Chapter 8: With the Army of the Potomac

Carleton’s account of the battle of Bull Run, where the Union forces first won the day, and then lost it through a panic, was so graphic, accurate, and comprehensive, that the readers of the Boston Journal at once poured in their requests that the same writer should continue his work and reports.

From his position with the Union batteries he had a fine view of the whole engagement. Many of the statements which he made were, as to their accuracy, perfect. For example, when the Confederates fired continuous volleys, making one long roll of musketry, mingled with screams, yells, and cheers, while their batteries sent a rain of shell and round shot, grape and canister, upon a body of three companies of Massachusetts men, Carleton stood with his watch in his hand to see how long these raw troops could stand such a fire. It is wonderful to read to-day his volume of “Army Correspondence,” and find so little to correct.

Besides letters written on the field during the first of four battles, he wrote from Washington in review of the whole movement. He was not at all discouraged by what had happened, believing that the bitter experience, though valuable, was worth its cost. He does not seem to have been among the number of those who expected that the great insurrection would be put down in a few months. Like every one else, he was at first smitten with that glamour which the Western soldiers, led by Grant, soon learned to call “McClellanism.” It was with genuine admiration that he noticed the untiring industry and superb organizing powers of “Little Mac;” who, whatever his later faults may have been, was the man who transformed a mob of militia into that splendid machine animated by an unquailing soul, “The Army of the Potomac.” Yet in the cool light of history, we must rate Gen. George B. McClellan as the military Erasmus of this war of national reformation, while Grant was its Luther.

Late in August, after ten days’ rest at home to recruit exhausted energies, Carleton was once more at his post in the “City of Magnificent Distances—and big lies,” attempting to draw out the truth from whole maelstroms of falsehood. He writes: “Truly this is a city given to lying.” He had a habit of hunting down falsehoods, of tracing rumors to their holes. Many an hour in the blazing sun, consuming his strength, did this hater of lies spend in chasing empty breaths. Once he rode forty miles on horseback, simply to confirm or reject an assertion. Very early, however, he learned to put every report upon the touchstone, and under the nitric acid of criticism. He quickly gained experience, and saved much vexation to himself and his readers. In this way his letters became what they are, like coins put in the pyx, and mintage that survives the best of the goldsmiths. When read thirty-five years after the first drying of the ink, we have a standard of truth, needing correction, for the most part, only here and there, in such details as men clearly discern only in the perspective of time.

Under McClellan’s strict orders, Washington became less of a national bar-room. The camps were made models of cleanliness, hygiene, and comfort, and schools of strict preparation for the stern work ahead. Carleton often rode through them, and out on the picket-line. Among his other studies, being a musician, he soon learned the various notes and tones of round and conical bullet, of globular and case shot, of shell and rocket, as an Indian learns the various sounds and calls of birds and beasts. Never wearing eye-glasses, until very late in life, and then only for reading, he was able, when standing behind or directly before a cannon, to see the missile moving as a black spot on the invisible air, and from a side view to perceive the short plug of condensed air in front of a ball, which is now clearly revealed by instantaneous photography. He soon noted how the variation in the charge of powder, and the curve of the rifle, changed the pitch of the ball, and how and why certain shells with ragged edges of lead scream like demons, and work upon the nerves by their sound and fury rather than their total of results. He soon discovered that in a battle the artillery, except at short ranges, and in the open, bears no comparison in its killing power to the rifles of the infantry. Like an old soldier, he soon came to look with something like contempt upon the ponderous cannon and mortars, and to admire the low firing of the old veteran musket-men.