Mcclellan an Analysis of George

McCLELLAN

AN ANALYSIS of GEORGE McCLELLAN'S

On September 13, 1862, a pair of Union soldiers of the Twenty-Seventh of Indiana accidentally stumbled upon a copy of General Robert E. Lee's campaign orders in a field near Frederick, Maryland, where two days earlier, a Confederate courier had somehow dropped it. By the early afternoon, these campaign orders were in the hands of General George B. McClellan who later told President Lincoln by letter that "I have all the plans of the Rebels and will catch them in their own trap." On the following day, McClellan brought the Army of the Potomac into action by punching a massive hole in "the screen of rebel troops on South Mountain" and then plunged downward at Lee's startled Confederate troops at Sharpsburg, Maryland, where the Antietam Creek flowed in the Potomac River. On the morning of September 17, McClellan and his men attacked Lee's army "like an everlasting juggernaut with unprecedented ferocity and hammered them to destruction" which quickly led to Lee withdrawing across the Potomac" (Guelzo, 2004, p. 152).

However, President Lincoln could scarcely believe that McClellan had not utterly destroyed Lee's Confederate armies when he had the chance, but Lincoln was rather pleased with McClellan's military skill and talent, for he still considered Antietam as a Union victory despite the loss of more than 2,000 U.S. troops. From these facts, one might assume that George McClellan ranks as one of the greatest Union generals of the Civil War, if not within the entire spectrum of American military history. But according to a number of prominent Civil War historians and scholars, McClellan's generalship as Commander-in-Chief of all Union forces during the early years of the Civil War is much in doubt regarding his abilities, military skills and the one trait which all military leaders must possess in great abundance, namely, gut instinct. This doubt was also greatly discussed during and many years after the war. For example, Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase in 1862 thought that "There are brave, capable and loyal officers" like Hooker, Sumner and Burnside, "who might be named to command our armies more safely and much more entrusted" than McClellan, while Radical Republican Carl Schurz described McClellan in 1906 as indecisive and a procrastinator. In contrast, in 1867, John Singleton Mosby, a Confederate veteran of Bull Run, stated that McClellan was one of the most able generals on the federal side and was greatly responsible for organizing the Union army which led to many successes in the battlefield ("George McClellan, 2007, Internet).

In George B. McClellan and Civil War History: In the Shadow of Grant and Sherman, Thomas J. Rowland offers a rather bleak portrait of McClellan's generalship during the Civil War as nothing less than a horrible failure and as a military blunderer. After a close reading of this book, it is obvious that Rowland has written a kind of psychological expose on McClellan concerning his personal and professional life as a soldier and his personality. For the most part, these types of psychological explorations are not wholly accurate, due to the fact that they tend to be subjective rather than objective and are based upon opinions of the authors who mostly do not hold any kind of professional degrees or positions in the field of human psychology. Rowland is no exception. However, as a professor of history, Rowland offers some very good scholarship and utilizes a large number of sources, such as original Civil War documents, diary entries, contemporary newspapers and biographies/memoirs on McClellan, dating back to the time of the Civil War and into the present day. The reliability of these sources is generally quite good, yet as is the case with memoirs written perhaps fifty years after the event or person being described, they tend to be subjective and somewhat inaccurate.

As to McClellan, Rowland begins his long examination by considering the viewpoints of other historians. For instance, Bruce Catton states that McClellan "had all of the virtues necessary in war except one -- he did not like to fight." In 1959, historian Kenneth P. Williams called McClellan the "antithesis of a military leader who does not deserve to be known as a real general" and as being vain and unstable (1998, p. 4). Personally, Rowland sees McClellan as the "problem child" of the Civil War because his "military performance still invites debate" although not as much as it did in the past. Overall, McClellan was not a winner, but not exactly a loser, for almost all historians agree that McClellan "was a competent organizer and administrator of an army that had been shattered at First Manassas," something which Robert E. Lee supports by admitting that McClellan was "my most difficult adversary" (1998, p. 4).

Right up front, Rowland declares that there are "formidable obstacles to surmount" when discussing the generalship of McClellan from an objective point-of-view, due in part to Unionists interpretations of the Civil War which have "solidified more negative appraisals" of McClellan. Rowland then explains that this problem with objectivity also haunts a number of prominent modern-day historians and biographers writing on McClellan and his generalship. For example, Stephen W. Sears has written that McClellan was a "grievously flawed and ineffective commander" and although McClellan did indeed help shape the course of the Union during the war, out of all the commanders of the Army of the Potomac, McClellan "was arguably the worst" (1998, p. 7). Apparently, Rowland agrees to a great extent with this summation of McClellan's generalship, for he adds that President Lincoln "had to deal with a subordinate who refused to attack when commanded and who ventured into political matters outside the military arena," a situation which forced Lincoln to "relieve the Union Army's principle commander" and replace him with Ulysses Grant (1998, p. 9). In addition, in 1992, General Colin Powell, the former Bush Administration Secretary of Defense and a well-known military history expert, stated in an article for the New York Times that McClellan "would not use the overwhelming force available to him to achieve a decisive result. Lincoln had set out clear... objectives (but) McClellan acted in a limited, inconclusive way," meaning that McClellan, for some unknown reason, failed to act in such a way as to guarantee a military victory (1998, p. 10).

In Chapter Two "A Foray Into the Twilight Zone," Rowland rounds out his argument about George McClellan's generalship by declaring that his most damaging flaw was that he "labored under innate psychological defects so severe as to preclude him from ever attaining excellence as a military leader," not to mention a number of weaknesses like "political meddling" and a "chronic overestimation of enemy strength." Also, McClellan "not only lacked the temperament for waging war" but also "operated under significant psychological disabilities as to ensure his ineffective handling" of the Army of the Potomac, one of these disabilities being delusion (1998, p. 16). Rowland even goes so far to include a definition on delusional personalities from the DSM-IV manual on psychiatric disorders which Rowland maintains elicits some pertinent inferences" about McClellan's personality (1998, p. 20). Thus, Rowland's overall portrait of George McClellan as a Civil War general remains in the shadow of Grant and Sherman in the role of an intelligent yet flawed individual who perhaps did not deserve to be Commander-in-Chief of the Union forces.

In contrast to Rowland's viewpoints on McClellan and his generalship, James M. McPherson in Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction provides a much more condensed version of McClellan's military achievements and failures, due mostly to the fact that this book covers a very broad spectrum of material related to the Civil War and its aftermath during Reconstruction. Much like Rowland's book, this award-winning entry in the history of the Civil War includes numerous primary and secondary sources from some of the most reliable scholars in the field of American history and criticism. What makes Ordeal by Fire such a convincing portrait of the "War Between the States" is McPherson's skill and talent as a premier American scholar and his ability to stick to the facts, rather than extrapolate upon the psyches and personalities of figures like McClellan as found in Rowland's book.

First of all, McPherson describes the Battle of Laurel Hill in 1861 which lasted for five long days with McClellan's Union troops winning decisively over their Confederate enemies. Once again in line with Rowland's views, McClellan's weak frontal attack at this battle "allowed hundreds of Confederate rebels to escape northward, where they joined other Confederate forces retreating" from Laurel Mountain. However, McClellan's actions also resulted in a Union victory at this battle which left "most of Virginia west of the Alleghenies under Union control." As a result, McClellan became known as the "Young Napoleon" by northern newspapers and "proved adept at writing dispatches reflecting glory on himself" which should have gone to his subordinate officers. Thus, McPherson has cleverly revealed two idiosyncratic traits related to McClellan, being his unwillingness to follow through with orders given to him by President Lincoln and his "delusions of grandeur" in the form of taking all of the credit for the success of this campaign at Laurel Hill (1993, p. 174).