Posted on 11/07/2012 4:12:43 AM PST by iowamark
Late on the evening of Nov. 6, 1862, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton dispatched Brig. Gen. Catharinus P. Buckingham, a West Point classmate and friend of Robert E. Lee’s, to the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac, then located in Northern Virginia. Buckingham had two messages, good news for one general and very bad news for another. Arriving the next evening in the midst of one of the worst snowstorms on record, Buckingham decided to give the good news first and sought out Gen. Ambrose Burnside to deliver a presidential order naming him as the new commander of the Union Army...
The two men then rode several miles to deliver the bad news to Maj. Gen. George McClellan: namely, that his contentious tenure as leader of the largest Union army was at an end...
Lee was not bagged at Antietam, opined Major Key to a War Department colleague, because “that is not the game. The object is that neither army shall get much advantage.” Rather, both “shall be kept in the field till they are exhausted, when we will make a compromise and save slavery...”
Perhaps the last word is best left to Robert E. Lee. In a letter to his wife he wrote, “I hate to see McClellan go. He and I had grown to understand each other so well.” To Gen. James “Old Pete” Longstreet, Lee reportedly said, “I fear they may continue to make these changes till they find someone whom I don’t understand.” A year later they would, when Lincoln called Ulysses S. Grant to lead the Union war effort.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com ...
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