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It came with a garden and entertaining rooms large enough to inspire him to try his hand at decorating. He was quite pleased with the results: one room was pink with gold buds, the other white “with lots of small gold stars.”6 All that was lacking were the people to fill them. Malet passed his precious spare time wandering up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, watching “the queerest figures I ever saw in my life—and nearly always troops of prisoners being taken from one place of confinement to another.”7

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The latest prisoners to arrive in Washington were Confederates captured during a skirmish on November 2, 1862, at Snickers Gap, one of the three main passes in the Blue Ridge Mountains that linked the eastern part of Virginia with the Shenandoah Valley. General McClellan’s new plan involved advancing along the base of the Blue Ridge, methodically taking each gap, until he reached the Manassas Gap railroad. Once there he intended to decide whether to attack a portion of Lee’s army that was known to be only twenty-five miles away, or to avoid a fight and march east to the town of Fredericksburg, which lay along the bank of the Rappahannock River, sixty miles due north of Richmond. In his telegram to Lincoln that afternoon, McClellan made his usual plea for more men and cavalry, though “I will do the best I can with what I have got,” he added.8

Lincoln was no longer interested in McClellan’s best. He had already made up his mind to dismiss the general after the midterm elections and appoint a successor who was less preoccupied with maneuvering and more interested in attacking. On the night of November 7, McClellan was writing a letter to his wife when two visitors knocked at his door. Snow covered their clothes and their faces were raw from the cold; McClellan realized that this was not a courtesy call. The older of the two, General Catharinus P. Buckingham, had come by special train from Washington to deliver the order from Lincoln removing McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac and replacing him with General Ambrose Burnside. “I read the papers with a smile,” wrote McClellan, and “turned to Burnside [who was standing next to Buckingham] and said, ‘Well Burnside, I turn the command over to you.’ ”9 McClellan told his wife, “They have made a great mistake,” and in his heart Burnside suspected it, too. Although his victory at Roanoke the previous spring had raised his reputation with Lincoln, Burnside’s limitations as a military leader had been revealed by his muddled thinking during the Battle of Antietam. Many soldiers broke ranks and tried to touch McClellan’s boots as he rode out of the camp and into retirement on November 9. He had failed to lead them to victory, but his commitment to their welfare had touched their lives in ways that only the soldiers themselves could appreciate.

Sir Percy Wyndham was disgusted by what he considered to be incompetent army management by the War Department. He had been assigned against his wishes to General Franz Sigel’s XI Army Corps in early September and was given temporary command of the cavalry brigade, which was on guard duty in northern Virginia.10 Bored by his new command, Sir Percy asked General Samuel P. Heintzelman of the III Army Corps for his help in obtaining a transfer. He was especially annoyed that connections seemed to count far more than merit: “The names of a great many Colonels in the service have been recommended to the President for Promotion,” he wrote, but “I, not being acquainted with any political parties of person of influence, naturally have no chance of being recommended in like manner. I would consider it a lasting favour if you would use your influence in obtaining me a position, and if possible in your own command.” Heintzelman was experiencing his own difficulties with the high command and had no influence to spare; so bitter were the rivalries in Sigel’s corps that a jealous officer sabotaged Sir Percy Wyndham’s request by accusing him of disloyalty. “I hear it from a field officer of cavalry that Wyndham said to him in the presence of a private