63. K. Marx. The Dismissal of McClellan
McClellan's dismissal! That is Lincoln's answer to the election victories of the Democrats.(1)
The Democratic journals had stated with the most positive assurance that the election of Seymour as Governor of New York State would entail the immediate revocation of the proclamation in which Lincoln declared slavery abolished in Secessia from January 1, 1863.(2) The paper that took this prophetic imprint had hardly left the press when their favourite general — their favourite-because "next to a great defeat he most dreaded a decisive victory"(3)—was deprived of his command and went back to private life.
We recall that McClellan replied to this proclamation of Lincoln with a counter-proclamation, an order of the day to his army, in which he indeed forbade any demonstration against the President's measure, but at the same time let slip the fatal words: "...It is the task of citizens through the polls to remedy the government's errors or to pass judgement on its actions." (4) McClellan, at the head of the main army of the United States, therefore appealed from the President to the impending elections. He threw the weight of his position into the scales. A pronunciamento in the Spanish manner aside, he could not have demonstrated his hostility to the President's policy more strikingly. Accordingly, after the election victory of the Democrats the only choice left to Lincoln was either to sink to the level of a tool of the pro-slavery compromise party or with McClellan to remove from under it its point of support in the army.
McClellan's dismissal at this moment is accordingly a political demonstration. In any case, however, it had become indispensable. Halleck, the Commander-in-Chief,[3] in a report to the Secretary of War,(5) had charged McClellan with direct insubordination.(6) For, shortly after the defeat of the Confederates in Maryland, on October 6, Halleck ordered the crossing of the Potomac, particularly as the low water-level of the Potomac and its tributaries favoured military operations at the time. In defiance of this order, McClellan remained immobile, under the pretext of his army's inability to march due to lack of provisions. In the report mentioned, Halleck proves that this was a hollow subterfuge, that, compared with the Western army, the Eastern army enjoyed great privileges in respect of the commissariat and that the supplies still lacking could have been received just as well south as north of the Potomac. A second report links up with this report of Halleck's; in it the committee appointed to inquire into the surrender of Harper's Ferry[287] to the Confederates accuses McClellan of having concentrated the Union troops stationed near that arsenal in an inconceivably slow fashion — he let them march only six English miles (about one and a half German miles) a day — for the purpose of its relief.(7) Both reports, that of Halleck and that of the committee, were in the President's hands before the election victory of the Democrats.
McClellan's generalship has been described in these columns so repeatedly(8) that it is sufficient to recall how he sought to substitute strategic envelopment for tactical decision and how indefatigable he was in discovering considerations of general-staff discretion which forbade him either to take advantage of victories or to anticipate defeats. The brief Maryland campaign cast a false halo about his head. Here, however, we have to consider the fact that he received his general marching orders from General Halleck, who also drew up the plan of the first Kentucky campaign, and that the victory on the battlefield was due exclusively to the bravery of the subordinate generals, in particular, of General Reno, who fell, and of Hooker, who has not yet recovered from his wounds. Napoleon once wrote to his brother Joseph that on the battlefield there was danger at all points and one ran into its jaws most surely when one sought to avoid it. McClellan seems to have grasped this axiom, but without giving it the practical application that Napoleon suggested to his brother. During the whole of his military career McClellan has never been on the battlefield, has never been under fire, a peculiarity that General Kearny strongly stresses in a letter, which his brother published, after Kearny, fighting under Pope's command, fell in one of the battles near Washington.(9)
McClellan understood how to conceal his mediocrity under a mask of restrained earnestness, laconic reticence and dignified reserve. His very defects secured him the unshakable trust of the Democratic Party in the North and the "loyal acknowledgement" of the secessionists. Among the higher officers of his army he gained supporters through the formation of a general staff of dimensions hitherto unprecedented in the annals of military history. Some of the older officers, who had belonged to the former army of the Union and had received their training at West Point Academy, found in him a point of support for their rivalry with the newly-sprung-up "civilian generals" and for their secret sympathies with the "comrades" in the enemy camp. The soldiers, finally, knew of his military qualities only by hearsay; for the rest they ascribed to him all the merits of the commissariat and could tell many a glorious tale of his reserved affability. McClellan possessed one single gift of the supreme commander — that of assuring himself of popularity with his army.
McClellan's successor, Burnside, is too little known to pronounce a judgement on him. He belongs to the Republican Party. Hooker, on the other hand, who is assuming command of the army corps serving specifically under McClellan, is incontestably one of the best warriors in the Union. "Fighting Joe",(10) as the troops call him, played the biggest part in the successes in Maryland. He is an Abolitionist.
The same American papers which bring us the news of McClellan's dismissal, contain utterances of Lincoln in which he resolutely declares that he will not deviate a hair's breadth from his proclamation.
"[Lincoln]," The Morning Star* observes quite justly, "has taught the world to know him as a slow, but solid man, who advances with exceeding caution, but does not go back. Each step of his administrative career has been in the right direction and has been stoutly maintained. Starting from the resolution to exclude slavery from the Territories, he has at last arrived at the ultimate purpose of all 'anti-slavery movements'—the uprooting of this evil from the soil of the Union — and has already reached the high vantage point on which the Union has ceased to be responsible in any way for the continuance of slavery."
Endnotes
[3] Construction of the Suez Canal was begun in 1859 and completed in 1869. The Fortress of Gae'ta, the last stronghold of Francis II, King of the Two Sicilies (the Kingdom of Naples), was seized by the Piedmont troops on February 12, 1861, as a result of which the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies became part of the united Kingdom of Italy.
[287] During their invasion of Maryland, the Southern troops under General T. J. Jackson on September 15, 1862, after three days' fighting, seized Harper's Ferry, an important town on the Potomac with a garrison of 10,000 and a large arsenal, burned down all the government buildings and withdrew four days later.