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.Lincoln still had an opening for a general-in-chief, which he had stripped from McClellan prior to the Peninsular campaign, but he bided his time, hoping Halleck would work with Farragut to open the Mississippi while McClellan swept into Richmond.Chapter 10“If I could save the Union.”While Halleck’s huge army stagnated at Corinth, McClellan’s equally huge army dallied on Virginia’s peninsula, between the York and James rivers.On April the Young Napoleon had fifty-eight thousand troops and one hundred guns ready to move against Yorktown and another fifty thousand troops in transit.Major General John B.Magruder, with only eleven thousand Confederates, posted half his troops at Yorktown and strung the other half across thirteen miles of the lower peninsula.Infused with wishful thinking, McClellan confided to his wife, “I hope to get possession of Yorktown day after tomorrow.The great battle will be (I think) near Richmond, as I have always hoped and thought.I see my way very clearly, and.will move rapidly.”The general’s energetic campaign ended the following day, whenMagruder staged a theatrical show of resistance.Instead of pressing the attack, McClellan put the Confederates under siege and, instead of flanking the position with his vastly superior forces, wasted exactly one month.Lincoln observed McClellan’s stalling and on April wrote, “Once more let me tell you, it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow.I am powerless to help this.You will do me the justice to remember I always insisted that going down the Bay in search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Manassas, was only shifting, and not surmounting, a difficulty—that we would find the same enemy, and the same or equal entrenchments, at either place.”The president promised to send Franklin’s division from McDowell’s corps, adding, “But you must act.” McClellan disliked presidential interference and wrote his wife, “I was much tempted to reply that he had better come and do it himself.” When on May Magruder withdrew unnoticed to Williamsburg, McClellan lost another day getting his army in motion.1McClellan blamed his ineptitude on others.He criticized the administration for insufficient support and the navy for not silencing Yorktown’s batteries.With more than , troops on the peninsula, McClellan needed no reinforcements to defeat Magruder, and the navy did all it could.2Magruder admitted his lines could have been pierced at any time, later reporting, “But to my utter surprise he permitted day after day to elapse without an assault.” Union generals were astonished by McClellan’s cautiousness.Congressmen John A.Gurley of Ohio condemned McClellan as a “traitor” who“i f i c o u l d sav e t h e u n i o n.”109intended “to have his own army beaten.” He quoted a conversation between Little Mac and a local physician, during which the general allegedly said, “The South was right and he would never fight against it.” When Bates learned of the comment, he branded McClellan as not a traitor, “only a foolish egot.”3Unaware McClellan was now moving forward, Stanton invited Lincolnand Chase to accompany him to Fort Monroe to determine whether the general’s constant demands for reinforcements were justified.Arriving on May, they were greeted by seventy-three-year-old General John E.Wool, who said McClellan had reached Williamsburg and was marching on Richmond.Having little to do, Lincoln’s party toured Hampton Roads and learned from Commodore Louis Goldsborough that the CSS Virginia lay berthed at Sewall’s Point, across from Fort Monroe.4Lincoln wanted to see the Virginia and asked Goldsborough to shell the batteries at Sewall’s Point.Moments later the ironclad, belching black smoke, swung into Hampton Roads and steamed toward the Union ships.Goldsborough withdrew the wooden gunboats but not the Monitor.To everyone’s disappointment the Virginia circled and returned to Sewall’s Point
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