Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

[296] The news of the retreat of the great Federal army under the command of McClellan from before Richmond to the James River, caused great excitement throughout the North. The details of the repulse fell upon the community with disheartening effect, and produced such a shock as had not been felt since the commencement of the war. A fierce clamour was raised against the unfortunate commander; and the occasion of the organization and direction of another Federal army against Richmond under Maj.-Gen. Pope, who had actually crossed the Rappahannock, as if to seize Gordonsville, and move thence upon the Confederate capital, was busily used to throw McClellan into the shade, to disparage his career, and to break down whatever public confidence might yet be disposed to linger in his name. Divisions and recriminations between these two grand wings of the Federal forces in Virginia were early developed. Several of McClellan's generals of division asked relief from duty under him, regarding him as inefficient and incompetent, and had been assigned to Pope's army. The friends of McClellan were not slow to retaliate that Pope was an upstart and braggart, who by trickery and partisan politics, had become chief favourite of the Washington Cabinet, and a military impostor, convenient only as a tool in the hands of the Radical party, who mistook brutality in lie war for vigour, and were for increasing the horrours of hostilities by emancipating and arming the slaves, legalizing plunder, and making the invaded country of the South the prey of white brigands and “loyal” negroes.

The appointment of this man to the command of the Federal forces gathered on the Rappahannock was significant of the design of the Washington Administration to introduce new measures of violence in the contest, and to re-enter upon the campaign in Virginia with a new trial of warfare. The desperate fortunes of the war were now to be prosecuted with a remarkable exasperation. Pope was a violent Abolitionist, a furious politician; his campaigns in the West had been remarkable only for the bluster of official despatches, big falsehoods in big print, and a memorable career of cruelty in Southeastern Missouri. He had suddenly risen into favour at Washington. McDowell, a moderate Democrat, having no sympathy with the Anti-Slavery school of politics — who some months before had been stationed at Fredericksburg, and was promised chief command of the movement thence upon Richmond when joined by Banks, Shields, and Fremont, but whose hopes had been destroyed by the rapid marches