The Maryland Campaign of 1862

On September 4, 1862, General Lee began the Maryland Campaign invading the North with 50,000 Confederate troops. From the article:

"On September 4, advance elements of the army crossed the Potomac into Maryland near Leesburg, Virginia. Over the next three days the main body of the army forded the river and advanced without opposition to Frederick.

In Washington, news that the Confederates were pouring into Maryland in large numbers created a crisis for President Lincoln. The defeat at Manassas had resulted in ugly accusations and finger pointing. Pope claimed that McClellan and the Army of the Potomac had not sustained him as they should have, and he even levied charges against several key officers. Lincoln understood that the army had lost confidence in Pope and he needed to go, but he hoped to have some breathing space to select a new field commander. As a temporary measure he placed McClellan in command of all the troops within the capital’s fortifications. Feelings against McClellan were so strong among members of Lincoln’s cabinet, that several of them presented a declaration for the President stating that they did not believe it was safe to entrust McClellan with the command of “any of the armies of the United States.” But Lee gave Lincoln no respite and the Confederate invasion of Maryland forced him to place an army in the field. Given the pace of events, Lincoln had no choice but to place McClellan in command. McClellan had the army’s confidence. As one of his soldiers put it, “the effect of this man’s presence upon the Army of the Potomac – in sunshine or rain, in darkness or in daylight, in victory or defeat – was electrical.”

There was great irony in Lincoln’s decision for he hoped that McClellan and the army would serve as a tool to not only turn back the Confederate tide, but to provide the opportunity for a war-changing measure. Sensing that the time had come that he might up the ante in the war, Lincoln had prepared an Emancipation Proclamation, a document presaging profound change by adding emancipation to the North’s heretofore single objective of preserving the Union. Lincoln knew that many Northern soldiers and civilians opposed emancipation, on grounds of race, or because of their ambivalence towards slavery or the belief that introducing such an objective would only encourage Southerners to fight more desperately. The Democrats were firmly in this camp and one of the staunchest supporters of this viewpoint was McClellan. Earlier in the war, he expressed his opinion, “I am fighting to preserve the integrity of the Union and the power of the Govt – on no other issue. To gain that end we cannot afford to mix up the negro question – it must be incidental and subsidiary.” But the issue of slavery was hardly incidental or subsidiary. It entangled itself with nearly everything about this war. Slaves formed the economic backbone of the Confederacy. Slaves enabled the Confederacy to mobilize more of its young white men for military service. Even setting the emotional issue of slavery aside, an attack upon slavery struck at the underpinnings of the Southern economy and the Confederates’ ability to wage war. But Lincoln needed to issue his proclamation from a position of strength, or else risk having his measure look like a desperate act of a sinking administration. He needed a battlefield victory and he counted on McClellan and the Army of the Potomac to deliver it."