Face to Face With the Rebels Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded. Gen. George B. McClellan, the former commander of the entire Union force, now commander of the Army of the Potomac alone, started the Peninsula campaign on April 4, 1862, the first step toward fulfilling the promise made to him by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton the previous November: "Now we two will save the country." Having landed tens of thousands of soldiers near the tip of the Virginia Peninsula in the preceding weeks, his plan was to push inexorably northwest toward the Confederate capital at Richmond - and victory in the Civil War. McClellan cut a dashing figure at the outset of the campaign, but in fact "Little Mac," as he was known, had to be prodded by the executives to even submit a plan, let alone execute one. He had been given command the previous July 26, shortly after the fiasco at Bull Run. From then until the winter he had virtually done nothing. Even a visit to his house by the president himself left Lincoln waiting in vain in his parlor for him to return; when he did, McClellan simply bypassed the president and went upstairs to bed. To make matters worse, in the midst of the growing impatience Lincoln and Stanton had with him, the general came down with typhoid fever, keeping him bedridden for several weeks. On Jan. 31, 1862, the president was compelled to issue a direct order for McClellan to move against Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, then in the vicinity of Manassas and Centreville, Va., and then proceed to march overland to Richmond, all to take place in February. The order, however, contained a caveat that McClellan was free to state any objections. He did so in a letter on Feb. 3. He wrote that Johnston's force was too strong to hit directly; instead, he laid out an alternative plan to send a flotilla down the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay and up the Rappahanock River to Urbana, on Virginia's Middle Peninsula. From there, his army would march overland to the York River, cross it and land at West Point - and on to Richmond. Lincoln was cool to the idea. He told McClellan, by "going down the bay in search of a field, instead of fighting near Manassas you are only shifting, and not surmounting, a difficulty." The president predicted he would "find the same enemy, and the same or equal entrenchments, at either place." Moreover, Lincoln feared that shifting so many troops south left the Union capital vulnerable to attack. But he ultimately deferred to the general, and the planning began. Then, on March 7, 1862, Johnston pulled a large portion of his troops from Manassas to Fredericksburg, putting them much closer to Richmond - and McClellan's intended line of attack along the Rappahannock River. Johnston's movement also exposed the depths of McClellan's paranoia: much of the rebel "artillery" was just logs painted to look like cannons, while the 100,000 troops supposedly camped near Manassas numbered closer to 45,000. McClellan now proposed a different route, using Fort Monroe as a staging point to march up the Virginia Peninsula, which separates the York and James rivers. Not only could he avoid a direct encounter with Johnston, but gunboats carrying troops and supplies could flank him on each river as he proceeded to Richmond. Lincoln agreed to this plan, contingent on McClellan leaving enough troops to defend his capital. Lincoln's concern for the protection of Washington was understandable, and he was dismayed to find, once the troops had departed, that McClellan had left nearly 45,000 fewer men to protect the city than promised. McClellan had counted some troops twice, and had included some 23,000 men under Gen. Nathaniel Banks, far afield in the Shenandoah Valley, as part of the capital's defense. Lincoln demanded that McClellan leave 50,000 troops behind. Notwithstanding this acquiescence to his general's plan, he had lost enough confidence in McClellan to demote him, on March 11, from general in chief to the commander of the Army of Potomac. He also created four corps commands within the Army of the Potomac making it easier for him to intervene in McClellan's operation if need be - indeed, one of his first steps was to keep one of them, Irwin McDowell's First Corps, behind to defend Washington. Nevertheless, McClellan's campaign was monumental in its size and complexity. The quartermaster general, Montgomery Meigs, had assembled 400 ships to transport 100,000 men, 14,592 animals, 5 locomotives, 80 railcars, 1,224 wagons, 74 ambulances and 103 cannons. The embarkation was preceded by an impassioned speech by McClellan to his men where he stated, "I will bring you now face to face with the rebels ... I am to watch over you as a parent over his children; and you know that your general loves you from the depths of his heart. It shall be my care ... to gain success with the least possible loss. Hundreds of stevedores, many of them contrabands who had escaped slavery to Fort Monroe, met the ships upon their arrival in Virginia. This may have marked the beginning of an ironic reversal of the use of former slaves by the respective armies. The same slaves that may have been responsible for the earthworks that would later hinder McClellan in his mission up the Peninsula were now being used to work the massive logistics necessary for such an enormous mission. This was a microcosm of the evolving attitude of the Union in general as it began to see one of the real advantages of emancipation: depriving the South of logistical support and providing the same for itself. McClellan himself arrived on April 2. As he later wrote in his memoirs, he feared that Lincoln's interventions and subtractions had significantly weakened his forces, leaving him with just 42,000 soldiers instead of 121,000 (19th-century military planners often had only a vague estimate of the number of troops under their command, and it's likely that McClellan was being overly conservative in his count). Moreover, because the Confederate ironclad Virginia was still on the prowl and Confederate batteries lined the entrance to the York River, he had to abandon his plan to have gunboat accompaniment up the Peninsula. Completely ready or not, McClellan proceeded with the force at hand at 6 a.m. on April 4. Confederate forces on the Peninsula, under Gen. John Bankhead Magruder, were centered in Yorktown, about 25 miles northwest from Fort Monroe; reports of his strength varied, from 11,000 to 15,000 men. McClellan's plan was to have his three corps outflank Magruder to the west, cutting off any retreat up the Peninsula (in much the same manner, and in the same location, that George Washington did against Lord Cornwallis, 80 years before). However, it soon became apparent that McClellan's maps of the area were inaccurate. Rivers like the Warwick and the Poquoson, thought to flow parallel to the route of the army, actually ran across the peninsula. This not only required valuable time to ford the rivers, but also gave Magruder a natural place behind which to construct entrenchments. Notwithstanding these problems, by the end of the first day McClellan's three corps had collectively occupied Big Bethel and Young's Mill, small towns 12 miles up the peninsula, without bloodshed. April 5 dawned with a change in the weather, both figuratively and literally. Heavy showers turned the roads into quagmires that slowed McClellan's army, giving Magruder time to entrench himself across the 12-mile width of the peninsula. The Third Corps, in the lead, reached Yorktown by afternoon. But McClellan's Fourth Corps, marching to the west of the Third, encountered a strong Confederate fortification at the village of Lee's Mill, along the Warwick River. The approach to the river and the path of any possible assault on the rebel position was dominated by thick forests, marshes and swamps. Rather than push through, the ever-cautious McClellan, perhaps justified in this instance, decided to pause. He had also received inaccurate estimates of the size of the Confederate force from Allan Pinkerton, his chief of intelligence, as well as observation balloons. Magruder shrewdly reinforced his adversary's hesitation by having his troops parade in and out of the woods and around the earthworks, giving the impression that reinforcements were steadily arriving (and for good measure, he had his band play loudly after dark to reinforce the frenzied activities by the rebels). It must have worked even beyond Magruder's expectations; McClellan became convinced that there were 100,000 Confederates holding Yorktown. He telegraphed his concerns to Washington and asked for reinforcements. Meanwhile, he decided to lay siege of Yorktown, despite direct orders from Lincoln to attack, warning that hesitation would result in another Bull Run-like fiasco. McClellan's hesitation allowed for Johnston's troops, which had been camped at Fredericksburg, to reach the Peninsula in time to provide real reinforcements. When Johnston rode down from Richmond and discovered that there had been no federal attack, he could not believe his luck. "No one but McClellan could have hesitated to attack," he said. For now, the dash up the Peninsula was halted in its tracks. Sources: John V. Quartstrein and Dennis P. Mroczkowski, "Fort Monroe: The Key to the South"; James McPherson, "Battle Cry of Freedom"; Christopher Nelson, "Mapping the Civil War"; Roy C. Basler, ed., "Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln." Bernie Siler is a lawyer and historian in Washington. He is also an adjunct professor at Montgomery College. As a Civil War re-enactor with the 54th Massachusetts, he has appeared in the films "Glory," "Andersonville" and "Tad" and the National Geographic documentary on the film "The Conspirator."