William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac

Upon the evacuation of Manassas, General McClellan, who had, since the retirement of Lieutenant-General Scott in the preceding November, exercised the functions of generalin-chief, was relieved from the control of the armies in the field, and relegated to the command of the Army of the Potomac. At the same time, the troops in Western Virginia were placed under General Fremont, who was assigned to what was called the ‘Mountain Department.’ Now, a few days before he sailed for Fortress Monroe, General McClellan had been informed by the President that a strong ‘pressure’ had been brought to bear at Washington to procure the detachment of Blenker's division of ten thousand men from the Army of the Potomac, in order that it might be added to the force under General Fremont. The President, apparently fully alive to the impolicy of depriving him of so considerable a body of men, on whom he had relied in forming his plan of campaign, assured General McClellan that he had decided to allow the division to remain; nevertheless, the very day before that officer left Alexandria, he received a note from the President, stating that he had been constrained, by the severity of the pressure, to order the division of Blenker to Fremont.¹ It will, moreover, presently appear, that scarcely had the army landed on the Peninsula, when, notwithstanding the President's emphatic assurances that no more troops should be detached from McClellan's command, the whole of McDowell's corps, whose arrival he was impatiently awaiting, for the purpose of making with it a turning movement on Yorktown, was taken from him, and General McDowell with his troops assigned to the new department of the Rappahannock. The reason assigned for this measure was, that General McClellan had not left behind a sufficient force for the protection of the capital. The result of this act will presently appear.

It is impossible to review the series of events here recorded