Excerpt from The Army of the Potomac: Sketch the Phantom Column Poem

Arms in their hands, were again cowed and dared not carry on their schemes for dissolution in the light of day. With scarce two weeks to equip and rehabilitate a dis pirited army, he met the exultant enemy at Antietam, and defeated and drove them across the Potomac. He has been censured for not following up this victory, and so was the gallant Meade because he did not capture or drive the enemy into the river after the grand repulse at Gettysburg. On both occasions the great and glorious Army of the Potomac had been sorely pressed by three days of most terrible fighting, and the commanders, uninformed of the demoralization of their foes, were um willing to risk a pursuit which they feared might deprive them of the immeasurable benefit of their victories. But both had accomplished great results: they had driven back the invaders of the North and saved the nation. The enemy crossed the Potomac, and sought rest in the Shenandoah Valley. Of the seventy thousand men with which Lee entered Maryland, thirty thousand were killed, wounded or prisoners of war. The invasion had utterly failed of its purpose in rallying Marylanders to the Confederate standard, for the people were apathetic, and, instead of receiving a welcome as friends, they found themselves under the disadvantage, which confronted our troops almost always during the war, of campaigning in an enemy's country. After a month spent in replen ishing supplies and putting the army in condition for an advance, mcclellan, by a skillfully concealed movement, reached Warrenton, completely severing the Confederate army, a part of which had been detached to Culpeper, while the rest remained in the Shenandoah Valley. Here was mcclellan's opportunity, and it was his purpose to fall upon each wing and beat it in detail, when the order came from Washington relieving him from the command of the army. The order was summary and brief: By direction of the President of the United States, it is ordered that major-general mcclellan be relieved from the command of the Army of the Potomac, and that Major General Burnside take command of that army. No.

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