Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 130.djvu/599

Rh June. During all this time MacClellan kept his army divided by the Chickahominy for the same reason that had at first led him to occupy both sides of the stream. The key to a strategy that seems so unnecessarily dangerous lay originally in the hope he still had of drawing MacDowell's corps from the front of Washington to his aid by a land march, when he proposed to be ready to meet him, and aid its flanking movement by extending his right. Lincoln not only promised to spare it, but would no doubt have done so but for the genuine alarm created at Washington, at this crisis of the war, by Jackson's famous successes in the Shenandoah Valley campaign against the three divided Federal forces; forces which were to have overwhelmed him and captured his army, but which he beat with rapid successive strokes, such as for brilliant illustration of genius in war may fitly be compared with the wonderful efforts made by Napoleon in 1814, when with a handful of wayworn men, he for a time kept the Allies from approaching Paris.

When the hope of MacDowell's aid faded away, and Lincoln and his war secretary grew alarmed afresh for their capital, MacClellan still found it necessary to hold a portion of his army well to the north to cover the single line of supplies which brought him provisions by the railroad from York River, and which had recently been seriously threatened by Stuart's cavalry. All this time MacClellan's inaction seems to need excuse, since the Confederate force covering Richmond was much weaker than his own; but, on the comte's showing, the ceaseless and judicious activity displayed by the new Confederate commander, Lee, along various points of the Federal front, completely deceived his opponent on this head, and also completely concealed the weakness of the works of Richmond behind him, which were by no means of the formidable nature that was supposed in the Federal camp. There was a distinct mistrust, we are told, of the powers of the army for direct attack, as compared with those it could put forth in intrenchments and works of approach — and a feeling of this sort was unfavorable to action. Corinth had just fallen in the West to a long and tedious series of operations conducted by Halleck on the principles of the engineer rather than those of the general; and men asked themselves whether it were not best after all to enter a place abandoned by the enemy than to take a ruined work at a heavy cost. The throwing up of lines of cover, and the burning of powder, many of the Federal generals believed at this time, might be so managed as to make success with superior numbers assured, and to spare the risk there must always be in a supreme struggle for the mastery. MacClellan, we must believe, was under the influence of the sentiments his former aide-de-camp freely ascribes to those around him; for the fourth week since the indecisive battle of Fair Oaks was entered on without further result than the retention of the ground held within a few miles of the Confederate capital, while the hoped-for cooperation from Washington was awaited. But on the 24th of June news brought by a deserter made it certain that Jackson and his corps were far advanced on the march towards Richmond, and it needed no inspiration to foretell that their arrival would put an end to this state of inaction.

The "strategic change of base" which has been made a sort of mocking byword against the name of MacClellan, became instantly a necessity, as his historian shows, from the moment that it was certain that Jackson had been allowed by his former adversaries to withdraw his corps secretly and swiftly to Lee's aid, although it made part of a deliberate design which circumstances forced on the Federal general. "Only those," says the comte, "who have known what the burden is of such a heavy responsibility, who have pointed out long beforehand the dangers that the faults of others would cause, and after having thus shown them in vain, have suddenly been compelled to face them, can know what the thoughts were that then filled the soul of the Federal chief." But, instead of giving way under the trial, he drew inspiration from it, and decided at once on the only movement which promised immediate safety for his army, with perhaps a final counter-attack on Richmond along the James; the transfer of his army from the Chickahominy to the north bank of the former river, with the simultaneous abandonment of the communications leading to the York, on which the coming blow would be directed. Hastily collecting, therefore, a large stock of provisions, including twenty-five hundred cattle, he prepared to make a flank march from the Chickahominy to the James with no other supplies, through a difficult country, chiefly covered by a swampy forest known as the White Creek. The step was a singularly bold one, and in striking contrast to the caution which had hitherto marked his operations. But this contrast, as his 