PREFACE. 5 by the sudden withdrawal of the corps farmee necessary to its execution. In respect to the operations of McClellan before Richmond, he testifies that it was the intention of that general to follow up his arrival upon the Chickahominy by an immediate assault in combination with the army of McDowell, and that this intention was defeated by the complete separation of that army from his own in consequence of orders sent to McDowell from Washington. He gives it as his opinion, however, that greater activity and more rapid aggressive movements on the part of General McClellan daring the months of ''lay and June and at the battle of Fair Oaks, might possibly have resulted in the fall of Richmond, but this opinion he qualifies by intimating that the disposition of the General to instant action was curbed and dampened during that time by the influence of the checks previously imposed upon the development of his strategy; and he ascribes the final extrication of the Army of the Potomac from a position which had become untenable, to a movement in an extraordinary degree decisive and audacious. 2. Writing after a familiar intercourse of months with the General-in-Chief of the army, in which he must necessarily have imbibed his leading views in respect to national policy, the Prince’s language makes it more than probable that General McClellan earnestly believed a prompt and decisive victory over the confederate army to be the surest if not the only means of securing the restoration of the Union, and that so believing, he thought it essential that a conciliatory temper towards the Southern people should precede, accompany and succeed the victory of the sword. 3. The Prince de Joinville asserts distinctly that the interference of the Government with the plans of General McClellan was constant, embarrassing, and of such a nature as finally to make it next to impossible for that General to risk the safety of the army under his charge in any extensive operation the success of which was not substantially assured in advance. 4. The Prince’s account of the retreat of McClellan from Richmond shows that he considers the confederate Generals to haxe been completely ont-manamvred and out-witted at that time by their adversary, whose concentration they did not comprehend in time to prevent it, and whose escape they were not able to intercept although superior to him in numbers and in knowledge of the country, fighting within sight of their base, and supported by the active good will of a whole population.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=