 Two more crises would confront McClellan before he could implement his plans . The Confederate forces under General Joseph E. Johnston withdrew from their positions before Washington , assuming new positions south of the Rappahannock , which completely nullified the Urbanna strategy . McClellan revised his plans to have his troops disembark at Fort Monroe , Virginia , and advance up the Virginia Peninsula to Richmond , an operation that would be known as the Peninsula Campaign . Then , however , McClellan came under extreme criticism in the press and Congress when it was learned that Johnston 's forces had not only slipped away unnoticed , but had for months fooled the Union Army with logs painted black to appear as cannons , nicknamed Quaker Guns . Congress 's joint committee visited the abandoned Confederate lines and radical Republicans introduced a resolution demanding the dismissal of McClellan , but it was narrowly defeated by a parliamentary maneuver . The second crisis was the emergence of the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia , which threw Washington into a panic and made naval support operations on the James River seem problematic . 
