Official Records of the Rebellion

[p.14]

On the 7th of April, and before the arrival of the divisions of Generals Hooker, Richardson, and Casey, I received the following dispatches from the President and Secretary of War:

WASHINGTON, April 6, 1862—8 p. m.

General GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN:

Yours of 11 a. m. to-day received. Secretary of War informs me that the forwarding of transportation, ammunition, and Woodbury’s brigade, under your orders, is not, and will not, be interfered with. You now have over 100,000 troops with you, independent of General Wool’s command. I think you better break the enemy’s line from Yorktown to Warwick River at once. This will probably use time as advantageously as you can.

A. LINCOLN,
President.

WASHINGTON, April 6, 1862—2 p. m.

General GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN:

The President directs me to say that your dispatch to him has been received. General Sumner’s corps is on the road to join you and will go forward as fast as possible. [p.15] Franklin’s division is now on the advance toward Manassas. There is no means of transportation here to send it forward in time to be of service in your present operations. Telegraph frequently, and all in the power of the Government shall be done to sustain you as occasion may require.

EDWIN M. STANTON,
Secretary of War.

By the 9th of April I had acquired a pretty good knowledge of the position and strength of the enemy’s works and the obstacles to be overcome. On that day I received the following letter from the President:

WASHINGTON, April 9, 1862.

MY DEAR SIR: Your dispatches complaining that you are not properly sustained, while they do not offend me, do pain me very much.

Blenker’s division was withdrawn from you before you left here, and you know the pressure under which I did it, and, as I thought, acquiesced in it—certainly not without reluctance.

After yon left I ascertained that less than 20,000 unorganized men, without a single field battery, were all you designed to be left for the defense of Washington and Manassas Junction, and part of this even was to go to General Hooker’s old position. General Banks’ corps, once designed for Manassas Junction, was diverted and tied up on the line of Winchester and Strasburg, and could not leave it without again exposing the Upper Potomac and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. This presented, or would present when McDowell and Sumner should be gone, a great temptation to the enemy to turn back from the Rappahannock and sack Washington. My explicit order that Washington should, by the judgment of all the commanders of army corps, be left entirely secure, had been neglected. It was precisely this that drove me to detain McDowell.

I do not forget that I was satisfied with your arrangement to leave Banks at Manassas Junction; but when that arrangement was broken up and nothing was substituted for it, of course I was constrained to substitute something for it myself. And allow me to ask, do you really think I should permit the line from Richmond via Manassas Junction to this city to be entirely open except what resistance could be presented by less than 20,000 unorganized troops? This is a question which the country will not allow me to evade.

There is a curious mystery about the number of troops now with you. When I telegraphed you on the 6th, saying you had over 100,000 with you, I had just obtained from the Secretary of War a statement, taken, as he said, from your own returns, making 108,000 then with you and en route to you. You now say you will have but 85,000 when all en route to you shall have reached you. How can the discrepancy of 23,000 be accounted for?

As to General Wool’s command, I understand it is doing for you precisely what a like number of your own would have to do if that command was away.

I suppose the whole force which has gone forward for you is with you by this time, .and, if so, I think it is the precise time for you to strike a blow. By delay the enemy will relatively gain upon you—that is, he will gain faster by fortifications and re-enforcements than you can by re-enforcements alone. And once more let me tell you it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. You will do me the justice to remember I always insisted that going down the bay in search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Manassas, was only shifting and not surmounting .a difficulty that we would find the same enemy and the same or equal intrenchments at either place. The country will not fail to note, is now noting, that the present hesitation to move upon an intrenched enemy is but the story of Manassas repeated.

I beg to assure you that I have never written you or spoken to you in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as, in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can. But you must act.

Yours, very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

Major-General MCCLELLAN.

With great deference to the opinions and wishes of His Excellency the President, I most respectfully beg leave to refer to the facts which I have presented and those contained in the accompanying letter of General Keyes, with the reports of General Barnard and other officers, as furnishing a reply to the above letter. His Excellency could not [p.16] judge of the formidable character of the works before us as well as if he had been on the ground; and whatever might have been his desire for prompt action (certainly no greater than mine), I feel confident if he could have made a personal inspection of the enemy’s defenses lie would have forbidden me risking the safety of the army and the possible successes of the campaign on a sanguinary assault of an advantageous and formidable position, which, even if successful, could not have been followed up to any other or better result than would have been reached by the regular operations of a siege. Still less could I forego the conclusions of my most instructed judgment for the mere sake of avoiding the personal consequences intimated in the President’s dispatch.