George McClellan

10 Key excerpts on "George McClellan"

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  The Wikipedia Legends of the Civil War

  The Incredible Stories of the 75 Most Fascinating Figures from the War Between the States

  • (Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Skyhorse

    (Publisher)

  George B. McClellan George Brinton McClellan (December 3, 1826–October 29, 1885) was an American soldier, civil engineer, railroad executive, and politician. A graduate of West Point, McClellan served with distinction during the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), and later left the Army to work in railroads until the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Early in the conflict, McClellan was appointed to the rank of major general and played an important role in raising a well-trained and organized army, which would become the Army of the Potomac in the Eastern Theater; he served a brief period (November 1861 to March 1862) as general-in-chief of the Union Army. McClellan organized and led the Union army in the Peninsula Campaign in southeastern Virginia from March through July 1862. It was the first large-scale offensive in the Eastern Theater. Making an amphibious clockwise turning movement around the Confederate Army in northern Virginia, McClellan’s forces turned west to move up the Virginia Peninsula, between the James and York Rivers, landing from the Chesapeake Bay, with the Confederate capital, Richmond, as their objective. Initially, McClellan was somewhat successful against General Joseph E. Johnston, but the emergence of General Robert E. Lee to command the Army of Northern Virginia turned the subsequent Seven Days Battles into a partial Union defeat. However, historians note that Lee’s victory was in many ways pyrrhic as he failed to destroy the Army of the Potomac and suffered a bloody repulse at Malvern Hill. Historian Stephan Sears in To the Gates of Richmond notes McClellan’s Army of the Potomac inflicted 20,204 losses while only sustaining 15,855 themselves. McClellan’s army would be withdrawn from the Peninsula in August 1862. Military theorist Emory Upton noted at the time that “The worst that could be said of the Peninsula campaign was that thus far it had not been successful

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  Military Campaigns of the Civil War

  The Peninsula and the Seven Days

  • Gary W. Gallagher, Gary W. Gallagher(Authors)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • The University of North Carolina Press

    (Publisher)

  The Seven Days of George Brinton McClellan

  JOHN T. HUBBELL

  History and historians have not been kind to George Brinton McClellan. His many critics have charged him with a multitude of faults — passivity, indecisiveness, “demons and delusions,” and fears that bordered on actual cowardice. Stephen Sears ranks him as “inarguably the worst” commander of the Army of the Potomac. Yet his contemporaries expected great things from him. Early impressions, in 1861, were of a poised, energetic, and engaging young officer. Indeed, a “look of competence” was one of McClellan’s “most noticed characteristics.” He looked good in uniform and on horseback, and he “made it a point to be seen often” by his soldiers. Nor is command presence a small matter, especially among new soldiers. They would in time sort out the real leaders, but on the eve of the great campaigns of 1862 a general who looked the part had an advantage.

  McClellan was at an advantage as well in terms of education and experience, and he had earned a small reputation as a military intellectual. Yet his public experience, in the army and in the world of commerce, did not preclude a habit of excuse-making, uninformed caution, and the blaming of superiors, military and political, for problems great and small. A noticeable and unattractive social snobbery led him to give undue credit to his “aristocratic” opponents and to sell short his own soldiers, no matter how he publicly flattered them. He was given to petulance and alternating bouts of arrogance and self-pity, tendencies often revealed in the same letter, if not in the same paragraph. His strategy could be grandiose without being grand, in the sense of being realistically comprehensive. He showed scant regard for military practicalities and small appreciation of terrain or logistics.1 Napoleon was his hero, but as an army commander he was not Napoleonic, a trait defined by Peter Michie as the “ready adaption of means to the end in view, followed by celerity of movement to gain strategical advantage.”2

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  Conflict and Command

  Civil War History Readers, Volume 1

  • John T. Hubbell(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • The Kent State University Press

    (Publisher)

  McClellan: A Vindication of the Military Career of General George B. McClellan: A Lawyer’s Brief (New York: The Neale Publishing Co., 1916).

  3 . For two critiques of the tremendous amount of attention historians have devoted to McClellan’s personality in particular, see Joseph L. Harsh, “On the McClellan-Go-Round,” Civil War History 19 (June 1973): 101–18, and Rowland, George B. McClellan and Civil War History, 45–75. For a prime example of the tendency of scholars of Civil War command relations to place a heavy emphasis on personalities, which goes so far as to explicitly employ psychoanalysis in its effort to explain McClellan, see Joseph T. Glatthaar, Partners in Command: The Relationships Between Leaders in the Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1994), esp. 237–42.

  4 . McClellan to Cameron, [Oct. 31, 1861], in Sears, ed., Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, 115–18.

  5 . David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 318; Benjamin Wade to Zachariah Chandler, Oct. 8, 1861, Zachariah Chandler Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., container 1/reel 1. Depository hereafter cited as LC. McClellan’s report, Aug. 4, 1863, in U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols., plus index and atlas (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1880–1901), ser. 1, vol. 5: 35. Hereafter cited as OR; all references are to series 1 unless otherwise noted. Sears, George B. McClellan, 129; George B. McClellan, McClellan’s Own Story: The War for the Union, The Soldiers Who Fought It, The Civilians Who Directed It, and His Relations to It and to Them, ed. William C. Prime (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1887), 226–27; McClellan, Memorandum for the Consideration of His Excellency the President, submitted at his request, [Aug. 2, 1861], in Sears, ed., Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan,

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  Statesmen And Soldiers Of The Civil War; A Study Of The Conduct Of War

  • Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Golden Springs Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Lincoln’s answer to the defeat of Bull Run was a call for 500,000 volunteers for three years, and an exercise of certain of his Presidential powers which caused many Senators and Congressmen to make wry faces. He also brought General McClellan from Western Virginia, where he had gained a substantial success, to command the troops around Washington. McClellan was then thirty-nine years old. He had been an officer of the Engineers in the United States Army and had served with credit on General Scott’s staff during the Mexican War. On leaving the army, he had been first chief engineer and then vice-president of the Central Illinois Railway. While in that position he had taken a keen interest in politics, and had been an active supporter of Douglas, Lincoln’s chief political opponent. This was one of the causes of his undoing. Not that there is the smallest evidence that McClellan’s political views ever influenced Lincoln’s attitude towards his general, but it did not make McClellan very favorably disposed towards Lincoln, and it was the cause of suspicion and distrust in certain members of Lincoln’s entourage. Thus there were, from the first, seeds of trouble which quickly germinated and grew.

  McClellan was undoubtedly a good soldier. Lee after the war declared that of the Union generals the ablest was “McClellan by long odds”;{45} but Lee knew McClellan only as an opponent. Grant also after the war declared: “If McClellan had gone into war as Sherman, Thomas, or Meade, had fought his way along and up, I have no reason to suppose he would not have won as high distinction as any of us.”{46} Grant had opportunity of knowing of McClellan’s performances both as a commander of troops in the field and as a commander-in-chief in relations with a Government, and his judgment is probably the more correct of the two.

  When McClellan was brought to Washington he was a young man of attractive manner and appearance; he had real gifts of organization and leadership, and was quickly not only respected but loved by his men. He became the idol of the press, which dubbed him the “Young Napoleon” — a nickname not without reference to his habit of issuing somewhat flamboyant proclamations to his troops. Everyone from the President downwards was anxious to serve and help him. As he wrote to his wife, “I find myself in a most strange position here, President, Cabinet, General Scott, all deferring to me. By some strange operation of magic I seem to have become a power in the land.”{47} In October General Scott resigned, and Lincoln made McClellan Commander-in-Chief. All this seems to have turned the General’s head. He was lacking in the elements of courtesy to the President, of whom the best he could say was, “He is honest and means well,”{48} while admitting that Lincoln had gone out of his way to be civil to him. After the first enthusiasm for him had cooled there was a good deal of political intriguing against him, and McClellan, finding the difficulties which he had himself in great measure created becoming too much for him, classed, in his anger, all the administration in Washington as “unscrupulous and false.”{49}

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  Civil War Witnesses and Their Books

  New Perspectives on Iconic Works

  • Gary W. Gallagher, Stephen Cushman(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • LSU Press

    (Publisher)

  2

  Many things stand out here, among them one of Roosevelt’s favorite adjectives, “mighty,” which appears two other times in the same address; the selective listing of McClellan victories out of chronological order, as they also appear on the plinth of his statue; and the familiar description of McClellan as an excellent organizer much loved by the rank and file he organized. By the time of Roosevelt’s speech, this description had established itself as orthodoxy in public memory of the Civil War, even among McClellan’s critics. With the appearance in 1901 of Peter S. Michie’s biography General McClellan in the Great Commanders series, published in New York by D. Appleton and Company, the orthodoxy became available to Roosevelt, sworn in after the assassination of William McKinley that year, in this neatly compressed, one-sentence form: “But whatever may be the judgment that history will ultimately formulate with regard to McClellan’s qualifications in the domain of strategy and tactics, there will be no divided opinion with respect to his talents and attainments for the organization of armies, and the wonderful power that he possessed of implanting in the hearts of his soldiers a personal affection and devotion that has never been excelled.”3

  MacMonnies’s equestrian statue of George B. McClellan, with the general’s right arm akimbo and a fisted hand on his hip, faces stoutly south, down Connecticut Avenue, presumably to keep a green oxidized eye on Virginia and its troublesome siblings, although in the 1862 campaigns of the Peninsula and Sharpsburg-Antietam McClellan usually found himself turning toward some combination of north and west. In facing south today, however, the bronze commander also stares unblinking at a much nearer monument to his place in popular memory, one that sits only about five hundred yards away, near the intersection of Connecticut with Florida Avenue. It is a snugly dim, wood-featured tavern with the archly punning name McClellan’s Retreat.

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  Military Campaigns of the Civil War

  • Gary W. Gallagher, Gary W. Gallagher(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • The University of North Carolina Press

    (Publisher)

  About the time Joseph Hooker assumed command of the army in January 1863, Warren wrote a lengthy essay in which he attributed reports of the demoralization of the army to the failure of Burnside and Hooker to shower all of the troops with the same love and devotion they reserved for their old commands. McClellan had done so, he said, but “those who live in Washington city, who have never heard the hiss of an enemy’s bullet, who live in an atmosphere of envy, malice, and all uncharitableness” had failed to appreciate what manner of man they had in McClellan. 52 So it would always be, to some extent, with the Army of the Potomac. Not everyone who served in its ranks would have welcomed Lincoln’s characterization of the army as “McClellan’s bodyguard,” but they would have interpreted the president’s remark as a caustic comment typical of a man who did not understand war. What shaped the peculiar character of this army was not simply the imprint of the character and personality of its first commander. The legacy of that general’s troublesome relationship with the authorities in Washington also played a role, as did a pervasive belief that Republican newspaper editors and, to a lesser extent, the northern public held unreasonable expectations for the army. Many generals, officers, and men shared McClellan’s reluctance to renew battle along Antietam Creek on September 18; many echoed his complaints about the feebleness of resupply efforts during October; many agreed that a winter campaign was out of the question; and a good number questioned the degree to which political demands influenced military decisions. McClellan may have reinforced these tendencies, but they endured long after he left. Perhaps so many members of the Army of the Potomac cherished their association with George B. McClellan in part because he was indeed one of them. NOTES 1. Marsena R. Patrick, Inside Lincoln’s Army: The Diary of Marsena Rudolph Patrick, ed. David S

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  Lincoln's Men

  How President Lincoln Became Father To an Army an

  • William C. Davis(Author)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • Free Press

    (Publisher)

  Not everyone expressed such admiration. In fact, within Mr. Lincoln’s army there had been a slowly growing division for some time when 1862 dawned, the single source of it being the commander of that army, General George B. McClellan. His reception in Washington, and the adulation heaped upon him from all sides—and even by Lincoln at first—went rapidly to a head that was in any case always ready for expansion. When people told him he was the savior of the army, of the capital, and even of the nation, he felt no inclination to disagree. Certainly he did work a wonder with the raw material that Lincoln and the patriotic outpouring of the North gave him. The command that on August 17, 1861, the War Department dubbed the Army of the Potomac was now the finest yet seen in the hemisphere. It seemed only fitting when, on November 1, Lincoln made him general-in-chief, replacing the retiring General Scott; the country at large would not know of the shameful way McClellan had systematically undercut the old hero to force him out.

  One problem was that, believing what the press and an admiring circle of sycophants on his staff and high command said about him, Little Mac bristled at being subordinate to the civil authority, and especially to Lincoln, of whom he almost instantly developed a condescending and patronizing opinion. He not only regarded the president as his intellectual and social inferior, but also passed on that attitude to those around him—or even fostered it. Whereas the common soldiers and their company officers almost universally spoke respectfully, or affectionately, of Lincoln, poking only good-humored fun at his quaint looks, McClellan’s set adopted an aggressively sneering stance. When the 1st New York Artillery’s Charles S. Wainwright, one of Little Mac’s most devoted admirers, encountered Lincoln at the theater on January 10, 1862, he professed disgust at the president’s ugliness. When Lincoln gave the audience the smile that the soldiers always found warm and open, Wainwright thought he “grinned like a great baboon.”3

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  Civil War America

  What Their Memoirs Can Teach Us Today

  • Stephen Cushman(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • The University of North Carolina Press

    (Publisher)

  4

  Abridged as it may be, Roosevelt’s affirmative summary of McClellan’s career scrupulously avoided negative, hyperbolic caricatures of him in wide circulation, beginning with wartime newspapers and political cartoons, continuing in recent memory with Ken Burns’s documentary The Civil War (1990), and still flourishing today. In March 1862 Nathaniel Hawthorne, along with publisher William D. Ticknor, traveled from Massachusetts to Washington “to look a little more closely at matters” there and subsequently published his account of the trip as the controversial essay “Chiefly about War-Matters,” printed in the July 1862 Atlantic Monthly , where the author signed himself “A Peaceable Man.” In this essay, which some read partly as a tongue-in-cheek hoax, especially in its fictional footnotes, Hawthorne noted meeting McClellan against the backdrop of “a most fierce and bitter outcry, and detraction loud and low, against [him], accusing him of sloth, imbecility, cowardice, treasonable purposes, and, in short, utterly denying his ability as a soldier, and questioning his integrity as a man.” In contrast, Hawthorne offered his own more favorable endorsement, taking his cue from the cheers of McClellan’s soldiers as the general rode past them: “If he is a coward, or a traitor, or a humbug, or anything less than a brave, true, and able man, that mass of intelligent soldiers, whose lives and honor he had in charge, were utterly deceived, and so was this present writer; for they believed in him, and so did I; and had I stood in the ranks, I should have shouted with the lustiest of them.”5

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  The Maryland Campaign of September 1862, Volume I

  South Mountain

  • Ezra Carman, Thomas G. Clemens, Thomas G. Clemens(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Savas Beatie

    (Publisher)

  In the cabinet meeting of the 2nd of September, the whole subject was freely discussed. The Secretary of War disclaimed any responsibility for the action taken, saying that the order to McClellan was given directly by the President, and that General Halleck considered himself relieved from responsibility by it, although he acquiesced and approved the order. He thought that McClellan was now in a position where he could shirk all responsibility, shielding himself under the President. Mr. Lincoln took a different view of the transaction, saying that he considered General Halleck as much in command of the army as ever, and that General McClellan had been charged with special functions, to command the troops for the defense of Washington, and that he placed him there because he could see no one who could do so well the work required. 11 The writers quoted other reasons for President Lincoln’s actions: It was not alone for his undoubted talents as an organizer and drill-master that he was restored to his command. It was a time of gloom and doubt in the political as well as the military situation. The factious spirit was stronger among the politicians and the press of the Democratic party than at any other time during the war. Not only in the States of the border, but in many Northern States, there were signs of sullen discontent among a large body of the people that could not escape the notice of a statesman so vigilant as Lincoln. It was of the greatest importance, not only in the interest of recruiting, but also in the interest of that wider support which a popular Government requires from the general body of its citizens, that causes of offense against any large portion of the community should be sedulously avoided by those in power. General McClellan had made himself the leader of the Democratic party. Mr

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  The Civil War Generals

  Comrades, Peers, Rivals?In Their Own Words

  • Robert Girardi(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Zenith Press

    (Publisher)

  Ohio in the War , 1:308, 309

  “McClellan is not the man to make himself popular with the masses. His manners are reserved and retiring. He was not popular either in Chicago or Cincinnati, when at the head of large railroad interests. He has never studied or practiced the art of pleasing, and indeed has not paid attention to it which every man whose position is dependent on popular favor must pay, if he expects to retain his position.” —George G. Meade, Life and Letters , 1:253

  “Before this reaches you, you will have read of the removal of McClellan. God be praised that this act of justice to the army and the country, so long delayed, has been consummated at last. It is better to the country than a decisive victory over the enemy. Indeed, I am not sure that it is in itself a decisive victory over rebels at home.” —James A. Garfield, The Wild Life of the Army , p. 176

  “I consider him one of the weakest and most timid generals that ever led an army. This opinion is held by General Hooker and nearly every prominent one of his field marshals … He is constantly scheming in politics, and I think the Government would at once remove him but for the fear that it would strengthen the Democratic party too much in the coming election … I have no hope for the success of our arms in the East till McClellan is removed entirely from active command.” —James A. Garfield, The Wild Life of the Army , p. 315

  JOHN A. MCCLERNAND Major general. Illinois Congressman. Veteran of Black Hawk War. Division and corps commander, Army of the Tennessee.

  “John A. McClernand … By profession a lawyer, he was in his first of military service. Brave, industrious, methodical, and of unquestioned cleverness, he was rapidly acquiring the art of war.” —Lew Wallace, Battles and Leaders

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