"Heaven save a country governed by such counsels!" The Safety of Washington and the Peninsula Campaign

"Heaven save a country governed by such counsels!" The Safety of Washington and the Peninsula Campaign Thomas J. Rowland One of the reasons why the Army ofthe Potomac appeared to experience less success than the Western armies of Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman was its need to protect Washington from Confederate invasion. Robert E. Lee parlayed this concern into strategies that both thwarted Federal efforts to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond and hindered the Army of the Potomac from making bold offensives across the Virginia landscape. Nowhere was fear for the safety of Washington a more determining factor in affecting a strategic outcome than it was in George B. McClellan's drive up the Peninsula in the spring and early summer of 1862. The strategic groundwork for the Peninsula campaign took shape in the wake of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's abandonment of his defensive works near Manassas and his retreat to the Richmond side ofthe Rappahannock River. This move rendered McClellan's earlier design of landing his army at Urbanna obsolete. Now McClellan would be forced to land his gigantic force at Fortress Monroe at the tip of the Peninsula and make his way up the sixty-odd miles to Richmond. One of the principal conditions Lincoln imposed on McClellan's plans was that he retain an adequate defense for the protection of the Federal capital. On March 17, Brig. Gen. Charles S. Hamilton's division of the Third Corps embarked from the wharves at Alexandria en route to Fortress Monroe. This marked the initiation of McClellan's prodigious task of bypassing the overland route to Richmond by a waterborne passage. The day before, McClellan had confidently written to his friend and mentor, Samuel Barlow, that he expected to "leave here on the wing for Richmond—which you may be sure I will take." A full week had not passed before news arrived that Confederate major general Civil War History, Vol. xlii. No. 1 © 1996 by The Kent State University Press 6 CIVIL WAR HISTORY Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson was pressing Federal forces in the Shenandoah Valley under the overall command of Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks. At Kernstown, Brig. Gen. James Shields had fought Jackson stubbornly, even garnering a tactical victory, but was eventually compelled to retreat down the Valley toward Winchester. Banks, fearful of Jackson's potential for trouble, suspended the forwarding of additional reinforcements for the Peninsula. One week later, Lincoln notified McClellan that the situation in the Valley required the detention of Brig. Gen. Louis Blenker's division in order to beef up Banks's sagging fortunes. McClellan issued a mild protest over Blenker's reassignment just before he set sail for the Peninsula. As it was the first tinkering with his plans, McClellan graciously promised to "use all the more activity to make up for the loss of this Division."1 While McClellan appeared to shrug off the loss of Blenker's division with little regret, he was not prepared for what was in store for him on his arrival at Fortress Monroe. On the Peninsula he was greeted with the news that the secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, believing that a sufficient host had already been raised and that the army was on the move, suspended recruiting efforts and disbanded recruitment stations throughout the Union. While this move did not adversely affect his initial operations as he approached Yorktown, it would have a serious impact on the government's ability to satisfy reinforcement requests as the campaign progressed. Reflecting on this decision years later, McClellan noted that both common sense and military history dictated that, when an army commenced a major undertaking, it was imperative that every possible effort should be enacted to "collect recruits and establish depots, whence the inevitable daily losses may be made good with instructed men ... so that the fighting force may be kept up to their normal strength." McClellan continued to believe that Stanton's decision was prompted either by a desire to see the campaign flatly fail or by the secretary's sheer incompetence, and he rather wistfully added that "between the horns of this dilemma the friends of Mr. Stanton must take their choice...