This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[217]
It was now McClellan's turn to assume the offensive.
To cross the Potomac, having that river at his back, and to fight Lee, was too hazardous for a man of his prudence; but by crossing below Harper's Ferry and marching into Virginia he could keep interposed between his capital and the Confederate army, and at the same time move on interior lines toward Lee's capital, which would bring Lee from the Valley of Virginia to offer battle at a point where, if he could be defeated, Richmond might fall.
Both armies had increased in numbers.
Three days after the battle Lee had 40,000 men, and McClellannotwithstanding his loss in the two battles, had 80,930, exclusive of the two divisions of Couch and Humphreys, which reached him the day after the battle.
The morning report, dated September 20th, sent by McClellanwhich included the troops at Washington under Banks and 3,500 men at Williamsport, Frederick, and Boonsboroa — showed an aggregate present for duty of 164,359, and an aggregate absent of 105,124, making a total present and absent of 293,798.
“General McClellan was never in a hurry, but wanted to reach the ideal of preparation before action.”
He was deliberate, his Government impatient.
The chasm between the two was widening.
The blood on the field of Sharpsburg was not dry before the Federal army commander was expressing his regret that every dispatch from his general in chief, Halleck, was fault-finding; he asked him to say something in commendation of his army; that it had been lately “badly cut up and scattered by the overwhelming numbers brought against them in the battle of the 17th, and it was only by very hard fighting that we gained the advantage we did. As it was, the result was at one period very doubtful, and we had all we could do to win the day.”
On the other side Halleck was, with Mr. Lincoln's assistance, putting hot coals on his back.
“The country is becoming very impatient at the want of activity in your army, and we must push it on,” the former writes, October 7, 1862.
And again: “There is a decided want of celerity in our troops.
They lie still in camp too long.”
Three days after the withdrawal of the Southern
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.