双语·林肯传 19

19

During the first few weeks of the war a handsome young general named McClellan marched into West Virginia with twenty cannon and a portable printing-press, and whipped a few Confederates. His battles didn't amount to much—mere skirmishes. That was all. But they were the first victories of the North, so they seemed important. McClellan saw to that; he dashed off scores of dramatic and bombastic despatches on his portable press, proclaiming his achievements to the nation.

A few years later his absurd antics would have been laughed at; but the war was new then, people were confused and eager for some kind of leader to appear; so they took this boastful young officer at his own valuation. Congress offered him a resolution of thanks, people called him “the Young Napoleon,” and after the defeat at Bull Run Lincoln brought him to Washington and made him commander of the Army of the Potomac.

He was a born leader of men. His troops would burst into applause when they saw him galloping toward them on his white charger. Besides, he was a hard and conscientious worker; he took the army that had been crushed at Bull Run, drilled it, renewed its self-confidence, and built up its morale. No one could excel him at that sort of thing; and by the time October came he had one of the largest and best-trained armies that had ever been seen in the Western world. His troops were not only trained to fight; they were eager for the fray.

Every one was crying for action—every one but McClellan. Lincoln repeatedly urged him to strike a blow. But he wouldn't do it. He held parades and talked a lot about what he was going to do; but that was all it amounted to—talk.

He delayed, he procrastinated, he gave all manner of excuses. But go forward he would not.

Once he said he couldn't advance because the army was resting. Lincoln asked him what it had done to make it tired.

Another time—after the Battle of Antietam—an amazing thing happened. McClellan had far more men than Lee. Lee had been defeated; and had McClellan pursued him, he might have captured his army and ended the war. Lincoln kept urging him for weeks to follow Lee—urging by letter, by telegram, and by special messenger. Finally McClellan said he couldn't move because his horses were fatigued and had sore tongues!

It you ever visit New Salem, you will see a depression about a rod down the hillside from Offut's grocery where Lincoln worked as a clerk. The Clary's Grove Boys used to have their cock-fights there, and Lincoln acted as referee. For weeks Bab McNab had been boasting of a young rooster that could whip anything in Sangamon County. But when this fowl was finally put into the pit, he turned tail and refused to fight. Bab, in disgust, grabbed him and tossed him high into the air. The rooster alighted on a pile of firewood near by, then strutted and ruffled up his feathers and crowed defiantly.

“Yes, damn you!” said McNab. “You're great on dressparade, but you are not worth a cuss in a fight.”

Lincoln said that McClellan reminded him of Bab McNab's rooster.

Once, during the Peninsular Campaign, General Magruder with five thousand men held up McClellan with a hundred thousand. McClellan, afraid to attack, threw up breastworks and kept nagging Lincoln for more men, more men, more men.

“If by magic,” said Lincoln, “I could reinforce McClellan with a hundred thousand men, he would go into ecstasy, thank me, and tell me he would go to Richmond to-morrow; but when to-morrow came, he would telegraph that he had certain information that the enemy had four hundred thousand men and that he could not advance without reinforcements.”

“If McClellan had a million men,” said Stanton, Secretary of War, “he would swear that the enemy had two million, and then sit down in the mud and yell for three million.”

“The Young Napoleon” had bounded into fame with one leap, and it had gone to his head like champagne. His egotism was boundless. He described Lincoln and his Cabinet as “hounds”... “wretches”... “some of the greatest geese I have ever seen.”

He was positively insulting to Lincoln; and when the President came to see him, McClellan kept him waiting for half an hour in the anteroom.

Once the general got home at eleven o'clock at night and his servant informed him that Lincoln had been waiting there for hours to see him. McClellan passed the door of the room where the President sat, ignored him, went on upstairs, and sent down word that he had gone to bed.

The newspapers played up incidents like these, and they became the gossip and scandal of Washington. With tears rolling down her cheeks, Mrs. Lincoln implored the President to remove “that awful wind-bag,” as she called him.

“Mother,” he replied, “I know he doesn't do right, but I mustn't consider my feelings at a time like this. I am willing to hold McClellan's hat, if he will only bring us victories.”

The summer drifted into autumn; autumn passed into winter; spring was almost at hand; and still McClellan did nothing but drill men and have dress-parades, and talk.

The nation was aroused, and Lincoln was being condemned and criticized on all sides for McClellan's inaction.

“Your delay is ruining us,” cried Lincoln, as he issued an official order for an advance.

McClellan had to move now or resign. So he rushed to Harper's Ferry, ordering his troops to follow immediately. He planned to invade Virginia from that point, after bridging the Potomac with boats which were to be brought through the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. But, at the last moment, the whole project had to be abandoned because the boats were six inches too wide to float through the canal locks.

When McClellan told Lincoln of this fiasco and said that the pontoons were not ready, the patient, long-suffering President lost his temper at last; and, lapsing into the phraseology of the hay-fields of Pigeon Creek Valley, Indiana, he demanded, “Why, in the hell, ain't they ready?”

The nation was asking the same question in about the same tone.

At last, in April, “the Young Napoleon” made a grand speech to his soldiers, as the older Napoleon used to do, and then started off with one hundred and twenty thousand men singing “The Girl I Left Behind Me.”

The war had been going on for a year. McClellan boasted that he was going to clean up the whole thing now, at once, and let the boys get home in time to plant a little late corn and millet.

Incredible as it seems, Lincoln and Stanton were so optimistic that they wired the governors of the various States to accept no more volunteers, to close the recruiting-places, and to sell the public property belonging to these organizations.

One of the military maxims of Frederick the Great was: “Know the man you are fighting.” Lee and Stonewall Jackson appreciated full well the kind of a weak-kneed Napoleon they had to deal with—a timid, cautious, whining Napoleon who was never on the battle-field, because he couldn't endure the sight of blood.

So Lee let him spend three months crawling up to Richmond. McClellan got so close that his men could hear the clocks in the church towers striking the hour.

Then the inspired Lee crashed upon him in a series of terrific onslaughts, and, in seven days, forced him back to the shelter of his gunboats and killed fifteen thousand of his men.

Thus the “en grande affair,” as McClellan called it, ended in one of the bloodiest failures of the war.

But, as usual, McClellan blamed it all on “those traitors in Washington.” The old story: they hadn't sent him enough men. Their “cowardice and folly” made his “blood boil.” He hated Lincoln and the Cabinet, now, more than he despised the Confederates. He denounced their actions as “the most infamous thing history has ever recorded.”

McClellan had more troops than his enemies—usually far more. He was never able to use at one time all that he then possessed. But he kept on demanding more. More. He asked for an additional ten thousand, then for fifty thousand, finally for a hundred thousand. They were not to be had. He knew it, and Lincoln knew that he knew it. Lincoln told him his demands were “simply absurd.”

McClellan's telegrams to Stanton and the President were fiery and insulting. They sounded like the ravings of a madman. They accused Lincoln and Stanton of doing their best to destroy his army. They made charges so grave that the telegraph operator refused to deliver them.

The nation was appalled, Wall Street was seized with panic, the country was submerged in gloom.

Lincoln grew thin and haggard. “I am as nearly inconsolable,” he said, “as one can be and live.”

McClellan's father-in-law and chief of staff, P. B. Marcy, said there was nothing to do now but capitulate.

When Lincoln heard this, he flushed with anger, sent for Marcy, and said:

“General, I understand you have used the word ‘capitulate.’ That is a word not to be used in connection with our army.”