Photo of the Day

It is September 27, 1862.

Ten days have passed since McClellan’s Union forces defeated Lee’s army at Antietam.

Confederate dead from the Battle of Antietam lie in a sunken road separating two farm fields, September 1862.

McClellan has refused Lincoln’s order to pursue and vanquish Lee’s retreating army.

Lee's army in Frederick, Maryland, prior to the Battle of Antietam, September 1862.

Lincoln believes an opportunity to crush Lee’s forces and end the Civil War in the East has been lost.

Contemporaneous cartoon depicting Lincoln as a raccoon. Some of Lincoln's critics, including McClellan, called Lincoln "a gorilla."

And the Secretary of the Interior has told Lincoln an astonishing story at a cabinet meeting.

Engraving by A. H. Ritchie depicts Abraham Lincoln presenting a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet on July 22, 1862.

After the Battle of Antietam, a Union staff officer named Major Key had said the Union objective in the war was not to defeat the Confederate army.

The comment was made in answer to the question why McClellan had not ‘bagged’ Lee’s army after defeating it.

Newspaper illustration of George McClellan's arrival in Frederick, Maryland, five days before the Battle at Antietam.

“That is not the game,” Key had said.

“[T]he object is that neither army shall get much advantage of the other;

“that both shall be kept in the field till they are exhausted,

“when we will make a compromise and save slavery.”

Union soldiers from Pennsylvania.

The comment outraged Lincoln.

And his misgivings about McClellan grew.

McClellan’s closest advisor was Key’s brother.

McClellan and his staff, March 1862.

Was Key’s view of the war widely held among Union officers?

Did McClellan share this view of war strategy?

White House during the Lincoln administration.

So, Key and the other party to this conversation were summoned to the White House for a meeting with Lincoln in his office.

Lincoln in his White House office.

During Lincoln’s questioning, Key did not deny making his comment.

So, Lincoln dismissed him from military service.

McClellan's army in camp, VIrginia, 1862.

Lincoln followed the dismissal with a letter to Key two months later:

“I did not charge, or intend to charge you with disloyalty.

“I had been brought to fear that there was a class of officers in the army, not very inconsiderable in numbers,

“who were playing a game to not beat the enemy when they could,

“on some peculiar notion as to the proper way of saving the Union;

“I dismissed you as an example, and a warning, to that supposed class.”

This cartoon showing George McClellan as Hamlet holding the skull of Abraham Lincoln (Yorick) was published in the New York World during the presidential campaign of 1864. Lincoln defeated McClellan in the race.

Historians still debate whether McClellan shared Key’s view of the war.

George McClellan and his wife, Ellen.

But six weeks after his White House meeting with Key, Lincoln dismissed McClellan from military service too.

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I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda

Banner image: Union soldiers drill near Washington, 1862.