Chapter XIII: The Committee on the Conduct of the War (2)

At night, instead of sending them reinforcements, they were ordered
to retreat. That was "strategy!" The moment they commenced their
retreat, as is said in the dispatches, the enemy fought like
demons. Of course they would. Who ever heard of a retreating army
that was not pursued by the victors like demons, except in the
case of rebel retreats? No other nation but ours was ever guilty
of stopping immediately after a victory. Other armies fight like
demons after a victory, and annihilate the enemy, but we do not.
Our left wing and center remained intact. A feint was made upon
the left and center, and I have here, not the sworn testimony, but
the statement of one of the bravest men in the whole Army of the
Potomac--I will not give his name, but a more highly honorable man
lives not--that when his regiment was ordered under arms, he had
no doubt that he was going to march into Richmond. He believed the
whole force of the enemy had attacked our right wing; he believed
there was nothing but a screen of pickets in front; and he thought
that now our great triumph was to come off. His men sprang into
line with avidity, prepared to rush into Richmond and take it at
the point of the bayonet. He never discovered his error until he
saw a million and a half dollars' worth of property burned in
front of his regiment, and then he began to think that an advance
upon Richmond was not intended. And it was not! We had been at
work there and had lost 10,000 men in digging intrenchments; we
had spent months in bringing up siege guns, and we abandoned
those intrenchments without firing one gun. Our army was ordered
to advance on the gunboats instead of on Richmond. This colonel
told me that his regiment fought three days and whipped the enemy
each day, and retreated each night. The left wing and center were
untouched until they were ordered to retreat. No portion of our
vast force had been fought except the right wing under Porter, and
they whipped the enemy the first day.

This is called strategy! Again, sir, I ask, Why was this great
Army of the Potomac of 230,000 men divided? Human ingenuity could
not have devised any other way to defeat that army; Divine wisdom
could scarcely have devised any other way to defeat it than that
which was adopted. There is no army in Europe to-day that could
meet the Army of the Potomac when it was 230,000 strong, the best
fighting material ever put into an army on the face of the earth.
Why was that grand army divided? I simply charge that grave and
serious errors have been committed, and, as I have said, no other
way could have been devised to defeat that army. If the 158,000
men that were sent to General McClellan had been marched upon the
enemy, they could have whipped all the armies the Confederates
have, and all they are likely to have for six months. One hundred
and fifty-eight thousand men are about as many as can be fought on
any one battle-field. One hundred and fifty-eight thousand men are
a vast army, a great deal larger army than that with which Napoleon
destroyed 600,000 of the Austrians in a single year. One hundred
and fifty-eight thousand men ably handled can defeat any force
the Confederates can raise; and that is the force that went down
to the Peninsula. But, sir, it lay in ditches, digging, drinking
rotten water, and eating bad food, and sleeping in the mud, until
it became greatly reduced in numbers, and of those that were left
very many were injured in health. Still they fought; still they
conquered in every fight, and still they retreated, because they
were ordered to retreat.

Sir, I have deemed it my duty to present this statement of facts to
the Senate and the country. I know that I am to be denounced for so
doing, and I tell you who will denounce me. There are two classes
of men who are sure to denounce me, and no one else, and they are
traitors and fools. The traitors have been denouncing every man who
did not sing pæans to "strategy," when it led to defeat every time.
The traitors North are worse than the traitors South, and sometimes
I think we have as many of them in the aggregate. They are meaner
men; they are men who will come behind you and cut your throat in
the dark. I have great respect for Southern traitors who shoulder
their muskets and come out and take the chances of the bullets
and the halter; but I have the most superlative contempt for the
Northern traitors, who, under the pretended guise of patriotism,
are stabbing their country in the dark.

The effect of this speech was profound. It enraged McClellan's friends to the highest pitch; it was not supported at the time by any like utterance in Congress, and at first many who believed it to be true condemned, or at least deprecated, the fierceness of the attack; but those who knew that "the young Napoleon" at heart preferred a pro-slavery compromise to the conquest of a durable and honorable peace, and who had marked with righteous indignation the attempt of his _claquers_ to make the Secretary of War the scape-goat for his own blunders, greeted with enthusiasm the signal courage of the man who, in the face of abuse, prejudice, and popular blindness, dared to tell with words of rugged force this story of disastrous imbecility. Mr. Chandler disregarded the remonstrances of weak friends, and met without quailing the storm of vituperation he had invited. Events made themselves his justifiers and within four months[24] President Lincoln, with the full approval of the patriotic masses of the North, relieved General McClellan from all command and abruptly terminated his military career. Nothing contributed more to this salutary change than Mr. Chandler's arraignment, of which it has been well said, that "with words resembling battles he told the American people that they were leaning upon a broken reed, that 'the idol of the soldiers' was as incapable of helping them as the idols of the heathen, and that McClellan was only digging graves for the brave men who followed him and a last ditch for the cause he defended; he shocked by his language the mass of the people into a right comprehension of the death's dance this military Jack-o'-lantern was leading them through the swamps of Virginia."

Mr. Chandler, who took this step after full deliberation and not from any passing impulse, rated the McClellan speech as his most important public service, alike in its necessity, its timeliness, and its results. He also felt that it involved more real hazard, and made larger demands upon his courage, than any other act of his Senatorial career, for such relentless invective could scarcely fail to mortally wound either its object or its maker. Had time shown that he had uttered calumnies and not the sober truth, he would have been inevitably driven from public life; and even when he spoke, the men who thoroughly doubted McClellan were still a small minority. History has shown that his indictment was as true in substance as it was unsparing in terms and bold in spirit.

Two other matters naturally group themselves with this speech: Mr. Chandler distrusted McClellanism in the Army of the Potomac as thoroughly as he did McClellan. The investigations of this committee convinced him that General Pope's campaign was so unfortunate because of the insubordination of General McClellan's friends among the corps commanders, and led him to believe that the same cause crippled the movements of both Burnside and Hooker, who, if faithfully supported, would have won decisive victories. So strong were his convictions on these points, that when General Grant became commander-in-chief he called upon the Secretary of War and requested him to make out a list of the incompetent, suspected and insubordinate generals of the Army of the Potomac, to be furnished to that officer so that he would be able to place them where they could do the least harm in the service. This Secretary Stanton promised to do. A few days afterward Mr. Chandler called again at the War Department, and, learning that this had not yet been done, said, "I will make out the list myself and send it to Grant;" and he did so, Major-Gen. C. C. Washburn being its bearer. Mr. Chandler carefully studied and vigilantly watched the Fitz-John Porter case, and approved of the findings of the court-martial, except the failure to inflict the death penalty, which he believed that the character and consequences of Porter's action fully merited. The attempt to secure the reversal of this verdict and the re-instatement in the army of the dismissed officer aroused his sternest indignation, and he fought it resolutely at every stage--and successfully, while he remained in the Senate. He spoke at length on this subject in that body on Feb. 21, 1870, declaring that he did so in fulfillment of a voluntary pledge given some years before in the same chamber to General Pope, "that justice should be done to him and to his campaign in the valley of Virginia, even although I were called upon to vindicate him from my seat in the Senate." After rehearsing the facts connected with Pope's movement, which was planned to create a diversion of Lee's army for the extrication of McClellan's forces from the Peninsula, in conformity with the suggestion of Gen. James S. Wadsworth, and showing that Pope had frequently requested to be relieved from the hazardous work laid out for him and that he had only a force of 42,000 men scattered between Harper's Ferry and Acquia Creek, Mr. Chandler said:

I asked him in the presence of the committee: "What is to prevent
you from being struck by a superior force of the enemy and
overwhelmed?" Said he: "Nothing on earth is more probable than
that I shall be struck by a superior force and shall be whipped;
but I will keep my troops near the mountains, and there are no
ten miles where there is not a gulch up which I can take my men
and small-arms, and, by abandoning my artillery and baggage,
save my men; I shall probably be whipped, but it must be done."
Any military man can see and appreciate the difficulties and
responsibilities of so desperate a campaign. "Yet," said he, "it
must be done."

Well, sir, General Pope started on that campaign. Had he announced
to the newspaper press of Washington, or of the North, the number
of his men or his object, the object itself would have been
defeated. General Pope did what I believe is allowable in war: he
perpetrated a _ruse de guerre_. He sent his scouts all through the
mountains of Virginia proclaiming that he had an army of 120,000
men. And, sir, he fooled the newspaper correspondents of the city
of Washington and of the whole North. General Pope, when he started
on that campaign, had no more idea of going to Richmond than he had
of following Elijah to Heaven in a chariot of fire without seeing
death. He started with one single object, and that was to save the
army of McClellan, or to do all that was in his power to save it.
He massed his troops, and that terrible battle of Cedar Mountain
was fought; and by that battle he not only fooled the people of
this country, but he fooled the rebels. The rebels believed that
he had 120,000 men, and that, unless they fought him and crushed
him before he could unite with the Army of the Potomac, their cause
was lost; and he drew upon his shoulders with that little force the
whole rebel army, so that, when McClellan started for Yorktown,
there was not even a popgun fired at his troops. The _ruse_ was
a perfect success, and, as I told General Pope then, "I consider
that your campaign has been one of the most brilliant that has been
fought up to this time"--which was February, 1863--"you saved two
armies; you first saved the Army of the Potomac, and then you saved
your own."

Sir, General Pope fought for eleven days, fought night and day,
fought the whole rebel army with his little force, his force never
having exceeded 70,000 men,--comprising not simply his own army,
but also General Burnside's forces, and the 20,000 men who had in
thirty days been brought up from the Army of the Potomac, and of
whom Porter's corps was part. The force which he had met with these
was that originally in his front, but overwhelmingly augmented by
that rebel force from which McClellan, with his 90,000 men, had to
be delivered by a demonstration in their rear. He fought for time.
He defended every brook, every barn, every piece of woods, every
ravine. He fought for time for the Army of the Potomac to reach him
and unite with him, so as to crush the advancing and overwhelming
force of the rebels.

Mr. Chandler then reviewed at length (and with copious citations from the testimony of eye-witnesses and the official orders) the facts as to Fitz-John Porter's course in Pope's campaign, adding extracts from the reports of rebel officers which had come into the possession of the government since the war, and closed as follows:

Mr. President, if I had more time I should like to go more fully
into this subject; but I cannot. The court, after forty-five days
spent in careful investigation, brought in unanimously the verdict
against Porter. Many of the members of that court were in favor of
sentencing him to suffer death. It is rumored, and many believe,
that the only reason the death-penalty was not inflicted was the
fear that Mr. Lincoln, whose kindness of heart was so well-known,
would not execute the sentence; and, hence, they unanimously
brought in the verdict they did. It was first carefully examined
_seriatim_ by the then Secretary of War and the President. No more
just tribunal ever investigated a case, I presume to assert, than
this tribunal, and there its finding stands.

It may be asked, How came it that a misunderstanding, almost as
universal as complete, was suffered to be put upon the country?
General Pope himself says: "The next day it (my report) was
delivered to General Halleck; but by that time influences of
questionable character, and transactions of most unquestionable
impropriety, which were well known at the time, had entirely
changed the purposes of the authorities. It is not necessary,
and, perhaps, would scarcely be in place, for me to recount these
things."

It is as well known to others present as to me that, during
that gloomy, eventful Sunday which succeeded the last battle on
Saturday, the 30th of August, the President and Mr. Stanton were
overrun and overcome with statements that, unless McClellan was
restored to command "the army would not fight." These statements
came from men who did not mean it should fight, who could not in
the exigency of the moment be displaced. The President was able
afterward to relieve McClellan and court-martial Porter. Had he
lived, he would have seen justice to General Pope awarded also. It
remains for me, while I live, to do my portion of that duty.

There is one other point to which I wish to allude. During this
very trial--during the very pendency of the trial--Fitz-John Porter
said, in the presence of my informant, who is a man whom most of
you know, and who is to-day in the employment of Congress, and
whose word I would take as soon as I would most men's--though
I told him I would not use his name, but I will give his sworn
testimony, taken down within two minutes after the utterance was
made--Fitz-John Porter said in his presence: "I was not true to
Pope, and there is no use in denying it." Mr. President, what was
"not true to Pope"? If he was not true to Pope, whom was he true
to? Being true to Pope was being true to the country; "not true
to Pope" was being a traitor to the country. Sir, "not true to
Pope" meant the terrible fight of the 30th of August, with all the
blood and all the horrors of that bitter day; "not true to Pope"
meant the battle of Antietam, with its thousands of slain and its
other thousands maimed; "not true to Pope" meant the first battle
of Fredericksburg, with its 20,000 slain and maimed; "not true
to Pope" covered the battles of the Wilderness and Cold Harbor,
and all the dreadful battles that followed. Had Fitz-John Porter
been true to his government, Jackson would have been destroyed
on the 29th of August, and on the 30th the rebels could scarcely
have offered any resistance to our victorious army. "Not true to
Pope" meant 300,000 slain and 2,000,000,000 of additional dollars
expended.

Sir, I wish to put this on the record for all time, that it may
remain. Let Fitz-John Porter thank God that he yet lives, and that
he was not living at that time under a military government. I told
General Pope, in the first interview I had with him, that I had but
one fault to find in the whole conduct of the campaign. He asked,
"What is that?" Said I, "That you ever allowed Fitz-John Porter to
leave the battle-field alive!"

In 1877 Porter at last succeeded, by the most persistent effort, in obtaining the order for the re-examination of his case, and when Mr. Chandler re-entered the Senate in 1879, he found himself confronting an organized movement to secure that officer's restoration to his old rank with full pay since the date of his dishonorable dismissal from the army. To this contemplated action he proposed to offer the most strenuous resistance, and the last volumes he drew from the Congressional Library were authorities he wished to consult in the preparation of his argument against the reversal of the Porter finding.

Mr. Chandler's positive opinions in the McClellan and Porter cases were shared by his colleagues of the Committee on the Conduct of the War of the Thirty-seventh Congress, and are justified by their elaborate reports covering the history of the Army of the Potomac from the battle of Ball's Bluff to the close of the Fredericksburg campaign. The Thirty-eighth Senate adopted a resolution continuing the existence of this committee, and, the House concurring, the old members, so far as they were in Congress, were re-appointed. Senator Harding of Oregon took the place of Mr. Wright, and afterward Mr. Buckalew of Pennsylvania succeeded Mr. Harding. From the House, Mr. B. F. Loan of Missouri was appointed as the successor of Mr. Covode. Wm. Blair Lord was re-elected clerk and stenographer. This committee also devoted much of its time to the troubles of the Army of the Potomac. General Burnside had resigned the command because of a misunderstanding with the President, brought about by the interference of Gens. John Cochrane and John Newton, and General Hooker was appointed in his place, with General Halleck as commander-in-chief. But Halleck disliked Hooker, and forced his resignation by overruling his plans and countermanding his orders, General Meade succeeding. The committee examined closely into this matter, reaching the conclusion that Hooker had not been fairly dealt with, and incidentally disposing of the false statement then current that that officer was intoxicated at the battle of Chancellorsville, and was defeated from that cause. The committee condemned Hooker's removal, and Mr. Chandler firmly believed in his courage, patriotism and ability, and regarded him as the victim of circumstances. These facts make it an interesting coincidence that these two men--both bold, frank and positive in their respective spheres of public activity--should have died sudden and painless deaths within the same week.

The committee did not believe that the selection of General Meade for the command of the Army of the Potomac was a fortunate one, and doubted his ability to properly control his subordinates. While there is no reference to the matter in their report on this subject, it is a fact that they recommended the removal of General Meade from command, and the re-instatement of Hooker. On the 4th of March, 1864, Mr. Chandler and Mr. Wade called upon the President, and told him that they believed it to be their duty, impressed as they were with the testimony the committee had taken, to lay a copy of it before him, and in behalf of the army and the country demand the removal of General Meade, and the appointment of some one more competent to command. The President asked what general they could recommend; they said that for themselves they would be content with General Hooker, believing him to be competent, but not being advocates of any particular officer, they would say that if there was any one whom the President considered more competent, then let him be appointed. They added that "Congress had appointed the committee to watch the conduct of the war; and unless this state of things should be soon changed it would become their duty to make the testimony public which they had taken, with such comments as the circumstances of the case seemed to require." General Meade was not removed, but General Grant was, within a week, given command as general-in-chief, and assumed personal direction of the movements of the Army of the Potomac.

During 1864 and 1865 the committee (besides considering many minor matters) also investigated, with care:

1. The disastrous assault upon Petersburg on July 30, 1864; their report exonerated General Burnside from the responsibility for the repulse, and held that the disaster was attributable to the interference with his plans of General Meade, whose course in the matter was severely censured.

2. The unsuccessful expedition of 1864 up the Red river in Louisiana, which the committee (Mr. Gooch dissenting) emphatically condemned.

3. The first Fort Fisher expedition, the committee, in its report, approving of General Butler's course in withdrawing from the projected assault.

During the inquiry into the Petersburg fiasco, the sub-committee were in session at General Grant's headquarters, and Mr. Chandler was his guest, renewing there an early acquaintance and laying the foundations of their future close friendship. Some incidents of their intercourse were characteristic.

General Sherman had just reached Savannah, and the mystery of the objective point of his great "march to the sea" had thus been solved for the public. This memorable exploit was discussed at length between General Grant and Mr. Chandler. The former said that the suggestion was Sherman's, and so was the entire plan of the campaign. Sherman had urged it for a long time before he (Grant) would consent, but finally the conditions were ripe, and the order was given. General Grant added that Sherman was the only man in the army whom he would have entrusted this campaign to, as he was especially adapted for such a command, and said: "Congress ought to do something for Sherman. He deserves a great deal more credit and honor than he has ever received." "What can we do for him?" asked Mr. Chandler. "Increase his rank," was the reply. "We have made you lieutenant general," responded Mr. Chandler, laughingly, "and I suppose we could make him a general, and thus put him over you." "Do it," said Grant, promptly. "If he carries this campaign through successfully, do it. I would rather serve under Sherman than any man I know." General Grant also said that when he received a dispatch that Thomas had attacked Hood, he felt that a great victory was already won. He added: "I did not have any anxiety about the result; when Thomas attacks, a victory is sure. He is a slow man, but he is the surest man I know. Once in motion, he is the hardest man to fight in this army. He never precipitates a battle unless he is all ready, and knows his points, and you may rest easy when he attacks, for the next news will be the enemy's rout. When Thomas once gets in motion the rebels have not force enough to stop him."

Upon the final adjournment of the Thirty-eighth Congress (on March 4, 1865) it continued the existence of the Committee on the Conduct of the War for ninety days, in order to afford it time to finish its work. During this period it closed up some pending inquiries and prepared its final reports. Its last action was an examination into General Sherman's unauthorized and unfortunate negotiations with General Johnston, which the committee disapproved and that officer's superiors promptly repudiated. The final report of the committee bears the date of the 22d of May, 1865, and its closing passages are as follows:

Your committee, at the close of the labors in which the most
of them have been engaged for nearly four years past, take
occasion to submit a few general observations in regard to their
investigations. They commenced them at a time when the government
was still engaged in organizing its first great armies, and before
any important victory had given token of its ability to crush
out the rebellion by the strong hand of physical power. They
have continued them until the rebellion has been overthrown, the
so-called Confederate government been made a thing of the past,
and the chief of that treasonable organization is a proclaimed
felon in the hands of our authorities. And soon the military and
naval forces, whose deeds have been the subjects of our inquiry,
will return to the ways of peace and the pursuits of civil life,
from which they have been called for a time by the danger which
threatened their country. Yet while we welcome those brave veterans
on their return from fields made historical by their gallant
achievements, our joy is saddened as we view their thinned ranks
and reflect that tens of thousands, as brave as they, have fallen
victims to that savage and infernal spirit which actuated those who
spared not the prisoners at their mercy, who sought by midnight
arson to destroy hundreds of defenseless women and children,
and who hesitated not to resort to means and to commit acts so
horrible that the nations of the earth stand aghast as they are
told what has been done. It is a matter for congratulation that,
notwithstanding the greatest provocations to pursue a different
course, our authorities have ever treated their prisoners humanely
and generously, and have in all respects conducted this contest
according to the rules of the most civilized warfare....

Your committee would refer to the record of their labors to show
the spirit and purpose by which they have been governed in their
investigations. They have not sought to accomplish any purpose
other than to elicit the truth; to that end have all their labors
been directed. If they have failed at any time to accomplish that
purpose, it has been from causes beyond their control. Their work
is before the people, and by it they are willing to be judged.

The volumes which contain the official record of the proceedings of the Committee on the Conduct of the War are and always must be regarded as the most valuable single magazine of historical material relating to the Great Rebellion. They have been liberally used in the preparation of every important account of our civil strife yet published, and the men, who shall in the light of another century estimate the greatness and significance of that "throe of progress," will inevitably look in their pages to the graphic narratives of those who were parts of memorable movements and actors in famous battles as a means of information, and to the conclusions of those who prosecuted inquiries so zealously when the events were yet fresh in the memory as a source of guidance. Infallibility is not a human attribute, and the work of this committee was not free from misapprehension and mistake. Time, which has shown some of its errors and will correct others, has also sustained the essential justice of its most important conclusions, which will stand unreversed on the pages of impartial history.

But the chief value of the labors of this committee is not to be found in its collection of rich materials for the future chronicler. To its unrecorded but potent influence upon the conduct of the war, adequate justice has not yet been done. Its unwearied investigations constantly exposed corruption, incompetence, and insubordination, and placed in the hands of the authorities the means of discovering and punishing the knavish, the weak, and the disloyal. Its activity was a perpetual prompter to energy, and a vigilant detective by the side of inefficiency and disaffection. As the result of its labors, the unsuccessful, the half-hearted, and the traitorous gave way to the able and the patriotic; because of the knowledge of its relentless questioning, indolent men were vigilant, and laxity was transformed into vigor. Its unremitting labors stayed up the hands of the War Secretary in the heaviest hours of his great task, and usefully informed the counsels and shaped the decisions of the White House. If its every session had been permanently secret, and not a line of its proceedings existed as a public record, there would still remain an ineffaceable transcript of the results of its action in the correcting of mistakes of organization and that crushing of sham generalship which alone made final victory possible.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] In "The Republic" magazine of April, 1875.

[23] Edwin M. Stanton had succeeded Simon Cameron on Jan. 13. 1862.

[24] On Nov. 7, 1862.