e separation
of parallel columns, which could never have co-operated with
success, and which had no common object had success been possible.
To be sure, it was presumed that McClellan with the Army of the
Potomac, and Banks in the Shenandoah valley, would be operating in
eastern Virginia; but as McClellan was already bent on making
Chesapeake Bay his base, and keeping as far as possible from the
mountains, there was no real connection or correlation between his
purposed campaign and that of the others. Indeed, had he succeeded
in driving Lee from Richmond toward the west, as Grant did three
years later, the feeble columns of National troops coming from West
Virginia would necessarily have fallen back again before the enemy.
If the general scheme had been planned by Lee himself, it could not
have secured for him more perfectly the advantage of interior lines.
Yet it was in substance that which was tried when the spring opened.

When Rosecrans's letter, enclosing his final plan, reached
Washington, McClellan had taken the field, and President Lincoln had
made use of the occasion to relieve him from the direction of all
other forces, so that he might give undivided attention to his
campaign with the Potomac army. This was done by an executive order
on March 11, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. v. p. 54.] which
assigned General Halleck to the command of everything west of a line
drawn north and south through Knoxville, Tennessee, and formed the
Mountain Department from the territory between Halleck and
McClellan. This last department was put under the command of
Major-General John C. Fremont. General Banks was commanding in the
Shenandoah valley, but he was at this time subordinate to McClellan.
These changes were unexpected to both McClellan and Rosecrans. The
change in McClellan's relations to the whole army was the natural
result of his inactivity during the autumn of 1861, and the
consequent loss of confidence in him. The union of Buell's and
Halleck's commands in the west was the natural counterpart to the
concentration of Confederate armies under A. S. Johnston at Corinth,
Miss., and was a step in the right direction. There was, however, a
little too much sentiment and too little practical war in the
construction of the Mountain Department out of five hundred miles of
mountain ranges, and the appointment of the "path-finder" to command
it was consistent with the romantic character of the whole. The
mountains formed