Army of Northern Virginia: February to September 1862Battle For New Orleans |
Where were Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in all of this? |
Both men were perplexed by McClellan’s slow progress. When McClellan asked them for reinforcements, Lincoln promptly telegraphed that by his reckoning, McClellan had 104,000 men fit and ready for duty, but that McClellan claimed, or owned up to, only 80,000 of them.
Edwin Stanton was secretary of war under Abraham Lincoln. He and the president were both puzzled by how slowly General McClellan moved his troops instead of taking advantage of Confederate errors.