Encounters*
''pontoon'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜encounter｜enc｜20260319113713-00-•
As for the upper Potomac, McClellan took action to keep Confederates from disrupting the Baltimore and Ohio. In late February, he ordered troops under General Nathaniel P. Banks to move toward Winchester, Virginia. To facilitate that offensive, a light pontoon bridge was thrown across the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry; it was to be supplemented by a permanent bridge of heavy timbers resting upon canal boats anchored in the river. On February 27, when those vessels tried to enter a lift lock in order to move from the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal to the river, they proved 6 inches too wide. The entire operation had to be called off, prompting the usually humorless Chase to quip that the Winchester expedition had died of lockjaw. Horace White of the Chicago Tribune, who aptly described the fiasco as “Ball’s Bluff all over again, minus the slaughter,” reported that Lincoln was in “a h[el]l of a rage” and “swore like a Phillistine” upon learning of it. He banged his fist on a table and exclaimed: “Why in hell didn’t he measure first!” This was the only time Nicolay heard his boss swear, and the secretary’s assistant, William O. Stoddard, said he “never knew Mr. Lincoln so really angry, so out of all patience.”
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