The Military Genius Of Abraham Lincoln by Brigadier Colin R. Ballard

Author:Brigadier Colin R. Ballard [Ballard, Brigadier Colin R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877), Military, Modern, 19th Century
ISBN: 9781786254771
Google: VDdwCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2015-11-06T02:58:21+00:00

XI — ANTIETAM

DURING the last half of August troops had been coming up from Fort Monroe and were sent on to join Pope. On the 27th McClellan himself arrived at Alexandria; he had now only two Corps left of his command, those of Franklin and Sumner, but even these were without transport and artillery horses. As the news of Jackson’s raid on Manassas began to arrive, Halleck wanted these Corps sent quickly in that direction. He and McClellan bungled the arrangements between them (with more bad temper on each side), and neither Franklin nor Sumner reached Pope till the battle was over, though it is pretty clear that they might have done so. McClellan created a bad impression by saying that ‘Pope must be left to get out of his scrape as best he could’; no doubt he meant that the man on the spot is the best informed and can disentangle the mess better than anybody else; if another officer were sent to supersede him it would only add to the confusion. But it was an unfortunate way of putting it, and, taken in conjunction with the delay about Franklin and Sumner, it left the impression that McClellan was not doing his best.

On the 30th the news became alarming—Pope was retiring, and the situation was much as it had been a year earlier after the First Bull Run.

On September 3rd Lincoln made one of the big decisions of his life—to place McClellan in command of all the troops at Washington. Stanton, Chase, Halleck were violently opposed to such an idea; they judged McClellan by the tone of his letters and found him dangerous; he had returned from the Peninsula under a cloud, and had just given grounds for suspicion that he was leaving a brother officer in the lurch.

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