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| The Joint Committee
I’m going to start by trying to get you into the mindset of tonight’s key characters. I think you really need that to be able to understand what drives them to create this pretty incredible story! So imagine that you’re a Republican Senator in Washington DC in January, 1861. More specifically, you’re part of a new group that’s being called the Radical Republicans. You’re standing before the Capital, watching Abraham Lincoln take the oath of office. Just think… this was the best man your party could come up with! This uneducated lawyer from the West! Even as you hear him swearing to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”, you already know that it’s slavery that he’ll soon be preserving and protecting! You fear that under this kind of leadership, this Union could come to an end! And the events of the next nine months certainly do nothing to calm that fear! Events like… The Southern States actually secede, almost before Lincoln’s words have stopped echoing!. The South fires on Fort Sumter, starting the much dreaded war between the States. The nation drifts with no visible leadership into July before you finally hear that a great battle is to take place. You head for the fields outside of Washington to watch what everyone hopes will be that one battle that will quickly end all this nonsense! Yet as the Battle of Bull Run unfolds, you watch a chaotic rout of the Union Army, and you yourself are almost captured by the rebels as they pursue the fleeing Army! Yet throughout these days of crisis, Lincoln and his generals seem to do absolutely nothing! Finally someone does step up! It’s John Fremont, who was your party’s first Presidential He declares martial law! He proclaims the confiscation of rebel property and the freeing of their slaves! Finally, a glimmer of hope… but it’s a glimmer that lasts only as long as a spark jumping from a fire! Because cowardly Lincoln reverses Fremont’s proclamation, and then actually removes him from Command! You wonder… has Lincoln gone absolutely mad?!? Still three more months of frustrating inactivity pass. The army grows and grows to a magnificent size! But Winfield Scott is in charge, and he’s too old and heavy to even ride his own horse! And George McClellan is that dashing young General out in the field, but that southern sympathizing Democrat is more interested in parading his army to frighten the enemy than in using that army to actually fight the enemy! October brings still one more Union disaster! This one is at Balls Bluff, where a close friend of President Lincoln is killed in still another rout of the Union Army! By now it’s perfectly clear that Jeff Davis is the one with the upper hand, and Lincoln has no idea of how to gain it back! This was the situation that Senators Benjamin Franklin Wade and Zachariah Chandler found The 37th Congress convenes and debate starts very quickly on the urgent need to investigate these recent defeats! Wade, Chandler and John Sherman, brother of Gen Wm T Sherman lead the debate which rather quickly leads to a proposal for a Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. Its purpose will be to examine every military disaster and related non-military affair of the war. On December 9th the proposal was approved by a vote of 33 to 3 in the Senate, and it was approved the very next day in the House without even taking a vote! The Committee is made up of 3 Senators and 4 members of the House, and it’s dominated 5 to 2 by the powerful Republican party. Benjamin Wade is named as its Chairman. Of the seven, it was Wade and Chandler who were the dominant figures. Andrew Johnson was also an original member, but he was appointed Military Governor of Tennessee by Lincoln only four months after the Committee was created. Wade was an Ohio Lawyer and Chandler a successful merchant from Michigan. They both Both Wade and Chandler had indeed been present on the Bull Run battlefield to witness the rout of the Union Army. Wade is the one who was almost captured by the rebels! It happened when he became so outraged by seeing the Union soldiers running scared that with the help of the others in his party he decided to try to stop them and turn them around! He placed his carriage across the road and took out his own rifle, using it to convince them to stay and fight like men! This is when he was almost captured himself by the pursuing rebels!
So with that brief introduction to these charming guys, let’s now look at the Committee’s work! We Start with the Investigation of the Battle of Bull Run.
This first investigation was really over before it had even begun! There was in fact never an investigation phase at all. What they called an investigation was an all out effort from the opening gavel to support their assignment of the entire blame for the Union defeat to General Robert Patterson! They had already determined that McDowell was routed by Beauregard solely because General Patterson had failed to keep Joe Johnston’s troops at Winchester from advancing to reinforce Beauregard and cause McDowell’s defeat! During the hearings there was no analysis of the command structure, the battle strategy or the tactics employed on the battlefield. So how did they decide that it was Patterson who deserved all of the blame? And just who was General Robert Patterson?
BUT… He was a life-long Democrat! He also had many business connections in the South! And he had been a supporter of Southern rights, as well as… a supporter of slavery! This alone was proof enough that he could not be serious about fighting this war! He had also caused the defeat of McDowell, who was one of the very few Generals who the Committee held in high esteem! (Wait until you find out who the others are!) They just couldn’t allow McDowell’s reputation to be tarnished, because they might need him later on! So they conducted an investigation in which Patterson actually had to fight to be able to introduce his own personal records, records that proved he had at least technically followed Scott’s orders. They called only witnesses who could help their case, and only allowed them to answer leading questions that would serve their purposes. In the end they left some of Patterson’s most important documents completely unmentioned in their official report! Their “findings” of Patterson’s guilt were clearly based on his political ideology more than on his or McDowell’s military performance. The only significant outcome was that Patterson’s reputation had been ruined, to the extent that soon afterward, his son’s nomination for Brig Gen was opposed, because his father had been charged with disloyalty. And in attacking the reputation of a General with a long and loyal military record they drew the animosity of many Union Generals, adding a new problem to the Union cause rather than identifying or eliminating any existing problems. Ball’s Bluff This was a carbon copy of the Bull Run investigation! Their target was General George Stone, who they quickly determined deserved the entire blame for sending their fellow Senator and Lincoln’s old friend Edward Baker, and hundreds of his men, to their deaths! Baker was an enthusiastic but inexperienced soldier. He’d been sent by Stone to aid a Colonel who had gotten himself into a jam! Baker quickly ordered his entire force across the Potomac, despite orders to be much more careful in his movements. Soon they were in an indefensible position on Ball’s Bluff, high above the river with their backs up against it, facing the enemy. Baker was quickly killed and over 800 of his 1700 men were killed, wounded or missing in another humiliating rout. Now Stone was a McClellan man, Mac quickly defended him, claiming that Baker had disregarded Stone’s direct orders, and that he violated “all the rules and precautions of Military Science”! Mac should have known how poisoned those words would prove to be for Stone! Stone had also known to have returned escaped slaves to their Southern owners! This was cited as proof enough that he was soft on slavery and not serious about fighting this war, even though he had been following official Government policy in returning those slaves! The Committee lined up only witnesses friendly to the deceased Baker and hostile to Stone and quickly assembled their case. They rushed their findings to Secretary Stanton who immediately issued orders for Stone’s arrest! McClellan provided a short period of additional support but soon became preoccupied by his Peninsula Campaign and largely abandoned Stone. After six months in jail and two personal appeals to Lincoln, Stone was finally released. Neither he nor his lawyers were ever permitted to see the charges or the “evidence” against him! And Wade bitterly protested any claim that the Committee had had anything at all to do with his arrest! Do You Remember Fremont? In an important side activity, the Committee had been working hard to restore Fremont’s reputation, despite a military record that led his critics to say he “had all the qualities of genius except for ability”. Just as with McDowell, they might need him for bigger things later on! Chandler and Wade argued persistently in Fremont’s defense on the floor of the Senate. Lincoln knew he couldn’t ignore such pressure from within his own party. In March ’62 he did reinstate Fremont, but as the head of the new and far less important Mountain Department in Virginia, now West Virginia. FINALLY it was time to move on to that biggest target of all, George McClellan, who had by now taken over for the retired Scott as General in Chief of the entire Army! By now the Republican newspapers had taken up the chant that no-one knew of Lincoln had to do something! By now he was certainly no fan of the Committee, but he ordered Mac to appear before them hoping that their pressure would finally get him to fight! The Committee’s early meetings with Mac were absolutely explosive! In one confrontation, complaining about the inactivity of an Army that was now 150,000 strong, Wade yelled at McClellan “If I were their commander, I would lead them across the Potomac, and they should not come back until they had won a victory and the war ended, or they came back in their coffins.” Wade’s continuing personal attacks on Lincoln were just as bitter! Mac had just seen the deaths of thousands of his men and the near destruction of his Army during the failed Peninsula Campaign! He complained publicly that it was Stanton and the Administration who had sacrificed his army! Well, Zach Chandler disagreed, and replied that Mac was a “traitor who deserves to be shot! It is only the President or General McClellan who can be held responsible and who should suffer the most extreme penalty of law. So now the Committee had openly attacked the general of the nation’s largest army, while that army was in its most vulnerable condition, and also while Robert E Lee was gaining in reputation and confidence! This only continued weakening the command structure of the Army. Nothing positive had yet come of their work and Lincoln still saw no practical alternative to McClellan and his obvious organizational skills, which were now needed to rebuild the Army! John Pope – A Rapid Rise… and Fall At this time John Pope was becoming a rising star. Stanton, Chase and the Committee Pope made a grand appearance before the Committee even before he took to the field. He ridiculed McClellan’s strategy and promised nothing but aggressive action. He swore that he and his Army would never use words like lines of retreat! The Committee now began viewing him as the replacement for Mac that was so sorely needed! But Pope soon found himself battling against much more than Robert E Lee! McClellan openly hated Pope, and he left a well documented trail of non-co-operation or support of Pope. He even made public predictions of Pope’s failure! Pope’s Army was soon surrounded by Jackson and Longstreet and he was soundly defeated. Thus the man who would replace Mac soon found himself back out west fighting the Indians! And McClellan was now more in control than ever! Republicans were absolutely livid. But as loud as the uproar was, it was suddenly silenced, at least temporarily, when Mac finally “won” a battle against Lee at Antietam. Lincoln was finally able to take his Emancipation Proclamation from the desk drawer! Finally, in Nov ’62, with McClellan still resisting Lincoln’s pressure to pursue Lee’s Army, Lincoln made his decision! Mac’s usefulness had passed! His eventual removal had long been a certainty to everyone, including Mac himself, but it was Lincoln and not the Committee who finally chose the right time. All of the Committee’s work against Mac had amounted to nothing! This brings us to the era of Burnside and Hooker, but we’re only going to touch on them briefly. The Committee simply made very little of Burnside’s defeat at Fredericksburg or Hooker’s at Chancellorsville. There would be no investigations! Both these men were seen as friends of the Committee, and they both had the correct political beliefs! Thus they joined a select group of military luminaries who enjoyed the Committee’s complete support, joining men like Fremont, McDowell, Pope and Ben Butler, who we’ll be discussing in a few minutes! Now we return to McClellan – Who is Still very much ALIVE in the Public’s Eye!! The Committee had become blind to how their constant criticism of McClellan was contributing to his growing popularity, even though he was no longer in charge of the Army! Democrats now confidently argued that it was Republican rhetoric and the Committee’s pressure that had forced the Army to make senseless head-on attacks like Burnside did at Fredericksburg, costing thousands of lives that everyone knew that McClellan would have protected and saved! Well Horror of Horrors!! Mac was suddenly looking like a future Presidential candidate! They now had to focus on killing his political chances instead of worrying about his possible military future! So they went back to what they did best! They lined up a long list of witnesses who were hostile to McClellan. They questioned Hooker, Heintzleman, Halleck, Burnside and Summner for days! They discussed every aspect of Mac’s time in Command with his greatest military enemies! Then they summoned McClellan himself, and similarly questioned him for two full days. Unlike their earlier hearings, they didn’t challenge a word of his testimony! Their purpose was to simply let him talk away as they recorded everything that he boasted about. Then they compared it to the testimony they had obtained from the other Generals, and wouldn’t you know that it contradicted Mac’s testimony on almost every single detail! They hurriedly wrote their grand report and released it to the Associated Press! The report blamed McClellan for absolutely every setback the Army had so far experienced! It credited him with absolutely nothing positive! Now, I’m sure there’s no need to add another hour to this speech just to everything that was on that list! The reaction was predictably along party lines. Some newspapers ridiculed Mac for favoring peace with the rebels over waging war against them. Some ridiculed him for assembling the most outrageous record of dereliction and inefficiency in recorded military history! But others dismissed it as a bitter Republican partisan attack. Others claimed it was a crude electioneering trick to cover up all the faults of the Lincoln administration! In the end, it all amounted to nothing but debate, and it accomplished nothing! Suddenly we’re at the Close of the 37th Congress… In summary, the Committee’s work had contributed more negatively than positively to the effectiveness of the Union Armies. They had clearly established an agenda that was very different from the one for which they were created! And where they’d applied their greatest efforts, they had had the least results, namely, in trying to influence Lincoln’s policy and military decisions, and in trying to rid the nation of George McClellan! Now the Summer of ’63 Brings us to George Meade. In June a defeated and discouraged Hooker resigned his command over a dispute with Halleck regarding the scope of his authority. Lincoln quickly chose George Meade to take his place. Meade had very strong support among the Division and Corps commanders, and he had absolutely no political ambitions, which Lincoln liked. He took Command on June 28th. Congress wasn’t in session, so there was no immediate reaction from the members of the Committee. Less than 10 days later, after a much praised battlefield success at Gettysburg, Lincoln was greatly distressed when Meade let Lee escape back across the Potomac without a challenge, passing up an opportunity which, coupled with Grant’s victory at Vicksburg, could have ended this seemingly endless war! When the next 5 months passed and Meade still hadn’t confronted Lee, he really had a big problem on his hands! His Army went into winter quarters just as the 38th Congress came into session, and the Committee couldn’t be more eager to go back on the attack! They simply had to get rid of George Meade! Why, you might ask? Well, Meade had absolutely no interest in partisan politics, which must of course mean that he was against Republican politics! And he was one of those do-nothing West Pointers, just like McClellan! And just like McClellan, he did let Lee escape to fight another day, and after that he did a perfect five month long imitation of Mac as he refused to use his Army to actually fight! So the Committee decided on another “Investigation”! To give you an idea of how fair this investigation would be, just consider their opening move! They set out first to restore Joe Hooker’s reputation, because they needed to be able to propose Hooker to replace Meade when they were through with him! So back once again to their basic skill! They lined up all of Hooker’s most loyal supporters. First Dan Sickles testified that if Hooker hadn’t fallen wounded at a critical moment at Chancellorsville, he would have sent reinforcements to Sickles that would have enabled him to easily win the battle in 30 minutes! He also testified that the rebel army had already been demoralized in their efforts to beat Hooker’s Army, but that sadly, with rations running low and a big storm expected, Hooker had no real choice but to retreat across the Rappahannock, to save his army from disaster! Then Albion Howe, a Div Commander in Sedgwick’s Corp, testified it was actually Sedgwick who caused Hooker’s defeat, by repeatedly disobeying orders to come from Fredericksburg to reinforce him with his very large Corps! This of course totally ignored that Hooker had already enjoyed strong numerical superiority over Lee, but had not yet used thousands of his troops! So these men praised Hooker for all the same things Mac had earlier been condemned for! Then as icing on the cake they called Butterfield, who had been Hooker’s loyal Chief of Staff! He testified to Hooker’s brilliance as a commander! Then to dismiss possibly damaging rumors, he closed by testifying that he had never seen Hooker under the influence of alcohol. And then they used the same list of witnesses against Meade, adding Abner Doubleday for good measure! They could have easily let Sickles make their entire case for them! Sickles was perfect! He had his own reputation to protect and rebuild! Less than 24 hours after being carried from the Gettysburg battlefield with his severed leg, Sickles was in a bed in Washington enjoying a personal audience with President Lincoln. He gave Lincoln his account of the battle and he took all the credit he could for the victory. He then continued refining his story, at least until Halleck’s report on the battle was issued. When Halleck praised Meade and singled out Sickles for criticism, Meade’s 2nd Battle of Gettysburg was under way, and the Committee hearings became one of its major battlefields! Several observers recorded seeing Sickles meeting privately with Wade and Chandler even before his testimony began, so they could discuss strategy! Then during the testimony Sickles repeated every criticism of Meade that he’d already been publicly reciting for many months. Doubleday corroborated Sickles’ testimony and added caveats of his own. His most damning comment came in answer to why Meade had removed him as commander of the 1st Corps. “No man who is an anti-slavery man, or an anti-McClellan man, can expect decent treatment in that army as it is presently constituted.” I’m sure the committee gave him a perfect 10!!! On the basis of witnesses like these, Wade and Chandler got still another audience with Lincoln. They presented their evidence and demanded Meade’s removal. They kindly said they would be satisfied with Hooker as his replacement. If Lincoln refused to co-operate, they would be forced to make their testimony public! Well, Lincoln showed little concern for their threats, and their mention of Hooker probably left him more amused than upset! Angry at this rebuff, the Committee next summoned Meade. He addressed all their questions using his official records and his sound military judgment, but he only drew louder and more sustained criticism, from the Committee and now also from Stanton, who was a solid friend of the Committee and whom some generals felt should have been named an official member of it. But now Ulysses S Grant was in command! And all the rules were beginning to change! Lincoln and Grant simply steamrolled the Committee’s further efforts against Meade. Their attacks did continue, including the Committee trying to place the entire blame for the Petersburg Crater fiasco on his shoulders. But with Grant in charge, their strongest rhetoric never amounted to anything except many months of additional heartburn for Meade. Clearly, in targeting Meade for removal the Committee had done nothing even remotely useful for the Union war effort. They simply couldn’t let go of the notion that a person was proven to be disloyal and a traitor simply by reason of his personal political beliefs! Now We Meet Benjamin Butler Ben Butler had long been a favorite of the Committee, and they came quickly to his aid after an obviously unfair action taken against him by Grant in late ’64. Fort Fisher guarded Wilmington NC, which was the last leak in the Union blockade of the Confederacy. Grant planned to take the Fort with a joint naval and army expedition to completely seal the blockade. He didn’t really view this as a very difficult undertaking! He wanted to keep Butler out of it, but Butler discovered Grant’s plans, because the army troops were being taken from Butler’s Department. Then unknown to Grant, Butler assumed Command of the mission! He came up with a plan that he hoped would cause the Delays, confusion and weak execution of Butler’s already weak plan contributed to a total fiasco on Christmas Eve of ’64. Butler cowered and left the scene as soon as he saw things begin to go wrong. The incident was ridiculed by most of the press! Every officer who was involved claimed that the US flag would have been flying over the fort that very day if any other general had been in command. Lincoln asked Grant to investigate, and he found that the entire fault was clearly Butler’s. With the ’64 election over, the political considerations that had kept Butler alive no longer mattered, so Lincoln backed Grant in quickly removing Butler from command. Butler fought back! He accused Grant of removing him because he wouldn’t “uselessly sacrifice” his troops for a military victory, an old McClellan line! Now Mac was branded a traitorous coward for using this logic to explain his moves, but they stood firmly by Butler when he used it. So they decided to open their own investigation, stacking the deck for Butler, even though this meant attacking US Grant! Unluckily for the Committee, on Jan 13th 1865, the day the hearing began, news arrived in DC that the Fort had just fallen in very short order, to a second expedition that Grant had deployed! But still the determined Committee stood by their man! During the hearings, Butler cast all the blame on the Navy whenever the battle itself was being discussed! But he managed to turn the greatest part of his testimony into a discussion of the flaws in Grant’s operations at Petersburg, all with absolutely no objection or challenge from anyone on the Committee. Somehow this testimony gave them all the reason they needed to now summon Grant! This group with no military experience at all was ready to argue that Butler, a political appointee general with no record of military success, had indeed performed admirably, and that Grant, the accomplished General in Chief of the entire Army, deserved to be censured for removing him! Grant’s testimony was fully corroborated by the Committee’s other witnesses, which they did not expect. In addition, Grant’s own official records proved that Butler was never even meant to be involved in the operation! Yet the key finding that was recorded in the record of these proceedings was that Grant looked as if rumors of his excessive drinking were indeed accurate, so the veracity of all of his statements was called into serious question! Almost as preposterous was Zach Chandler’s added comment: “General Butler is earnest in all that he does, and he has done more to injure rebels and put down the rebellion than any other man who has appeared on the stage since the breaking out of the rebellion.” Now to get back to reality, the only significant support that historians have ever given to the Committee with regard to their work on military affairs was that it did manage to prod some of the overly cautious Northern Generals into action! Yet here was a clear case where they defended Butler whose caution had caused him to retreat in the face of possible defeat, while they condemned Grant for ordering the assault! Needless to say, history didn’t bother to take much note of this portion of the Committee’s work! Now we’re in the closing stretch of the talk, and the material just keeps on getting better and better! Consider their parting shot – which they chose to take at none other than… William Tecumseh Sherman… Sherman was certainly an unlikely target for this committee! His warfare against the South had been brutal! He’d terrorized Southern civilians and broken their will to fight. And he left a trail of destruction matched by no other general in the entire war! BUT…
And why did these past transgressions matter now? Because Sherman had also just unintentionally involved himself in matters of civil government in negotiating the surrender of Joe Johnston as he closed the final chapter of the war! On April 21st 1865 he sent Grant the agreement he had just negotiated with Johnston. Lincoln had earlier instructed Grant to avoid any final agreements involving civil governments, but Sherman had never been informed of this. In addition, a recent conversation between Sherman and Stanton had left Sherman thinking that he was permitted to discuss such matters to ease the pain of defeat for the enemy! So in his treaty with Johnston, Sherman agreed to recognize the existing governments of the rebel states, and he guaranteed both the protection of property and the political rights of the residents of those states. President Johnson and his cabinet immediately rejected Sherman’s agreement. Stanton in fact actually ordered Grant to go to Sherman and personally order him to “resume hostilities at the earliest possible moment”! In Stanton’s angry words, Sherman had “given up all for which we had been fighting, and he had thrown away all the advantages we had gained from the war!” Grant went immediately to Sherman’s HQ, and the situation was very quickly remedied. Johnston was immediately informed, and a new surrender was negotiated that was identical to that which Grant had agreed to with Lee. Sherman quickly dispatched a letter to Stanton admitting to and apologizing for his unintended mistake. But even before finding out the result of Grant’s visit to Sherman, Stanton released a copy of Sherman’s agreement to the NY Times! He added his own point by point disagreement with the accord, and in his comments he questioned not only Sherman’s actions, but also his loyalty! Well, Zach Chandler publicly declared that “Sherman’s disgraceful surrender to Johnston is universally and most bitterly condemned.” The public began to swing against Sherman! And so on May 6, with the war completely over, and the nation still mourning Lincoln’s death, the Committee summoned Grant and Sherman to a hearing! This 272nd meeting of the Committee proved to be their final curtain call! Grant appeared with George Meade on the first day, and both testified to Stanton’s incompetence in running the War Department. By the time Sherman appeared the next day, he had already made easy work of explaining his actions to a sympathetic public. Sherman was greeted by only Ben Wade and one other member of the Committee. He defiantly expressed his anger at Stanton, and for the first time anyone could remember, Ben Wade had been left speechless! I could find no record of why Zach Chandler hadn’t attended the session, which proved to be the final session of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. That very day they adjourned for the very last time! Sherman got his final revenge a few days later during the Grand Review of the Federal Armies in Washington. He climbed to the main platform, to shake hands with President Johnson, General Grant and every member of the Cabinet… except for Stanton. When Stanton offered his hand, Sherman refused to take it, delivering his public rebuke to Stanton himself and indirectly to Stanton’s friends on the Committee for their attempt to destroy his reputation. And Now For the Grand Finale! We jump ahead all the way to 1868. President Andrew Johnson has by now alienated almost everyone! The Judiciary Committee voted 5 to 4 to bring impeachment proceedings against him, for “high crimes and misdemeanors”. His trial in the Senate was presided over by Chief Justice Salmon Chase. Of the 54 votes cast, 36 were required for a 2/3 majority to find him GUILTY! Every one of the twelve Democrats understandably voted against Johnson’s impeachment, but so did seven Republicans, which was absolutely shocking in these bitterly contested partisan times! The result? This left only 35 voting for impeachment and 19 against, which was exactly one vote short of finding Andrew Johnson guilty! Now you might ask how this wraps up the story of the Committee? Well, as the Paul Harvey would say, “Now here’s the rest of the story!” The office of Vice President had never been filled after Johnson succeeded Lincoln. And at the beginning of this 40th Congress, Benjamin Wade became the President Pro-tem of the Senate, placing him next in line for the Presidency! So poor Ben became the first and the only person in American history ever to miss becoming President of the United States by exactly one vote! I don’t think Al Gore has any claim on my pity after learning about this! The Seven Republicans who had voted against impeachment did so because they actually feared having the extremely radical Wade as President of the country, even though they believed that Johnson was guilty!!! With less than a year left in Johnson’s term, they could tolerate the Democrat for the duration, knowing full well that Grant was likely to win the Presidency after that! As one newspaper editor wrote, to close the book on this page in history, “Andrew Johnson is innocent, because Ben Wade is guilty of being his successor!” © Jim Santagata. All rights reserved. Jim Santagata is an officer of The Civil War Forum of Metropolitan New York (CWFMNY)
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candidate just four years earlier! He takes firm control as the Commanding General in the Department of the West, where the issue of slavery in Missouri is being hotly contested! 
themselves in during 1861, prior to the start of the 37th Congress! These were not men to stand idly by any longer! If Lincoln and his Generals wouldn’t take charge and provide tough leadership, then they would do it themselves! 
Patterson was born in 1792 and was 69 at the time of the Battle. He had served in the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. After Scott, he was the Union General with the most military experience, so he was clearly not some inexperienced, political appointee! He’d also been given an honorable discharge soon after the battle, so he was already out of the military picture. 
McClellan’s battle plans for his massive Army, not the other generals or the Cabinet or the President himself! Wade personally accused Lincoln of “murdering your country by inches in consequence of the inactivity of the military and the want of a distinct policy on slavery!” The Committee campaigned relentlessly with Lincoln for McDowell to take over the Army in place of McClellan!
began lobbying for a bigger role for him. He was a West Pointer, but he held strong Republican beliefs! Stanton formed the new Army of Virginia, and placed Pope in command of McDowell, Fremont and Banks, a move which finally caused Fremont to decide to leave the Army. 
Fort to fall immediately, bringing him instant accolades… Then, he leaked his plan in advance to Horace Greely of the NY Tribune, hoping to preemptively claim those accolades! 
The Committee knew that at the start of the war Sherman’s philosophy toward the South was conciliatory. He’d also been president of a military academy in Louisiana, and he didn’t want to have to fight against so many of his best friends. He had openly resisted the Emancipation Proclamation! And he didn’t share the views on post-war Reconstruction held by Republicans! 
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