E 470 .2 J> .n23 1 Copy 1 MAJOR-GENERAL (^m[]t §. PrCkllan, FROM August 1st, 1861, to August 1st, 1862. You have been taught, ere this, the value of "one man. Schiller. TO THE PP]OPLE OF THE UNITED STATES RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 382 THE j^tjt:e3:y strong- iufantry corps, and all the at- tempts of the Rebels to prevent this corps from gaining the right bank of the Chickahominy were repulsed, the bridges were destroy- ed by McClellan after Porter had passed them, and the enemy held in check on the left bank of the river. At tlie same time the army stores were sent toward the James River, the sick and wounded went in the same direction, the heavy siege-guns ibllowed, commun- ication with the gun-boats on the James River was established and on the 29th at night all the wagons, heavy artillery, the sick and wounded and Porter's corps had passed the White Oak Swamp. At the same time an attack by a large Rebel army on New Bridge was repulsed, the enemy driven back and forced to abstain from further molestation for 18 hours, when he brought fresh troops upon the field. At Bottom's Bridge another battle was fought with the same result ; the Rebels trying hard to turn the flank of the Union army from the New Kent cross-roads, but the same unsurpassed gallantry that won the day on the 2*Ith, repulsed the Rebels here. At White Oaks the Rebels made another most desperate attempt, but the cold steel of the Excelsior and the Irish Brigades and the grape and can- ister too liberally served out to them by McClellan's personal direc- tion they could not overcome, and at the end of this hard-fought day the Rebels were again repulsed. On Monday, June 30th, another battle was fought at Charles' City road ; the Rebels appearing on three sides were repulsed after a severe fight, in which the Union army advanced to close quarters. The Divisions of Franklin, Kearney and Slocum distinguished them- selves, and in which the artillery contributed most materially to the defeat of the exhausted Rebels. The army had reached its new position on the banks of the James River in perfect order on the 30th day of June and 1st day of July, respectively, marching some thirty miles in four to five days, when on the second day of July a Rebel army under General Magruder, fresh from Richmond, appeared near Malvern Hill. General Sum- ner's corps at once advanced against them, charged upon them, took two of their batteries, made some seven hundred prisoners and drove them back to Richmond in great disorder, never to this day again to molest the army of the Potomac in their new position. General Stoneman With his command joined the army by way of Fortress Monroe. The loss of life during the seven battles fought, from the 27th of June to the 2d of July was enormous, that of the army of the Potomac, including killed, wounded and missing, is about 20,000 ; that of the Rebel array variously estimated at from 22 35,000 to 50,000. The army of the Potomac lost none of the siege- guns and only two or three light guns, which had to be left behind because the horses had been killed. They captured from the Rebels and carried to the James River some twenty guns. During the eventful days from June 2Tth to July 2d, General Mc- Clellan handled his army of about 100,000 men in a manner, if ever equaled, has certainly never been surpassed. He fought seven distinct battles, each of them against greatly superior forces of fresh troops, led by Generals who had staked everything upon this move- ment, who expected to conquer, to destroy the army of the Potomac and to gain large, stores of which they stood sorely in need. He won evei'y one of these battles, punishing the enemy always so severely that they dared not molest him in his march towards his new position. The broad diflerence between the march uf the arn)y of the Poto- mac from the Chickahominy to the James River, and a retreat, as the radical Press delights to call his masterly manoeuvre, consists in the fact that a retreating army lighting a pursueing enemy, moves steadily, although backwards, in the direction in which it retreats, while in everj^ one of the seven battles McClellan led his army to battle in the direction whence he came, that is East; defeated the enemy and crippled him so that he could not move before the arrival of new forces ; and then resumed his march Westwards, repeating the same movement whenever a fresh Rebel army approached his rear ; so well did he economise the strength of his armj'- and so true were the hearts of the gallant men, that on Malvern Hill he could take the Rebel batteries by a bayonet charge, after having marched three miles to come up to them. Three days after the battle of Malvern Hill and after the position at Harrison's Landing had been fully secured, the division of Gen. Shields was sent to re-inforce the army of the Potomac; (too late for any real use, except to suppl}'- the places of those whom their pre- sence in proper time would probably have saved,) and as Senator Chandler, in his speech against General McClellan, told the Senate, McDowell's troops also "toere to have been sent hwi." No other evidence seenis to be required to show, how profound ignorance or evil intentions against the Commander and the cause he was fighting for, withdrew originally two corps from McClellan's army and retained them so long notwithstanding his constant re- quest of re-inforcements ; because the Cit}^ of Washington was as safe when McDowell's and Banks' corps where withdrawn from the army of the Potojnac — apparently a great deal safer, — than when 23 McCalPs and Shield's divisions were sent to the Peninsula, and when McDowell's troops "were to have been sent.'''' If these troops could be spared at any time from Washing-ton, they could have been spared in the spring when the army of the Potomac embarked for the pen- insula; they were withdrawn from that army when this withdrawal sacrificed the whole campaign ; and they were restored when it was too late to save the campaign and the blood and treasure that now have to be poured out like water, because they were not sent in time. During this week of battles which will mark an epoch in military history, the army of the Potomac and the Nation reaped the fruits of the systematic training, drilling, manoeuvering and the "idle reviews " as the radicals called them, to which day by day the different corps had been subjected last winter in front of Manassas, and General McClellan was rewarded for the long days and sleepless nights, whicli for months he had devoted to the practical direction of these preparations. Modern history'' records only the instance of the French General Victor Moreau, the man whose military genius, by many, was con- sidered greater even than that of Napoleon Bonaparte; who jealous of him prosecuted and banished him to America, but had the satisfac- tion of learning that his rival was killed by a French cannon ball in the battle of Dresden, August 2'Tth, 1813, which battle Moreau as commander of the Russian army had planned and which Napoleon lost. Moreau with 45,000 men was attacked October 2nd, 1196, by 66,000 Austrians under Archduke Charles near Biberach, beat the Austrians in a hard fought battle, marched to a valley in the black forests, called the " valley of hell" on a,ccount of the wild and broken character of its formation; had another battle near Emmendingen, October 19th, won the day and took up his line of march; attacked and beat the Austrians again near Schliengen, October 24th, and reached Kehl in safety which he defended against very greatly superior forces. The above mentioned movement of Moreau is pointed out to the student of military history, as a most brilliant achievement by which he immortalized himself, but when we compare the quick succession of the seven battles on the Peninsula with the length of time between the battles fought by Moreau, we find how much more time the latter had than McClellan to rest and refresh his army and to mature his plans. There was more fighting done by the army of the Potomac in the seven battles between the 27th of June and 2nd of July than there has been done up to this date in all the engagements of the several 24 Union armies together, the battles at Pittsburgh Landing not except- ed ; compared with these seven battles all the engagements between the two hostile armies appear insignificant. There has been since Bull's-Run, no necessity on the Union side to lead a large army to battle, still less to handle one under so many perplexing and always different circumstances. George B. McClellan is the only American General who has ever led a large Union army into battle ; he had to do it against the well-known talent, genius, experience and desperation of Jeff. Davis, Beauregard, Johuson, Lee and Stonewall Jackson combined, who, exercising dictatorial -powers, concentrated all the troops that could be reached, till their forces were twice as large as McClellan's, and applied all means to gain their end; he had to do it alone, denied re-inforcements, villified and slandered by the radicals, annoyed by intermeddling officials with correspondence about a house of four rooms which had or had not been used as a hospital, and so forth ; supported only and bravely by his self- organized and militarized gallant and faithful army of the Potomac and its brave officers ; and so well did he and his armj^ execute the difficult task entrusted to them, that with all the odds against them they completely frustrated the designs of the combined Rebel stra- tegists and tacticians and that the army of the Potomac, although con- siderably reduced in numbers, reached the new position on the James River victorious, driving the Rebel army under Magruder badly whipped to Richmond. With the most profound respect for, and full appreciation of the universal bravery and general adaptedness of almost all the Generals of the army of the United States, the author can not suppress his firm conviction that by the organization, drill, manoeuvring and complete military education of his army, by the consumate skill with which he has handled this army in the attacks as well as in the defensive under the most difficult circumstances and against larger forces of the enemy; as well as by the instantaneous conception and precise execution of his strategical movements. General McClellan has proved himself, up to this moment, to be the only man, who if our country is to be saved by the achievements of her armies, is capable of accomplishing that beyond anything else desirable object. The Rebels admit that McClellan by his brilliant strategy has outwitted all their Generals, whipped them seven times although they fought him two to one, and has frustrated their plans, upon the success of which they had staked everything. The military world at large beholds with admiring astonishment the bold con- ception of the movement from the Chickahominy to the James, and 25 the unsurpassed galantry and precision displayed in its execution; but the radicals among us call this great military success, a bad retreat and a defeat, are jubilant about it and try their best to make it a cause for an oflScial censure, or better yet for the removal of McClellau from his high command. This want of judgement and justice although at the first glance it may appear strange and un- accountable, is after all nothing but strong evidence of the fact that fanatical politicians of this great Republic of the 19th century, are just as blind and unscrupulously selfish as their prototypes of other ages and countries have been; so was Julius Ceasar threatened with exile after his great conquest, Marlborough, the only military genius England has ever produced, deprived of the command of the army he had led to France victoriously; so became Napoleon after his cel- ebrated campaign in Italy, in which he had conquered half a dozen kingdoms, the object of jealousy, fear and hatred of the Directory, who sent him to Egypt in the hope, never to see him return; and so was even George Washington, the immortal, by the fanatics of his time, called a slow general without dash, one who retreated to often and had no fight in him, he was to discrete and his policy a Fabian policy; every one of his subordinate generals who achieved a success was by the politicians set up as the proper person to supersede Washington, until the patriotism of the country had to be aroused to prevent the father of his country from being superseded by one of his own officers. - Conscious of doing his duty in the best possible manner, keeping the lasting welfare of his country constantly at heart, Washington treated his calumniators in and out of Congress with contemptious silence. George B. McClellan has had no other reply to his slander- ers, who with all their unscrupulous means do not succeed to dimin- ish the attachment for and adoration of their commanding General in the army of the Potomac, where general- officers who had seen service in the army before McClellan was born, unite most heartily with their younger comrades and with the rank and file from every part of the Union and of every nativity in the battle-cry, "McCkllam for ever f^ When we ask, what induced Winfield Scott who had seen all the officers of the U. S. army grow up before him, who had seen most of them in active service, who knew their metal and their capacities, whose most fervent wish it was to see this wicked rebellion crushed and the glorious Union restored in the shortest possible time ; what induced him, we ask, to commit the two-fold Herculean task, of creating the largest army and planning a vast and complicated cam- 26 paigJi, to George B. McClellali, in Belecting him to his successor ? — We are answered that Scott knew not only the vigor and capacity which he had shown during his campaign in Western Virginia, but he well remembered the unrivalled gallantry, the skill and the inde- fatigable enei'gy which distinguished McClellan throughout the Mexican war. From the reports of his simple and unostentatious habits, the in- dustrious, diligent, strict but just manner, in which he attends to the regular business of his army, (which he has never left for a single day,) the precision of his orders, the indefatigable energy, the cool deliberate courage and self-possession with which he moves and directs operations under the hottest fire ; the never failing word of encouragement and cheer in the battle, and of consolation in the hospital ; of the swiftness with which he moves, of the eagle-eye that, always calm, surveys the situation at a glance, and devises the means to become its master ; the unanimous reports of all this must go far to show that the characteristic qualities in McClellan, which bind the army of the Potomac stronger and stronger to their Commander, are the same which upon the heights of "Cerro-Gordo" elicited the oflScial commendation of General Scott ; which at the battles of Contreras, August 29th, 1841, made him spring forward to take the post of the killed commander of a howitzer battery and fight it with so much spirit and ability, that General Twiggs recom- mended him for efficiency and gallantry, and that he was immediately brevetted first Lieutenant of Engineers ; which at the assault upon the Castle of Chapultepec made General Worth recommend him for gallantry of conduct and signal service as an engineer ; which, at Mexico made him push the first officer into the city, entering at three o'clock in the morning at the head of his sappers and miners under the most dreadful of all attacks, the firing from the windows and house-tops, kept up by two thousand released convicts ; when he was for gallant and mcritorioiis conduct at Chapultepec and Mexico brevetted Captain.'an honor he had once already declined when con- fered upon him on the 12th of September ; "en-fi,n" the same rare qualities of conspicuous gallantry, daring and professional excel- lence by which George B. McClellan had won his captaincy upon bloody fields before he was twenty-two years old. August 1st, 1862. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS i !i liil iiii 1 Ill i 013 706 644 A. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS e'eiS 706 644