I am sorry to find so much in vogue amongst you. I hear constantly of taking strong positions and holding them,' of 'lines of retreat,' and of bases of supplies.' Let us discard such ideas. The strongest position a soldier should desire to occupy is one from which he can most easily advance against the enemy. Let us study the probable lines of retreat of our opponents, and leave our own to take care of themselves. Let us look before us, and not behind. Success and glory are in the advance, disaster and shame lurk in the rear." 1 This address lacked wisdom and tact. To the officers and soldiers of the three corps which made up his Army of Virginia, it was unjust and almost insulting. Their ill success had come from the imperfect strategy devised at Washington and from incompetent leadership rather than from the want of bravery. Regarded also as a slur upon the Army of the Potomac, it made almost every officer in it his enemy. Pope followed up his address with four orders which caused commotion at the time, and have since given rise to much discussion in the Confederate and the Union books on the war. Orders No. 5 and 6 and the greater part of Order No. 7 were at least unnecessary, although Ropes maintains, after an impartial discussion of them, that they were justified by the laws of war. A penalty threatened in Order No. 7 calls for mention. Non-combatants who fired upon Union soldiers from houses should, if detected, "be shot without awaiting civil process." Order No. 11 provides for the arrest of all disloyal male citizens within the lines of the Union army. Those who took the oath of allegiance should be permitted to remain at their homes; those who refused to take it should be sent farther South, and if found again within our lines, "be considered as spies and subjected to the extreme rigor of military law;" those who violated their oath of allegiance should be

1 Date of this is July 14, O. R., vol. xii. part iii. p. 474.

The Army under Pope, p. 9. Order No. 5 gave occasion for acts of pillage and outrage, and Pope issued an order, Aug. 14, rebuking those who had misinterpreted and abused it, and threatening them with punishment. – O. R., vol. xii. part iii. p. 573.

shot. For Order No. 11 there is, in the opinion of Ropes, "absolutely no justification." It was, moreover, impossible of execution. I have found no instance of the enforcement of the extreme penalty or even of attempt at its enforcement.2 Even Chase wrote Pope mildly disapproving it.3 From Winchester, a town constantly bandied between the Union and Confederate armies, a lady whose sympathy was entirely with the South wrote to the wife of Stonewall Jackson seventeen days after the issue of the order, "That threatened oath of allegiance has been so long delayed that we hope it may not be carried out." 4 Nor have I found a case of summary punishment that substantiated the menace of Order No. 7. In truth, any serious intention of carrying out these orders would have been abandoned after Jefferson Davis had threatened to retaliate, and after Pope and his army had entered upon their active campaign, which from the start was series of reverses. The address and the orders are such as were hardly to be expected from a trained and experienced soldier; they bear the stamp of a pugnacious civilian. General Pope in after years affirmed they were issued on the direct prompting of Stanton. Certain it is that the orders were shown to the President before they were published, and the most obnoxious one, Order No. 11, was in his hands twenty-four hours without receiving a manifestation of disapproval. The radical Republicans were convinced that the Army of the Potomac under McClellan had been coddled. The Secretary of War undoubtedly shared this conviction,

1 These orders are printed in O. R., vol. xii. part ii. p. 50 et seq. The date of Order No. 7 should probably be July 20 (see Ropes), that of Order No. 11 is July 23.

2 Some references to these orders and proceedings under them in the Confederate Correspondence may be found in O. R., vol. xi. part iii. p. 669; vol. xii. part iii. pp. 919, 923.

3 Aug. 1, Schuckers, p. 378.

Life of Jackson by his wife, p. 369.

5 In conversation with General J. D. Cox four or five years before Pope's death.

6 O. R., vol. xi. part iii. p. 359; vol. xii. part iii. p. 500.

which suggested the advisability of giving the troops in Virginia to understand that rough work lay before them. Moreover, "the barbarity of rebel warfare" was a common tenet at the North, where it was believed that undue leniency in many respects had been shown by our generals to the Confederates. The orders of Pope were looked upon as the announcement of a change of policy, and when Chase set down in his notes, "General Pope seemed to me an earnest, active, intelligent man, and inspired me with the best hopes," 2 he unquestionably spoke for the radical Republicans in Washington and in the country at large. Perhaps we shall gain a better understanding of these orders if we attribute to them the ulterior purpose of affecting public sentiment at a time when fresh enlistments in the army were earnestly desired.

Jefferson Davis ordered that notification be sent to the general-in-chief of the armies of the United States that the Confederacy would not consider any of the commissioned officers captured from Pope's army as prisoners of war.3 Halleck probably made no reply to this communication; indeed he regarded some of the orders as "very injudicious," and advised Pope, on the authority of the Secretary of War, to modify Order No. 11 in the direction of leniency. Some of the officers of the Army of Virginia who were taken prisoners were sent into close confinement as felons; but with the end of Pope's brief career in Virginia, this wrangle ceases, having gone no great way beyond fulminations.

Those who made a hero of Pope continued their strife against McClellan. "My dear Mac," wrote Burnside, July 15, after his visit to Washington, "you have lots of enemies."6 The radicals so far prevailed with the President that after

1 See, for example, letters of John Sherman to his brother, May 19, Aug. 24, Sept. 23, Sherman Letters, pp. 151, 157, 164.

2 Schuckers, p. 448.

3 July 31, Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. ii. p. 315.

4 Aug. 6, O. R., vol. xi. part iii. p. 359; vol. xii. part iii. p. 540.

5 A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, Jones, vol. ii. p. 148.

6 McClellan's Own Story, p. 472.

sending 9000 or 10,000 troops to Harrison's Landing, he withheld further reinforcements, detaining Burnside with his force at Fort Monroe. Rumors of McClellan's disloyalty were in the air, and the subject must have been alluded to in cabinet meeting, for Chase records in his diary: "I said that I did not regard General McClellan as loyal to the administration, although I did not question his general loyalty to the country."2 It was about this time that he and Stanton advised the President to remove McClellan and send Pope to the army on the James. This, Lincoln would not do, but, owing to the representations of Pope that cordial co-operation from McClellan could not be expected, or perhaps for other reasons, he offered the command of the Army of the Potomac to Burnside, who peremptorily declined it. This was known only to a few. The President's perplexity was painful, but he would decide nothing further until he should have a chance to consult Halleck, whose arrival was awaited by all with the hope that he would prove the long-sought-for leader. He reached Washington July 23, and the next day went to the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac on the James River. McClellan told his chief that his plan was to cross the James River, attack Petersburg, an important railroad centre, and cut the communication between Richmond and the States farther South. Halleck maintained this project to be impracticable and full of risk, and nearly if not quite talked him out of it. He further laid down as a military necessity the concentration of the Army of the Potomac with Pope's army unless a reinforcement of 20,000 would enable McClellan to attack Richmond with a strong probability of success. McClellan thought he should require 30,000 additional troops,

1 Letters of July 15, 17, McClellan's Own Story, pp. 449, 472.

2 July 22, Warden, p. 440.

3 Schuckers, p. 447.

4 Burnside's testimony, C. W., part i. p. 650; McClellan's Own Story, p. 458. This offer was made between July 18 and 30, and probably before Halleck's arrival in Washington on the 23d. — General J. D. Cox's Reminiscences, MS.; also, O. R., vol. xi. part iii. pp. 326, 330.

but after reflection said in a second interview that there was "a chance," and he "was willing to try it" with the number promised by the President. He also expressed the opinion that while the junction between his and Pope's forces might be made without exposing Washington, the withdrawal of his army would have a demoralizing influence on the soldiers, and that it would be better to maintain his present position until reinforcements should be furnished him adequate to an aggressive movement. His despatches to Washington which followed Halleck's visit are an enforcement of this view. There also ensued between him and his chief an exchange of friendly and sympathetic letters.2 July 30 an order to send away his sick was despatched from Washington, the reason given for it being "to enable you to move in any direction." 3 August 3 Halleck telegraphed him: "It is determined to withdraw your army from the Peninsula to Aquia Creek. You will take immediate measures to effect this." 4 Burnside's letter of the day before throws some light on a council which led to this determination. "My dear Mac," he wrote, "I am much worried at the decision they have chosen to make in regard to your army. From the moment I reached Washington I feared it would be so, and I am of the opinion that your engineers had much to do with bringing about the determination. When the conclusion was arrived at, I was the only one who advocated your forward movement." 5

The decision was a choice of evils made on the side of safety, a natural result of the balancing of chances in which the poor promise for the future of McClellan's failures in the past outweighed the many disadvantages of his withdrawal from the Peninsula. The hesitating manner in which he agreed to resume the offensive with a reinforcement of 20,000 indicated that when that number reached him he would cry

1 Memorandum of Halleck, July 27, O. R., vol. xi. part iii. p. 337.

2 July 30 and Aug. 1, ibid., pp. 343, 345.

3 Ibid., part i. p. 76.

4 Ibid., p. 80.

5 McClellan's Own Story, p. 472.