Report on the organization and campaigns of the Army of the Potomac; to which is added an account of the campaign in Western Virginia, with plans of battlefields

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REPORT ON THE ORGANIZATION AND CAMPAIGNS OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC TO WHICH IS ADDED AN ACCOUNT OF THE CAMPAIGN IN WESTERN VIRGINIA, WITH PLANS OF BATTLE-FIELDS. BY GEORGE B. McCLELLA&jC MAJOE-GENEBAL C«ITED STATES ARMT. NEW YORK: SHELDON & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, 335 BROADWAY, cor. WORTH STREET. 1864. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by SHELDON & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. Smith & McDot/gal, Stereo typers. C. S. Westcott & Co. Printers, "When the Report which is given in this volume was prepared and sent to the Adjutant-General, it was impossible to include in it the particulars of the Campaign in Western Yirginia, for the reason that important papers re lating to it had not come to my hands.

During the various changes which had occurred in the Western Department, they had been moved from place to place, and efforts to reclaim them from among the papers of other officers, succeeded only a few weeks ago. In order to com plete the history of the campaigns in which I have been engaged, it has seemed proper to prefix to the official report a simple narrative of the Campaign in Western Yirginia. February 22, The attack upon Fort Sumter on the 12th of April, 1861, took the Northern people by surprise, and found them entirely unprepared to carry on a serious contest. Our people were born and educated amidst the blessings of peace and material prosperity ; they were in the habit of yielding obedience to the laws of the country and the will of the majority as ex pressed in the elections, and had become accustomed to see great political excitement and animosity calmly subside through the deference of the minority to the decision of the majority.

Thus to the last moment it was difficult to realize that a great civil war was imminent ; and men clung fondly to the hope that the good sense of both sections would in the eleventh hour find some honorable solution to the difficulty, as had so often been the case before. It is probable that neither section fully realized the power and violence of the passions evoked, and that each flattered itself with the delusive hope that the other would yield some thing, rather than risk the inevitable and terrible consequences of an appeal to arms. Each underrated the strength, resources and courage of the other. These mutual misunderstandings, ably used by a comparatively small number of ambitious and unscrupulous men, were at their height when the insult offered the national flag in the harbor of Charleston aroused both par ties to something like a true sense of their condition.