"Too Useful to Sacrifice" Topic

Has anyone taken a look at or read this new book on McClellan?

Yes. I found it to be a balanced and objective assessment of McClellan's leadership in the Maryland Campaign.

I just finished it, but was less impressed than Mr. Priest. Little of it is untrue, but the format let him focus on the most defensible aspects of McClellan's generalship while not addressing other issues. "Little Mac's" wild overestimate of Confederate numbers is just taken as a given, for instance. His failure to renew the battle of Antietam on the 18th isn't really discussed--just a line here and there. And his discussion of McClellan's last campaign and dismissal is eccentric to say the very least. You can read the book with profit--but read a real campaign history first, and keep it handy to double-check this one.

(Hmm. And while the subject is up, can anyone recommend a good book on Union intelligence under McClellan?)

Try link for a good history through 1863. I think this is the book I read many years ago and was impressed with back then. Just picked up a copy now to renew acquaintances. It was very thorough, even though covering more than just intelligence under McClellan if my memory is correct.

Chris

Drat! I read that one, and only remembered the section on the BMI. Have to try it again. Thank you, Bates.

For the rest of you, the nasty suspicion in the back of my mind is that McClellan wanted to be heavily outnumbered, and wasn't interested in evidence to the contrary. It's certainly true that Pinkerton's numbers were more accurate early on--and that his reports weren't forwarded to Lincoln until he inflated the number of Confederates. The intelligence officer whose boss wants a particular answer can be in a terrible bind--as both Mitch Boyer and some recent CENTCOM G-2's can tell you.

link

Pretty good book on Allan Pinkerton with many pages spent on McClellan.

And, to my own embarrassment, I fetched my copy of batesmotel's recommendation--Fishel's The Secret War for the Union--off my own shelves. It makes it quite clear that, inflated as Pinkerton's Confederate troop strengths eventually became, they were always lower than McClellan's estimates to his superiors. But the structure of Too Useful to Sacrifice lets the author pass off consistently rating the enemy at three times his actual strength in a passing sentence or two.

That's my problem with the book. He's flat wrong once or twice--most of us are, myself certainly included. But the real problem is that he hasn't written a study of the 1862 campaign in Maryland or a study of McClellan's generalship in the fall of 1862. He's written half a dozen essays on subjects where McClellan's conduct is defensible and been largely silent where it is not. That makes it a useful supplement, but you need at least one more book on the subject to bring up the things he doesn't want to talk about.

Hmm. Some of you have no doubt read the chapter in Too Useful to Sacrifice which explains that the Young Napoleon was deliberately stiffed of uniforms and such by the wily radicals? Fishel mentions in passing that McClellan put uniforms in storage before heading for the Peninsula, then, after Antietam, demanded and got replacements for them instead. So by the account of Mac's own quartermaster, by the time the army marched again it had 50,000 surplus uniforms in storage. Now, that might be rebuttable, but Too Useful to Sacrifice doesn't rebut it, but ignores the report altogether. You can make a really plausible case for quite a number of things if you only cite the evidence of one side.

Which is why you always want multiple books on a subject.

Thank you Ochoin. The Pinkerton book is on order.

You have to understand the difference between Union leaders Each had a belief in either a "soft War" a "hard War". Little Mac was a very soft leader

Soft war Leaders Believe that it would just going to take a southern Defeat and they would rejoin the union. Hard war was the final result.

Check out The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War by Edwin C. Fishel. Here a short amazon description.

At the end of the American Civil War, most of the intelligence records disappeared—remaining hidden for over a century. As a result, little has been understood about the role of espionage and other intelligence sources, from balloonists to signalmen with their telescopes.

When, at the National Archives, Edwin C. Fishel discovered long-forgotten documents—the operational files of the Army of the Potomac's Bureau of Military Information—he had the makings of this, the first book to thoroughly and authentically examine the impact of intelligence on the Civil War, providing a new perspective on this period in history. Drawing on these papers as well as over a thousand pages of reports by General McClellan's intelligence chief, the detective Allan Pinkerton, and other information, he created an account of the Civil War that "breaks much new ground"

Maybe, Wackmole. Certainly McClellan took a dim view of abolitionists. But But I don't really think that was the military problem, if you will. If nothing else, he was bright enough to realize that the longer the war went on, the less likely it was to have limited political consequences.

The last troops never got committed when McClellan was in command, I think, not because McClellan wasn't interested in a military decision, but because he wasn't the sort of man who'd bet his last dime, and because he always wanted to believe he was outnumbered, which lessened his responsibility. Doesn't make him a bad man or a bad manager, but it made him the wrong man to bring a quick end to an offensive war. I think Too Useful to Sacrifice evades that.

McClellan was an incompetent army commander and who was not present on the field in most of the battles the Army of the Potomac fought:

Yorktown-Remained at Yorktown supervising the embarkation of the divisions that were to make an amphibious envelopment while Hooker, Kearney, and Hancock were engaged with Longstreet.

Fair Oaks-McClellan was absent as he was ill.

Mechanicsville-Porter fought and won this battle north of the Chickahominy River on his own. McClellan remained south of the river convinced that the Confederate strength was massed there and not north of the river.

Gaines' Mill: Porter again fought his battle while McClellan was south of the river. McClellan decided to retreat to the James River.

Savage's Station: McClellan not present.

Frayser's Farm: McClellan not present.

White Oak Swamp: McClellan not present.

Glendale: McClellan not present.

Malvern Hill: McClellan not present initially was later present on the Union right flank, away from the fighting. Porter again fought the battle, not McClellan.

South Mountain: McClellan's overestimation of Confederate strength caused this battle to be 'conducted cautiously.' The outnumbered Confederates, though defeated, withdrew.

Antietam: McClellan's orders were ambiguous so his plan might not have been properly understood. McClellan wrote that he intended 'to make the main attack upon the enemy's left-at least to create a diversion in favor of the main attack, with the hope of something more, by assailing the enemy's right-and as soon as one or both of the flank movements were fully successful, to attack their center with any reserve I might then have in hand.' McClellan did not issue any written general order for the Union attack and conducted no reconnaissance of the Confederate positions.

The attacks were not coordinated and struck the Confederates separately and were defeated separately. This allowed Lee to shift units to meet such uncoordinated attacks and generally negated the northern numerical advantage. McClellan had 70,000 troops on hand, Lee 39,000.

At Antietem McClellan was a spectator, not a commander.