CHAPTER X.

GENERAL HALLECK APPOINTED COMMANDER-INCHIEF OF THE ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES.

WHILE our army lay at Corinth, an event occurred which determined the conduct of the war for another eighteen months. We refer to the appointment of General Halleck, July 23rd, as Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the United States; General Grant being thereby left in command of our army at Corinth. This event, which did more than anything that had previously occurred to paralyze the hope of the army and people, an appointment more universally reprobated than almost any other that could have been made, occurred in this manner. We give the facts as we received them directly from Mr. Sumner; he receiving them with the same directness from President Lincoln. Soon after the arrival of our army under McClellan at Harrison's Landing, the President visited the place. In a council of war General McClellan and certain of his corps commanders advised a movement from that point upon Richmond, General Lee's army there being represented as 200,000 strong, and General M. offering to make the movement provided he could be reinforced by 20,000 or 30,000 men. After the council broke up, a General in command of a division (his name we cannot recall) assured the President that it would be absolute presumption to make that movement unless the army of the Potomac was increased by at least 100,000 men ; this assurance being rendered exceedingly plausible and impressive by the estimate previously given in the council of war, that there was at that time in Richmond under General Lee an army 200,000 strong. Under such circumstances, "My mind," said the President to Mr.

Sumner, "became perfectly perplexed, and I determined right then and there to appoint a Commander-in-Chief who should be responsible for our military operations, and I determined further that General Halleck should be the man. I accordingly, as soon as I arrived in Washington, telegraphed to him to come here, and assume the responsibilities of that office." These are the identical circumstances under which that disastrous appointment was made, an appointment which never should have been made but after the maturest and most careful consultations with the wisest men in the nation had been taken. The determination of the President was taken under the perplexed impression that circumstances demanded instant action, and that the Administration of the individual selected for the high office had been a comparative success. "So much do circumstances tend to make us what we are."

We are now to consider the movements of our armies as mainly directed by one mind, that of the individual under consideration. The visit of the President to Harrison's Landing was on the 8th July. Three days after this, July 11th, General Halleck was called to Washington to assume the command of the whole land forces of the United States as General-in-Chief."

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CHAPTER XI.

GENERAL POPE AND THE ARMY OF VIRGINIA.

THE raid of General Jackson, and the confusion resulting from the action of three independent commanders upon the same field, with no controlling mind to unify their forces, at length convinced the Administration of the great error which had been committed in the arbitrary divisions and separations which had been made of the army of the Potomac. It was accordingly determined to unite the corps of Fremont, McDowell, and Banks, and other reserve forces in and about Washington and in Northern Virginia, into one body under a single commander. To such command General John Pope was called, June 26th, the day preceding that on which occurred the battle of Gaines' Mill. This appointment was exceedingly offensive to the three Generals above named, and indeed to the entire

army of the Potomac. This fact, together with the meagreness of the means placed under his command, induced General Pope to request to be relieved from his new position and be restored to his old command. This request being denied, he set about the work of reorganization and a new disposition of his forces, so necessary in existing circumstances. The new organization took on the name of the Army of Virginia. As a field force, it amounted, in all, to about 42,000 men,-an army quite too small for any effective offensive service. The very first measure of the Administration, and of our new Commander-in-Chief, who was appointed fifteen days after General Pope, after the organization of this new army should have been to render its strength quite double what it then was. All this could readily have been done, one

half the number required being furnished by the union of General Cox's division with the corps of General Burnside, and the remaining 20,000 drawn from other departments. Before the close of July a force 80,000 strong might undeniably have been concentrated in the vicinity of Culpepper. With this army at this point, and the army at Harrison's Landing, then consisting, by official report, of an effective force 101,691 strong, no new dispositions could have been required for an advance upon Richmond. The true policy unquestionably was to have kept the army under McClellan where it was until that of Virginia was prepared as above stated. All things being in readiness, McClellan should have crossed the James river at Burmuda Hundred, we think, and having fortified that point, have seized Lee's communications south of Richmond; our forces being so disposed that McClellan's left should, as early as possible, have been brought into communication with Pope's right wing. The results of the campaign thus conducted, cannot be a matter of rational doubt. If any one is disposed to doubt the practicability of reinforcing the army of Virginia as above indicated, let him consider the following facts. very time there lay at Helena, Arkansas, on the Mississippi river, an army wholly unemployed, and numbering upwards of 20,000 men-the army commanded by General Curtis. This army could have been put upon the transports, then in readiness, and forwarded to Washington by the time when their presence was required. At the same time 20,000 more men could have been spared from the army assembled at Corinth, and this without endangering any interests in that quarter. Consider, still further, the strength of the American army at this time. According to the report of the Secretary of War, submitted to Congress on the 1st December of that year, our army consisted, according to the last returns, of upwards of 750,000 men, all "well armed and equipped." In the July previous, that army must have been not far from 700,000 strong. We should stiltify ourselves if we should question the fact that from all these immense forces 40,000 men could have been drawn for the army of Virginia, and 20,000 or even 30,000 more for that of the Potomac.

At this

There can have been no valid excuse for not having rendered both these armies fully adequate in numbers to all the responsibilities devolved upon them. While the reinforcements above referred to were being brought up, the army of Virginia, with absolute directions to fight no important battle, should have been employed in making threatening demonstrations in the direction of Richmond, and all for the purpose of drawing off to the north as many of General Lee's forces as possible. At the same time, General McClellan's army should have made no demonstrations in any direction, the newspapers being filled with reports that he was to be speedily united with the army of Virginia for the protection of Washington. Should General Lee show a disposition to move north still farther, into Maryland and Pennsylvania, none but an apparent resistance to such a movement should have been made. Any General having the forces at his command that General Halleck had, would have built all the bridges above Harper's Ferry that General Lee could desire, provided the latter would have agreed to pass his army over them. In neither of those invasions would any wise Commander-in-Chief, as we shall see, have permitted a single division of General Lee's army to have recrossed the Potomac.

The campaign of the army of Virginia.

Let us now consider the campaign of the army of Virginia as actually conducted by General Pope. In judging of the merits and demerits of a General, we must consider, not only what he accomplished, and failed to accomplish, but more especially the amount of forces put under his command, together with the character of the commanders opposed to him, and the amount of forces which they brought into the field. We must bear in mind that General Pope was compelled to take the field with an army but about 40,000 strong; that at no time did he have under his immediate control over 60,000 men; that he had opposed to him the best Generals known to the Confederacy, with the crushing masses of General Lee's army under their control. The public generally have the impression that the army of the Poto