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[171] and reoccupied Malvern, when he was met by a telegram from the new general-in-chief, dated August 3d, ordering him to withdraw the entire army from the Peninsula to Aquia Creek, there to make a junction with Pope. After an urgent appeal from this order, General McClellan proceeded to carry out his instructions. The judgment of the act that removed the Army of the Potomac from the Peninsula must turn on the one fact, whether or not it was really designed to re-enforce that army. If it was not designed to re-enforce it to an effective that would enable it to immediately recommence active operations, then undoubtedly the wisest course was to withdraw it from the Peninsula; for a concentration of the divided forces was so prime a necessity, that if a junction of the two armies was not to be allowed on the James, a junction in front of Washington was preferable to their continued isolation,—a situation in which neither could operate with much effect.1 If, however, there had been on the part of the Administration any intention of giving effect to the views of General McClellan, by furnishing such accessions to his strength as would permit his moving upon Richmond, the army should assuredly have remained on the line of the James. Now, it is a curious circumstance, that at this time there was another person full as anxious as General Halleck to have the Army of the Potomac leave the Peninsula. That person was General Lee. And if there be any force in that military maxim, which admonishes ‘never to do what the ’
1 There is another consideration that prompted certain officers of the army to urge the removal of the army from the Peninsula, if it was not to be reenforced; and that is the unhealthy situation in which the army would find itself lying in inaction amid the swamps of the James during the hot months of August and September. This was the reason why several of the officers of the Army of the Potomac—among them Generals Franklin and Newton—expressed to President Lincoln, during a visit he made to McClellan's camp in July, 1862, an opinion in favor of withdrawing the army from the Peninsula. 1 make this statement on the authority of the officers named. If reenforcements were to be expected, they were altogether in favor of remaining.
1866.
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