Rebels at the Gate: Lee and McClellan on the Front Line of a Nation Divided (37 page)

Major General George McClellan was relieved to learn of Kelley's success, following so closely the fiasco at Ball's Bluff. From headquarters in Washington, McClellan had built a second Union fighting force—the gargantuan Army of the Potomac. His energy and stellar organizational skills were again on display. With that army he staged reviews, each one grander than the last. Up to seven divisions—nearly sixty-five thousand men—stood in gilded lines that stretched to the horizon. Bands played, artillery boomed, and cavalry rumbled in gaudy display. Thousands of spectators came out to watch, including diplomats, cabinet secretaries, and President Lincoln himself. McClellan would appear on a splendid mount, galloping across the reviewing grounds as the entire army waved their hats and hurrahed, a spectacle that
Harper's Weekly
called “brilliant beyond description.”
⁵⁵⁰

McClellan's army looked ready to crush the rebellion, but the general showed no inclination to fight. “I will advance & force the rebels to a battle on a field of my own selection,” he wrote Nelly in early October. “A long time must yet elapse before I can do this.”

In the meantime, he sparred with General-in-Chief Winfield Scott. McClellan believed he was outnumbered. By his latest estimate, some one hundred and fifty thousand Confederates threatened Washington—a number more than three times their actual strength. When General Scott questioned the amazing figure, McClellan swore he could not tell if the old warrior was a “
dotard
or a
traitor!
” Their dispute—now a raw struggle for power—finally boiled over in a stormy high-level meeting. The cantankerous Scott angrily confronted his young protégé. “I kept cool, looked him square in the face, &
rather
I think got the advantage of him,” McClellan boasted of the exchange.
⁵⁵¹

In a letter to Secretary of War Cameron, Scott charged that the brash young general had repeatedly broken the chain of command, going directly to Lincoln and certain Cabinet members without Scott's knowledge. McClellan reportedly withheld sensitive information from Scott, yet shared it with the politicians.

McClellan had allied himself with powerful forces, and Scott was enfeebled by poor health. “I am unable to ride in the saddle or to walk by reason of dropsy in my feet and legs and paralysis in the small of my back,” the aged Scott admitted. “I shall definitely retire from the Army.” He did so on October 31. One day later, President Lincoln appointed George McClellan as the new general-in-chief. At the tender age of thirty-four, McClellan now commanded
all
United States armies.
⁵⁵²

That evening, President Lincoln called on McClellan. “I should be perfectly satisfied if I thought that this vast increase of responsibility would not embarrass you,” the president said, reflecting some misgivings.

“It is a great relief, Sir,” McClellan assured him. “I feel as if several tons were taken from my shoulders today. I am now in contact with you, and the Secretary. I am not embarrassed by intervention.”

“Well, draw on me for all the sense I have, and all the information,” Lincoln said. “In addition to your present command, the supreme command of the army will entail a vast labor upon you.”

McClellan responded quietly, “I can do it all.”
⁵⁵³

He chose to do it alone, uninspired by the president or his staff. “It is perfectly sickening to have to work with such people & to see the fate of the nation in such hands,” McClellan informed Nelly on the eve of his appointment. He looked upon the cabinet secretaries as “a set of scamps,” vile, cowardly rascals and fools. McClellan viewed Lincoln as honest but “unworthy” to be president, a fancier of quaint anecdotes that were beneath the dignity of his office—traits that moved him to call Lincoln “the
original gorilla
” and “nothing more than a well-meaning baboon.”
⁵⁵⁴

McClellan was more gracious to the departing Winfield Scott. And even while Congressional Republicans carped over the army's inertia, the troops were endeared to their new general-in-chief. “If McClellan wields the sword as well as he does the pen,” editor Archibald Campbell wrote presciently, “the nation may well have confidence in the new commander of our forces.” In the meantime, there were grand reviews and bulletins assuring Lincoln that the capital was safe. “All quiet on the Potomac,” became McClellan's watchphrase. “I am doing all I can to get ready to move before winter sets in,” he informed Nelly, “but it now begins to look as if we are condemned to a winter of inactivity.”
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As campaigning drew to a close, troops in the mountains of Western Virginia sought escape from the drudgery of army life. In the absence of ladies, the boys held stag dances. “Chestnutting and exploring expeditions; trout fishing and bathing; chuck-a-luck, seven-up, and what not modes of gambling besides,” recalled an Ohio Federal, “checker-playing, with chess—kingliest of games; these, and the like, commanded general attention, and were practiced daily. But pipe-making was the supreme passion.” Soldiers dug up the abundant laurel or rhododendron bushes and from the roots carved handsome smoking pipes, rings, and other objects
with their jackknifes. Countless such mementoes of soldier life were mailed to the loved ones at home.
⁵⁵⁶

The troops avidly penned and read letters. James Hall, working in the post office at Camp Bartow, claimed that nearly eight hundred letters passed through each day. Although notoriously unreliable, the mails were important for morale. “Your letters are my only comfort,” wrote Georgian Shepherd Pryor to his wife, a common theme among the troops.
⁵⁵⁷

Hunting became a popular pastime. Soldiers gained passes to chase the abundant game in those mountains, but usually returned to camp empty-handed. “We were the original game-preservers of the Cheat Mountain region,” Ambrose Bierce confessed years later, “for although we hunted…over as wide an area as we dared to cover we took less game, probably, than would have been taken by a certain hunter of disloyal views whom we scared away.”
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There was always the lucrative art of foraging. “Our Indiana friends are providing for the winter by laying in a stock of household furniture at very much less than its original cost, and without even consulting the owners,” wrote John Beatty from Camp Elkwater. Enterprising country folk extracted revenge by selling the troops eggs, butter, and other scarce items at greatly inflated prices. “Sometimes we give them a cursing and march them out of camp at double-quick,” admitted James Hall from Camp Bartow, “and then half starve for the fun!”
⁵⁵⁹

Africans—enslaved and free—served the armies. Body servants like Shepherd Pryor's “Henry” performed domestic chores in the Confederate camps. Free blacks like John Beatty's “Willis” cooked, washed, and played fiddle or banjo music for the Federals. A self-described “gemman ob culler” tried to enter battle with the Fourteenth Indiana more than once during 1861, but nearly two years would pass before men of his race could legally fight for the Union.
⁵⁶⁰

In late October, a runaway slave named Ben approached the Federal pickets on Cheat Mountain. Displaying a white flag, he offered information about the enemy in exchange for freedom.
Ben was a powerfully built mulatto of noted bearing and intellect. Newly minted Brigadier General Robert Milroy, a strident abolitionist, readily took him in. Christened “Benjamin Summit” by Milroy, he worked at headquarters and served as a guide for the Federals.
⁵⁶¹

The abolitionists in Federal arms were a distinct minority in 1861, and mostly of the closet variety. “Slavery always has been and always will be a source of strife as long as it exists,” penned a member of the Thirteenth Indiana from Beverly that fall, “and although I hope and believe the present war will be the cause of its extinction, I do not believe the time has arrived at which such an opinion should be expressed publicly.”

Even Northern newspapers railed “Against a War for Emancipation.” An October 1861 editorial in the Boston
Advertiser
claimed “that neither man nor money will be forthcoming for this war if…the people are impressed with the belief that the abolition of slavery and not the defense of the Union is its object.” Romantic visions of war were gone. In the Alleghenies, soldiers were jaded and anxious to return home.
⁵⁶²

Miserable camp conditions fueled dissatisfaction. Body lice were a constant nuisance, infesting the garments of lowly privates and officers alike—literally eating them up. Despondent men scrubbed in frigid streams or buried underclothes to rid themselves of the vermin.
⁵⁶³

It became increasingly difficult to supply troops in the mountains. “The roads are awful,” wrote a member of the Fourteenth Indiana, “and when our train returns from Huttonsville it is hard to tell whether our teams are horses and men or statues of mud.” Another noted that “a single cold night will freeze the top of this mud, and then no team can pass at all, unless the freezing should continue till the ice will bear a team; and at the first thaw the road will again be impassible.” Shortages of all types ensued, which bred further discontent.
⁵⁶⁴

As winter neared, the troops were destitute of blankets and clothing. “I state by personal investigation when I say there is not
a regiment in this command that can muster over twenty five pair of pantaloons, twenty shirts or thirty blankets,” wrote a correspondent from Cheat Mountain in October. “All the men are without socks, and many barefooted.” Governors of the home states responded by sending clothes to the soldiers. The Confederates received badly needed garments from families and soldiers' “relief societies” in the South.
⁵⁶⁵

Accidents were commonplace. A shell from Greenbrier River was thoughtlessly tossed into a campfire, where it exploded, killing a man and wounding others. “[F]rom accidental discharges of their guns many have lost their fingers; some have shot themselves in different parts of their bodies. Some have died from these wounds,” a member of the Cheat Mountain garrison related. Another soldier confessed, “I am not half as fearful of being shot by the rebels as I am by some of our own men.”
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Disease was a grim companion. “There is scarcely a man you meet that can speak plainly, in consequence of colds,” wrote a Confederate correspondent, “and the frequent barking of nights would remind one of a pack of hounds in full chase.” A virulent form of typhoid fever struck the camps. Men died with heart-wrenching suddenness. “Imagine yourself in the midst of more than five hundred sick and dying comrades, with scorching fevers and parched lips, far away from all that is near and dear to them,” intoned a sad commentary from Camp Bartow. “The hospital arrangements are insufficient,” complained a Georgian. “We are without nurses, and nothing for the sick fit for diet. The rooms are filthy, loathsome, and some actually full of lice.”
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Spirits reached low ebb. “Nothing going on…Mud knee deep, no news from home, no papers, all we can do is sit in our tents and brood over our gloomy situation,” wrote an Indiana soldier. The army was “such a wicked place” to Georgian Shepherd Pryor, “so much profanity in camp life, though there isent a day passes over my head but that I think of death and its consequences.” “Western Virginia has no charm for me,” declared another. “It is the most God forsaken Country I ever laid eyes upon that is certain.”
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Arrival of the paymaster jolted the camps to life. He had been long awaited; many of the troops had not received a penny during five months of service. The soldiers took their pay (eleven to thirteen dollars a month for privates of both armies) in silver, gold, or more dubious paper notes. “[I]t was truly diverting to see them seated on the grass, and counting it out in different piles,” wrote one observer, “each pile having its particular object, or destination, those of home and the girls being much the largest.” Some paid off debts owed to the sutlers. Others went straight to gambling and in search of a bottle of old “tangle-leg.”
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General Reynolds may have been a teetotaler, but his army imbibed freely. Sutlers smuggled whiskey in boxes of “Palm Soap” and “Pearl Starch.” Local mountaineers hawked potent home brew. “They have been forbidden to sell to soldiers but they still do it slyly,” wrote a Federal. “The consequence is the Col sends out every day or two and hunts them up, destroys the liquor and puts them in jail.”