Terrible Swift Sword (79 page)

Library of Congress. As printed in O.R.,
Vol. XI, Part Three, 233, the letter bears the date of June 18.

11.
Francis W. Palfrey,
The
Seven Days Battles,
Military Historical
Society of Massachusetts, Vol. I, 224-25; Prince de Join-ville,
The
Army
of
the Potomac,
79-82;
Diary and Letters of Capt John Taggart, 9th Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry, Mss.
in the Bureau of Research, Publications and Records, Pennsylvania Historical
and Museum Commission.

12.
O.R., Vol. XI, Part
One, 49. This minor engagement is usually counted as the first of the Seven
Days Battles.

13.
Ibid.,
272-74; Part Three, 355. After the campaign ended McClellan protested that he
had not, before the Seven Days, been able to base his army on the James because
Stanton on May 18 ordered him to prepare to meet McDowell on the Pamunkey.
However, he had already established his base at White House when he received
that order, and the order in any case became inoperative on May 25, when he
was notified that McDowell was marching to the Shenandoah. There was plenty of
time to make the change of base if he had wanted to do so.

14.
O.R., Vol.
XI, Part One, 49; McClellan's Report, 237.

15.
O.R., Vol.
XI, Part One, 51.

16.
O.R., Vol.
XI, Part Three, 254.

5.  
Seven Days

1.
 
There
are of course many good accounts of the opening of
the Seven Days, the best probably being Freeman's, in
R.
E. Lee,
Vol. II, 75-121. A good brief summary is
in Steele,
American
Campaigns,
Vol. I, 99. An oddity
about the Seven Days is that they
actually were only six—from June 26 to July 1, inclusive. Ap-
parently most people in 1862 began the count with the engagement
of June 25, when McClellan's skirmish line made a moderate
advance south of the Chickahominy at Oak Grove.

2. O.R., Vol. XI,
Part One, 405; Part Three, 455-56.

3. In his memorandum of a post-war
conversation with Lee,
Col. William Allan of the faculty of Washington College reports
Lee as saying that the attack at Mechanicsville was made "in order
to occupy the enemy and prevent any counter movement." In the
same way, according to Allan, Lee felt obliged to attack the next
day at Gaines's Mill even though Jackson was not ready: "Other-
wise, with a large part of his army really farther from Richd. than
McClellan was, disaster was to be apprehended." In this account
there is no criticism of A. P. Hill for his movements on the afternoon of June
26. The implication, at least, of Allan's version is that the move had Lee's
approval. (Memorandum of Conversations of Lee with Col. William Allan;
typescript in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina
Library.) Hill's report on Mechanicsville, O.R., Vol. XI, Part Two, 834-36,
says flatly: "Three o'clock having arrived, and no intelligence from
Jackson
...
I determined to cross at
once rather than hazard the failure of the whole plan by longer deferring
it."

4.        
O
.R.,
Vol. XI, Part Three, 257, 259, 260.

5.
In
McClellan's
Own Story,
411,
McClellan says that he "determined to resist Jackson
...
in the new position near the bridge
heads, in order to cover the withdrawal of the trains and heavy guns and to
give time for the arrangements to secure the adoption of the James River as our
line of supplies in lieu of the Pamunkey." Col. Robert Tyler's account of
the moving of the guns is in
O
.R.,
Vol. XI, Part One, 272-74. Kellogg's report is in Part Two, 969-72.

6.
Letters
of James L. Dinwiddie to his wife, dated June 29, 1862, in the Virginia State
Library; Reminiscences of Berry G. Benson, 1st South Carolina Volunteers, in
the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library; diary
of J. R. Boulware, 6th South Carolina Volunteers, entries for June 27 and Ju-e
28; in the Virginia State Library.

7.
Letter
of A. A. Humphreys to Mrs. Humphreys dated July 17, 1862, from Vol. 33, the A.
A. Humphreys Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Humphreys wrote:
"I was not in the battle on the north side of the Chickahominy nor was
Genl. McClellan—we waited for him expecting any moment to mount."

8.
Reminiscences
of Berry G. Benson, cited in Footnote 6.

9.
O
.R.,
Vol. XI, Part Three, 264-66.

10.
O
.R.,
Vol. XI, Part One, 60-61; Part Three, 267.

11.
O
.R.,
Vol. XI, Part One, 61. It may be as well to remark that McClellan had seen none
of the fighting at Gaines's Mill, and that the number of "dead and wounded
comrades" he had actually beheld was strictly minimal.

12.
McClellan's
Own Story,
453;
David Homer Bates,
Lincoln in the
Telegraph Office,
109-10. Senator
Browning noted in mid-July that Lincoln told him he had approved all that
Stanton had done in respect to the Army of the Potomac. Browning wrote:
"That immediately after Fitz John Porter's fight McClellan telegraphed to
Stanton in very harsh terms, charging him as the author

of the disaster—that Stanton came to him
with the telegram in bis hand and said to him with much feeling 'You know—Mr.
President that all
I
have done was by your authority."
(Diary
of
Orville Hickman Browning,
Vol.
I, 558-59.) This story, of course, fits either the expurgated telegram or the
original version.

13.
Basler, Vol. V,
289-91; O.R., Vol. XVI, Part Two, 69-70; Vol. XI, Part Three, 270. Dix had been
put in command at Fort Monroe early in June, and the former commander, General
Wool, had been given Dix's former post at Baltimore.

14.
O.R., Vol. XI, Part
Three, 274-75, 277; Basler, Vol. V, 293, 295-96. This burst of optimism of
course was quite groundless, but it did rest upon a correct appraisal of the
possibilities that existed after Porter's corps crossed the Chickahominy. The
last word Lincoln and Stanton had from McClellan had said nothing about a
retreat; it simply talked of a move "to this side of the
Chickahominy."

15. O.R., Vol. XI,
Part Three, 280.

16.
Alexander
S. Webb,
The Peninsula,
136-37;
Prince de Join-ville,
The Army
of
the Potomac,
91.

17.
The
failure of Lee's battle plan is examined in detail in Freeman,
R.
E. Lee,
Vol. II, 176-99.
Jackson's strange failure to measure up to his responsibilities has perplexed
all of his biographers, beginning with Col. Henderson; the riddle is most
carefully studied in Lenoir Chambers'
Stonewall
Jackson,
Vol. II, 61-76. No
one has ever been able to suggest anything much more definite than that Jackson
was physically ailing and at the point of exhaustion— and that like everyone
else at the time he was still learning his trade.

6.  
Letter From Harrison's Landing

1.
Newspaper
account dated July 2, 1862, in a scrapbook of unidentified clippings at the
Huntington Library; letter of G. F. Newhall to his father dated July 4, 1862,
in the Newhall Letters, Boston Public Library; McClellan's
Own
Story,
442.

2.
Lee's
report, O.R., Vol. XI, Part Two, 497; letter of Stephen Mallory to Mrs.
Mallory, mis-dated May 13, 1862, in the Mallory Papers, Southern Historical
Collection, University of North Carolina. Mallory was by no means the only man
of that time who used the spelling "McClelland."

3. B. & L., Vol.
H, 315, 317.

4. Letter of Beauregard to Thomas Jordan
dated July 12, 1862,
in the Beauregard Papers, Library of Congress.

5. O.R., Vol. XI,
Part Three, 281, 287-88.

6.     
McClellan's
Own Story,
483;
O.R., Vol. XI, Part Three,
291-92.    ,

7.
Basler,
Vol. V, 301.

8.
O.R.,
Series Three, Vol. II, 45-46.

9.      Basler, Vol. V, 292, 297; Fred
Shannon,
Organization and
Administration
of
the Union Army,
Vol.
I, 269-70.

10.
O.R., Vol.
XI, Part Three, 294, 298-99; Basler, Vol. V, 305-6.

11.
 
McClellan to Mrs.
McClellan, July 6, 1862, in the McClellan Letterbook; Lee to Davis, July 6,
O.R., Vol. XI, Part Three, 634-35.

12.
Warren W.
Hassler, Jr.,
General George B.
McClellan,
177-78: McClellan's
Own
Story,
487-89.

13.
Two oddly
contrasting views of Lincoln's reception by the troops are offered here for
whatever they may be worth. A soldier named Felix Brannigan, whose letters are
in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, wrote home on July 16
telling about the review and saying: "Talk of McClellan's popularity among
the soldiers. It will never measure the 1/100th part of Honest Old Abe's. Such
cheers as greeted him never tickled the ears of Napoleon in his palmiest
days." On July 17 McClellan, whose Letterbook is also in the Library of
Congress, wrote to Mrs. McClellan that "a certain eminent individual is
'an old stick'—of pretty poor timber at that. . . . The army did
not
give him an enthusiastic reception—I had
to order the men to cheer."

14.
Basler,
Vol. V, 309-12, 322. A slightly more detailed discussion of the home-state
hospital situation is presented in this writer's
Glory
Road,
126-29.

15.
Letter of
Warren to his brother, July 20, 1862, in the G. K. Warren Papers, Manuscript
and History Section, New York State Library, Albany. Warren's letter calls to
mind the bitter outburst of the Abolitionist Congressman Owen Lovejoy, who told
the House six months earlier: "We are afraid that we shall hurt somebody
if we fight; that we shall get these rebels and traitors so exasperated that
they will not return to their loyalty."
{Congressional
Globe,
37th Congress, Second
Session, Part One, 194.)

16.
McClellan
to Mrs. McClellan, July 10, 1862, in the McClellan Letterbook.

17.
McClellan
to Mrs. McClellan, July 22, in the McClellan Letterbook.

18.
Porter to
Marble, June 20, in the Manton Marble Papers, Library of Con^  ji; Webb to his
father, August
1
4,
in the Alexander Stewart Webb Collection, Historical Manuscript Division, Yale
University Library.

19.
Letter to
Mrs. McClellan dated July 11, and an undated letter to her written late in July
or early in August 1862; in the McClellan Letterbook.

20.
McClellan
to Mrs. McClellan dated July 17, July 18, and July 27, in the McClellan
Letterbook. It should be remembered that W. C. Prime, thi editor of McClellan's
Own Story,
either
omitted or sharply expurgated the most revealing of the letters when he
assembled his book.

21.
McClellan
to Barlow, July 15, in the Barlow Papers, Huntington Library.

22.
McClellan
to Mrs. McClellan, July 13, in the McClellan Letterbook.

Chapter Six:
UNLIMITED
WAR J.  
Trade With the Enemy

1.
Thomas
E. Taylor,
Running the Blockade,
23, 69; James Morris Morgan,
Recollections
of
a Rebel Reefer,
99;
J. Wilkinson,
The Narrative
of
a Blockade Runner,
123-24;
Augustus Charles Hobart-Hampden,
Hobart
Pasha: Blockade Running, Slaver-Hunting and War and Sport in Turkey,
119-23.

2.
Taylor,
Running the Blockade,
11-14;
F. B. C. Bradlee,
Blockade Running
During the Civil War,
29-30; Frank Lawrence
Owsley,
King Cotton
Diplomacy,
285.

3.
Taylor,
op. cit., 12; James Sprunt,
Chronicles
of
the Cape Fear River,
238-^10;
Bradlee, op. cit., 118-19.

4.        
Diary
of
Gideon Welles,
Vol.
II, 127.

5. Wilkinson,
The
Narrative
of
a Blockade Runner,
199-202;
Sprunt,
Chronicles
of
the Cape Fear River,
243-44,
246, 252.

6.         C.C.W. Report for 1863, Part HI,
611-12.

7.
American
Annual Cyclopaedia, 1862,
765;
Joseph H. Parks, "A Confederate Trade Center under Federal
Occupation,"
Journal
of
Southern History,
Vol.
VII, Number Three, 289-94; O.R., Vol. XVH, Part Two, 123, 140.

8.
Memoirs
of
William
T.
Sherman,
Vol. I,
265-68; O.R., Vol. XVII, Part Two, 150; Series Three, Vol. II, 349-50.

9.         O.R., Vol. VI, 873-74; Series
Four, Vol U, 151, 173-75.

10. O.R., Vol. XVII,
Part Two, 839-40.

11.
Ella Lonn,
Salt as a Factor in the Confederacy,
14-50;
Letter of G. S. Denison, Acting Collector and Surveyor for the Port of New
Orleans, to Secretary Chase, Nov. 29, 1862, from
Diary
and Correspondence
of
Salmon P.
Chase,
Annual Report of the
American Historical Association for the Year 1902, Vol. II, 336.

12.
O.R., Vol.
XVII, Part Two, 179, 186; M. A. DeWolfe Howe, ed.,
Home
Letters
of
General Sherman,
232.

13. Moore's
Rebellion
Record,
Vol. VI, Documents,
291-92.

14.
Diary and
Correspondence
of
Salmon P. Chase,
312-13,
321-24, 346. In his voluminous reports to Secretary Chase, Collector Denison
was highly critical of the things that happened in New Orleans but he never
quite believed that General Butler was personally dishonest and he greatly
respected his administrative ability. He remarked finally that Butler "has
great ability, great energy, shrewdness and activity, but he can never acquire
a character here for disinterestedness."

15.
J. B.
Jones,
A Rebel
War
Clerk's Diary,
ed.
by Earl Schenck Miers, 55; O.R., Series Four, Vol. II, 301-2, 334-35.