of disasters marked the second period of 1862. The withdrawal of the Army of the Potomac from the James River to Washington and Alexandria, the retreat of the Army of Virginia from the Rappahannock to the Potomac, the invasion of Maryland, the retreat of the Army of the Ohio to Louisville, produced a depression in the public mind nearly as great as that which succeeded the battle of Bull Run."

Third Period. (Plate 25.) ·

"As soon as the Army of Virginia returned to Washington, General Pope, at his own request, was ordered to the West, the command of all the troops around the capital devolving on General McClellan.

"Crossing into Maryland, the advance of the Army of the Potomac reached Frederick on the 12th of September. Here General McClellan learned through a dispatch picked up in the enemy's camp, that General Lee, with a view to capturing Harper's Ferry, had divided and scattered his army."

At this point we will leave the narrative until the next lesson, with the following concluding remarks taken from the same source:

"On the 31st of March, 1862, the Government had in its service an army of 637,126 men, nearly all of whom were enlisted for the term of three years.

"The Confederate Army, composed largely of one-year volunteers, whose enlistment was on the eve of expiring, scarcely exceeded 200,000 men.

"The failure to subdue the Rebellion in 1861 has already been explained by our total want of military organization and preparation. The failure to subdue it in 1862, with the amazing advantages possessed by the Union, proceeded from a cause entirely different-the mismanagement of our armies.

"In discussing the events of 1862, most of our historians, according to their political connections, have contented themselves with laying the blame upon the President, the Secretary of War, or the commander of the Army of the Potomac. "The candid reader, however, if not already convinced, will discover upon further investigation that the President and his subordinates were but the instruments or victims of a bad system; that the disasters of the campaign entailing the bloodshed of the three ensuing years had their origin in the needless division of our armies, and what is still more instructive, that the cause of this division is to be found in that defect of our laws which, contrary to the spirit of our institutions, tempted the President to assume the character and responsibilities of a military commander."

TWELFTH LESSON.

THE CIVIL WAR-PART II.

(Based Upon "Military Policy of the United States," by Upton.)

It was stated in our last lesson that the military operations of the year 1862 may be divided into three distinct periods, in the first of which the Government forces took the offensive, in the second the defensive, and in the third they again returned to the offensive. It was shown that in the first period the Government's plans for a general offensive resulted in several victories but that the net result, in so far as terminating the war was concerned, was negligible because the system adopted resulted in a dispersion of effort due to the want of a chief military commander to direct and coordinate the several armies as one well regulated machine. The President as constitutional commander-in-chief, attempted by his personal efforts to supply the deficiency but, even had he been a thoroughly trained soldier, able to appreciate the needs and requirements of each military situation to the minutest detail; the numerous grave cares and responsibilities of his office as the chief executive of the nation would have precluded him from giving to the military problem that close and tireless application which is an absolute essential in the conduct of war. Because of the evident need for an experienced commander, whose duty it would be to relieve the President of the actual direction of military operations, General Halleck was called to Washington from the West, and appointed general in chief on July 11, 1862.

The fault inherent in the system did not immediately disappear and in the second period of the year we have seen how the Union armies were thrown on the defensive and lost the advantage of the initiative because they lacked the very unity of command adopted by the Confederate Government, making possible a concentration of effort and the directing of the whole military power toward the attainment of definite results.

At the termination of our last lesson we saw that the Army of the Potomac under the command of General McClellan had crossed the Potomac River into Maryland in pursuit of General Lee's army and that upon his arrival at Frederick, McClellan learned that Lee, with a view of capturing Harper's Ferry, at the foot of the Shenandoah Valley, had sent General Jackson with three divisions to approach Harpers Ferry from several directions at once. "The remainder of the Confederate Army took position in the vicinity of Boonsboro and Hagerstown."

We have now come to the third period, which was marked by the return of the Government forces to the offensive.

General McClellan wished to take advantage of the absence of the three divisions under Jackson and accordingly moved his army so as to catch General Lee while his forces were divided, but, hearing of the approach of the Army of the Potomac, Lee ordered all of his available troops to assemble in time to give battle so that on September 14, the Confederate Army was able to make a strong fight at South Mountain.

It was, however, forced to retire from that position. On September 17, when the Army of the Potomac was in a position to defeat the Confederate Army (which might have resulted in the capture of most of the Confederate forces north of the Potomac), the garrison at Harpers Ferry surrendered to General Jackson.

"September 17, the two armies joined in battle at Antietam. September 19 the Confederates gave up the invasion and retreated to Virginia. Their losses during the Maryland campaign were 10,291 killed and wounded," their losses in prisoners captured during the battle with the Army of the Potomac were 6000 men. The losses of the Army of the Potomac, not counting those who surrendered at Harpers Ferry, were, killed, wounded, and missing, 13,794.

The remainder of the year 1862 was consumed by the Union Army, under General Burnside (General McClellan having been relieved) in an offensive campaign which had for its objective the capture of the seat of the Confederate Government, Richmond, the most notable event of the campaign was the battle of Fredericksburg in which the Union forces were repulsed with a loss of 12,321 killed, wounded, and missing. Protected by intrenchments, the Confederate losses were only 5309.

During the same period the offensive campaigns waged by the leaders of the Union armies in the West were more fruitful of favorable results. General Buell succeeded in driving the Confederate forces under General Bragg out of the State of Kentucky. After the retreat of Bragg from Kentucky the number of troops in the District of West Tennessee (Plate 26) was increased by the arrival of new levies to 72,000 men, of whom 18,000 were at Memphis. The remainder were distributed, as before, at Bolivar, Jackson, and Corinth.

The situation at the end of the third period of 1862 is described by General Upton in the following language: "At the close of the year 1862 the Army of the Potomac, with one leg still chained to the capital (Washington), confronted its antagonist at Fredericksburg on the Rappahannock; the Army of the Cumberland went into winter quarters at Murfreesboro, Tennessee; and the Army of the Tennessee, like a huge serpent, was approaching Vicksburg along the levees of the Mississippi."

Comment.

The student is naturally impressed with the tremendous expenditure of life and effort, not to mention the less apparent waste of time and treasure, which resulted from the military operations up to the close of the year 1862 with so little gained toward the termination of the war. We have attempted to show that on the part of the Government of the United States that condition arose from a lack of a proper

system for the control of the effort. In order to understand how the President was led to the determination to assume the character and responsibilities of a military commander it is necessary to review briefly certain events leading up to it.

General Winfield Scott being too advanced in years to bear the burdens of another war, retired on November 1, 1861, and General George B. McClellan was appointed general in chief. Humiliated and made wiser by the defeat at Bull Run, the President, the Cabinet, and the people were at first disposed to give the new commander all the time necessary to organize and discipline his troops; but when several months had passed with no indication of an advance, the army in the meantime having increased to about 200,000 men, impatience for action returned with accumulated force. As a recognition of this feeling, Mr. Stanton, on the 13th of January, 1862, was appointed Secretary of War. January 27, at the suggestion of the Secretary of War, the President issued the first "General War Order," fixing the date of the 22nd of February as the day " for a general movement of the land and naval forces of the United States against the insurgent forces." About the same time the general in chief submitted his plan of operations, which was to transfer the Army of the Potomac from Washington and Annapolis by water to Urbana or Fort Monroe, and thence advance upon Richmond.

Disappointed, if not alarmed, at the proposition to remove the army while the enemy still held the capital in a state of siege, the President disapproved of the plan, and himself ordered that all disposable force of the Army of the Potomac, after providing safely for the defense of Washington, be formed into an expedition for the immediate object of seizing and occupying a point upon the railroad southwest of what is known as Manassas Junction, all details to be left to the commander-inchief.

Finally, after much delay a plan proposed by the general in chief was approved by the President who, however, did not refrain from issuing orders without consulting the general in chief and which were calculated to interfere with his orderly execution of the plan of campaign and lessen his influence.

One of the features of the plan was that the general in chief was to personally superintend its execution. In short, he was to command the military forces engaged in it, and, as at this time influences were at work to destroy the confidence of the President in the general in chief, on March 11, 1862, "yielding to pressure which he could no longer resist," the President issued War Order No. 3, which was pregnant with disaster.

"The first paragraph, on the ground that General McClellan had taken the field, relieved him from his duties as general in chief, but retained him in command of the Army and Department of the Potomac."

"The second paragraph created the Department of the Mississippi, commanded by General Halleck and the Mountain Department, commanded by General Fremont, and the last paragraph of the order directed all commanders of departments to 'report severally and directly to the Secretary of War.'

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In discussing an order which led to nearly all the reverses of the year 1862, the object should not be to vindicate a military commander, not to blame a great and patriotic President, but to satisfy ourselves that the causes of our disasters, like those of preceding wars, can be traced to defects of military legislation, which Congress at any time has the power to correct.

"One of the first acts of Congress after the adoption of the Constitution was to relieve the President of the multitude of details pertaining to the administration of the army, by creating the War Department, the Secretary of which was 'to execute such duties relative to military commissions or to the land and naval forces, ships, or warlike stores of the United States' as, from time to time, might be enjoined upon or intrusted to him by the President. The Secretary was further required to conduct the business of the department in such manner as the President might direct. By means of these restrictions upon the Secretary of War, who, under the practice of the Government, has always been removable at the pleasure of the President, the

constitutional authority of the latter as commander-in-chief of the army and navy was preserved unimpaired.

"Had Congress at the same time created the grade of general in chief, as the officer to command the army, subject only to the order of the President, it is more than probable that the disasters of the year 1862 might have been avoided.

"The absence of such a law, during the War of 1812, proved the necessity of having such a military adviser. Four years before it broke out, General Dearborn, a Secretary of War, ambitious of military distinction, reported to the President: "In the event of war, it will, I presume, be necessary to arrange our military force in separate departments, and to have a commander to each department, and, of course, to have no such officer as commander-in-chief.'

"The fruits of this fatal advice were soon gathered. Unable to attend in person to the duties of commander-in-chief, the President, during the campaign of 1813-14, permitted General Armstrong, the Secretary of War, to control military operations until the enemy approached the capital, when in the face of a great national calamity he was compelled to resume his constitutional functions by directing that no orders for the movement of troops should be issued from the War Department without previously receiving Executive sanction.

"A few days later the military authority of the Secretary of War had again to be suppressed on the field of Bladensburg, when the President gave him the verbal order to leave to the military functionaries the discharge of their own duties on their own responsibilities.' To this confused system, which was productive of nothing but disaster, Mr. Lincoln returned, when he issued the fatal order of March 11, dispensing with the services of a general in chief and ordering all military commanders to report to the Secretary of War. By this stroke of the pen, the command of our vast armies at the moment they were ready to strike, passed from the hands of an educated soldier, to those of the President and Secretary of War, neither of whom possessed any knowledge of the military art.

"The effect of this joint command soon became apparent, as the following incident shows:

"On March 12 General McClellan called a council of war, composed of the four corps commanders who had been appointed by the President. Those officers, after carefully considering all of the elements of the problem, formulated a plan for the military operations which in their unanimous opinion should be adopted. This plan was intrusted to General McDowell who was instructed to proceed to Washington and lay it before the Secretary of War. In the meantime McClellan telegraphed to the Secretary that a plan had been agreed upon by the Council of War and that McDowell was then en route to present it to him. Without waiting to consult the President, immediately the Secretary sent the following reply to General McClellan :

"Whatever plan has been agreed upon, proceed to execute at once, without losing an hour for my approval."

"The same afternoon when the plan was presented to him by General McDowell, the Secretary, not being versed in military matters, could see nothing in it that to him indicated that it was a plan and called upon General McClellan to state what plan of operations he proposed to execute. General McClellan insisted that he and the corps commanders had been unanimous in formulating the plan which had been sent to the Secretary and stated that if it were approved the movement of troops. could begin on the following morning. Then the Secretary laid the plan before the President who gave it a qualified approval.

"The plan proposed by General McClellan's Council of War had for its main objective the capture of Richmond which was the seat of the Confederate Government and at the same time it recognized the importance of protecting the national capital from attack by the enemy."

We have seen how the operations on the peninsula in 1862 came to naught so far as accomplishing the objective of the campaign and how the Confederate Government with its better system of military command was enabled to throw its troops

into Maryland, causing the Army of the Potomac to follow its lead as the loadstone draws the steel.

The army upon which General McClellan relied to carry out his plan consisted of four corps with a strength present for duty on April 1, 1862, of 136,444. Whatever objection the President had to the route chosen by the military commanders for the advance against Richmond, from a military point of view "it is manifest that after having assented to the plan recommended by the four corps commanders of his own appointment, he ought to have ordered to the new theatre of operations every soldier who was not deemed necessary for the defense of the capital." "In military tactics it is said that one good position is worth a dozen indifferent ones. So, too, in regard to campaigns it may be said that their success can only be confidently look for when all of the available military resources are judiciously employed for their execution."

"But the President was by no means the master of his own actions. ... He had assumed all of the personal responsibilities of a military commander, with the further disadvantage that, as chief magistrate, he could not, even in matters of detail, turn a deaf ear to the appeals and representations of his political and military advisors.

"Whenever a territory was threatened with real or imaginary invasion, the people felt that they had the right through their representatives to appeal to him for protection.

"Educated in political life he could not fail to apply the same system of reasoning to military as to political questions." Hence it came to pass that in a time of the greatest public emergency "troops could not be ordered from one department, district, or place to another without first paying 'a due regard to all points,' which meant that the requirements of the military situation were at all times subject to jeopardy through a 'regard' for the fears of local communities."

"In this manner strategical principles, involving perhaps the fate of an army, had to give place to political considerations. The first evidence of this fact was presented in a demand made to detach Blenker's division from the Army of the Potomac, and to send it to the Mountain Department where it was impossible that a great battle could be fought. For days the President resisted the demand, but on the 31st of May, after most of the troops had embarked for Fort Monroe, he was compelled to yield, and wrote General McClellan as follows:

"This morning I felt constrained to order General Blenker's division to (join) Fremont, and I write this to assure you that I did so with great pain, understanding that you would wish it otherwise. If you could know the full pressure of the case I am confident that you would justify it, even beyond a mere acknowledgment that the commander-in-chief may order what he pleases.'

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General Upton remarks that "This order detached 10,000 troops, and was the beginning of the disintegration of the army (of the Potomac)."

It is seen that the detaching of Blenker's division was a direct play into the hands of the enemy when it is considered that Blenker was sent to reinforce Fremont's command which was one of the forces engaged in attempting to capture or drive General Stonewall Jackson's Confederate forces out of the Shenandoah Valley. While it is stated that "it was impossible that a great battle could be fought " in the region to which Blenker was sent, yet it is a fact that General Jackson in the Valley was carrying on a campaign well calculated to mystify, mislead, and surprise the Union generals pitted against him and, as part of the general plan of operations determined by the higher military commanders of the Confederate Government at Richmond, we have seen that it was most effectual in weakening the main Union Army as it was about to be launched upon its first big campaign, by causing the transfer of Blenker's 10,000 troops from McClellan to Fremont.

The month of May, 1863, found the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia confronting each other on opposite sides of the Rappahannock River in the vicinity of Fredericksburg, "the morale of the Union