August 6, 1862Thursday): Halleck Takes Things as He Finds Them

Stereo View of Confederate Works at Drewry's Bluff (Library of Congress)

WASHINGTON, August 6, 1862.
Major-General MCCLELLAN, Commanding, Berkeley, Va.:
    GENERAL: Your telegram of yesterday was received this morning, and I immediately telegraphed a brief reply, promising to write you more fully by mail. You, general, certainly could not have been more pained at receiving my order than I was at the necessity of issuing it. I was advised by high officers, in whose judgment I had great confidence, to make the order immediately on my arrival here, but I determined not to do so until I could learn your wishes from a personal interview, and even after that interview I tried every means in my power to avoid withdrawing your army, and delayed my decision as long as I dared to delay it. I assure you, general, it was not a hasty and inconsiderate act, but one that caused me more anxious thought than any other of my life. But after full and mature consideration of all the pros and cons, I was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the order must be issued. There was to my mind no alternative.
    Allow me to allude to a few facts in the case. You and your officers at our interview estimated the enemy's forces in and around Richmond at 200,000 men. Since then you and others report that they have received and are receiving large re-enforcements from the South. General Pope's army now covering Washington is only 40,000. Your effective force is only about 90,000. You are 30 miles from Richmond and General Pope 80 or 90, with the enemy directly between you, ready to fall with his superior numbers upon one or the other, as he may elect. Neither can re-enforce the other in case of such an attack. If General Pope's army be diminished to re-enforce you, Washington, Maryland, and Pennsylvania would be left uncovered and exposed. If your force be reduced to strengthen Pope, you would be too weak to even hold the position you now occupy should the enemy turn around and attack you in full force. In other words, the Army of the Potomac is split into two parts, with the entire force of the enemy directly between them. They cannot be united by land without exposing both to destruction, and yet they must be united. To send Pope's forces by water to the Peninsula is, under present circumstances, a military impossibility. The only alternative is to send the forces on the Peninsula to some point by water, say Fredericksburg, where the two armies can be united.
    Let me now allude to some of the objections which you have urged. You say that to withdraw from the present position will cause the certain demoralization of the army, "which is now in excellent discipline and condition." I cannot understand why a simple change of position to a new, and by no means distant, base will demoralize an army in excellent discipline, unless the officers themselves assist in that demoralization, which I am satisfied they will not. Your change of front from your extreme right at Hanover Court-House to your present position was over 30 miles, but I have not heard that it demoralized your troops, notwithstanding the severe losses they sustained in effecting it.
    A new base on the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg brings you within about 60 miles of Richmond, and secures a re-enforcement of 40,000 or 50,000 fresh and disciplined troops. The change with such advantages will, I think, if properly represented to your army, encourage rather than demoralize your troops. Moreover, you yourself suggested that a junction might be effected at Yorktown, but that a flank march across the Peninsula would be more hazardous than to retire to Fort Monroe. You will remember that Yorktown is 2 or 3 miles farther from Richmond than Fredericksburg is. Besides, the latter is between Richmond and Washington, and covers Washington from any attack by the enemy.
    The political effect of the withdrawal may at first be unfavorable, but I think the public are beginning to understand its necessity, and that they will have much more confidence in a united army than its separate fragments.
    But you will reply, why not re-enforce me here, so that I can strike Richmond from my present position? To do this you said at our interview that you required 50,000 additional troops. I told you that it was impossible to give you so many. You finally thought you would have "some chance" of success with 20,000. But you afterward telegraphed to me that you would require 35,000, as the enemy was being largely re-enforced. If your estimate of the enemy's strength was correct, your requisition was perfectly reasonable, but it was utterly impossible to fill it until new troops could be enlisted and organized, which would require several weeks. To keep your army in its present position until it could be so re-enforced would almost destroy it in that climate. The months of August and September are almost fatal to whites who live on that part of James River.
    And even after you got the re-enforcements asked for, you admitted that you must reduce Fort Darling and the river batteries before you could advance on Richmond. It is by no means certain that the reduction of these fortifications would not require considerable time, perhaps as much as those at Yorktown. This delay might not only be fatal to the health of your army, but in the mean time General Pope's forces wold be exposed to the heavy blows of the enemy, without the slightest hope of assistance from you.
    In regard to the demoralizing effect of a withdrawal from the Peninsula to the Rappahannock, I must remark that a large number of your highest officers, indeed a majority of those whose opinions have been reported to me, are decidedly in favor of the movement. Even several of those who originally advocated the line of the Peninsula now advise its abandonment.
    I have not inquired and do not desire to know by whose advice or for what reasons the Army of the Potomac was separated into two parts, with the enemy between them. I must take things as I find them. I find the forces divided and I wish to unite them. Only one feasible plan has been presented for doing this. If your or any one else had presented a better one I certainly should have adopted it, but all of your plans require re-enforcements, which it is impossible to give you. It is very easy to ask for re-enforcements, but it is not so easy to give them when you have no disposable troops at your command.
    I have written very plainly as I understand the case, and I hope your will give me credit for having considered the matter, although I may have arrived at different conclusions from your own.
    Very respectfully, your obedient servant,


H. W. HALLECK,
General-in-Chief.

Official Records, Series I., Vol. 12, Part 2, Page 11.

Halleck, whether with intent or not, hoists McClellan on his own petard.  McClellan constantly overestimated the forces facing him and now Halleck rejects his call to continue the campaign by citing his own numbers.  He also takes McClellan's point regarding the morale effects of changing the base of operations and rebuts them by pointing out that McClellan had shifted his base of operations without damaging morale.  A smaller point, but significant is that the weather and environment in the swampy terrain leading to Richmond from the east is so unhealthful that it presents a significant military obstacle.  No less an authority than the Confederate E. Porter Alexander wrote after the war that removing the Union army from its position threatening both Richmond and the railroads supplying the city from the South prolonged the war two years.  But it is difficult, reading Halleck's summary, to argue with his conclusions.