Part 44 (2/2)

Now they could get something to eat, bury their dead and care for all the wounded. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign had ended. His Grand Army had melted from a hundred and ten thousand fighting men in line to eighty-six thousand. The South had lost almost as many.

From the wildest panic into which the advance of his army had thrown Richmond, the Confederate Capital now swung to the opposite extreme of rejoicing for the deliverance, mingled with criticism of their leaders for allowing the Federal army to escape at all.

The gloom in Was.h.i.+ngton was profound.

An excited General rushed to the White House at two o'clock in the morning, roused the President from his bed and pleaded for the immediate dispatch of a fleet of transports to Harrison's Landing as the only possible way to save the army from annihilation.

The President soothed his fears and sent him home. He was not the man to be thrown into a panic. Yet the incredible thing had happened. His army of more than two hundred thousand men, under able generals, had been hurled back from the gates of Richmond in hopeless, bewildering defeat, and he must begin all over again.

One big ominous fact loomed in tragic menace from the smoke and flame of this campaign--the South had developed two leaders of matchless military genius--Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It was a fact the President must face and that without fear or favor to any living man in his own army.

He left Was.h.i.+ngton for the front at once. He must see with his own eyes the condition of the army. He must see McClellan. The demand for his removal was loud and bitter. And fiercest of all those who asked for his head was the iron-willed Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, his former champion.

CHAPTER XIV

THE RETREAT

John Vaughan had become one of his General's trusted aides. His services during the month's terrific struggle had proven invaluable. The Commander was quick to discern that he was a man of culture and possessed a mind of unusual power. More than once the General had called him to his headquarters to pour into his ears his own grievances against the authorities in Was.h.i.+ngton. Naturally his mind had been embittered against the man in the White House. The magnetic personality of McClellan had appealed to his imagination from their first meeting.

The General was particularly bitter on the morning the President was expected. His indignation at last broke forth in impa.s.sioned words to his sympathetic listener.

The tragic consequence of the impression made in that talk neither man could dream at the moment.

Pacing the floor with the tread of a caged lion McClellan suddenly paused and his fine blue eyes flashed.

”I tell you, Vaughan, the wretches have done their worst. They can't do much more----”

He stopped suddenly and drew from his pocket the copy of a dispatch he had sent to the war office. He read it carefully and looked up with flas.h.i.+ng eyes:

”I'll face the President with this dispatch to Stanton in my hands, too.

They would have removed me from my command for sending it--if they had dared!”

He slowly repeated its closing words:

”I know that a few thousand more men would have changed this battle from a defeat to a victory. As it is, the Government must not and cannot hold me responsible for the result. I feel too earnestly to-night. I have seen too many dead and wounded comrades to feel otherwise than that the Government has not sustained this army. If you do not do so now, the game is lost. If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you, or to any other person in Was.h.i.+ngton. You have done your best to sacrifice this army----”

He paused and his square jaws came together firmly.

”And if that be treason, they can make the most of it!”

”I am curious to know how he meets you to-day,” John said with a smile.

An orderly announced the arrival of the President and the Commanding General promptly boarded his steamer. In ten minutes the two men were facing each other in the stateroom a.s.signed the Chief Magistrate.

Lincoln's tall, rugged figure met the compact General with the easy generous att.i.tude of a father ready to have it out with a wayward boy.

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