"Opinion of McClellan" Topic

History seems, to my admittedly non-expert eye, to have concluded that George McClellan was great at organizing, equipping, training and motivating an army, but he was not the man to successfully lead that army into battle, due to an overabundance of caution and a lack of aggressiveness that characterized other leaders such as Lee or Grant.

My question is why? Was he:

1. Just timid, lacking down deep the true confidence in his ability to fight, or when he did fight, to go full out?

2. A true believer that he was grossly outnumbered by the Confederates and that a strategy of caution was the only way to prevent the destruction of his army?

3. A man with a large ego who rose to the top with dizzying speed and who, having attained that lofty perch, was afraid to risk battle, and thus defeat, which would have harmed his reputation?

I personally think it was a combination of all three and think about what massive opportunities were missed due to his shortcomings. Imagine if Grant had been in command at Antietam…

Your thoughts?

4. All the bad press heaped upon early Union generals by the congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War. If you weren't a rabid Republican you were at least suspect and quite possibly a traitor.

He did manage to get to the gates of Richmond, just like Grant but without the 50,000 casualties.

He had his limitations (maybe a lot) but for a different appraisal you might want to read Taken at the Flood by Joseph Harsh.

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Difference is Big Red, he was driven away, Grant wasn't. And Grant didn't go missing onto riverboats while battles were being fought.

He was a planner and an organiser but no gambler, and all generals have to have a streak of that in them. He also didn't react well if something went wrong.

He would have been superb in Hallecks job, except he wouldn't have left the field generals alone.

1 Sharpsburg was a total leadership failure. If he had only just attack with his whole army and the war would in the East would have been over.

I'll go with Option 3.

You only need to look at his attitude and opinion of Lincoln to take that route.

I could easily be persuaded on the Halleck angle though.

He did manage to get to the gates of Richmond, just like Grant but without the 50,000 casualties.

He had his limitations (maybe a lot) but for a different appraisal you might want to read Taken at the Flood by Joseph Harsh.

Agree with Rapier. It helps to have a navy with total command of the sea to cut down on casualties getting to your objective. And when he got there and met significant opposition he couldn't backpedal fast enough.

Big Red, thanks for the book suggestion, it looks interesting. I might just add it to my collection.

Wackmole9…Amen.

He did manage to get to the gates of Richmond, just like Grant but without the 50,000 casualties.

He got there facing Joe Johnston, a man who was as cautious as Little Mac. Grant got there facing Lee.

"Difference is Big Red, he was driven away, Grant wasn't. And Grant didn't go missing onto riverboats while battles were being fought."

One other difference, Lincoln, Stanton and Halleck didn't interfere with Grant's plan. McClellan had designated McDowell's Corps to cover his right flank. The upper leadership panicked at Jackson's Valley Campaign and withdrew McDowell, informing McClellan that they had done so. Where did Lee attack? Where was Jackson?

McClellan will always be a controversial figure because of all the above and the fact that he was a "soft war" guy. One other interesting item as pointed out by Bruce Catton: McClellan was offered command of the forces from Pennsylvania but turned it down. Meade was ultimately given that command. Mr. Catton wondered what would have been the outcome if McClellan had taken Pennsylvania up on their offer.

McClellan wasn't driven away (much). Halleck ordered him to withdraw…

Definitely option 4.

If McClellan had commanded at Gettysburg, he would have retreated at the end of the second day, if not the first. Revisionist fiddle-faddle notwithstanding, the common opinion is the correct one: the man who created the Army of the Potomac, but who was morally unfit to command it.

Big Red, I have read Prof Harsh's trilogy. I had the pleasure of studying under him in the masters History Program at George Mason. Prof Harsh was very fond of Little Mac. The class did a field trip with him that covered the Antietam Campaign, with a side bar at Ball's Bluff National Cemetery. All of Ball's Bluff at that time was in private hands except the Cemetery. When we finally got to the Antietam National Park Prof Harsh made it clear that anyone who pressed a button to start the official recordings at various spots would fail the course. He considered all of it positive drivel from history hacks who knew nothing. Prof Harsh had a set of the OROTWOTR with his side notes in the margins correcting the records. He was a great professor and a lot of fun. Ice cream in Poolesville with Professor Harsh is a great memory.

I wouldn't say morally unfit, but definitely temperamentally unfit. McClellan was so afraid of losing, he couldn't win. Although he built a great army, it almost seemed he had no confidence in it.

Grant would have hit Lee like a sledgehammer at Antietam, perhaps crushing the ANV before Hill's arrival. Pure speculation of course, but consider what would have happened if McClellan had commanded the Union army at Shiloh. I doubt he would have replied to Sherman's statement, "We've had the devil's own day" with "Yep, lick 'em tomorrow."

Is there a NONE OF THE ABOVE option?

Is there a NONE OF THE ABOVE option?

By all means. I didn't mean to imply that mine were the only options. What's your take?

I am sorry, McClellan was driven from Richmond, the seven days battles did that. He was ordered out of the peninsular after this point when it became obvious he had no immediate intention of going forwards again.

Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike McClellan, the speed he rebuilt them after 2nd Bull Run is astonishing and showed great skill. I suspect some of the issues were the sheer scale of the armies he was trying to handle were beyond him, as he had a tendency to micromanage.

He was also not helped by his faith in Pinkerton, who was an incompetent collector of information.

Lee himself said McClellan was the best he faced.

Totally agree about the Seven Days. I would add regarding Pinkerton that Pleasonton was as culpable in terms of misleading McClellan and his misinformation added a military gloss to exaggerations that were readily believed.

Good trainer and organizer. Poor combat general.

Of course the war in 1864 was very different from the war in 1862 and Grant was a very different man than McClellan. Maybe they were what the country needed at those specific times.

Although Little Mac made many good moves and many mistakes, the one that was fatal to his career was not respecting and therefore badly underestimating Lincoln – a catastrophic mistake not unique to McClellan.

When the going got tough and Congressional witch hunters were trying to burn him at the stake, he had very few friends of influence in Washington.

I agree, good organizer, poor wartime general. There were several points early in the war where a decisive strike may have made a big difference. The Peninsular campaign was one of them. Unfortunately we will never know what would have happened if they had moved just a little more aggressively.

A combination of your reasons 1 and 3, I would say.

Little Mac was unaware of the pressure that inactivity had on the Union war effort and he was egregiously insubordinate. He was a great trainer and organizer. He left his imprint on the Army of The Potomac. While brave, it was almost always slow, with the exceptions of the Gettysburg and Appomattox campaigns.

When Grant came along, he was fully aware of the pressure of time and properly respectful to Lincoln. That's why he got a free rein.

Also, Lincoln had learned from the Valley Campaign to leave as much to the generals as he could.

The Army of Northern Virginia should have ceased to exist on the 17th of September, 1862. That it didn't is the direct and sole responsibility of McClellan and his complete tactical command incompetence.

I'm re-reading "Landscape Turned Red" and Mr. Sears hands out condemnations where they belong, up and down the Union chain of command, but it all points back to "The Little Napoleon" being wholly out of his element on a battlefield.

When the going got tough and Congressional witch hunters were trying to burn him at the stake, he had very few friends of influence in Washington.

IIRC, Lincoln supported him solidly until it became clear he wasn't the man for the job, even warning him that for his own sake he must move against Lee, but McClellen wouldn't be swayed from his path.

Say what you will about his Congressional critics but I think Little Mac was his own worst enemy.

I always wondered why McClellan was so easily misled as to the numbers he was facing. There had just been a census taken in 1860, so the government knew how many men of military age were potentially available.

Little Mac was a perfectionist, ego driven and probably had something of an inferiority complex.

As long as anything went by the book under his complete control, he was a superb manager, but as soon as armies began to march this sense of control became much fuzzier which probably annoyed McClellan and made him highly uncomfortable and the lack of control and increasing lethargy reinforced each other.

He seems to have mastered the theory, but was confused by reality and may have been aware of this. He projected his own abilities on enemy generals, assuming they lacked his flaws and were in perfect control unlike himself. That's why he feared being lured into a battle he could not win, insisting that his enemies had picked better positions, had superior numbers and better intelligence.

And like so many generals he clung a bit too much to the dream of fighting that single battle where he would deliver a fatal blow to the enemy, with minimal losses and get this war over in the most elegant way possible.

I think his fatal flaw was that unlike administrative and organisational tasks and the personal bravery he displayed in the Mexican-American war, he never had the ability to "read a battle" and feel in control (or as much as the illusion of it) and he never was able to rise above it. And in the end he could only do one thing in the face of failure, lie to himself he had done the best he could, which others read as incompetence mixed with blind arrogance.

i had thought in the past there was a place for McClellan in an army…just not the top man…but i am not sure now

I'm no McClellan expert, but I'll suggest a major problem is that McClellan was (as generals often do) fighting the last war – in his case, the Crimean War, where he was an observer.

I respectfully submit that among the lessons he learned there were the costly folly of frontal assaults against modern firepower and earthworks; the necessity for massive superiority of numbers and heavy artillery to overcome the same; and the paramount importance of logistics. These lessons militated against swift action, especially in the face of uncertainty about enemy numbers and intentions.

No doubt his personal characteristics were an important element in how he absorbed, interpreted and implemented those lessons. But I think that Crimea experience can help to explain a lot of McClellan's (in)actions.

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!
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bloodybigbattles.blogspot.co.uk

Interesting assessment of McClellan's conduct of the Battle of Antietam by Stephen Sears -

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My personal take on McClellan? A fine general in the more orderly peacetime managerial/bureaucratic sense of the term, but not possessed of a warrior mentality.

Strictly my opinion, of course.

B

On Pinkerton, he wasn't as long as you think. After working out what he was assessing as strength categories etc. he was almost bang on on April and May, and about 20-25% high in June and September.

Nice analysis, Patrick R.

The finest commander of the age was Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke (1800-1891). He developed an interesting Value Matrix to categorize his officer corps.

• Smart & Lazy: I make them my Commanders because they make the right thing happen but find the easiest way to accomplish the mission.
• Smart & Energetic: I make them my General Staff Officers because they make intelligent plans that make the right things happen.
• Dumb & Lazy: There are menial tasks that require an officer to perform that they can accomplish and they follow orders without causing much harm
• Dumb & Energetic: These are dangerous and must be eliminated. They cause thing to happen but the wrong things so cause trouble.

On this matrix Little Mac would be Smart/Energetic but that means he's a better suited as part of a staff team rather than sole command. He was obviously an intelligent man based on his prewar career and energetic in creating the AoP.

Since you asked Blackhorse, McClellan built a great army and loved it too much to see it destroyed in unnecessary and risky fighting when careful maneuvering and carefully planned actions might accomplish the same goal. What he didn't plan on was having his timetable messed up by an opponent who was willing to take risks and incur casualties in order to accomplish his goals.

There are a couple of reasons I wouldn't consider #1 a correct option. First, like all other AoP commanders before Grant's arrival, McClellan's number 1 order was not to do anything which would put Washington at risk of being captured. Second, I don't believe McClellan understood how banged up Lee's army was, or how resilient the AoP could be.

To go off on a tangent, I can't imagine that if Lee had been in charge of the ANV when Little Mac started his move to the Peninsula that Lee would not have immediately have threatened Washington DC and scotched the whole thing that way.

Only Joe Johnston, as cautious as the Young Napoleon, let him get away with this.

+1 – 138SquadronRAF

Great Stuff! I am stealing it for my repertoire of witticisms on life.

B

Cheers 138; I 'd always thought that was Clausewitz, though I could never find it in'On War'. Now I know why!

Blackhorse MP: Great topic!

DJCoaltrain: Regarding Harsh's books, I really enjoyed them. A tour of the battlefield of Antietam with Mr. Harsh must have been a fascinating experience. I would love to have been a part of that. John Miller

i had thought in the past there was a place for McClellan in an army…just not the top man…but i am not sure now

He'd have made a great adjutant or quartermaster. Or maybe, general-in-chief, if he had learned to keep his nose out of political decisions (but he wouldn't have).

Love the von Molke ideas!

Having never failed in life McClellan was terrified of failure in war. He was simply and completely risk-averse.

As was Joe Johnston.

Yes but unlike McClellan who thought the Confederates outnumbered him by almost two to one, Joe Johnson WAS outnumbered by the Union almost two to one. That makes Joe Johnsons caution understandable and McClellan's inexcusable.

What he didn't plan on was having his timetable messed up by an opponent who was willing to take risks and incur casualties in order to accomplish his goals.

Bill N…I think that it is inexcusable for a commander not to get to know his opponent and to be familiar with his capabilities and tendencies. That I think was one of Lee's greatest strengths; he knew what he could get away with with his various opponents. McClellan never mastered that.

There are a couple of reasons I wouldn't consider #1 a correct option. First, like all other AoP commanders before Grant's arrival, McClellan's number 1 order was not to do anything which would put Washington at risk of being captured. Second, I don't believe McClellan understood how banged up Lee's army was, or how resilient the AoP could be.

I think, understandably, that the politicians wanted Washington defended, but beyond that I think Lincoln wanted the ANV crushed. Lincoln was always urging his commanders to take the fight to the enemy and beat him, not dedicate themselves to sitting in the works around the capitol on the defensive. Lincoln's driving spirit was never matched until Grant came east, and then Lincoln supported him fully, even in spite of the horrendous casualties that Grant incurred. I've never seen any claim that Lincoln ever advised Grant to slow down, be more cautious or fight defensively. Lincoln's quote about Grant "I can't spare this man, he fights" I think says it all.

John Miller. Thanks.

Unfortunately, I have to defend little Mac until my dying days as my great, great grand daddy was named after him. Born a few days after the battle of Antietam in Frederick MD. Interestingly, his daddy obviously had a change of heart by the next year as his little brother was named "Stonewall".

Blackhorse: The reason Grant did not go by boat to the gates of Richmond is that Mac had tried that route and had failed. The president could not afford another defeat in an election year.

Steve,
I never commented on Grant not following in McClellen's footsteps to the Penninsula. In fact I've never even really given it any thought. I don't necessarily think he should have. Once the army disembarks Lee's job gets easier; there's really only one way for Grant to go.

But as to your point that Grant didn't go via the Peninsula because it had been tried and failed makes me wonder why he chose the route he did for the overland campaign if previous failure made a particular route untenable? Hadn't that route been unsuccessfully tried too(Chancellorsville)?

I think that Grant's statement to Meade that "wherever Lee goes, there you will go also" negates the idea that any terrain considerations were going to interfere with his destruction of the ANV. I certainly don't think McClellen had the moxie to maintain that kind of mindset.

Lee's bio would likely have looked different in June of 1862 when he took over the ANV. In the old army Lee had spent most of his time as an engineer. As commander of Virginia's state forces in 1861 he had not been known for any bold moves, nor had he in the campaign in western Virginia and along the Atlantic coast. When he took over the ANV he had his troops dig in, and they nicknamed him Granny Lee and King of Spades.

I believe the extensive discussions between McClellan and Lincoln at the start of the Peninsula campaign support my assessment about Lincoln's concern for the safety of Washington. During Antietam the III and XI Corps were held back for the defense of Washington.

Engineer officers in the Old Army before the Civil War were not merely engineering specialists, but were versed in, and expected to perform, various duties on campaign and in combat that were much more involved and varied that that of modern combat engineers.

West Point was an engineer and artillery school, modeled on the Ecole Polytechnique in France which produced the best military engineers in Europe.

Lee's service in the Mexican War with Scott's army in Mexico was distinguished and Lee himself, and his service, were important to the success of that army in Mexico.

McClellan was an excellent organizer and trainer. He was not a good army commander. He definitely did not lead his army either in the Peninsula or at Antietam. Those campaigns were fought by his subordinates.

Porter commanded at Gaines' Mill, Mechanicsville, and Malvern Hill, not McClellan. He wasted a month of campaigning time in front of Yorktown and when he was ready to 'attack' Johnston retreated.

McClellan's 'change of base' to the Janes was a retreat, pure and simple, and after the victory of Malvern Hill, won by Porter and Henry Hunt, he sat on his hands for a month, and had no intention of any offensive action. That was why Halleck ordered the withdrawal.

McClellan's support of Pope in the Second Bull Run campaign was limp-wristed at best and Antietam was badly handled. McClellan's plan was poor, and poorly understood by his subordinates, the Union attacks were not coordinated at all, although McClellan had twice Lee's numbers and Lee had his back to the Potomac. McClellan had enough fresh, uncommitted troops at the end of the action to push Lee into the river and quite possible win the war, but again failed.

McClellan did not have the killer instinct of a true independent commander and in the words of George Patton, he 'took counsel of his fears.'

Just one small point in this discussion. Grant was never the GOC Army of the Potomac. Meade held that post and Grant was his superior.

"Yes but unlike McClellan who thought the Confederates outnumbered him by almost two to one, Joe Johnson WAS outnumbered by the Union almost two to one. That makes Joe Johnsons caution understandable and McClellan's inexcusable."

Not really.

Johnston and McClellan had roughly equal sized armies on the Peninsula. Lee had a larger army than McClellan.