James S. Wadsworth of Geneseo

James S. Wadsworth of Geneseo

Biography of James S. Wadsworth

The life of James S. Wadsworth - Brevet Major-General of United States Volunteers

Henry Greenleaf Pearson

Cornell University Library
https://archive.org/details/cu31924032774220

John Murray, Albemarle Street 1913

1913

Public Domain

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CHAPTER IV UPTON'S HILL

The commission as brigadier-general of volunteers offered to Wadsworth he was at first inclined to refuse, for his brief military experience had made him less willing in August to accept a position of that rank than he had been in May to receive a major-generalship at the hands of Governor Morgan. But his friends on McDowell's staff, whose admiration he had won by zeal as a worker and by courage and leadership on the field of battle, were urgent that he should take the place, and he was assured that a graduate of West Point would be assigned to duty as adjutant-general of the brigade which he would command. With this understanding he accepted the offer, and a commission was issued to him bearing the date of August 9. He was presently assigned to a brigade composed of the Twelfth, Twenty-first. Twenty-third, and Thirty-fifth New York regiments, with headquarters at Arlington. In the organization of his staff, he was not able, after all, to obtain as adjutant-general the promised West Pointer, for the War Department had put a close restriction on details of officers away from their commands in the regular army; but when Lieutenant John A. Kress, who had been three years at the military academy, became one of his aides, he had no reason for regret on that score. He also found a place on his staff for his second son, Craig, who was twenty years old.

The fruits of the lesson of Bull Run were already beginning to appear; the cry of "On to Richmond!" had given place to the watchword of "organization," and with a submission almost pathetic the chastened North waited upon the word of McClellan, the young major general whose early successes and personal popularity were regarded as omens full of hope for the future. McDowell, accepting his defeat with the philosophy of a good soldier, had been willing to serve as division commander under his junior, and the assignment of Wadsworth's brigade to his division was a welcome arrangement to both men.

Drill now was the order of the day, though from all the commands large detachments were made for work on the defenses of Washington. Necessary as the construction of these fortifications was—for the outposts of the enemy were at Munson's and Upton's Hills, four miles from Arlington—the troops little relished what seemed to them preparations for a defensive campaign. In spite of all Wadsworth's efforts, the ardor of his pickets frequently got them into skirmishes with those of the enemy. That the "rebel flag" should be allowed to remain flying within six miles of Washington and in full view from the dome of the Capitol was an indignity under which not only the army, but the whole North chafed.

A letter from Craig to his mother gives a glimpse of camp life at Arlington late in September:

“I am safely installed in the office of aide to the General. I hold a Second Lieutenant's commission in Kerrigan's Irish regiment. I am to be transferred to the Thirty-Fifth regiment in a few days and expect to rank better. I sign my name with A. D. C. added about sixty times a day—^you have no idea how nice it looks. McClellan reviewed McDowell's division on Monday last. He said it was the most satisfactory review he had during the campaign. I suppose it was all owing to my military knowledge. Father is not as stout as when he was in New York, but notwithstanding I never saw him looking better. It is all bone and muscle now. We have the front this week, but there is nothing doing, there have been only two or three shots in the last forty-eight hours”.

The proximity of the enemy to Washington which had continued through September was at last brought to an end, though not by any effort of McClellan's. It was his opponent, Joseph E. Johnston, who, seeing that the Confederate army was not then and was not likely to be in condition to undertake offensive operations, gave the order for the outposts to retire from their advanced position. On September 28 Wadsworth's pickets reported that the force at Munson's Hill was withdrawing. Setting out at once with two companies on a reconnaissance, Wadsworth found Munson's Hill and also Upton's Hill, a little under a mile to the north, abandoned, except for a small detachment of cavalry which retired on his approach. The stovepipe on wheels and the pump-logs doing duty as cannon which were found there were probably indicative not so much of the poverty of the Confederates in artillery as of their love for a joke. In the evening of the same day Wadsworth was ordered to move his brigade thither; and here, where the Union line was farthest advanced toward the enemy, he and his men were stationed for the next five months. The well-built Virginia farmhouse on the hill, belonging to Charles H. Upton, Wadsworth occupied as his headquarters. Colonel Regis de Trobriand, commander of the New York Fifty-fifth, having ridden out to Upton's Hill the day after Wadsworth's command took possession, described the scene there as follows:

*Upton had remained loyal to the Federal government. He claimed election as representative from the Alexandria district to the existing Congress, but as the election had taken place in May 1861, after Virginia had seceded, the House refused to seat him.

I found General Wadsworth under the roof of the pillaged farmhouse. ... A few broken stools were all there was left of the furniture. Some doors taken off their hinges served for tables; some boards picked up in the garden answered for benches. The Confederates, who were still occupying the house the day before, had written their names with charcoal upon the defaced walls of all the rooms. They had added, after the manner of soldiers, rough sketches, among which the favorite was the hanging of Mr. Lincoln. An alteration in the explanatory legend was all that was needed to turn the picture into the hanging of Mr. Jefferson Davis, and this our soldiers did not fail to do.

The house was surmounted by a sort of observatory, from which one saw in all its details a scene of the most varied character. About the premises, stacks of arms, surrounded by soldiers lying on the ground or digging in the vegetable garden; regiments successively taking their positions in line; a dozen cannon in battery, the cannoneers at their guns watching the valley, the officers sweeping with their field glasses the wooded horizon, the caissons in the rear, the teams on the inner slopes of the hill. In front, the Leesburg Road, upon which galloped here and there staff officers followed by their orderlies, and the isolated hillock called Munson's Hill, from the top of which already floated the Federal flag.

To the task of making this post a secure point for defense Wadsworth at once devoted himself. Besides strengthening the works on the hill, he sent the axemen out to fell the trees along the front so that there would be less chance for the enemy to approach unseen and greater opportunity for the use of artillery. The management of such pioneer tasks was a matter of course to him, and the speed with which his men did their work elicited the public praise of McClellan. It was no less characteristic of Wadsworth that, though the needs of the camp required every stick of wood possible, he would not suffer the axe to be laid to any of the oaks and chestnuts that immediately surrounded the Upton house.

During the next weeks many other visitors followed Colonel de Trobriand to the house at Upton's. Before the brigade had been in camp a fortnight, Russell, in quest of copy for the Times, arrived, lunched with Wadsworth on camp fare, and then from the lookout surveyed the "fine view, this bright, cold, clear autumn day, of the wonderful expanse of undulating forest lands streaked by rows of tents which at last concentrated into vast white patches in the distance towards Alexandria."^ With an eye by no means friendly to the North, he noted that "the country is desolate but the camps are flourishing, and that is enough to satisfy most patriots bent on the subjugation of their enemies." Among the visitors was Mrs. Wadsworth, and as a result of her housewife's inspection of the premises there presently arrived sundry supplies contributing to the comfort of her husband and her son.

Early in November Wadsworth's brigade was strengthened by the arrival of the Ulster Guard. This regiment, which as the Twentieth New York State Militia he had in May vainly urged to enlist for two years, had now been reorganized as the Eightieth New York Volunteers, though it was familiarly known by its numerical designation in the State force. The story of its arrival at night at Upton's Hill, as told by the lieutenant-colonel, Theodore Gates, and his characterization of Wadsworth, give details that make vivid the camp life of these months:

“Officers and men were glad to hear the command "halt!" for the march had been a long and fatiguing one, and they were tired, hungry, and thirsty. Not one of us knew anything about the commander into whose hands we had just fallen, and the locality was a perfect terra incognita to all of us. We knew we had reached our destination, because we were halted by a guard drawn up across the road in front of us, and an officer directed us to file to the left, into an open field, and bivouac. We marched into the field and went to work in the darkness to make ourselves as comfortable as possible, but the command was by no means in an amiable mood. Each officer and man knew we had marched fifteen miles to reach a point less than eight from our starting place, and that there were two routes no more than half as far as the one we had been required to take, and the consequence was we had arrived at our destination too late to cook coffee or make any arrangements for a comfortable night's rest.”

But this feeling underwent a very sudden and unexpected change. Lanterns were seen approaching from what appeared to be a house, a few hundred feet west of us, and a kind, cheery voice called out, "Twentieth, where are you.'' ' ' The interlocutor was Brigadier-General James S. Wadsworth, who captured the affections of the entire command by his evident anxiety for their comfort and by the practical way in which he manifested it. He had the men supplied with fuel, and the whole regiment was furnished with an abundance of splendid hot coffee which he had had prepared for it as soon as its approach was announced at his headquarters. He did not turn this good work over to some of [his] subordinate officers and get back into his comfortable house, out of the chill November air, but he personally superintended it, and left only when he was assured the men were properly provided for; many a poor fellow went to sleep that night blessing General Wadsworth and congratulating himself that his regiment had been assigned to his brigade.
This example of consideration for the men over whom he was placed was by no means exceptional. He was the commander not only, but he was also the watchful friend of the officers and men in his brigade. There was no matter too trivial for his ready personal attention, if it concerned the health or comfort of his men. The guardhouse, the kitchens, the sinks, the stables: all were frequently subjected to his inspection and required to be kept in the cleanest and best possible condition. The writer of this has been aroused by General Wadsworth at four o'clock of a winter's morning and re- quested to accompany him in a tour of the camp to see if the men's huts were properly warmed and ventilated, and many a soldier of the Twentieth was surprised on being awakened in the short hours of the morning at seeing his gray-headed Brigade-Commander and his Lieutenant-Colonel inspecting his stove and chimney and sniffing the air of his hut, as though they suspected he had the choicest stores of the commissary and quartermaster's departments hidden away in the capacious recesses of his eight by ten palace. General Wadsworth would stand in the snow and mud for hours at a time instructing the men how to build rude fireplaces and chimneys, and he was especially exacting in regard to the stables. He was a lover of good horses, and he believed the brute deserved a good dwelling-place, and that he should be well fed and kindly treated.

Such a description indicates, as well as anything can, not only the responsibilities but also the opportunities of a general officer of volunteers at the beginning of the war. In view of the fact that there were many volunteer officers who to inexperience added incapacity, one is likely to dwell on the superior fitness of the trained officers of the regular army and, as is so often done, to condemn the Federal and State authorities for putting political ahead of military considerations in their appointments. This criticism, however, ignores the plain facts of the case. The number of men professionally trained for war—small at best and diminished by the withdrawal from the regular army of those who entered the Confederate service—was hopelessly inadequate to fill the positions required in the vast body of troops which the North was raising. Volunteer officers were therefore a plain necessity. But this was not the whole story. The Northern soldier who enlisted in 1861 and 1862 was a self-reliant, intelligent citizen and patriot. The only power to which he was accustomed to yield obedience was the law which he as a voter had had a chance in making. In this respect he resembled the patriot soldier of the early part of the French Revolution, who considered the title citoyen to confer every bit as much authority as the titles which his officers held. His attitude toward his commanders was one of friendly co-operation, and in this attitude, he expected them to acquiesce. On New Year's day, 1862, the celebration devised by one of Wadsworth's regiments consisted in the temporary abdication of the officers, their places being taken by men elected from the ranks, who made their superiors the camp Gibeonites, hewers of wood and drawers of water for the day.

Clearly, to win the reluctant footsteps of such "sovereigns in uniform" along the hard road of instinctive and instantaneous obedience - the first duty of a soldier - the skill of an officer of their own antecedents was often of more avail than that of a military precisian. Of course, not every officer from civil life possessed this skill; but wherever was found a man who had the gift of leadership, it usually proved that in camp, on the march, and on the field of battle his power of personal ascendancy formed the basis of the discipline which his men acquired. And if such an officer showed himself earnest in purpose and brave in fight there was no feat of endurance or courage to which he could not command them.
Such considerations by no means leave out of ac- count the fact that there were volunteer officers who were not only a weakness but a disgrace to the army, but it must be remembered that the chief cause of their inferiority was one that was common to a large number of the officers of the regular army. Jealousies, bickerings, insubordination, magnifying of self were human failings that distracted the Army of the Potomac for the first three years of the war. An officer could rise above such failings and sink self in service not by virtue of his previous military experience but by virtue of the stuff of manliness and patriotism that was in him. This fact the American volunteer, with his keen native wit, instantly recognized, and on this recognition, he based his conduct.

The bearing of all this in Wadsworth's case may be summed up in the words of one of his staff. He had, says General Kress, "a serious appreciation of his lack of education and training in the details of military affairs, a deficiency for which I claim his good judgment, energy, sound common sense, the esteem and regard of all under his command which he invariably acquired, his adaptability, and his quiet, matchless bravery were ample offsets; military details are not so diffi- cult to acquire; he would soon have mastered the essentials. I doubt if any more appropriate appointment to the grade had been made at that time."

Thus it was that Wadsworth from the first won regard and obedience from the men in his brigade. Moreover, the practical instinct which led him to have a supply of hot coffee ready for the cold and weary Twentieth is only one out of a hundred instances of the way in which the long habit of out-of-doors life and the traditions of pioneering had taught him the right thing to do for the comfort of man and beast exposed to the elements. Another case is that of his ordering at his own expense a large supply of gloves from Gloversville for the benefit of men on picket duty. The long habit of generosity, too, is of course accountable for this; but such favors carried with them no demoralization. The men took them in the spirit in which they were given, not as evidences of wealth or of a desire to curry favor, but as showing a generous solicitude to provide for his soldiers that degree of comfort necessary to their efficiency.

When the men of Wadsworth's brigade prided themselves on their good fortune in having as commander a man of means, they also did not fail to note that he was careful to make no ostentatious display in his own way of life. It was not uncommon for the commander of a regiment or brigade to show his sense of a recent rise in social importance by entertaining guests at his headquarters with champagne. The "camp fare" on which Russell dined at Upton's Hill and on the plain- ness of which he for once did not comment unfavorably, in his usual gourmand's fashion, was but an example of Wadsworth's gift for keeping in touch with his men by living with them the life of a soldier.

The current newspaper phrase of these months, "All quiet along the Potomac"—a watchword which came to have a sharp edge of irony as the season wore on — was by no means true of Wadsworth's command and the adjoining brigades along the line of the advance. The country between the Federal pickets stationed three miles in advance of Upton's Hill and the Confederate pickets at Fairfax Court House abounded in woodlands and offered many opportunities for the detachments of Stuart's cavalry which infested it to operate secretly against the Federals. The region had, of course, suffered from the devastations of both armies, and on many of the farms the buildings were either burnt to the ground or else abandoned; but where white inhabitants remained they were, with few exceptions, of Southern sympathies and, in effect, spies upon the movements of the Federals. As for the negroes, the instinct of loyalty to their masters still persisted in enough cases to render their childlike curiosity concerning the Northern troops a matter of decidedly ambiguous intention. All these advantages the dashing Stuart knew how to put to good use.

Another circumstance that contributed to make Wadsworth anxious about his picket line was the fact that as yet the Yankee volunteer approximated the condition of a soldier only in external aspect. In outpost duty the regiments took turns, marching from camp with a supply of "cooked rations," and serving for fortyeight hours. Although the men when on duty were no longer so green that they could be led by the tinkle of a cow-bell in search of fresh milk only to walk into a Confederate ambush, still the sight of one of the lean pigs that ran wild in the woods was often too great a temptation to a hungry man; and it was common knowledge that the picket-firing, strictly forbidden except in case of alarm, was likely to be directed at a four-legged rather than a two-legged victim. It is no wonder, therefore, that Wadsworth should have had very much on his mind the fortimes of whatever regiment was doing picket duty, or that he should have ridden nearly every day to Falls Church, just inside the Federal lines, to consult with its commanding officer and also, it must be admitted, to do a httle reconnoitring on his own ac- count. If in this practice he calls to mind Washington and Lafayette similarly occupied at Wilmington, it is only another point in the resemblance, already suggested, between Wadsworth and the fighters of the Revolutionary era.

A still further incentive to Wadsworth in making these reconnaissance was the hope of finding forage at some farm between the lines, for with navigation on the Potomac blocked by Confederate batteries and the single-track railroad between Washington and Baltimore taxed far beyond its powers of performance, the problem of providing fodder for the horses in the army was rapidly becoming critical.^ The zeal with which he set about scouring the country for provender brought him on one occasion into closer quarters with the enemy than he had bargained for. On the morning of November 8 he had set out on this quest, accompanied by two privates, and his search had carried him to a farm a mile or more beyond the hnes. Here, having dismounted at noon to eat his lunch, he suddenly spied a squad of Confederate cavalry rapidly approaching. He himself had time to get to horse and make good his es- cape; the two privates, .who had accepted an invitation to take their meal inside the house, were captured.^

Though after this incident Wadsworth restricted somewhat the range of his own reconnoitering, the warning of the adventure was lost on a foraging expedition that set forth a few days later from the other brigade stationed at Upton's Hill. A train of six wagons with teamsters and men to do the loading and an escort of fifty soldiers started on November 16 for Doolan's farm, which was some distance beyond the place where Wadsworth had had his narrow escape. While filling their wagons they kept due watch, but when at noon the negroes about the place offered them the unwonted delicacies of hoe-cake and milk the hungry and guileless soldiers, taking the bait, gathered about the house, intent on nothing but their dinners. Meanwhile a messenger betook himself to the next farm where some sixty cavalry of a Mississippi regiment were in hiding. Soon the care-free Northerners were disturbed in their hour of ease, and, after an interval during which the farm premises were the scene of what was more a scramble than a skirmish, the Mississippians retired from the field of action, having in their possession over thirty shamefaced New Yorkers and their muskets, five new army wagons, twenty valuable horses, and "one hundred and twenty bushels of excellent corn, ready shucked and in the wagons."^ Such was the happy-go-lucky volunteer of 1861.

The result of these two successes was to embolden the Confederates to a deed of greater daring. On November 15 Beauregard sent to Johnston a clipping from a Baltimore newspaper detailing the incident in which Wadsworth, for the first and only time in his life, showed a clean pair of heels to the enemy ;^ three days later, acting on the hint thus given, Lieutenant-Colonel Fitzhugh Lee, with a detachment of the First Virginia Cavalry, set out in the direction of the Union line in front of Upton's Hill "for the purpose," as the Confederate commander said in his report, "of obtaining valuable information." His plan was probably to break through the pickets with a dash and push toward Falls Church at the hour at which Wadsworth was accustomed to make his afternoon round. Lee succeeded in getting three or four hundred yards within the Union lines; but, unfortunately for him and quite contrary to his expectation, the reserve companies of the regiment on picket,^ which happened to be close at hand and in command of an officer with a cool head, were marched forward and from the shelter of a thicket poured a sharp fire on the Confederates. For a few moments there was hot work, Lee's opponents, greatly to his surprise, fighting "with much more bravery than the Federal troops usually exhibit." Then, since there was no longer hope of catching the Yankee brigadier on that day, Lee, taking his wounded and his prisoners, retired slowly to camp.

Such brushes as these, though productive of greater watchfulness, did not cause Wadsworth to abandon his determination to obtain forage wherever it could be found outside the lines. In the course of the winter 1 108 W. R., p. 379. 2 The 84th New York, commonly known as the 14th Brooklyn. It was not at the time in Wadsworth's brigade, though in 1863 it formed a portion of his command. 2 See the reports of the respective commanders in each of which the object of the raid is hinted at (5 W. R., pp. 441, 442). W. M. Campbell, one of the captured, was brought the next day before Generals Johnston, Beauregard, G. W. Smith, and Stuart, and Colonel Fitzhugh Lee, and the in- quiries put to him by them disclosed the purpose of the raid.—(Letter of W. M. Campbell to J. W. Wadsworth.) 94 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO four or five expeditions, managed with circumspection and sufficient escort, were uniformly successful, and Wadsworth reported that on each occasion they brought in from fifty to a hundred wagon-loads of forage, whereby the needs of McDowell's division were greatly relieved. During the whole season the only loss suffered by his command at the hands of the enemy was that of the two unwary privates who put their faith in the hospitality of a Virginia farmer.

If this narrative of the unpretentious military exploits of a general of volunteers tend to provoke a smile, let it be remembered that the point of the story is not to make a hero out of a modest country gentleman but to show in what fashion a man of aptitude in affairs brought over into his new profession of arms the experience gained in civil life. In applying to himself the standard of duty to which he held up the enlisted men under him, Wadsworth showed a sense of dignity different at least from that of the general officers whose presence in force on Pennsylvania Avenue, the Via Sacra of the capital, was a subject of derisive jest. A stone, so one story ran, thrown at a dog there glanced from its intended victim and hit two brigadier-generals. From such dangers Wadsworth at Upton's Hill was exempt.
In still another respect the experience and convictions of Wadsworth's civil life came into play in this new field. It was quite a matter of course for him to regard the inhabitants of the region under his command much as he had always regarded the tenants on his estates, and to deem a concern for their welfare as within the scope of his duty. How naturally and how actively he carried out this conception was described some months later by Upton, who reoccupied his house after the Army of the Potomac had taken the field.

While in command at this post, where he [Wadsworth] had a most difficult and trying task to perform, he exhibited so much wisdom, and tempered the firm- ness of his command with so much kindness and forbearance, that he won the confidence and respect of the citizens of Fairfax, and I have heard some of them, who were among the bitterest rebels, express feelings of respect, and even affection, for him, which no subsequent events of this wretched rebellion are likely to efface. . .

When the rebels fell back there went with them a good many men from my neighborhood who were ignorant and deluded as to the cause of the war, and the true character of the "Yankees and Lincolnites," but who had never taken up arms; some of these left destitute families behind them, and there were then—as, alas! there will be this coming winter—many cases of sickness and destitution among women and children. These cases General Wadsworth inquired into and relieved so far as possible; to give two instances out of many which might be related: one man left a wife and ten children; the mother was taken sick and the children were starving; General Wadsworth sent flour and provisions from his own stores to this family and contrived to get word of invitation beyond our lines to the father to return home, which he did in time to soothe the last hours of his dying wife and parent; this man has been ever since at home and is a good, industrious farmer. Another case was that of a man who had been violent in denouncing all Yankees (but who speaks now in the warmest praise of General Wadsworth), who had fled without other cause than a conscious complicity with the rebels, and whose wife was near her confinement, while his aged mother was on her deathbed. General Wadsworth sent for him also in time to assuage the distress of his family. . . . Indeed, so thoroughly did he enter into the duties of his position, I verily believe he is better acquainted at this moment with the personnel of Fairfax County than I, who have lived there nearly thirty years. . . .

No less under his care did Wadsworth consider the slave population of the region, and his efforts at this time in their behalf proved an introduction to more important work that he was to do later. In many cases, where the negroes had been abandoned by their masters, their condition was peculiarly forlorn, and his sympathy was quick to respond to the plight of the poor wretches whose state, according to his conviction, was the cause of the war, and to do for them what little there was that could be done. "My dear Sumner," he wrote on December 31: "There are three or four families here of slaves—practically emancipated—which I wish to get to the North, at least as far as Philadelphia. They are mostly women and children. How can I get papers for them through Baltimore? Please make inquiries and advise me."

Another instance of Wadsworth's concern for the negroes is given in the story told by an officer whom he sent out to a house near the picket line, where, he had been informed, lay the body of an old man who had been the slave of an acquaintance of former days. "The house, on reaching it," wrote the officer, "I found occupied by a party of the Harris Light Cavalry, commanded by Major Gregory, who, on learning the General's wish, promptly furnished men for the requisite service. An old colored woman, the wife of the deceased, was the only person of her race present—a meek, subdued old soul—who, in answer to my questions about her family, said, in broken accents, that her three children, her only ones, had been sold into the Carolinas while yet very young, and that she had never seen or heard of them since. If these were alive they were her only living kin, and she was now alone in the world. We gave the old man a decorous Christian burial, and I stated what I had seen and heard to General Wadsworth on my return. The recital moved him deeply, and he expressed himself with indignant energy on the abominations of a system which laughs at the rights of parents, and by tearing apart families at pleasure and for gain violates the most sacred ties and affections."

Though such an instance is highly characteristic of the first contact of one type of Northerner with the system of slavery, there was many another officer in the Army of the Potomac whom the application of the touchstone showed to be of quite different quality. If negroes, seeking with the instinct of freedom what they deemed the refuge of the Union army, came within the lines at a point where one of these men held high command, they soon discovered their mistake. They were seized as fugitive slaves, and United States volunteers were used to return them to their masters, though when, as often happened, the owners also were fugitives, the attempt to do so was not attended with success. Negroes who made their way to the outposts in front of Upton's Hill received, it is needless to say, treatment of another sort. Every such case was, by Wadsworth's orders, brought directly to him, and before the interview was ended he had provided as best he could for the fugitive's wants, giving him work about the camp when possible, or sending him on to Washington. But first he plied him with questions as to what he knew of the number and position of the Confederate forces at Centreville and Manassas. In the information derived from repeated inquiries of this kind Wadsworth put considerable confidence, and though this confidence was not shared by many officers of higher rank, in the end, when the question of the size of the force that had been confronting the Army of the Potomac all winter was a matter of general concern, it was proved that Wadsworth's judgment was not mistaken.

The year 1861 drew to a close and the Army of the Potomac had still taken no advantage of the Indian summer which delayed so long amid the woodlands of Virginia. To Lincoln and the officers coming in contact with McClellan the reason why was beginning to be apparent, for they had already had cognizance of those qualities in the general-in-chief which made him so difficult either to command or to obey. "Surrounded for the most part by young officers," says the Comte de Paris, who was then serving on McClellan's staffs and who has been one of his most lenient critics, "he was himself the most youthful of us all, not only by reason of his physical vigor, the vivacity of his impressions, the noble candor of his character, and his glowing patriotism, but also, I may add, by his inexperience of men."2 Difficulties with a valetudinarian such as General Winfield Scott could perhaps be pardoned to the "inexperience of men" of any commander; but McClellan's persistent and contemptuous stand-off attitude toward "browsing presidents" showed this inexperience to consist in part of the Bourbonism which learns nothing and forgets nothing.

The tactlessness of a man who could thus deal with his superiors naturally displayed itself also in his handling of his division commanders, among whom the positive and able McDowell was soon in disfavor. Of these facts the Northern public was naturally ignorant; had it possessed them its murmurs would have been louder and more menacing than they were. Congress, however, assembling early in December, was quick both to sense the situation and to act, appointing a committee on the conduct of the war with powers for gaining information at first hand. "Endeavoring," in the words of its chairman, Senator Wade, "to see if there is any way in God's world to get rid of the capital besieged, while Europe is looking down upon us as almost a conquered people,"^ it summoned to its sessions as witnesses one general after another from the Army of the Potomac. Wadsworth, as it chanced, was the fifth person to appear before it, giving his testimony on December 26, 1861.

From McDowell, who preceded Wadsworth as a witness, the committee had obtained his views touching the importance of an advance toward the enemy at Manassas and Centreville. To Wadsworth they now put questions on the subjects as to which they were most concerned: whether McClellan had called his division commanders to council; whether the condition of the roads was favorable to a forward movement; whether the divisions of the army should not be organized into army corps; whether the cavalry was not in excessive proportion; whether he, Wadsworth, returned fugitive slaves to their owners. In fact, he was asked to answer any sort of military question that might suggest itself to the inconsequent and non-military mind of a congressman sitting in committee. Such of these queries as related to matters of fact he answered with frankness; to such as dealt with matters of opinion he re- plied with discretion. His testimony on two important points is here given. As to his ways of getting information concerning the strength of the enemy, he said:

“The sources of supply that were open to us, until within a very few days, were these: runaway negroes coming in our lines, deserters coming in, and prisoners taken from the enemy; likewise the information collected by scouts, who go out, but do not go exactly within the lines of the enemy—or not very much within their lines—very slightly. ... I have scouts who go out, for instance, to Fairfax Court House; there are a number of Union men near Fairfax Court House with whom these scouts communicate, and also some intelligent negroes. From these various sources a great deal of information is obtained. It is reliable as far as it goes, but it is not definite enough. The way in which we get at the numbers of the enemy from such sources is by endeavoring to ascertain the number of their camps, the number of their regiments, and then we multiply that by what we suppose to be the average force of their regiments. We have several times had parties come in who would tell us how many camps there were, 100 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO for instance, at Fairfax Court House; how many at Centreville; and, not so definitely, but approximately, the number at Manassas. In that way we have had some materials for getting an estimate of their strength. But latterly an order has been issued prohibiting the commanders in front from examining these parties as they came in. We are now obliged to send them to headquarters. That order took effect two or three weeks ago, and we now send them in without examination to any great extent. I know that General McDowell told me it would not be a breach of the order to examine them sufficiently for us to know whether the enemy were going to attack us at once. Then there have been re- strictions placed upon the movements of these scouts. There is difficulty in getting passes through the lines; so that within two or three weeks we have not had so much information as previously. I do not know the object of it”.

As to the effect on the men of inaction, he said:

The troops are still in very good spirits. They have not abandoned the idea of active service this winter; but I think if it should become generally understood in the army that we are not to have any active service this winter, it would be almost impossible to keep the volunteers here. The volunteers, as I know to be the case with those from New York, embrace a great many men of intelligence and property. Many have left their families under circumstances of a great deal of anxiety and have come here from patriotic motives. If it was understood that they were going into winter quarters, it would be almost impossible to keep them here at all. The applications for furloughs are now ten times what they were in the summer. The men want to go home and see their families, as they are doing nothing here. Our time is largely occupied by these applications, which are very pressing.

Question. I will ask you whether, in your judgment, your men would be improved by the experience they would obtain by remaining in camp during all winter?

Wadsworth. I do not think they would. The winter- is very unfavorable for drilling. ... I do not think the men would be better in the spring under any circumstances, even if they were in good spirits. The officers of the line might be improved if they had efficient working commanders who would compel them to study, and who would drill them themselves at officers' drill. . . .

Question. Is it your opinion that a movement should be made?

Wadsworth. It seems almost presumptuous for me to give an opinion upon that question. But as you ask me, I will answer you. It seems to me that there is no doubt about it: that we must, beyond all question, make a movement. I think we are largely superior to our enemies in numbers, and we have a vast superiority in artillery. . . . They are brave men, and ardent in their cause; they fight very well when we meet them. . . . From what I have seen of them, however, I am sure we are superior to them in discipline.

Question. How are they off for clothing, so far as you have been able to learn from their prisoners?

Wadsworth. Very badly off. We get very reliable accounts in that respect from negroes and from citizens who have seen them. There are citizens near Fairfax Court House who see their troops there, but are not allowed to go to Centreville or Manassas. The enemy takes very extraordinary precautions to prevent us from learning their numbers. And if any citizen goes to Centreville or Manassas he is kept there, and not allowed to return. But these citizens see detachments of their troops. A man by the name of Webster, living a little way out of Fairfax Court House, saw some regiments pass his house, and he gives a very reliable account of their condition as to clothing.^ The period when the committee of Congress was entering upon its labors, patriotic but nevertheless subversive of military propriety and discipline, marked also the beginning of one of the most poignantly distressing situations of the war in its exhibition of men at cross- purposes, of incompatibility of temperaments. A day or two before Christmas McClellan fell ill. Refusing to relinquish his command temporarily, he kept everything at a stand-still at precisely the moment when further inaction had become insupportable. Lincoln, expressing the wish to "borrow" the army for a while, called McDowell and Franklin, another of McClellan's division commanders, into council with some of the members of the cabinet, and the body thus casually constituted undertook first to inform itself as to the internal condition of the army and then to plan a campaign which should satisfy the impatience of the North for action. Nothing shows better the desperateness of the situation than the fact that men of sense should undertake to co- operate in this fatuous fashion. Though the conference seems to have wonderfully accelerated McClellan's recovery, the deadlock continued. Unfortunately for him, his inaction, combined with the ungracious treatment of his generals already referred to, had spread demoralization among them. The testimony of the officers, except Fitz-John Porter, called before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, goes far to prove this; if further evidence were needed it could be found in a letter written by Wadsworth to Sumner on January 10, the day of Lincoln's first conference with McDowell and Franklin.

Upton's Hill, January 10, 1862.

My Dear Sumner: I have just received your note. There are no signs of a fight or a move. The Adjutant-General of General McClellan told one of my staff that the country ought to be satisfied that the Capital had been protected, and that he did not think an onward move could be made. In my judgment the policy of sending expeditions to attack the enemy at unguarded points while he comes up and offers us battle in sight of our Capital which we decline is a pusillanimous, cowardly one. The army is as much depressed and discouraged as the monied interest. The despondency and disgust is almost universal. Starting with a prosperous and patriotic North we have reached bankruptcy and got seven miles into Virginia. I tell you confidentially but advisedly that the army has lost confidence in its commander. It never had any, nor had anyone else, in the Secretary of War. Our only hope now is in the Legislative branch. If you are competent to the crisis you may save the country; but you must do it soon or be too late. It is difficult for me to leave my command and come to Washington, though I have been in for a few hours at a time occasionally. I wish you would make up a party and come out and dine with me. Send me word if' you can by the Military Telegraph from [the] War Office and I will be at home. I should be very much gratified if I could have an hour's conversation with a few influential gentlemen in the Senate. I should like to meet Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Grimes. Can you manage this for me? You see that I write you with great frankness. My apology will be found in the desperate condition of our affairs. I do not aspire to discuss the great problems before you, but to let you know the condition and feeling of the army.

Very sincerely yours, JAS. S. WADSWORTH.

It was from the executive, nevertheless, that the first ray of hope came. Remove McClellan Lincoln could not, for there was no one commanding the confidence of the country who could be put in his place; but on the very day after Wadsworth's letter was written Cameron was displaced, and on January 13 Edwin M. Stanton was appointed to succeed him. This was almost the first act of Lincoln's to reveal the quality of leadership which the stern discipline of the national crisis was slowly developing within him. Conscious of the train of blunders into which his administrative inexperience ^The financial measures adopted by Congress in the summer of 1861 bad proved inadequate, and the United States Treasury was nearly empty. " Saturday night, December 28, 1861, the managers of the New York banks, after a meeting of six hours, decided that they must suspend special payments. Gold soon brought a slight premium and insecurity had led him, he had now, at the long last, turned into the upward path. His genius consisted not a little in his power to grow from weakness to strength, and with this deed of courage he fitly began the great year of Emancipation.

The appointment of Stanton, however, had little effect upon the immediate fortunes of the Army of the Potomac except to strengthen in the cabinet the hostility to McClellan. Meanwhile the unseemly tussle between the President and the commander of the armies went on. The long arguments between them as to the best route for the advance of the Army of the Potomac—whether it should be directly against the Confederate army at Manassas, or, by a change of base, against Richmond up one of the rivers flowing into Chesapeake Bay—have no place here. With a point at issue, however, which later became acute, Wadsworth had a direct concern. It was one of McClellan's failings as a commander that his sense of fact was always at the mercy of his imagination. His faculty for "realizing hallucinations," ^ to use the phrase of Gurowski, the Thersites of Washington at this time, displayed itself nowhere more tryingly than in his estimate of the number of the enemy opposed to him in Virginia. He was convinced that his own army of over one hundred and fifty thousand was face to face with eighty thousand men at Manassas and Centreville, while the Confederate forces along the Potomac above and below Washington amounted to thirty-five thousand more.2 His belief, based on the reports of Allen Pinkerton, the chief of his secret service, was proof against any evidence which made his foes less formidable in point of numbers. Wadsworth, on the other hand, relying on the means of information which he had indicated to the Committee on the Conduct of the War, had reached the conviction that the force about Manassas was between forty thousand and fifty thousand men.^ Growing surer of his figures as the weeks of the winter wore on, he took his evidence to McDowell, to McClellan, and even to Stanton. Though McClellan rejected it with a rudeness, so the story goes, surpassing his usual treatment of subordinates, on the Secretary of War the effect was of a different sort. The soldier before him, so clear as to his facts and pressing them home with all the personal force of a man accustomed to make his ideas tell upon his auditors, struck Stanton as a man who might be of ser- vice for other work in the combinations to be made in the near future.

These new combinations, representing the effort of the administration to put vigor into the conduct of the war, were the outcome of the appointment of Stanton, who, having now been in office for nearly two months and feeling himself firmly established, was beginning to manifest that relentless and unreasoning love of authority for which he was to become famous. A man of far greater executive force than Lincoln, a "worker of workers," in the phrase of Nicolay and Hay, and also of far less personal tact and human understanding, he was soon at loggerheads with McClellan. Being both inexperienced and contemptuous as to military habits of thought and methods of procedure and having withal a consuming passion for action, he had come into the cabinet at just the moment when Lincoln was dallying with the idea of "borrowing" the Army of the Potomac. Impatient of all half-way measures, Stanton fell in readily with the President's scheme, which was in effect to ignore McClellan and to issue orders direct to the army, says that the estimate of General Wool at Fortress Monroe confirmed that of Wadsworth. It has been too often assumed that all the estimates given McClellan of the numbers of the Confederates were exaggerated. The truth is, he willfully shut his eyes to the evidence that, if accepted, would condemn his inaction. In defense of such a course, as green and artless as it was demoralizing and predestined to disaster, the only thing that can be urged is that no other was open. As has already been said, there was no available commander of sufficient achievement in whose favor McClellan could be relieved, and, this being the case, the way to make the best of a bad business seemed to be for the administration to assume such control as should prevent McClellan from having altogether his own willful way. A forlorn hope, this, as the events of the past winter had already shown; but there was no hope elsewhere. It was on Saturday, March 8, 1862, soon after McClellan had returned from the inglorious "lockjaw expedition" at Harper's Ferry,^ that effective steps toward this singular arrangement were taken. While McClellan was taking counsel of his general officers, mostly division commanders, called together at Lincoln's direction to discuss the still unsettled question of the route to be taken against the enemy, Lincoln was preparing the President's General War Orders, numbered two and three, and bearing this same date.^ By these orders McClellan was required to organize the part of the Army of the Potomac about to enter upon active operations into four corps, for the command of which the ranking division commanders, Major-General McDowell and Brigadier-Generals Sumner, Heintzelman, and Keyes, were designated. A fifth corps under Major-General N. P. Banks was to be formed of two divisions stationed near Harper's Ferry. At Washington was to be left a force sufficient in the estimation of McClellan and his corps ^ McClellan had assembled a large number of boats in the canal opposite Harper's Ferry, to be used in making a bridge across the river, and had ordered a large force to rendezvous there. When, however, it was attempted to pass the boats through the lift lock it was found that they were some six inches too wide. Chase's Ttiot, that the expedition died of lockjaw, spread rapidly in Washington. commanders for its defence, and to the command of this force Wadsworth was assigned with the title of Military Governor of the District of Washington. The work thus begun without consultation with McClellan was continued—but by no means completed—by the President's War Order, No. 3, published three days later.^ By its terms McClellan was relieved of his position of general-in-chief, his command being restricted to the Department of the Potomac; the troops in the West were constituted the Department of the Mississippi, under General Halleck; while the mountainous region of western Virginia, where there were almost no forces. Union or Confederate, was designated the Mountain Department, with Major-General John C. Fremont, recently returned in disgrace from Missouri, as its commander. All three commanders of departments were ordered to report directly to the Secretary of War.

This stripping of authority from McClellan, the prelude to a still more humiliating stripping of troops, he bore with fairly good grace, issuing without undue delay the necessary commands for the organization of his army into corps. Against the appointment of Wadsworth, however, he saw fit to protest. It was not strange that he should object to an arrangement by which a man wholly without technical training was to be put in command of the extensive fortifications about the city and of the troops necessary to man them. He must also have had some inkling of Wadsworth's personal hostility to him. But, on remonstrating with Stanton, he was told, as he declares, "that Wadsworth had been selected because it was necessary, for political reasons, to conciliate the agricultural interests of New York, and that it was useless to discuss the matter, because it would in no event be changed." ^ Whatever the rashness of Lincoln and Stanton in assigning Wadsworth to such a position, McClellan, as in the case of the corps commanders, had only his own dilatoriness to thank. His proposal that the place should be given to Brigadier-General W. B. Franklin, an excellent officer of the regular army, came too late and had the air of being merely an afterthought, a peg upon which he could hang his protest.

With regard to such appointments as those of Banks, Fremont, and Wadsworth, it must be remembered that, from one point of view, they represented for the month of March the balance of favors which Lincoln was continually trying to strike between the two wings of the Republican party. Throughout the winter the inactivity of the Army of the Potomac had been laid by the radical leaders to the conservative tendencies of McClellan and some of his generals. It was the men of anti-slavery sentiments who were spoiling for a fight, and their clamors kept the harassed President constantly between the devil and the deep sea. The coming of Stanton was a godsend to the party of action, and his falling out with McClellan a circumstance of which they made the most. The three military appointments in question were also read throughout the North as signs that the administration had set its steps resolutely forward, and the response desired by Lincoln came in renewed support from this section of the party.

It was considerations such as these, rather than the need of conciliating the agricultural interests in New York, that probably played a part in the choice of Wadsworth for the position of military governor of the capital. His inexperience as commander of an army of twenty-five thousand men within fortifications cannot be gainsaid; but Stanton, who was already expecting to bring to Washington Major-General E. A. Hitchcock, an army ofiicer of long service and high standing, was doubtless trusting to him to make good Wadsworth's professional deficiencies.^ In point of fact, the turn of circumstances, as will presently appear, ultimately reheved ' Fifty Years in Camp and Field, p. 437. 1862] MILITARY GOVERNORSHIP 109 the volunteer oflScer of this larger responsibility. The true justification for his appointment, therefore, over and above his qualifications of general capacity and executive force, is to be found in the fact that the position was quasi-civil. The man who was to govern a place that was half city, half camp must use his military authority in such fashion that it should not con- found the strength of the civil arm. In this respect the appointment of Wadsworth was as suitable in promise as it actually resulted in performance. The single instance in which, acting with Stanton's consent, he made his power paramount is the exception that proves the rule.

Saturday, March 8, the day on which Lincoln's two orders were issued, was the beginning of a week of memorable events, tumbling after one another in disordered sequence, kaleidoscopic in their bewildering combinations. To touch for a moment on things naval, it was the day when the iron-clad Merrimac dealt destruction among the wooden frigates at Hampton Roads. On the next day the iron-clad was checkmated by the Monitor in a combat which revolutionized warfare on sea for the whole world. On land, on this same Sunday, it became known that the Confederate pickets were being withdrawn from the lines which they had watched for five months. Wadsworth's outposts were among the first to make the discovery, and he telegraphed the fact to McClellan's headquarters. Later in the evening his brigade received marching orders. Although the day before lie had had word of Stanton's intention to appoint him military governor of Washington, the order assigning Mm to that duty had fortunately not been made out, and he was free to lead his men in the advance movement for which he had so long waited. An hour after midnight the sergeants went from tent to tent quietly arousing the men and bidding them prepare to start at five. "At four," according to the regimental narrative of the Twenty-first New York, "all were astir, bonfires were lighted in the streets with the straw of our bunks and the remnant of firewood, and in their glare men hurried to and fro, securing the safety of whatever must be left behind, filhng haversacks and canteens, and taking a last look at the old camp which had been the scene of so many long-to-be-remembered experiences.

"At five the bugle sounded, and the cry of 'Fall in!' echoed from street to street; the men hurried into their places, the line was formed, and just as daylight began to streak the east, we joyously took up the march. The morning was damp, and the hill was enveloped in an ashy canopy of smoke through which the smoldering fires showed dimly as we turned away, wondering if we should ever see it again. On the march at last."

That night Wadsworth's men, being the advance brigade of the army, encamped in a pine grove about two miles east of Centreville. There they tarried for five days, the men spending the time free from drill and camp duties in straying about the deserted Confederate camps and over the battlefield of Bull Run. There, too, Stanton's order of appointment reached Wadsworth, who made immediate preparation to return to Washington. The news of their loss spread rapidly among the regiments of the brigade, just returning from drill, and with the instinct of soldiers for an emotional moment they gathered about their commander to bid him farewell. The thronging adieus, inarticulate save for the repeated cries of "Good-by!" were gathered up for ex- pression in the "Auld Lang Syne" which the band of the Twenty-first New York struck up as he left the camp.2 His connection with the Army of the Potomac, beginning with its organization by McDowell, had lasted for nine months; another nine months was to pass before he saw service with it again.

Riding toward Washington over the same road that he had travelled alone after Bull Run, Wadsworth had opportunity to reflect upon the transition from the first to the second period of his military career. Keenly as he desired to lead his brigade in the coming campaign and there to justify his pride in its discipline, he was not insensible to the recognition by the administration of a greater power of service for him in another field. The very scope of opportunity in this command, the limits of which were still indeterminate in the minds of those who had created it, was an attraction to him. With no illusions as to his lack of military training for the command of a fortified city, and yet in true American fashion in no wise daunted thereby, he crossed the Potomac and entered the nation's capital, the governance of which was henceforth to be his care.