Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals Part 17

CHAPTER XIII.

_Camp near Warrenton--Stability of the Republic--Measures, not Men, regarded by the Public--Removal of McClellan--Division Head-Quarters a House of Mourning--A Pigeon-hole General and his West Point Patent-Leather Cartridge-Box--Head-Quarter Murmurings and Mutterings--Departure of Little Mac and the Prince--Cheering by Word of Command--The Southern Saratoga--Rebel Regret at McClellan's Departure._

Writers p.r.o.ne to treat of the instability of Republics, will find serious matter to combat in the array of events that culminated at Warrenton. Without the blood that has usually characterized similar events in the history of Monarchies, in fact with scarcely a ripple upon the surface of our national affairs, a great military chieftain, or to speak truly, a commander who had endeavored, and who had the grandest of opportunities to become such, pa.s.sed from his proud position as the leader of the chief army of the Republic, to the obscurity of private life. Proffered to a public, pliant, because anxious that its representatives in the field should have a worthy Commander, by an Administration eager to repair the disaster of Bull Run,--puffed into favor by almost the entire press of the country, the day had been when the loyalty of the citizen was measured by his admiration of General McClellan.

Never did a military leader a.s.sume command so auspiciously. The resources of a mighty nation were lavishly contributed to the materiel of his army. Its best blood stood in his ranks. Indulged to an almost criminal extent by an Administration that in accordance with the wishes of the ma.s.ses it represented, bowed at his beck and was overly solicitous to do his bidding, no wonder that this ordinary mind became unduly inflated. He could model his army upon the precedents set by the great Napoleon; he could surround himself by an immense Staff--the talent of which, however, but poorly represented the vigor of his army,--for nepotism and favoritism interfered to prevent that, as they will with common men; drill and discipline could make his army efficient,--for his subordinates were thorough and competent, and his men were apt pupils; but he himself could not add to all these the crowning glories of the field. Every thing was there but genius, that G.o.d-given gift; and that he did not prove to be a Napoleon resulted alone from a lack of brains.

Now that the glare of the rocket has pa.s.sed from our sky, and its stick has fallen quietly enough among the pines of New Jersey, citizens have opportunity for calm reflection. We are not justified, perhaps, in attributing to McClellan all the evils and errors that disfigure his tenure of office. Intellect equal to the position he could not create for himself, and ninety-nine out of one hundred men of average ability would not have descended from his balloon-like elevation with any better grace. It is in the last degree unjust to brand with disloyalty, conduct that seems to be a result natural enough to incompetency. That upon certain occasions he may have been used for disloyal purposes by designing men, may be the consequence of lack of discrimination rather than of patriotism.

Whatever might have induced his conduct of the war, the nation has learned a lesson for all time. Generals who had grown grey in honorable service were rudely set aside for a Commander whose princ.i.p.al merit consisted in his having published moderately well compiled military books. Their acquiescence redounds to their credit; but their continued and comparatively calm submission in after times, when that General, regardless of soldierly merit, placed in high and honorable positions relatives and intimate friends, who could be but mere place-men, dependent entirely upon him for their honors, and committed to his interests, is strong proof of devoted patriotism. Slight hold had these neophytes upon the stern matter-of-fact fighting Generals, or the equally devoted and patriotic ma.s.ses in ranks. In their vain glory they murmured and muttered during and subsequent to this week at Warrenton, as they had threatened previously, in regard to the removal of McClellan. They knew not the Power that backed the Bayonet. In the eye of the unreserved and determined loyalty of the ma.s.ses, success was the test of popularity with any Commander. Not the shadow of an excuse existed for any other issue. Our resources of the materiel of war were well nigh infinite. Men could be had almost without number, at least equal to the Rebels in courage. There was, then, no excuse for inaction, and none knew it better than our reflecting rank and file.

The effort to inspire popularity for McClellan had been untiring by his devotees in position in the army. In the outset it was successful. Like their friends at home, the men in ranks, during the dark days that succeeded Bull Run, eagerly caught at a name that received such honorable mention. That this flush of popularity did not increase until it became a steady flame like that which burned within the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the veterans of the old French Empire, is because its subject lacked the commanding ability, decision of character, and fiery energy, that made statesmen do reverence, turned the tide of battle to advantage, and swept with resistless force over the plains of Italy and the mountains of Tyrol.

It was with mingled feelings of pleasure and uncertainty, caused by the change, that the Regiment broke to the front in column of company, and encamped on a beautifully wooded ridge about two miles north of Warrenton. Pleasure upon account of the change--as any change must be for the better,--uncertainty, as to its character and extent. In their doubtful future, Generals shifted position, and succeeded each other, very much as dark specks appear and pa.s.s before unsteady vision. Who would be the successor? Would the change be radical? were questions that were discussed in all possible bearings around cheerful camp-fires.

Whatever the satisfaction among subordinate officers and the ranks, Division Head-quarters was a house of mourning. To the General removed solely it owed its existence. Connected with his choice Corps, it had basked in the sunshine of his favor. With the removal already ordered, "the dread of something worse"--a removal nearer home was apprehended.

As a Field Commander, the officer upon whose shoulders rested the responsibilities of the Division, was entirely unknown previously to his a.s.suming command. His life hitherto had been of such a nature as not to add to his capacity as a Commander. Years of quiet clerkly duty in the Topographical Department may, and doubtless did in his case, make an excellent engineer or draughtsman, but they afford few men opportunities for improvement in generalship. During the McClellan regime this source furnished a heavy proportion of our superior officers. Why, would be difficult to say on any other hypothesis than that of favoritism. Their educational influences tend to a defensive policy, which history proves Generals of ability to have indulged in only upon the severest necessity. To inability to rise above these strictures of the school, may be traced the policy which has portrayed upon the historic page, to our lasting disgrace as a nation, the humiliating spectacle of a mighty and brave people, with resources almost unlimited, compelled for nearly two years to defend their Capital against armies greatly inferior to their own in men and means.

Independently of these educational defects, as they must be called, there was nothing in either the character or person of the Division Commander to command respect or inspire fear. Eccentric to a most whimsical degree, his oddities were the jest of the Division, while they were not in the least relieved by his extreme nervousness and fidgety habits of body. That there was nothing to inspire fear is, however, subject to exception, as his whims kept subordinates in a continual fever. The art of being practical--adapting himself to circ.u.mstances--he had never learned. It belongs to the department of Common Sense, in which, unfortunately, there has never been a professor at West Point.

His after life does not seem to have been favorable to its acquirement.

Withal, the hauteur characteristic to Cadets clung to him, and on many occasions rendered him unfortunate in his intercourse with volunteer officers. Politeness with him, a.s.sumed the airs and grimaces of a French dancing-master, which personage he was not unfrequently and not inaptly said to resemble. Displeasure he would manifest by the oddest of gestures and volleys of the latest oaths, uttered in a nervous, half stuttering manner. Socially, his extensive educational acquirements made him a pleasant companion, and with a friend it was said he would drink as deep and long as any man in the Army of the Potomac. Once crossed, however, his malignity would be manifested by the most intolerable and petty persecution.

"He has no judgment," said a Field-Officer of a Regiment of his command; a remark which, by the way, was a good summary of his character.

"Why?" replied the officer to whom he was speaking.

"I was out on picket duty," rejoined the other, "yesterday. We had an unnecessarily heavy Reserve, and one half of the men in it were allowed to rest without their belts and boxes. The General in the afternoon paid us a visit, and seeing this found fault, that the men were not kept equipped; observing at the same time that they could rest equally well with their cartridge boxes on; that when he was a Cadet at West Point he had ascertained by actual practice that it could be done."

"Do you recollect, General," I remarked, "whether you had forty rounds of ball cartridge in your box then?"

"He said he did not know that that made any difference."

"Now considering that the fact of the boxes being filled makes all the difference, I say," continued the officer, "that the man who makes a remark such a the General made, is devoid of judgment."

But he was connected both by ties of friendship and consanguinity with the hitherto Commander of the Army of the Potomac. His Adjutant-General was related to the same personage. The position of the latter, for which he was totally unfitted by his habits, was perhaps a condition precedent to the appointment of the General of Division.

The fifth of November, a day destined to become celebrated hereafter in American as in English history, dawned not less inauspiciously upon the Head-quarters of the Corps. They too could not appreciate the dry humor of the order that commanded Little Mac to report at Trenton. They thought alone of the unwelcome reality--that it was but an American way of sending him to Coventry. The Commander of the Corps had been a great favorite at the Head-quarters of the army--perhaps because in this old West Point instructor the haughty dignity and prejudice against volunteers which characterized too many Regular officers, had its fullest personification. His Corps embraced the largest number of Regular officers. In some Regiments they were ridiculously, and for Uncle Sam expensively, plentiful,--some Companies having two or three Captains, two or three First or Second Lieutenants,--while perhaps the enlisted men in the Regiment did not number two hundred. But these supernumeraries were Fitz John's favorites, and whether they performed any other labor than sporting shoulder straps, regularly visiting the Paymasters, adjusting paper collars and cultivating moustaches, was a matter of seemingly small consequence, though during depressed national finances.

The little patriotism that animated many of the officers attached to both of these Head-quarters, did not restrain curses deep if not loud.

Pay and position kept them in the army at the outbreak of the Rebellion; and pay and position alone prevented their taking the same train from Warrenton that carried away their favorite Commander. A telegram of the a.s.sociated Press stated a few days later that a list of eighty had been prepared for dismissal. What evil genius averted this benefit to the country, the War Department best knows. It required no vision of the night, nor gift of soothsaying, to foretell the trouble that would result from allowing officers in important positions to remain in the army, who were under the strongest obligations to the General removed, devotedly attached to him, and completely identified with, and subservient to, his interests. It might at least be supposed that his policy would be persevered in, and that his interests would not suffer. So far the reform was not radical.

"Colonel," said one of these martinets who occupied a prominent position upon the Staff of Prince Fitz John, as with a look of mingled contempt and astonishment he pointed to a Lieutenant who stood a few rods distant engaged in conversation with two privates of his command, "do you allow commissioned officers to converse with privates?"

"Why not, sir? Those three men were intimate acquaintances at home. In fact, the Lieutenant was a clerk in a dry-goods establishment in which one of the privates was a junior partner."

"All wrong, sir," replied the martinet. "They should approach a commissioned officer through a Sergeant. The Inspecting Officer will report you for laxity of discipline in case it continues, and place you under arrest."

The Brigadier, when he heard of this conversation, intimated that should the Inspecting Officer attempt it, he would leave the Brigade limits under guard; and it was not attempted.

Nonsense such as this is not only contemptible but criminal, when contrasted with the kind fellowship of Washington for his men,--his solicitude for their sufferings at Valley Forge,--Putnam sharing his scanty meals with privates of his command,--Napoleon learning the wants of his veterans from their own lips, and tapping a Grenadier familiarly upon the shoulder to ask the favor of a pinch from his snuff-box. Those worthies may rest a.s.sured that marquees pitched at Regulation distance, and access through non-commissioned officers, will not, if natural dignity be wanting, create respect. How greatly would the efficiency of the army have been increased, had the true gentility that characterized the n.o.ble soul of Colonel Simmons, who fell at Gaines' Mills, and that will always command reverence, been more general among his brother officers of the Regular Army.

These evil results should not, however, lead to a wholesome condemnation of West Point. The advantages of the Inst.i.tution have been abused, or rather neglected, by the great ma.s.ses of the Loyal States. In our moral matter-of-fact business communities it has been too generally the case, that cadets have been the appointees of political favoritism, regardless of merit; and that the wild and often worthless son of influential and wealthy parents, who had grown beyond home restraint, and who gave little indication of a life of honor or usefulness, would be turned into the public inclosure at West Point to square his morals and his toes at the same time at public expense, and the act rejoiced at as a good family riddance. Thus in the Loyal States, the profession of arms had fallen greatly into disrepute previously to the outbreak of the Rebellion, and instead of being known as a respectable vocation, was considered as none at all. Had military training to some extent been connected with the common school education of the land, we would have gained in health, and would have been provided with an able array of officers for our n.o.ble army of Volunteers. Among other preparations for their infamous revolt, the Rebels did not fail to give this especial prominence. The Northern States have been great in peace; the material is being rapidly educated that will make them correspondingly great in war.

"November's surly blasts" were baring the forests of foliage, when the order for the last Review by McClellan was read to the Troops. Mutinies and rumors of mutinies "from the most reliable sources" had been suspended above the Administration, like the threatening sword of Damocles; but Abraham's foot was down at last, and beyond murmurings and mutterings at disaffected Head-Quarters no unsoldierly conduct marked the reception of the order. So far from the "heavens being hung with black," as a few man-worshippers in their mad devotion would have wished, nature smiled beautifully fair. Such a sight could only be realized in Republican America. A military Commander of the greatest army upon the Continent, elevated in the vain-glory of dependent subordinates into a quasi-Dictatorship, was suddenly lowered from his high position, and his late Troops march to this last Review with the quiet formality of a dress parade. What cared those stern, self-sacrificing men in ranks, from whose bayonets that brilliant sun glistened in diamond splendor, for the magic of a name--the majesty of a Staff, gorgeous, although not clothed in the uniform desired by its late Chief. The measure of payment for toil and sacrifice with them, was progress in the prosecution of their holy cause. The thunders of the artillery that welcomed _him_ with the honor due to his rank, reminded _them_ to how little purpose, through shortcomings upon his part, those same pieces had thundered upon the Peninsula and at Antietam.

Ma.s.sed in close columns by division along the main road leading to Warrenton, the troops awaited the last of the grand pageants that had made the Army of the Potomac famous for reviews. Its late Commander, as he gracefully sat his bay, had not the nonchalance of manner that he manifested while reading a note and accompanying our earnest President in a former review at Sharpsburg; nor was the quiet dignity that he usually exhibited when at the head of his Staff, apparent. His manner seemed nervous, his look doubly anxious; troubled in the present, and solicitous as to the future. Conscious, too, doubtless, as he faced a nation's Representatives in arms, how he had "kept the word of promise to the ear," and how "he had broken it to the hope;" how while his reviews had revealed a mighty army of undoubted ability and eagerness for the fight, his indecision or p.r.o.neness to delay had made its campaigns the laughing-stock of the world. His brilliant Staff clattered at his heels; but glittering surroundings were powerless to avert the memories of a winter's inactivity at Mana.s.sas, the delay at Yorktown, the blunders on the Chickahominy, or the disgrace of the day after Antietam. How closely such memories thronged upon this thinking soldiery, and how little men who leave families and business for the field, from the necessity of the case, care for men if their measures are unsuccessful, may be imagined, when the fact is known that this same Little Mac, once so great a favorite through efforts of the Press and officers with whom he had peopled the places in his gift, received his last cheers from some Divisions of that same Army by word of command.

"A long farewell to all his greatness."

Imbecile in politics as in war, he cannot retrieve it by cringing to party purposes. The desire that actuates our ma.s.ses and demands able and earnest leaders has long since dissolved party lines.

This leave-taking was followed a few days later by that of the Corps Commander. Troubled looks, shadows that preceded his dark future, were plainly visible as the Prince pa.s.sed up and down the lines of his late command.

Another day pa.s.sed, and with light hearts the men brightened their muskets for a Review by their new Commander, Major-General Burnside, or "Burney," as they popularly called the Hero of Carolina celebrity.

But the day did not seem to be at hand that should have completed the reform by sweeping and garnishing disaffected, not to say disloyal Head-Quarters--removing from command men who were merely martinets, and who were in addition committed body and soul to the interests of their late Commander, and who, had they been in receipt of compensation from Richmond, could not have more completely labored by their half-hearted, inefficient, and tyrannizing course, to crush the spirit of our soldiery.

"What's the matter with Old Pigey?" inquired a Sergeant, detailed on guard duty at Division Head-Quarters, as he saluted his Captain, on one of these evenings at Warrenton.

"Why?" rejoined the Captain.

"The General," continued the Sergeant, "was walking up and down in front of his marquee almost all of last night, talking to himself, muttering, and at almost every other step stamping and swearing. He had a bully old mad on, I tell you, Captain. He went it in something of this style."

And the sergeant himself strode up and down, muttering and stamping and swearing, to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of the Captain and some bystanders.

The unwillingness to bow to the dictation of the President as Commander-in-Chief in his most righteous removal of their favorite, caused much heart-burning, and gave rise to much disloyal conduct. That it was tolerated at all was owing to the unappreciated indulgence or hesitation of the Administration, lest it should undertake too much. The operation, to have been skilful and complete, required nerve. That article so necessary for this crisis is in the ranks, and let us trust that for the future it will be found in greater abundance at Washington.

The Southern Saratoga, as Warrenton has been styled among the fashionables of the South, has much to commend it in situation and scenery, as a place of residence. The town itself is an odd jumble of old and new buildings, and is badly laid out, or rather not laid out at all, as the streets make all possible angles with each other. Yankee enterprise appears to have had something to do with the erection of the later buildings. Like other towns of that neighborhood its cemetery is heavily peopled with Rebel dead. At the time of our occupancy many of its larger buildings were still occupied as hospitals.

On the day of McClellan's departure the streets were crowded with officers and men, and the sympathies of the Rebel residents seemed strangely in unison with those of the chieftain's favorites. The representatives of the clannish attachments which made McClellanism a species of Masonry in the army, were there in force. In these banded interests brotherly love took the place of patriotism. Little wonder!

looking at the record of the McClellan campaigns, that the Rebels present fraternized with these devotees in their grief.

"You have thrown away your ablest commander," said an elderly man, of intelligent and gentlemanly appearance, clad in the uniform of a surgeon of the Rebel army, who stood conversing with one of our own surgeons, on the sidewalk of the main street of the place, while the crowd gathered to witness the departure of the General.

"Do you really think so?" rejoined the Union Surgeon, as he earnestly eyed the speaker.

"Yes, sir," said the Rebel, emphatically. "It is not only my opinion but the opinion of our Generals of ability, that in parting with McClellan you lose the only General you have who has shown any strategic ability."

"If that be your opinion, sir," was the decided reply, "the sooner we are rid of him the better."

And to this reply the country says, Amen!

"But what a shame it is that military genius is so little appreciated by the Administration, and that he is removed just at this time! Why, I heard our Colonel say that he had heard the General say, that in a few days more, he would have won a decisive victory," remarked a young officer, in a jaunty blue jacket, to a companion, gesticulating as he spoke, with a cigar between the first and second fingers of his right hand.

An older officer, who overheard the remark, observed, drily:--"He was not removed for what he would do, but for what he had done."

"And for what he had not done," truthfully added another.