A full description of this mid-winter campaign would be out of place in this sketch, and the same may be said of the abortive Mud Campaign six weeks later, which had for its object the passage of the Rappahannock by a movement above Fredericksburg.  Both Franklin and Smith took part in this ill planned and poorly executed undertaking.  The weather and the roads were against it, and it soon came to an end quite as pitiful, though not so costly, as its predecessor.

Following these failures, Burnside, in futile desperation, prepared an order relieving Franklin, Smith and several other officers of inferior rank from duty, and dismissing Hooker, Brooks, Newton and Cochrane from the service.  He made no further charge against these officers than that they had no confidence in himself, and this much was probably true, but it would have been equally as true of any other generals serving at that time in the Army of the Potomac.  The President, instead of approving the order, it should he noted, at once relieved Burnside and assigned Hooker to the command.  Sumner and Franklin both of whom outranked Hooker were relieved from further service with that army, while Smith was transferred to the command of the Ninth Corps, which he held but a short time, owing to the failure of the Senate to confirm him as a major general.  This was doubtless brought about by misrepresentation, made to the Senate committee on the Conduct of the War, but as the action of the Senate and its committees in reference to confirmations were secret, no correct explanation can now he given of the allegations against Smith, though they were generally attributed at the time to Burnside and his friends, and while they were neither properly investigated nor supported, they resulted in reducing Smith to the rank of brigadier general and depriving him of the high command which he would have otherwise continued to hold.

It is worthy of note that before these changes were made, and while the Army of the Potomac was still floundering in the mud under the inefficient command of Burnside, Franklin and Smith joined in the letter previously referred to, advising the President to abandon the line on which the Army was then operating, with such ill success, and after reinforcing it to the fullest extent, to send it back again to the line of the James River.  This letter was doubtless written in entire good faith, but at a time when it seemed to be impossible for the government, even if it had so desired, to carry out its recommendations.  Its only immediate effect was to arouse the antagonism of Mr. Stanton against these two able officers, and to deprive the country for a while of their services.  A wiser and more temperate Secretary of War would have filed and ignored it, or sent for the officers and explained why he deemed their advice to be impracticable at that time.  That, however, was not Mr. Stanton’s way.  Although intensely patriotic and in earnest, he was imperious and overbearing both to high and low alike, and preferred to banish and offend rather than to listen and conciliate.