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Palfrey, "Antietam

icksburg,'

p. 119.

whole day," says General Palfrey, "till towards the CHAP. IX. middle of the afternoon, when all the fighting was over, on the high ground near Pry's house, where he and Freder had some glasses strapped to the fence, so that he could look in different directions." We make no imputation on his courage; he was a brave man; but he was too much cumbered with other things to take part in his own battles.

"The Army of the Potomac,"

p. 229.

With such limitations as these it is not likely that posterity will rank him among the leading generals of our war. The most his apologists ask for him is a place among the respectable, painstak- swinton, ing officers of the second order of talent, "that middle category of meritorious commanders "; but when we see such ardent friends and admirers as General Webb and General Palfrey, brought by a conscientious and careful study of his career to such a conviction of his continuous mistakes as they have expressed, we may well conclude that the candid historian of the future will have no sentiment but wonder when he comes to tell the story of his long mismanagement of a great, brave, and devoted army, backed by a Government which strained every nerve to support him, and by a people whose fiery zeal would have made him the idol of the nation if he had given them the successes which their sacrifices deserved, and which were a dozen times within his grasp.

We have evidence from a candid and intelligent, if not altogether impartial, witness of the impression made upon the peace party of the North by the dismissal of General McClellan from command. Lord Lyons, the British Minister at Washington, arrived in New York from a visit to England on VOL. VI.-13

CHAP. IX. the 8th of November, 1862. The Democrats, or the Conservatives as he called them, had carried the State and elected Mr. Seymour governor. He found them in great exultation over their victory. They imagined that the Government would at once desist from the measures which they had denounced as arbitrary or illegal; or, if not at once, they were certain that after the 1st of January, when Mr. Seymour would be inaugurated, the Government would not dare to exercise its war powers within the limits of the State of New-York. They confided to the urbane and genial representative of the British Government much more spacious hopes than these,- hopes which they were not yet ready to avow to their own countrymen,' - that the President would" seek to terminate the war, not to push it to extremity; that he would endeavor to effect a reconciliation with the people of the South and renounce the idea of subjugating or exterminating them." But these rising hopes, Lord Lyons says, "were dashed by the next day's news." The dismissal of General McClellan caused "an irritation not unmixed with consternation and despondency. The general had been regarded as the representative of Conservative principles in the army. Support of him had been made one of the articles of the Conservative electoral programme. His dismissal was taken as a sign that the President had thrown himself entirely into the arms of the extreme

1 Lord Lyons says: "I listened with attention to the accounts given me of the plans and hopes of the Conservative party. At the bottom I thought I perceived a desire to put an end to the war

even at the risk of losing the Southern States altogether; but it was plain it was not thought prudent to avow the desire.". Letter of Lord Lyons to Earl Russell, dated November 17, 1862.

Radical party, and that the attempt to carry out CHAP. IX. the policy of that party would be persisted in." The "party" and the "policy" referred to were of course the Republican party of the nation, and the policy of carrying the war through to the end, and saving the Union intact by all the means within the power of the Government; and in this forecast the Conservative gentlemen of New York, who sought the accomplished envoy of Great Britain to unbosom to him their joys and their griefs, showed that however they may have been lacking in patriotism or self-respect they were not deficient in logic or sagacity.

CHAPTER X

СНАР. Х.

FREDERICKSBURG

T was on a raw and gusty November day that General Buckingham arrived at Burnside's headquarters at the little village of Orlean, and delivered him the orders to take command of the Army of the Potomac. He was greatly surprised, he himself says "shocked," at the news. He told General Buckingham that it was a matter which required very serious thought; that he did not want the command; that it had been offered to him twice before, and that he did not feel he could take it. He called two of his staff-officers into consultation, and for more than an hour resisted Burnside, their importunities that he should accept it; he Committee told them, what in the light of experience we of the War. know was true, that he "was not competent to command such a large army." He had said as much to the President and to the Secretary of War, when they on a former occasion had intimated to him that such a promotion was thought of. In the dissatisfaction prevailing in high quarters in Washington against McClellan the name of Burnside had been more than once mentioned, in the councils of the Government, as his successor — a suggestion which Burnside had always discoun

Testimony,

Report

on Conduct

Part I.,

p. 650.

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