In case of disaster would not a retreat be more difficult by your
plan than mine?"
To these queries McClellan replied by a long and elaborate exposition of
his views. He said that, if the President's plan should be pursued
successfully, the "results would be confined to the possession of the
field of battle, the evacuation of the line of the upper Potomac by the
enemy, and the moral effect of the victory." On the other hand, a
movement in force by the route which he advocated "obliges the enemy to
abandon his intrenched position at Manassas, in order to hasten to
cover Richmond and Norfolk." That is to say, he expected to achieve by a
manoeuvre what the President designed to effect by a battle, to be
fought by inexperienced troops against an intrenched enemy. He
continued: "This movement, if successful, gives us the capital, the
communications, the supplies, of the rebels; Norfolk would fall; all the
waters of the Chesapeake would be ours; all Virginia would be in our
power, and the enemy forced to abandon Tennessee and North Carolina. The
alternative presented to the enemy would be, to beat us in a position
selected by ourselves, disperse, or pass beneath the Caudine forks." In
case of defeat the Union army would have a "perfectly secure retreat
down the Peninsula upon Fort Monroe." "This letter," he afterward wrote,
"must have produced some effect upon the mind of the President!" The
slur was unjust.
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