Edward Porter Alexander, Military memoirs of a Confederate: a critical narrative

Mr. Lincoln had allowed McClellan to decide whether his advance should be up the Shenandoah Valley, or east of the Blue Ridge, but expressed a preference for the latter route.

McClellan, however, had decided to take the Valley route, for fear of Lee's advancing into Md. and Pa. if it was left uncovered. Both Lincoln and Halleck thought his fears groundless and his caution excessive. Neither of them believed the Confederate army to be as immense as McClellan reported, and both knew that if the Federals needed supplies the Confederates needed them much more. In Lincoln's practical style, he often made pertinent suggestions to McClellan and would sometimes mingle with them a touch of sarcasm. He wrote that if Lee ‘should cut in between the Army of the Potomac and Washington, McClellan would have nothing to do but to attack him in the rear.’ Soon after Stuart's raid, he suggested that ‘if the enemy had more occupation south of the river, his cavalry would not be so likely to make raids north of it.’ And on Oct. 25, he telegraphed McClellan in reply to a despatch about sore-tongued and fatigued horses, ‘Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done, since the battle of Antietam, that fatigues anything?’

On Oct. 26, McClellan put his army in motion, 19 days after his receipt of the President's order. By this time he was willing to adopt the line of advance east of the Blue Ridge, as the stage of water in the Potomac River now made all fords impracticable. The crossing was made at Berlin, about 10 miles below Harper's Ferry. Pontoon bridges were laid, and the army crossed over rather leisurely, the last of it, Franklin's corps, on Nov. 1 and 2.

We will now return to the Confederates, who, since Sharpsburg, have been resting and recuperating between Winchester and Bunker Hill.