March 23, 1863, The New York Herald
The late Congress, in the estimation of the great body of the people of the loyal States, atoned for numerous blunders and covered a multitude of sins in its broad, comprehensive measures for a vigorous and overwhelming prosecution of the war. The men, money, means and resources of the country at the service of the government, and the powers of the President to draw upon them, are ample for the suppression of the rebellion before the expiration of the approaching summer. The issue is now in the hands of the administration, and a responsibility from which, in the event of another indecisive campaign, President Lincoln need not hope to escape.
Experience should be to him as she is to other thoughtful men – the teacher of wisdom. The terrible instructions of the disastrous three months of June, July and August, 1862, should not be forgotten. Granted that the misfortunes which in those months befel the army of General McClellan and the army of General Pope resulted from the disarrangement of McClellan plans and combinations by intermeddling and ignorant politicians, we still contend that even after the sanguinary seven days’ battles in front of Richmond McClellan would have been able from Malvern Hill to follow up that wholesale slaughter of the rebel army into the rebel capital had reinforcements to his army to the extent of even twenty thousand men been promptly forwarded from Washington. The radical abolition military leaders of Congress had stopped enlistments; all the troops that had been raised were in active service, and the Virginia army of General Pope had absorbed all the reserves that could be spared, and was still so weak that against a forward movement of the enemy it was considered imperatively necessary to bring up the army of General McClellan to his support to save the national capital. Thus failed the peninsular campaign of last summer, when a reserved force at Washington of even twenty thousand men, in addition to the army of General Pope, and the forces in the fortifications of Arlington Heights, &c., would have enabled the government to carry General McClellan triumphantly into Richmond. As it was, the disasters to General Pope’s army at Manassas, which enabled the rebel General Lee to push forward into Maryland, and to capture our twelve thousand men and their valuable supplies of artillery and military stores at Harper’s Ferry, would have been avoided had McClellan’s seasonable idea of fortifying Manassas been adopted. Thus General Pope would have had a secure halting place; thus all his provisions and military supplies of all kinds would have been saved; thus the half famished rebel army, unprepared for a siege, would have been compelled, on short rations and over an impoverished country, to hurry back to Richmond, and thus that hungry and exhausted army could have been annihilated in its retreat by the combined forces of McClellan and Pope.
But the question before us now is that of a reserved force, here and there, from which to strengthen our armies in the field. We think that the experience of last summer clearly indicates the duty of the President. He has the power, and the country will sustain him in immediately calling out a new levy of at least two hundred thousand men. One-half of this number might be distributed in camps of instruction along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and the other half at Washington, Fortress Monroe and at other points in the East. Thus the losses to our armies, East and West, from active campaigning and heavy battles, may be promptly repaired, and thus we shall avoid the necessity of suspending again all offensive operations for an indefinite time in order to raise new armies, while those of the rebellion, kept full by a merciless conscription, are turned again towards the Potomac and Ohio rivers.
It is due to our brave soldiers in the field, it is due to the country, and it is demanded by the sacrifices already made by the people of the loyal States, that our armies now advancing upon the enemy shall not be left to the chances of defeat from the want of reinforcements. The naval branch of the service, too, should be kept full and strong. We therefore, in behalf of the army and navy, in behalf of the people and the Union, and in behalf of the administration itself, earnestly call upon President Lincoln to put the Conscription act at once into practical operation, and all the other laws of Congress looking to an overwhelming and decisive spring and summer campaign. We have shown Mr. Lincoln the way of safety, success and glory, and we warn him to beware of that indecision and timid, temporizing policy which lead to disaster and disgrace.