4 PREFACE. The failure of the Army of the Potomac to achieve either of the grand immediate objects wliieh it moved from before 'Washington in March to effect, the dispersion, namilv. of the main confederate army under General Johnston and the occupation of llichmond. has been variously attributed: 1. To the constitutional unfitness of General McClellan for the conduct of operations requiring boldness! in the conception and decision in the execution. 2. To the presumed bias of that commander’s political opinions. Those who adopt this theory of the origin of our reverses, charge upon General McClellan that, he has always sought to avoid driving the insurgent States to the wall, in the belief that the soothing inlluence of time and the blockade would eventually bring them to accept terms of reconciliation and reunion. 3. To the constant interference of mt “Anlic Council” at ’Washington with the plans of our commanders in the field, an interference which when it does not positively interrupt the progress of operations actually begun, If depriving a general of some portion of the force on which his Calculations were based, must still greatly cripple his ellicieney by making it incompatible with common prudence for him to take serious risks and essay adventurous combinations. 4. To the superior military abilities of the Southern commanders enabling them to outmanoeuvre our leaders and to accumulate overwhelming forces upon the separate armies of an array in the aggregate greatly outnumbering their own. ' The testimony under these different heads of the Prince de Joinville may be thus summed up: 1. The Prince de Joinville testifies that General nlcClellan’s original plan of campaign was in the highest degree direct and aggressive. This ]>Ian wns formed at a time when the command of the waters of “rginia was entirely in our hands, and it involved so rapid a concentration of the federal forces at a point within striking distance of Pichmond as must hat e been followed either by the evacuation of that city or by :t decisive action in the field. II b-'tifu-s also that when by the sudden and formidable advent of the .Merrimac and by the retreat of Johnston from -Manassas upon Itichmond and Yorktown, this original plan w:ls made impracticable, Gem al McClellan conceived a second plan for turning the position at Yorktown, which was also direct and aggre-site in its character, and which was made impracticable
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