Counter-Thrust: From the Peninsula to the Antietam

2. From Tidewater to Cedar Mountain

2( From Tidewater to Cedar Mountain george mcclellan spent the two weeks following receipt of Halleck’s order trying desperately to avoid evacuating the Peninsula. Privately, he wrote letters excoriating Lincoln and other superiors for stupidity, duplicity, and culpability for what he took to be impending disaster. He dramatically reduced his estimation of enemy strength (perhaps reflecting the fact that Lee had already begun shifting forces to counter Pope to the north). Halleck meanwhile expected prompt compliance with his directive. The Army of the Potomac finally decamped on August 14. Rhode Islander Edward W. Stone noted. “The shadow of coming events at Harrison’s Landing was resolved . . . into tangible substance.” Preparations had been made with baggage and upwards of eleven thousand convalescing sick and wounded placed aboard river transports and sent downriver. Fate had intervened to assuage the ghosts of the Byrd and Harrison families , declared one Confederate, “that their ancestral marshes are yielding their malaria and mosquitoes with an unstinting hand, and aiding unsparingly the sword of the South in relieving it of invaders.” No tents were to be carried but only five days’ cooked rations and movement to be in light marching order. The general impression, said Union III Corps topographer Robert Sneden, was that “we will move on Richmond by way of Petersburg.” Turning their backs on the Rebels beaten at Malvern Hill “and the entomological tribes that from tidewater to cedar mountain | 33 shared our tents and disturbed our repose,” Sneden and his comrades took up the march. The route lay away from rather than toward Richmond.1 The officers in particular, Sneden observed further, anticipated that they would move on “Malvern Hill and Richmond, or cross the James above Petersburg, and move on Manchester,” where lack of protective defenses gave access to the enemy capital. All this caused consternation, for, as another Rhode Islander, Elisha Hunt Rhodes, observed, “[We are no] nearer the end of the war than we were when we first landed at fortress Monroe five months ago.” Capt. Theodore Dodge of New York remembered that in June, “if anyone had told me we were not going to Richmond, I should have laughed in his face.” But now, “’tis best no doubt,” for the “little mounds behind each regiment” attested to the fact that “this place is by no means healthy, and the worst months are to come.” Sneden agreed: “All were glad to know that the army would move out of these burning acrid plains and go somewhere no matter where!” They were retiring before “overwhelming forces and fearful disease,” Dodge concluded. At least some of Samuel Heintzelman’s corps sported new uniforms and canvas leggings, their kepis adorned with snappy red diamond corps identification badges—the first such in the army. Still, many questioned whether a renewed offensive against Lee and Richmond rather than another “change of base” might have had a more salutary effect.2 No matter, the movement would be made, and it was a hot one. The temperature stood at ninety-two degrees on August 15, and four degrees higher three days later. “Our greatest enemy was dust,” recounted Edward Walker of the First Minnesota, as the march back down the Peninsula met with “sullen and defiant remarks” from local women on all sides. The women were irate about the loss of slaves and servants, which now forced them to do their own tasks, noted Sneden. Why didn’t the Yankees leave us alone, the women asked plaintively. “You will never subjugate us,” they told their perceived oppressors, all the while asking for coffee and sugar and the ever-present snuff tobacco. Sneden deplored this peculiarly southern habit, for it “serves to excite them in the same way that strong tea does old women.” Turning away empty-handed, the females would sneer, “Curse this war, but you ’uns will never conquer us.” Devastation was everywhere. Williamsburg, the colonial Virginia capital, stood closed 34 | from tidewater to cedar mountain up, with stores sacked and no business being conducted. Only safeguard sentinels ensured that the residents remained unharmed. Sneden commented that the column mustered barely six miles a day on average, ten at most, as McClellan “is taking things easy,” although “Pope is badly in want of reinforcements.”3 Sneden’s observation indicated that his comrades knew another Federal force now operated elsewhere in Virginia. For the moment, though, he and the marchers concentrated...