John A. McClernand

“ On the 15th of July, on motion of General John A. McClernand, the House, by a vote of one hundred and twenty-one to five, adopted a resolution pledging itself to vote any amount of money and any number of men which might be necessary, to ensure a speedy and effectual suppression of the rebellion. ”

“ The Western commanders, like those at the East, and with better reason, were importunate for more men and more equipment. The President could not, by 348 any effort, meet their requirements. He wrote to McClernand after the battle of Belmont: "Much, very much, goes undone; but it is because we have not the power to do it faster than we do." Some troops were without arms; but, he said, "the plain matter of fact is, our good people have rushed to the rescue of the government faster than the government can find arms to put in their hands." ”

“ In short, McClernand was merely a smart man, quick, very active-minded, but his judgment was not solid, and he looked after himself a good deal. Mr. Lincoln also looked out carefully for McClernand, because he was an Illinois Democrat, with a considerable following among the people. It was a great thing to get McClernand into the war in the first place, for his natural predisposition, one would have supposed, would have been to sympathize with the South. As long as he adhered to the war he carried his Illinois constituency with him ”

“ From the time that I had joined Grant's army at Milliken's Bend and heard him criticising Porter, Sherman, and other officers, I had been observing McClernand narrowly myself. My own judgment of him by this time was that he had not the qualities necessary for commander even of a regiment. In the first place, he was not a military man; he was a politician and a member of Congress. He was a man of a good deal of a certain kind of talent, not of a high order, but not one of intellectual accomplishments. His education was that which a man gets who is in Congress five or six years. ”

“ There was only one thing to be done, and circumstances were such that not only must that thing be done by him, but also it must be done by him in direct opposition to the strenuous insistence of all his official and most of his self-constituted advisers. It was necessary to reinstate McClellan. ”

“ In Washington the only powerful backing upon which McClellan could still rely was that of the President, and he was surely wearing away the patience of his only friend by the irritating attrition of promises ever reiterated and never redeemed. No man ever kept his own counsel more closely than did Mr. Lincoln, and the indications of his innermost sentiments concerning McClellan at this time are rare. ”

“ On April 2 McClellan arrived at Fortress Monroe. On the very next day he was disturbed by the revocation of the orders which had left him in command of that place and had allowed him to "draw from the troops under General Wool a division of about 10,000 men, which was to be assigned to the First Corps." Another and a serious disappointment also occurred at once; he found that the navy could not be utilized for assisting in an attack on Yorktown, or for running by it so as to land forces in rear of it. He must therefore depend wholly upon his army to force a way up the Peninsula. ”

“ After he had put the capital in safety, McClellan advanced slowly against Lee, who had crossed the Potomac into Maryland with designs on Pennsylvania. He made his usual complaint of inadequate forces, and exaggerated the forces of the enemy. He won, however, the battle of Antietam,--for, although the Confederates afterwards claimed that it was a drawn battle, they immediately retired,--but even then failed to pursue his advantage, and allowed Lee to recross the Potomac and escape, to the deep disgust of everybody and the grief of Lincoln. ”

“ To reach the truth and sound conclusions in the many quarrels which it has provoked is never easy, and upon some points seems impossible; and neither the truth nor the conclusions are often agreeable. Opinion and sympathy have gradually but surely tended in condemnation of McClellan and in favor of Lincoln. The evidence is conclusive that McClellan was vain, disrespectful, and hopelessly blind to those non-military but very serious considerations which should have been allowed to modify the purely scientific strategy of the campaign. ”

“ McClellan had sought to give to it a complexion safer for his party and more honorable for himself, but the platform and events combined to defeat his wise purpose. In addition to these difficulties the South also burdened him with an untimely and compromising friendship. The Charleston "Courier," with reckless frankness, declared that the armies of the Confederacy and the peace-men at the North were working together for the procurement of peace; and said: "Our 287success in battle insures the success of McClellan. Our failure will inevitably lead to his defeat." ”

“ I said to him: "I'll tell you what I will do, General McClernand. If General Sherman goes in command of the troops, I will go myself in command of a proper force, and will insure the capture of the post." McClernand winced under this, and Sherman quietly walked off into the after-cabin. He beckoned me to come there, while McClernand was apparently deeply engaged in studying out a chart, making believe he was interested, in order to conceal his temper. Sherman said to me: "Admiral, how could you make such a remark to McClernand? He hates me already, and you have made him an enemy for life." ”

“ General McClernand, responsible for crowding men worse than a humane man would crowd cattle on a voyage to the shambles, was scarcely less blameworthy than those who tortured our prisoners at Andersonville. ”

“ It is all easy if our troops march as well as the enemy, and it is unmanly to say they cannot do it. This letter is in no sense an order."
A general who failed to respond to such a spur as this was not the man for offensive warfare; and McClellan did not respond. Movement was as odious to him now as it ever had been, and by talking about shoes and overcoats, and by other dilatory pleas, he extended his delay until the close of the month. It was actually the second day of November before his army crossed the Potomac. Another winter of inaction seemed about to begin. ”

“ General McClernand is still living in Springfield, Illinois.
A week after Congress organized, Lincoln wrote to Springfield: "As you are all so anxious for me to distinguish myself, I have concluded to do so before long;" and he did it—but not exactly as his Springfield friends wished. The United States were then at war with Mexico, a war that the Whigs abhorred. Lincoln had used his influence against it; but, hostilities declared, he had publicly affirmed that every loyal man must stand by the army. Many of his friends, Hardin, Baker, and Shields, among others, were at that moment in Mexico. ”

“ This was done by Pillow and Bushrod Johnson, who gained McClernand's flank. Buckner, however, who was to strike McClernand's left, was slow in advancing. Had he (p. 080) moved as rapidly as the other divisions, McClernand would have been utterly routed. It was then that W. H. L. Wallace, of Illinois, showed his great military ability. He had been in the Mexican war, was courageous, and had that power of presence which made every man feel that he was under the eye of his commander. Then, too, General Logan animated his men, and held them in close contact with the Rebels till wounded. ”

“ Only the intensity of hatred could make any man blind to McClellan's capacity for such work; and what he might be for other work was a matter of no consequence just now. Lincoln simply applied to the instant need the most effective help, without looking far afield to study remote consequences. Two remarks, said to have been made by him at this time, indicate his accurate appreciation of the occasion and the man: "There is no one in the army who can man these fortifications and lick these troops of ours into shape half so well as he can." "We must use the tools we have ”

“ On the other hand the politicians, always eager to minister to the gratification of the people, began to be importunate; they harried the President, and went out to camp to prick their civilian spurs into the general himself. But McClellan had a soldierly contempt for such intermeddling in matters military, and was wholly unimpressible. When Senator Wade said that an unsuccessful battle was preferable to delay, for that a defeat would easily be repaired by swarming recruits, the general tartly replied that he preferred a few recruits before a victory to a great many after a defeat. ”

“ Our transportation was not sufficient to move all the army across the river at one trip, or even two; but the landing of the 13th corps and one division of the 17th was effected during the day, April 30th, and early evening. McClernand was advanced as soon as ammunition and two days' rations (to last five) could be issued to his men. The bluffs were reached an hour before sunset and McClernand was pushed on, hoping to reach Port Gibson and save the bridge spanning the Bayou Pierre before the enemy could get there; for crossing a stream in the presence of an enemy is always difficult. ”

“ McClernand, arriving just after Sherman's defeat near Vicksburg, fell in at once with a suggestion of his to attack the Post of Arkansas, a Confederate stronghold in the State of Arkansas and upon the river of that name, from the shelter of which Confederate gunboats had some chance of raiding the Mississippi above Vicksburg. The expedition succeeded in this early in January, 1863, and was then recalled to join Grant. This was a mortification to McClernand, who had hoped for a command independent of Grant. In his subsequent conduct he seems to have shown incapacity ”

“ At once 342 the cry of McClellan's assailants went up: If McClellan had only moved upon the place! What a cheap victory he would have won, and attended with what invaluable "moral effects"! Yet, forsooth, he had been afraid to move upon these very intrenched positions which it now appeared that the Confederates dared not hold even when unthreatened! But McClellan retorted that the rebels had taken this backward step precisely because they had got some hint of his designs for advancing by Urbana, and that it was the exact fulfillment, though inconveniently premature, of his predictions. ”

“ Then he lost Warner in the smoke and the regiment retreated yet further. It was impossible to preserve cohesion or keep a line formed. The Southerners never ceased to press upon them with overwhelming weight. Pillow, now decisive in action, continually accumulated new forces upon the Northern right. Every position that McClernand had held at the opening of the battle was now taken, and the Confederate general was planning to surround and destroy the whole Union army. Already he was sending messengers to the telegraph with news for Johnston of his complete victory. ”

“ It would have been well if he could have found some quarter in which permanently to repose his implicit faith, so that one consistent plan could have been carried out without interference. Either he had placed too much confidence in McClellan in the past, or he was placing too little in him now. If he could not accept McClellan's opinion as to the safety of 043Washington, in preference to that of Wadsworth, Thomas, and Hitchcock, then he should have removed McClellan, and replaced him with some one in whom he had sufficient confidence to make smooth coöperation a possibility. ”

“ But McClellan presented as his project a movement by Urbana and West Point, using the York River as a base of supplies. General McDowell and Secretary Chase favored the President's plan; General Franklin and Postmaster Blair thought better of McClellan's. The President had a strong fancy for his own scheme, because by it the Union army was kept between the enemy and Washington; and therefore the supreme point of importance, the safety of the national capital, was insured. ”

“ He is intrepid to recklessness, his head is clear though rather thick, his disposition honest and manly, though given to boasting and self-exaggeration of a gentle and innocent kind. His division is well cared for, but is rather famous for slow instead of rapid marching. McClernand, however, disliked him, and kept him in the rear throughout the late [Pg 65] campaign. He is a good officer to command a division in an army corps, but should not be intrusted with any important independent command. ”

“ Although his troops were then under fire for the first time, their commander, by his constant presence with them, inspired a confidence in officers and men that enabled them to render services on that bloody battle-field worthy of the best of veterans. McClernand was next to Sherman, and the hardest fighting was in front of these two divisions. McClernand told me on that day, the 6th, that he profited much by having so able a commander supporting him. A casualty to Sherman that would have taken him from the field that day would have been a sad one for the troops engaged at Shiloh. ”

“ The delay in the advance of the troops immediately with McClernand was caused, no doubt, by the enemy presenting a front of artillery and infantry where it was impossible, from the nature of the ground and the density of the forest, to discover his numbers. As it was, the battle of Champion's Hill or Baker's Creek was fought mainly by Hovey's division of McClernand's corps and Logan's and Quinby's divisions (the latter commanded by Brigadier-General M. M. Crocker) of McPherson's corps. ”

“ For while it is certain 042 that what actually did happen coincided very accurately with McClellan's expectations; on the other hand, it can never be known what might have happened if Lincoln had not held McDowell, and if, therefore, facts had not been what they were.
So far as Mr. Lincoln is concerned, the question, what military judgment was correct,—that is, whether the capital really was, or was not, absolutely secure,—is of secondary consequence. The valuation which he set on that safety was undeniably correct; it certainly was of more importance than McClellan's success. ”