[5.0] The Aftermath

* The day after the end of the battle at Antietam Creek, Lee withdrew his Army of Northern Virginia, to lead it back to where it had come from. McClellan's hesitant efforts to pursue the Confederates amounted to little. President Lincoln was not happy that the rebels had escaped, but the victory at Antietam allowed him to announce his Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slave in the Confederacy -- much to the consternation of the South. As for McClellan, his days as commander of the Army of the Potomac were numbered.

[5.1] LEE WITHDRAWS

* The morning after the battle of Antietam -- Thursday, 18 September 1862 -- arrived to reveal a ghastly scene of smashed equipment and dead bodies. Pickets exchanged a few pot-shots with each other, but for the most part the two sides, having established truces, were busy attending to their wounded and taking ownership of the dead. The air stank with the smell of the decaying corpses of men and horses; the Federals tried to burn some of the horses, and only made the smell worse.

Lee considered attacking the Federals, but he knew he had been badly hurt and concluded he had to withdraw his army back to Virginia. McClellan received reinforcements of 14,000 men that day, but the slaughter of the previous day had reinforced his natural caution and he refused to attack. No doubt, he still felt he was outnumbered. His critics back in Washington would proclaim the day "Black Thursday".

Lee withdrew that night. A fine rain fell and turned the road into soupy mud, making life even more miserable for his men. They crossed the Potomac at a place called Boteler's Ford. Lee was very apprehensive that the Federals would attack while his army was packed onto a narrow country road, but though Union pickets were perfectly aware the Confederates were pulling out, McClellan did nothing. In the morning, when Lee was informed that nearly all of his men had crossed the river, he let out a relieved: "Thank God!"

McClellan belatedly sent Porter's V Corps after the rebels. Porter's cavalry reached Boteler's Ford at about 8:00 AM. The Confederates had completed their crossing of the river, but a rear guard, consisting of two brigades of infantry and 44 guns, faced the Yankees from the Virginia side of the river. Porter brought up 18 guns of his own and started trading shots with them. Union sharpshooters took up positions in a dry canal running along the Maryland side of the river and picked off rebel gunners.

The Confederate rear guard was under the command of Brigadier General William Pendleton, who physically resembled Lee but had few of his military virtues. Pendleton, although a West Pointer, had spent much of his life as an Episcopal priest and was out of his depth in military command. The fighting went on all day. About dusk, the Federals sent over a raiding party of about 500 men and took four of the rebel guns. Pendleton panicked and rode off to find Lee. Sometime after midnight, Pendleton found him sleeping under an apple tree, roused him, and told him an overblown story of how the Federals had stormed him and captured all 44 of his guns. Lee was shocked: "ALL?!"

Pendleton replied: "Yes, General, I fear all!" Lee gave the matter some thought, then suggested that, since nothing could be done until sunup, they might as well get some sleep. Stonewall Jackson was not so calm about it. Although Jackson took no stock in Pendleton and his story, he still told A.P. Hill to be ready to move out at dawn.

In the meantime, McClellan had decided to send three brigades across the river. The lead Federal brigade, composed of regulars, crossed over about 7:00 AM on Friday, 19 September, and ran into Hill's men. The Yankees quickly realized they were outnumbered by the rebels, fell back to the river, and then withdrew back to the Maryland side, along with the second brigade that had just been sent over.

The third Federal brigade, under command of Colonel James Barnes, had moved across the river out of communications with the other two brigades. In the lead was the 118th Pennsylvania, a completely green regiment that had seen no combat. Barnes had sent the Pennsylvanians across a ravine and up a cliff when A.P. Hill's division, with 5,000 men, appeared before them. Barnes ordered his regiments to pull back, but when one of Barnes's lieutenants shouted up from the ravine frantically calling for the Pennsylvanians to withdraw, their commander, Colonel Charles E. Provost, insisted on being dignified, responding: "I do not receive orders in that way! If Colonel Barnes has any order to give me, let his aide come to me!"

Hill's men rushed the Pennsylvanians. Although Porter's artillerymen did the best they could to help, firing from across the river, the lone brigade was hopelessly outmatched. Worse, half the Pennsylvanians found their British Enfield rifles, normally good weapons, were defective. They still held their ground for over a half hour. Then Colonel Provost was wounded, and when a formal order finally arrived giving them permission to withdraw, the Pennsylvania men collapsed. The men tumbled down the cliff and tried to swim across the river while the rebels poured fire down on them. Yankee bodies floated downstream. The Federals managed to complete their withdrawal by about 2:00 PM, but 269 of the 750 men had been shot down.

McClellan, intimidated by the fiasco, gave up what few thoughts he had of pursuing Lee's army. He reoccupied Harper's Ferry with a large force, but most of the Army of the Potomac stayed in Maryland to refit. Lee wanted to renew the offensive, but he quickly realized that the Army of Northern Virginia was, for the moment, not up to more fighting, and withdrew down the Shenandoah Valley to Winchester to rest and reorganize. His soldiers wanted nothing more to do with Maryland. The popular Confederate anthem "My Maryland" fell into disuse.

McClellan was proud of his achievement at Antietam, writing his wife: "Those in whose judgement I rely tell me that I fought the battle splendidly and that it was a masterpiece of art." In reality, it was the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac who had fought the battle. McClellan had been little more than a spectator; he had committed his forces piecemeal, when on several occasions a coordinated attack would have cracked the Confederate defense -- and in the end, when he was given the opportunity to snatch up the bruised rebels, let it slip away entirely. This last failure did not go unnoticed by his superiors.

Despite that, McClellan was again the hero of the hour, and he felt strong enough in his position to be able to write his wife Ellen on 20 September that he had, through intermediaries, let it be known to his superiors that if Secretary Stanton was not removed from his position and that if he, McClellan, were not restored to the position of Army Commander in Chief over Halleck, then the Administration would have his resignation. Lincoln then trumped him, and his demands became irrelevant.

[5.2] THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

* Antietam was a painful and limited victory but it was still a victory, and so Lincoln finally had the opportunity he wanted to play the ace up his sleeve: emancipation.

The matter had been on his mind ever since he had proposed it to his cabinet in late July, and then shelved it. Since that time, he had been playing his cards close to his vest. A Quaker woman who visited the President in office to inform him that she had been sent by the Lord to inform him that he was divinely appointed to end slavery got a cool reception, indicating that he had no time or inclination to discuss the matter with her. He dismissed her, exasperated as anyone might be with a self-appointed messenger from God, saying afterward that "if it is true that the Lord has appointed me to do the work she has indicated, it is not probable He would have communicated knowledge of the fact to me as well as her?"

But wheels were turning in Lincoln's head. On 22 August, even as the movements that would lead up to the Second Battle of Bull Run were in progress, the NEW YORK TRIBUNE had printed a letter from the President that replied to a critical editorial two days earlier. Lincoln's letter read in part:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

On the Monday after the battle at Antietam, 22 September 1862, the President assembled his cabinet. In his easy-going way, he did not immediately get down to business, instead reading them a story by the humorist Artemis Ward, "High-Handed Outrage In Utiky", from a book given to him personally by Ward. The story related how the proprietor of a traveling show set up in Utica, only to have one of his exhibits vandalized by a local:

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END_QUOTE

His people smiled or chuckled, except for the solemn Salmon Chase and the sour Edwin Stanton. Then Lincoln got down to business, starting out with: "Gentlemen, I have, as you are aware, thought a great deal about the relation of this war to slavery." He reminded them of the draft Emancipation Proclamation he had presented to them back in July, and said: "I think the time has come now. I wish that we were in a better condition. But the rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise."

The Proclamation was a compact document. Its first two paragraphs stated that it was being issued on the basis of the President's authority as Commander-in-Chief, as a military measure, with the only goal of restoring the Union; the President still offered the promise of compensated emancipation to loyalist slaveholders, and proposed that freed slaves be colonized elsewhere on a voluntary basis. It was the third paragraph that was of central importance:

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Secretaries Seward and Chase proposed a few minor refinements and the Proclamation was released the next morning, 23 September 1862. It was a very odd document, in which there was at one time both less and more, much more, than met the eye.

As noted, the document established emancipation as a strictly military measure, performed under the authority of the Commander-in-Chief, since the rights of slaveholders were protected by the Constitution and the President had no authority to enact universal emancipation as such. It only applied to territories where the Federal government had at the time no power to enforce it, with even occupied Louisiana exempted. Another interesting fact was that it did not take effect immediately. If the Confederacy returned to the Union before the end of the year, slavery would remain intact; and if emancipation were to then take place after that time, it would be on a compensated basis.

By such measures, the Emancipation Proclamation was less than it seemed, but the practical effects of the document were, if anything, made sharper by its seeming contradictions. First, although the geographic scope of the Proclamation was limited, the idea that slavery could be eliminated in its heartlands and survive elsewhere was laughable; if the heart was torn out, the rest of the body was unlikely to survive very long. Lincoln had kicked the props out from underneath slavery, and it would all inevitably fall in time.

Second, the fact that the Federal power did not, for the most part, extend over the states in rebellion was not an absurdity that had to be glossed over: it was actually the point of the exercise. By declaring emancipation in the rebellious states, Lincoln struck at the Confederate war effort. That was the only rationale by which the President felt he had the authority to take such an action, or for that matter wanted to. Although he believed that slavery should be abolished, his continuous attempts to push compensated emancipation in the face of total indifference had demonstrated he did not really want to take drastic action, and had only been forced into it by the realization that it was an absolute necessity if he wanted to win the war.

The direct material effects were uncertain. Of course, the news of emancipation would quickly spread through the slave population of the south, exerting ever more strain on a system that was already under great stress while the white menfolk were away on the battleground. The proclamation would not likely greatly increase that stress much, since slavery was dissolving spontaneously wherever Union armies touched it, and that was really not the point. The true effect was ideological, the Confederacy in the position of fighting for no greater cause than that of slavery.

The war of course had been caused by slavery, but it was not really being fought for slavery. Lincoln had said again and again that his goal was to "preserve the Union", and that was what most Union soldiers had signed up to do. The Emancipation Proclamation was clearly stated and intended as a means to that end. On the other side of the coin, most Southerners drew their intense fighting spirit out of a passion to defend their homes and families from an invader, not directly out of the wish to keep other people in chains. Although the states of the Deep South had made no secret that they had seceded over slavery, the states of the Upper South had only left the Union when the Federal government mobilized for war.

Slavery was behind the conflict, of course, but at first the Union had tried to tiptoe around it, in hopes that things could be patched up as they were. Lincoln had realized they couldn't. He also knew that the abstract goal of "preserving the Union" meant in practice the invasion and subjugation by military force of the South, and it is likely if the matter were posed to him in such a blunt fashion, he would have agreed it was exactly the fact. What else could it possibly mean? It put the Union in the position of being an aggressor, and cast Lincoln as a ruthless tyrant. What else could it possibly do?

In one sweeping, revolutionary move, the President had turned everything upside-down. There was no more tiptoeing around the issue of slavery. It was brought to the center stage, with the effect of putting the Confederacy on the wrong side of the dispute. Now, there was no way, then or ever, of being sympathetic to the Confederate nation without being accused of being sympathetic to slavery.

To twist the knife, the document was not effective immediately. The rebels could keep their slaves if they gave up the struggle and returned to the fold before the end of the year, and Lincoln would in turn give up his war against the South. Confederates could legalistically argue "State's Rights" all they wanted -- but outsiders might be forgiven for wondering why such legalisms justified a conflict, when the Union had declared it was willing to give up the war against the South and respect Southern rights. Instead of a noble struggle against an invader and a tyrant, the Confederacy's fight was now put in the light of being simply pigheaded.

When the time limit expired, the knife would become razor-sharp. If the Confederacy continued the struggle into the new year, the Federal government would adopt as a primary official war aim the destruction of the Southern way of life. Lincoln told an official that once the new year came, "the character of the war will be changed -- it will be one of subjugation." As a peace offering, the Emancipation Proclamation was hollow; its real effect was to undercut the Confederacy in a deep, fundamental way while making the Union's war policy much harsher.

Lincoln had not spent his grown life as a high-profile lawyer for nothing; and yet, at the same time, in hindsight it was a perfectly obvious ploy. Slavery was the Confederacy's blatantly visible political weakness, and the only reason it hadn't been exploited before was because it was seen as so drastic and radical as to be unthinkable. The President, however, was willing to think the unthinkable.

* None of this was lost on Confederates. They knew they'd been had, and howled. A clause in the Proclamation that stated that Federal forces would not restrain slaves attempting to gain their freedom was read as an incitement to bloody revolt, and the limitation of emancipation to the Confederacy was blasted as blatant hypocrisy. The Confederacy's Northern sympathizers understood matters as well, with conservative Democrats almost as angry as the Confederates. Of course, although black abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote: "We shout for joy that we live to record this righteous decree!" -- some abolitionists were upset for their own reasons, blindly complaining about the incomplete nature of the Proclamation, without considering what a bone-shattering blow it was to slavery.

However, most of the citizens of the North sensibly took the simple message in the Proclamation as enough for them: Lincoln had freed the slaves. The details seemed of no concern, and to a large extent they weren't. Along with denying the Confederacy foreign recognition, Lincoln had done much to brace up support for the war effort in the North, and he had also managed to make some peace with the radical elements of his own party. They might grumble that the Proclamation wasn't enough, but they understood that it was certainly a big step in the right direction.

When the news finally sailed overseas, the British ruling classes were contemptuous -- how could the Lincoln Administration claim to free the South's slaves while retaining slaves in the Union itself? Newspapers mocked the "sad document" and a member of Parliament calling it the "last card" of a "reckless gambler" -- with the satirical magazine PUNCH, no friend of the Union, showing a frustrated Abraham Lincoln angrily tossing down the "last card" in front of a smirking Jefferson Davis. British Foreign Secretary Lord Russell more carefully and perceptively said that the Proclamation was "of a very strange nature", and very correctly noted that it contained "no declaration of a principle adverse to slavery." Lincoln had deliberately been careful not to state such a principle.

Even across the Atlantic, however, the simple message was still enough. Although there was considerable sympathy for the South in Britain, there was very little sympathy for slavery; British friends of the South were fond of hinting, ever so deniably, that the Confederacy would free their slaves once independence was assured -- but any sensible Briton could then only ask what the point of secession was supposed to be. Britons had been impatient with the Union's refusal to address the slave question to that time; now it had been addressed, and to most British citizens, the fine print of the matter did not outweigh that fact.

In October, Emperor Napolean III of France would propose that France, Russia, and Britain intervene and enforce a six months' armistice between the Federals and Confederates -- a move that would do much to guarantee Southern independence. Lord Russell would endorse the proposal, but Prime Minister Palmerston's cabinet would reject it; the scales were clearly tipping towards the Union.

* Lincoln had played his emancipation card well, but there were two dangers in the game. The first threat was from the border states in the Union. Lincoln cared little about the predictable fury of the South over the Proclamation, but antagonizing the loyal slave states was taking a big chance. Secretary Blair had pointed this out in the cabinet meeting on 22 September. Lincoln replied in essence that when he had attempted to discuss compensated emancipation with the border state men, they had not listened. Now he had no choice but to act.

The Proclamation would in fact antagonize border state men, but hot talk was not the same thing as action. Federal power was great and much in evidence in the border states, and would-be rebels in loyal states stood to lose a great deal if they flew off the handle. States had joined the Confederacy in a rush, when nobody quite understood what they were getting into. Now everybody knew what the stakes really were, and there was no such rush when he proclaimed emancipation.

The second threat was from the military. There was much bitterness over the Proclamation among the officer corps of the Army of the Potomac, and some wild ideas were being tossed around. Lincoln was aware of their grumblings, and took immediate steps to suppress them. It came to Lincoln's attention that a Major John Key of the War Department staff, brother of McClellan's aide Colonel Thomas Key, had explained to another officer that McClellan had not destroyed the Army of Northern Virginia because "that is not the game. The object is that neither army shall get much advantage of the other; that both shall be kept in the field till they are exhausted, when we will make a compromise and save slavery."

The President had no patience with officers spinning conspiracy tales to slander the integrity of the government to which they were responsible. Lincoln commented that if the major had indeed said such a thing, then "his head should roll." On 26 September, the President sent a note to Major Key to ask him to confirm or deny his remarks. The major confirmed them, and was immediately sacked. Lincoln did this as a warning to the major's comrades: "I thought his silly, treasonable expressions were 'staff talk', and I wished to make an example."

McClellan himself was suffering through great personal doubts in response to the Proclamation. A few days after the Proclamation was issued, he wrote to a friend, commenting: "At one stroke of the pen, it changed our free institutions into a despotism." For a while, McClellan wavered between going public with his protests, or complying with the will of his superiors. One night, he had some of his generals over for dinner and discussed the matter with them. When he mentioned the idea that, with the loyalty of the Army of the Potomac, he might be able to oppose the Proclamation, he was told in response that those who were feeding him such ideas were his worst enemies and that "not a corporal's guard" would follow him if he tried to take matters into his own hands. On 9 October, McClellan would publish General Order Number 163, intended to suppress the loose talk running through the command ranks. He reminded them of their "highest duty" under the Constitution, which was "earnest support of the authority of the government."

There would be no military coup. In fact, there were more than a few soldiers in the ranks who understood and appreciated the President's logic far better than McClellan did. The Union had to defeat the Confederacy, and if undermining slavery helped put down the rebellion, then that was all for the good -- abolitionism be damned, the secessionists were going to be crushed come hell or high water. Halleck, in one of his moments of perceptiveness, saw matters clearly, telling Grant: "Every slave withdrawn from the enemy is the equivalent of a white man put hors de combat."

The practical impact of the Emancipation Proclamation could not be truly assessed for some time to come, but despite its limitations there were some who immediately saw what it meant. After the cabinet meeting on 22 September, Secretary Chase had told John Hay that the behavior of the slave holders was "a most wonderful history of the insanity of a class the world had ever seen." In the Union, slavery had been protected and might have survived for a generation or more, but by resorting to secession the slave power had "madly placed in the very path of destruction" the institution they had intended to preserve at all costs.

Lincoln himself understood this well, and was further beginning to see in the pattern of events that he struggled to direct as they flowed around him evidence of some greater purpose, much more compelling than lectures from overly enthusiastic Quakers. He had never been a religious man, but had a certain sense of mysticism that made him increasingly believe that the chaos and disaster of revolt and war reflected a terrible and agonizing agenda that humans could only faintly understand. John Hay found on the President's desk a "Meditation on the Divine Will":

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[5.3] THE FALL OF MCLELLAN

* The contest did not seem to be proceeding with any haste with General McClellan. His Army of the Potomac had spent the remainder of the month of September 1862 recuperating in western Maryland from the horrendous battle at Antietam, and McClellan did not seem inclined to disturb its rest.

On 1 October, President Lincoln left Washington to pay McClellan a surprise visit. The general got wind of the trip and met him at Harper's Ferry. Lincoln apparently hoped to press McClellan to move against Lee while the weather still permitted it. McClellan was unresponsive, and the President did not press the matter; it was as if Lincoln had been expecting it.

Lincoln spent three days inspecting the troops. Though they saw him as pale and worn, they greeted his visits with enthusiasm, but not as much enthusiasm as they reserved for General McClellan. Lincoln saw this as cause for concern. One morning, before dawn, he went out with an old Illinois friend, O.M. Hatch, to watch the sun come up over the camp. With a sweep of his hand over the camp, Lincoln asked his friend in a quiet voice: "Hatch, Hatch -- what is all this?"

Hatch replied: "Why, Mr. Lincoln, it is the Army of the Potomac."

Lincoln shook his head. "No, Hatch, no. This is General McClellan's bodyguard." The President went back to Washington on 4 October. On 6 October, McClellan got a telegram from General Halleck:

   THE PRESIDENT DIRECTS THAT YOU 
   CROSS THE POTOMAC AND GIVE BATTLE 
   TO THE ENEMY OR DRIVE HIM SOUTH.  
   YOUR ARMY MUST MOVE NOW WHILE THE 
   ROADS ARE GOOD.  ... I AM DIRECTED 
   TO ADD THAT THE SECRETARY OF WAR 
   AND THE GENERAL-IN-CHIEF CONCUR 
   WITH THESE INSTRUCTIONS.

McClellan predictably did not move -- but he did use the occasion to step up his demands for supplies. Almost as predictably, the Confederates took advantage of his immobility. Just before sunup on 10 October, Jeb Stuart and 1,800 rebel cavalry crossed the upper Potomac at Martinsburg, with orders to gather intelligence on the disposition of the Army of the Potomac, and if possible destroy the railroad bridge at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. They made it there, unopposed, by nightfall, capturing the town without any real resistance.

Stuart was disappointed to find that an official of the local bank had kept enough presence of mind to take all the money out of the vault and carry it to safekeeping, and that the rebels did not have the means to destroy the iron railroad bridge. Stuart did, however, capture and parole almost 300 Union soldiers and seize more than a thousand horses, many of them well-bred plow horses, complete with harness. Their owners protested loudly at seeing their prized animals taken away, some invoking their loyalty to the Union. They were apparently under the mistaken impression that Stuart's men were Federals, a misunderstanding Stuart's men no doubt found amusing and encouraged.

Stuart bundled up his loot, which included over 30 public officials taken as hostages to help secure the release of Southerners in Federal hands, and left town the next morning. He went due east, not back along his original track. He knew the Federals would be waiting for him if he went back the way he had come, and besides, it would be great fun to run another circle around the Yankees. The Yankees were determined to prevent it; Halleck wired McClellan:

   NOT A MAN SHOULD BE PERMITTED 
   TO RETURN TO VIRGINIA.  

McClellan replied:

   I HAVE GIVEN EVERY ORDER NECESSARY 
   TO INSURE THE CAPTURE OR 
   DESTRUCTION OF THOSE FORCES, AND 
   I HOPE WE MAY BE ABLE TO TEACH 
   THEM A LESSON THEY WILL NOT SOON 
   FORGET.

The only lesson Stuart's men got was that it was just as easy to fool the Yankees as it always had been. On 12 October the raiders forded the Potomac, at very nearly the same location where Lee had led his army north over a month ago, having done about a quarter of a million dollars worth of damage and tweaked the nose of an army about fifty times bigger than their raiding party. Southern newspapers crowed once more.

In the North, McClellan was loudly criticized and derided. Lincoln no longer concealed his impatience -- a bad sign from a patient man. While on a steamer returning from a review in Alexandria, someone asked him: "What about McClellan?" The President looked at the deck and drew a circle on it with the tip of his umbrella. "When I was a boy we used to play a game, 'Three Times Round and Out'. Stuart has been round him twice. If he goes around him once more, gentlemen, McClellan will be out."

On 13 October, the President sent McClellan a nagging letter, again encouraging to move against Lee while the weather still permitted it:

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Lincoln went on in this vein, pointing out that McClellan was nearer to Richmond than Lee and emphasized that the objective was to crush Lee's army once and for all. He finished it with: "This letter is in no sense an order."

McClellan in no sense regarded it as one. He continued to ask for more soldiers and more supplies, even though his own quartermaster told him that "no army was ever more perfectly supplied than this one as a general rule." On 21 October, Halleck wired McClellan to press him to move. McClellan replied that he was nearly ready, but needed more horses, since his were broken down by labor and disease. Lincoln gave way to one of his rare fits of temper on hearing this, wiring McClellan on the 25th:

   WILL YOU PARDON ME FOR ASKING 
   WHAT THE HORSES OF YOUR ARMY 
   HAVE DONE SINCE THE BATTLE OF 
   ANTIETAM THAT FATIGUES ANYTHING?

McClellan, stung, responded at length, explaining his problems and telling the President that the Army of the Potomac was in fact on the move. Lincoln apologized, but only in the faintest fashion, using the occasion to further badger McClellan over for his reluctance to move. As the soldiers moved into Virginia, McClellan told one of his corps commanders: "I may not have command of the army much longer. Lincoln is down on me."

Late in the month, McClellan had moved the Army of the Potomac into northern Virginia, skirting along the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge mountains. The movement was characteristically sluggish and before he had made much progress, Lee, with Longstreet and his corps, had made it to Culpeper Court House, blocking the Federal line of march. McClellan was stalled; Lincoln was disgusted. It was the "third time around", and McClellan was out, the President explaining to a political friend: "He has got the slows."

Lincoln would have to wait a few days before removing him. 4 November was an election day in most Northern states, and firing McClellan on the eve of the election would have been seen as groveling to the radicals. The Emancipation Proclamation had been more than enough of a concession to them, and Lincoln did not want to appear to be giving them more. Given the widespread public grumbling over the Proclamation and deep frustration over the slow progress of the war, Lincoln had reason to be careful of public perceptions.

After the final tally on voting day, the Democrats went from 44 to 75 seats in the House, though the Republicans retained a majority. Critics used the election to blast the administration's "tyranny, corruption, and maladministration". The election results were painful, even if they failed to dislodge Republican dominance. Lincoln commented that he felt like the boy who had stubbed his toe on the way to see his girl: he was too big to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.

However much the election setback pained him, now that it was over Lincoln could deal with General McClellan. On 5 November, even as the final votes were tallied, the President was having orders written up relieving the general of command. The following day, the orders were given to Brigadier General C.P. Buckingham, who was instructed to present them to McClellan under the authority of the Secretary of War.

The next morning, 7 November 1862, Buckingham took a train through an early winter snowstorm to McClellan's headquarters at Rectortown, near Manassas Gap. McClellan heard of Buckingham's arrival and suspected the worst, but was puzzled when the visitor went south to Salem, where Burnside's corps was camped. About 11:00 PM, Buckingham and Burnside, their coats and hats dusted with snow, showed up at McClellan's tent, with Burnside clearly in distress. McClellan greeted the two men courteously, they exchanged pleasantries for a moment, and then Buckingham got down to business. Buckingham presented McClellan with two orders, one from Halleck, one from the Adjutant General's office under the authority of the Secretary of War, relieving McClellan of command.

McClellan had been expecting something of the sort, and had resigned himself to it. He remained composed while reading the orders, and then said pleasantly: "Well, Burnside, I turn the command over to you." Burnside, shaken, begged McClellan to stay on a day or two to help with the transition. When Buckingham had told Burnside that he was being given the top job, Burney had tried to refuse, saying he wasn't fit for the post; he agreed only when Buckingham told him that it was an order, and that command would otherwise go to Joe Hooker, who Burnside strongly disliked. McClellan agreed to stay on to help Burnside, and to say goodbye to his army.

The change of command was announced to the Army of the Potomac the next day. When McClellan rode among them one last time for a farewell review on 10 November, they broke ranks and mobbed him, crowding around him and stroking his boots, weeping in bitter sorrow and resentment. McClellan was stirred and mournful at this show of faith, but he knew he had to go.

When he boarded a train on 11 November to go to Washington, a mob of soldiers uncoupled his car and pushed it back up the rails, cursing the politicians in Washington and threatening revolt. They turned quiet when McClellan came out to address them, saying that they should "stand by General Burnside as you have stood by me, and all will be well." McClellan had not always demonstrated much dignity as commander of the Army of the Potomac, but he knew how to make a graceful exit; no doubt, the axe having fallen, he had cause to feel a certain amount of relief. With this, the soldiers in turn submitted, letting out a loud long HURRAH as the car was coupled back up to the train and pulled out of sight, effectively taking McClellan out of the war for good.

[5.4] COMMENTS, SOURCES, & REVISION HISTORY

* This document was derived from a history of the American Civil War that was originally released online in 2003, and updated to 2019. It was a very large document, and I first tried to simply break it into volumes for publication in ebook format; however, that proved unsatisfactory, and I decided to break it into separate focused volumes. This stand-alone document was initially released in 2022.

* Sources:

• The original VECTORS document started out as notes from Shelby Foote's three-volume THE CIVIL WAR -- which I found entertaining but somewhat meandering, so I decided to put together a more structured document to organize matters in my own mind.
  
  
• I used Bruce Catton's CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR to write initial outlines for the chapters, with some backup from his ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.
  
  
• The TIME-LIFE series of books on the Civil War was consulted in parallel with Foote's work to add details and obtain alternative interpretations of events.
  
  
• James McPherson's BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM was a useful source on political issues that I consulted for later revisions.

When I was interested in picky details, I'd scrounge the internet, particularly the Wikipedia, for leads.

* Illustrations credits:

• BANNER: Battle of Antietam / 1887 / Thure de Thulstrup
  
  
• CHAPTER 1: Major General George Brinton McClellan visiting card
  
  
• General John Pope
  
  
• CHAPTER 2: Abraham Lincoln / 1861 / Alexander Gardner photograph at Brady studios
  
  
• Major General Henry W. Halleck / John A. Scholten photograph
  
  
• CHAPTER 3: Battle of Cedar Mountain / 1862 / FRANK LESLIE'S ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER
  
  
• CHAPTER 4: General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson / This is the only good photo of Jackson, taken not long before his death in 1863.
  
  
• CHAPTER 5: General Robert E. Lee / 1864 / Julian Vannerson
  
  
• CHAPTER 6: Confederate dead at Fox's Gap / 1862
  
  
• CHAPTER 7: General Joseph Hooker / Brady Studios
  
  
• Poffenberger farm / 2016 / Wikimedia Commons user "Acroterion" / Creative Commons Share Alike license
  
  
• CHAPTER 8: Dunker Church / 2012 / Wikimedian Commons user "Acroteria" / Creative Commons Share Alike license
  
  
• CHAPTER 9: dead in Sunken Road / 1862 / Alexander Gardner of Brady Studios
  
  
• CHAPTER 10: Burnside's Bridge / 2014 / Dave McSpadden / Creative Commons Share Alike license
  
  
• 9th New York charges at Antietam / 1862 / FRANK LESLIE'S ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER
  
  
• CHAPTER 11: Lincoln visits McClellan after Antietam (Captain Custer at far right) / 1862 / Alexander Gardner of Brady Studios

Finally, I need to thank readers for their interest in my work, and welcome any useful feedback.

* Revision history:

   v1.0.0 / 01 jun 22
   v1.0.1 / 01 jan 24 / Review & polish.