Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [246]
The first public dissatisfaction with McClellan’s performance began to emerge as the autumn leaves began to fall. While Washingtonians delighted in his magnificent reviews of more than fifty thousand troops marching in straight columns to the sounds of hundred-gun salutes, with “not a mistake made, not a hitch,” they grew restive with the failure of the troops to leave camp. Undeterred, McClellan insisted to his wife that he would not move until he was certain that he was completely ready to take on the enemy. “A long time must yet elapse before I can do this, & I expect all the newspapers to abuse me for delay—but I will not mind that.”
Radical Republicans who had initially applauded McClellan’s appointment began to turn on him when they learned he had issued “a slave-catching order” requiring commanders to return fugitive slaves to their masters. McClellan repeatedly emphasized that he was “fighting to preserve the integrity of the Union & the power of the Govt,” and that to achieve that overriding goal, the country could not “afford to raise up the negro question.” Coming under attack, he sought cover from his Democratic friends. “Help me to dodge the nigger,” he entreated Samuel Barlow of New York, “we want nothing to do with him.”
At the first whiff of censure, McClellan shifted blame onto any other shoulder but his own—onto Scott’s failure to muster necessary resources, onto the incompetence of the cabinet, “some of the greatest geese…I have ever seen—enough to tax the patience of Job.” He considered Seward “a meddling, officious, incompetent little puppy,” Welles “weaker than the most garrulous old woman,” and Bates “an old fool.” He was disgusted by the “rascality of Cameron,” and though he commended Monty Blair’s courage, he did not “altogether fancy him!” Only Chase was spared his scorn, perhaps because the treasury secretary had sent a flattering letter before McClellan was called to Washington in which he claimed that he was the one responsible for the general’s promotion to major general.
Impatience with McClellan mounted when one of his divisions suffered a crushing defeat at a small engagement on October 21, 1861. Having learned that the rebels had pulled back some of their troops from Leesburg, Virginia, McClellan ordered General Charles P. Stone to mount “a slight demonstration on your part” in order “to move them.” Stone assumed that he would have the help of a neighboring division, which McClellan had ordered back to Washington without informing Stone. Colonel Edward Baker, Lincoln’s close friend from Illinois, was killed in action, along with forty-nine of his men when the Confederates trapped them at the river’s edge at Ball’s Bluff. Many more were seriously wounded, including the young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who was brought to Chase’s spacious home to recover.
Baker was mourned by the entire Lincoln family. Lincoln later told the journalist Noah Brooks that “the death of his beloved Baker smote upon him like a whirlwind from a desert.” The day before Baker was killed, the two old friends had talked together on the White House grounds. A passing officer recalled the poignant scene: “Mr. Lincoln sat on the ground leaning against a tree; Colonel Baker was lying prone on the ground his head supported by his clasped hands. The trees and the lawns were gorgeous in purple and crimson and scarlet, like the curtains of God’s tabernacle.” Not far away, ten-year-old Willie “was tossing the fallen leaves about in childish grace and abandon.” When the time came for Baker to take his leave, he shook Lincoln’s hand and then took Willie into his arms and kissed him.
Twenty-four hours later, Captain Thomas Eckert, in charge of the telegraph office at McClellan