23288 Louis J Sheehan

23288 Louis J. Sheehan

McClellan's army began to sail from Alexandria on March 17. It was an armada that dwarfed all previous American expeditions, transporting 121,500 men, 44 artillery batteries, 1,150 wagons, over 15,000 horses, and tons of equipment and supplies. An English observer remarked that it was the "stride of a giant."[36] The army's advance from Fort Monroe up the Virginia Peninsula proved to be slow. McClellan's plan to seize Yorktown quickly was foiled when he discovered that the Confederates had fortified a line across the Peninsula, causing him to decide on a siege of the city, which required considerable preparation.
McClellan continued to believe intelligence reports that credited the Confederates with two or three times the men they actually had. Early in the campaign, Confederate General John B. "Prince John" Magruder defended the Peninsula against McClellan's advance with a vastly smaller force. He created a false impression of many troops behind the lines and of even more troops arriving. He accomplished this by marching small groups of men repeatedly past places where they could be observed at a distance or were just out of sight, accompanied by great noise and fanfare.[37] During this time, General Johnston was able to provide Magruder with reinforcements that were, even then, still far fewer troops than McClellan had miscalculated were opposite him.
After a month of preparation, just before he was to assault the Confederate works at Yorktown, McClellan learned that Johnston had withdrawn up the Peninsula towards Williamsburg. McClellan was thus required to give chase without any benefit of the heavy artillery so carefully amassed in front of Yorktown. The Battle of Williamsburg on May 5 is considered a Union victory—McClellan's first—but the Confederate army was not destroyed and a bulk of their troops were successfully moved past Williamsburg to Richmond's outer defenses while it was waged, and over the next several days.[38]
McClellan had also placed hopes on a simultaneous naval approach to Richmond via the James River. That approach failed following the Union Navy's defeat at the Battle of Drewry's Bluff, about 7 miles downstream from the Confederate capital, on May 15. Basing artillery on a strategic bluff high above a bend in the river, and sinking boats to create an impassable series of obstacles in the river itself, the Confederates had effectively blocked this potential approach to Richmond.[39]
McClellan's army cautiously inched towards Richmond over the next three weeks. He established a supply base on the Pamunkey River (a navigable tributary of the York River) at White House Landing where the Richmond and York River Railroad extending to Richmond crossed, and commandeered the railroad, transporting steam locomotives and rolling stock to the site by barge.[40]
On May 31, as McClellan planned an assault, his army was surprised by a Confederate attack. Johnston saw that the Union army was split in half by the rain-swollen Chickahominy River and hoped to defeat it in detail at Seven Pines and Fair Oaks. McClellan was unable to command the army personally because of a recurrence of malarial fever, but his subordinates were able to repel the attacks. Nevertheless, McClellan received criticism from Washington for not counterattacking, which some believed could have opened the city of Richmond to capture. Johnston was wounded in the battle, and General Robert E. Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia. McClellan spent the next three weeks repositioning his troops and waiting for promised reinforcements, losing valuable time as Lee continued to strengthen Richmond's defenses.[41]
At the end of June, Lee began a series of attacks that became known as the Seven Days Battles. The first major battle, at Mechanicsville, was poorly coordinated by Lee and his subordinates and caused heavy casualties for little tactical gain. But the battle had significant impact on McClellan's nerve. The surprise appearance of Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson's troops in the battle (when they had last been reported to be many miles away in the Shenandoah Valley) convinced McClellan that he was even more significantly outnumbered that he had assumed. (He reported to Washington that he faced 200,000 Confederates, although they actually numbered 85,000.)[42]
As Lee continued his offensive at Gaines' Mill to the east, McClellan played a passive role, taking no initiatives and waiting for events to unfold. He kept two thirds of his army out of action, fooled again by Magruder's theatrical diversionary tactics.[43] That night, he decided to withdraw his army to a safer base, well below Richmond, on a portion of the James River that was under control of the Union Navy. In doing so, he may have unwittingly saved his army. Lee had assumed that the Union army would withdraw to the east toward its existing supply base and McClellan's move to the south delayed Lee's response for at least 24 hours.[44] But McClellan was also tacitly acknowledging that he would no longer be able to invest Richmond, the object of his campaign; the heavy siege artillery required would be almost impossible to transport without the railroad connections available from his original supply base on the York River. In a telegram to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, reporting on these events, McClellan blamed the Lincoln administration for his reversals. "If I save this army now, I tell you plainly I owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army."[45] Fortunately for McClellan's immediate career, Lincoln never saw that inflammatory statement (at least at that time) because it was censored by the War Department telegrapher.


Cartoon of McClellan used in 1864 presidential campaign.
McClellan was also fortunate that the failure of the campaign left his army mostly intact because he was generally absent from the fighting and neglected to name a second-in-command to control his retreat.[46] Military historian Stephen W. Sears wrote, "When he deserted his army on the Glendale and Malvern Hill battlefields during the Seven Days, he was guilty of dereliction of duty. Had the Army of the Potomac been wrecked on either of these fields (at Glendale the possibility had been real), that charge under the Articles of War would likely have been brought against him."[47] (During Glendale, McClellan was five miles away behind Malvern Hill, without telegraph communications and too distant to command the army. During the battle of Malvern Hill, he was on a gunboat, the U.S.S. Galena, which at one point was ten miles away down the James River.[48] When the public heard about the Galena, it was yet another enormous embarrassment, comparable to the Quaker Guns at Manassas. Editorial cartoons during the 1864 presidential campaign would lampoon McClellan on the safety of a ship while a battle was fought in the distance.[49])
McClellan was reunited with his army at Harrison's Landing on the James. Debates were held as to whether the army should be evacuated or attempt to resume an offensive toward Richmond. McClellan continued his estrangement from Abraham Lincoln by his continuous call for reinforcements and by writing a lengthy letter in which he proposed strategic and political guidance for the war, continuing his opposition to abolition or seizure of slaves as a tactic. He concluded by implying he should be restored as general in chief, but Lincoln effectively responded by naming Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck to the post, without consulting, or even informing, McClellan.[50] Lincoln and Stanton offered command of the Army of the Potomac to Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, who refused the appointment.[51]
Back in Washington, a reorganization of units created the Army of Virginia under Maj. Gen. John Pope, who was directed to advance towards Richmond from the northeast. McClellan resisted calls to reinforce Pope's army and delayed return of the Army of the Potomac from the Peninsula enough so that the reinforcements arrived while the Northern Virginia Campaign was already underway. He wrote to his wife before the battle, "Pope will be thrashed ... & be disposed of [by Lee]. ... Such a villain as he is ought to bring defeat upon any cause that employs him."[52] Lee had assessed McClellan's offensive nature and gambled on removing significant units from the Peninsula to attack Pope, who was beaten decisively at Second Bull Run in August.