December 28, 1861 (Friday): "Look For A Smash Up"

Rose Greenhow

                                    DECEMBER 28, 1861.

   DEAR GENERAL:  I wrote you yesterday, giving you some information additional to that contained in my dispatch the day before.  I omitted to say yesterday that I inclosed a dispatch from our friend Mrs. Greenhow, which I hope reached you to-day.  I also inclosed one from our friend in B.  To-day I have it in my power to say that Kelley is to advance on Winchester.  Stone and Banks are to cross and go to Leesburg.  Burnside’s fleet is to engage the batteries on the Potomac, and McClellan & Co. will move on Centreville and Manassas.  This move will be made next week.  This information comes from one of McClellan’s aides, and from Fox, of the Navy department.  As I remarked yesterday, be prepared for them on every hand and at every moment.  Mason and Slidell have been given up, and the Hall clique are furious.  Look out for a smash-up.  I send you the papers containing Seward’s letter, &c.

   Now, my dear general, look out for a large army, and tell your men (God bless them!) to cut and slay until the last man is destroyed.  Do not allow one to come back to tell the sad tale.  No living men ever made such a desperate effort as McClellan will make.  Nevertheless I believe he is a coward, and is afraid to meet you.  If some excuse is not hatched up you may certainly expect an attack next week.  My ___! General give them the most awful whipping that any army ever received.  McClellan’s army will certainly number 180,000 or 185,000 men—perhaps more.  Let our next meeting be in Washington.  You shall have a warm reception.  I write in some haste.

From Mrs. Greenhow.

                                                DECEMBER 26,

     In a day or two 1,200 cavalry, supported by four batteries of artillery, will cross the river above to get behind Manassas and cut off railroad and other communications with our army whilst an attack is made in front.  For ---‘s sake heed this.  It is positive.  They are obliged to move or give up.  They find me a hard bargain, and I shall be, I think, released in a few days, without condition, but to go South.  A confidential member of McClellan’s staff came to see me and tell me that my case should form an exception, and I only want to gain time.  All my plans are nearly completed.

Official Records, Series I., Vol. 5, Part 1, Page 1038.

These letters were sent from Thomas Jordan, an aide to Beauregard who ran Confederate spies in Washington to the War Department on January 18.  It does not appear Jordan was in any haste to forward these messages given their original dates.  It is not clear who sent this information, which appears to describe Lincoln’s plan to turn the Confederates by crossing below them on the Occoquon.  However, the Mrs. Greenhow whose note was inclosed is the famous spy and Washington society matron Rose Greenhow.  In August Pinkerton had searched her home and found maps and documents leading to her being placed under house arrest (in mid-January she would be placed in the Capitol Prison, and in mid-May she was sent South).  There are two interesting points here.  First, it is possible the Confederate spies were being fed misinformation as nothing in the memo came to pass and the estimates of Union forces are badly overstated.  But the movement Greenhow warms of was contemplated by the Administration (Lincoln committed it to writing in a letter to McClellan) and the same report came repeatedly to Beauregard and Johnston from different sources.  This being the case, it is possible to better understand what modern historians are appalled by, which is the unwillingness of McClellan to disclose or discuss plans with members of an administration who leaked like the proverbial sieve.