George B. McClellan

From Free net encyclopedia

For the 1960s Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police of the same name, see George McClellan (police commissioner).

Image:GeorgeMcClellan.jpeg

George Brinton McClellan (December 3, 1826 – October 29, 1885) was a major general (and briefly the general-in-chief of the Union Army) during the American Civil War. Trained at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, he served under General Winfield Scott in the Mexican War. In 1857, he left the military to work with railroads, but rejoined the U.S. Army in 1861 as the Civil War broke out.

1 Education, early career
2 American Civil War
3 Resumption of civilian career
4 References
5 External links

Early in the War, McClellan played an important role in raising a well-trained and organized army for the Union. However, meticulous in his planning and preparations, his leadership skills during battles were questioned, and he was accused of being incompetent and overly cautious. While skilled in organization, he lacked the decisive drive of Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, or William Tecumseh Sherman, who were willing to risk a major battle even when all preparations were not perfect. The failure of his Peninsula Campaign in 1862 to seize Richmond was due in no small part to McClellan's slow and cautious troop movements toward the Confederate capital of Richmond, which provided the Confederate leaders valuable time to strengthen the city's defenses.

General McClellan also seemed never to grasp that he needed to maintain the trust of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, and proved to be frustratingly insubordinate to the commander-in-chief. After he was relieved of command, McClellan became the unsuccessful Democratic nominee opposing Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election.

After the War, he later was elected as a Governor of New Jersey, headed a railroad, and became a writer in his later years. Much of his writing was in defense of his actions during the Peninsula Campaign and the early part of the Civil War.

[edit]

Education, early career

Born in Philadelphia, McClellan first attended the University of Pennsylvania, then transferred to West Point, graduating second in his class of 1846. Originally assigned to the engineers, he served under General Winfield Scott in Mexico, then transferred to the cavalry.

Dispatched to study European armies, he observed the siege of Sevastopol in the Crimean War. Upon his return to the United States he submitted to the Army a pattern of saddle he claimed to have seen used in Prussia and Hungary. It became known as the "McClellan Saddle," which became standard issue for as long as the U.S. horse cavalry existed. The saddle was actually more likely based on the Spanish Tree saddle that had been in use in the United States, but of Mexican origin, for some time.

McClellan resigned his commission January 16, 1857, and got into the railroad business, becoming chief engineer of the Illinois Central and then eventually division president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad.

[edit]

American Civil War

[edit]

Western portion of Virginia

McClellan rejoined the military when the American Civil War broke out in 1861, initially commanding the Ohio Militia. His first combat assignment was to occupy the area of western Virginia, which wanted to remain in the Union and later became the state of West Virginia. There he defeated two small Confederate armies in 1861 and became famous throughout the country.

[edit]

Defending Washington and training the troops

After the defeat of the Union forces at Bull Run in July 1861, Lincoln appointed McClellan commander of the Army of the Potomac (July 26), the main Union army located around Washington, D.C.. He brought a much higher degree of organization to this army, and on November 1 1861, he became general-in-chief of all Union armies after Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott's retirement.

In late 1861 and early 1862, President Lincoln, as well as many other leaders and citizens of the northern states, became increasingly impatient with McClellan's slowness to attack the Confederate forces still massed near Washington. As the weeks and months passed, McClellan continued to insist that the troops were still not ready.

After the Confederate forces under General Joseph E. Johnston moved south, Lincoln continued to urge McClellan to go on the offensive, and accepted (with some reluctance) McClellan's plan to advance on Richmond from the southeast after moving by sea to Fort Monroe, Virginia (a fort that stayed in Union hands when Virginia seceded), a campaign that would be known as the Peninsula Campaign. Lincoln removed McClellan as general-in-chief in March 1862, leaving him in command of the Army of the Potomac.

[edit]

Peninsula Campaign

McClellan's advance up the Virginia Peninsula proved to be slow. He believed intelligence reports that credited the Confederates with two or three times the men they actually had. Critics of his slowness felt justified when some of the Confederate fortifications, evacuated after McClellan took the time to bring up siege artillery against them, proved to be lined with fake cannons.

Early in the campaign, Confederate General John B. "Prince John" Magruder was defending the Peninsula against McClellan's advance with a vastly smaller force. Magruder used a system of primitive but effective defense fortifications that took advantage of waterways such as the meandering and swampy Warwick River to establish the Warwick Line across the Peninsula, anchored by Mulberry Island on the James River on the south and Yorktown on the York River on the north. Then, using the troops he did have, Magruder created a false impression of many troops behind the lines and of even more troops arriving. He accomplished this by marching small groups of men repeatedly past places where they could be observed at a distance or were just out of sight, accompanied by great noise and fanfare. As a result, McClellan spent much time and resources laying siege to Yorktown and getting large guns in place to overcome an force he miscalculated to be much larger than his own. During this time, General Johnston was able to provide Magruder with reinforcements which were even then, still far fewer troops than McClellan had miscalculated were opposite him.

Just before he was to launch his offensive against Yorktown, it was learned that the enemy had retreated up the Peninsula towards Williamsburg. McClellan was thus required to give chase without any benefit of the heavy artillery so carefully amassed in front of Yorktown. The Battle of Williamsburg on May 5 is considered inconclusive by historians, but the bulk of the Confederate troops were successfully moved past Williamsburg and behind Richmond's outer defenses while it was waged, and in the next several days.

McClellan had also placed hopes on a simultaneous naval approach to Richmond via the James River. That approach proved flawed following the Union Navy's defeat at the Battle of Drewry's Bluff about 7 miles downstream from the Confederate capital on May 15, 1862.

McClellan's land forces, supported by control of the York and Pamunkey Rivers, came within a few miles of Richmond and, on June 1, his army repelled an attack at Seven Pines. Confederate commander Joseph E. Johnston was wounded in this battle, and Jefferson Davis named Robert E. Lee commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. With his line astride the Chickahominy River, McClellan spent the next 3 weeks repositioning his troops and waiting for promised reinforcements, losing valuable time while the Confederates reinforced Richmond's defenses.

At the end of June, Lee ordered a series of attacks that became known as the Seven Days Battles. While these attacks failed to attain Lee's goal of crushing McClellan's army, the first of these combined with the appearance of General Stonewall Jackson's troops before him (when they had last been reported to be many miles away in the Shenandoah Valley) destroyed McClellan's nerve and convinced him to withdraw his army farther from Richmond to a safer base on a portion of the James River under control of the Union Navy. In a telegram reporting on these events, McClellan accused Lincoln of doing his best to see that the Army of the Potomac was sacrificed, a comment that Lincoln never saw (at least at that time) because it was censored by the War Department telegrapher.

Urged to remove McClellan from command, Lincoln compromised by taking some of McClellan's men and some newly organized units to create the Army of Virginia under John Pope, who was to advance towards Richmond from the northeast. Pope was beaten spectacularly by Lee at Second Bull Run in August.

[edit]

Defending against Lee's invasion of Maryland

Lee then continued his offensive by launching his Maryland Campaign, hoping to arouse pro-Southern sympathy in the slave state of Maryland. Lincoln then restored Pope's army to McClellan on September 2, 1862. Union forces accidentally found a copy of Lee's orders dividing his forces, but McClellan did not move swiftly enough to defeat the Confederates before they were reunited. At the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, McClellan attacked Lee. Lee's army, while outnumbered, was not decisively defeated, because the Union forces did not manage to coordinate their attacks and because McClellan held back a large reserve.

After the battle, Lee retreated back into Virginia. When McClellan failed to pursue Lee aggressively after Antietam, he was removed from command on November 5 and replaced by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside on November 9. He was never given another command.

[edit]

Leadership shortcomings

McClellan generally had very good relations with his troops. They referred to him affectionately as "Little Mac"; others sometimes called him the "Young Napoleon". It has been suggested that his reluctance to enter battle was caused in part by an insistent desire to spare his men, to the point of failing to take the initiative against the enemy and therefore passing up good opportunities for decisive victories, which could have ended the war early and thereby could have spared thousands of soldiers who died in those subsequent battles.

Another cause could have been an issue of personal bravery. During critical battles, McClellan generally stayed well away from any action. During the Seven Days, he kept himself far away from the scenes of battle north of the Chickahominy River. At the Battle of Malvern Hill, he was on a Union gunboat, the U.S.S. Galena, at one point ten miles away down the James River. At Antietam, his headquarters was miles to the rear and he had little control over the battle.

[edit]

Resumption of civilian career

McClellan was nominated by the Democrats to run against Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 U.S. presidential election.

Image:~mccl2.jpg

He supported the war but the party convention wrote an anti-war platform that he repudiated. The deep division in the party, the unity of the Republicans (running under the label "Union Party"), and the military successes of fall 1864 doomed McClellan. Lincoln won the election handily. While McClellan was highly popular among the troops when he was commander, they voted for Lincoln over McClellan by margins of 3-1 or higher.

After the war, McClellan was appointed chief engineer of the New York City Department of Docks. In 1872, he was named the president of the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad, and became involved with the Pennsylvania Railroad's South Improvement Company rate-rebate scheme intended to secretly benefit John D. Rockefeller Jr. who was developing Standard Oil.

Also in 1872, McClellan was among the many investors who were deceived by Philip Arnold in a famous diamond and gemstone hoax.

In 1877, McClellan was elected Governor of New Jersey as a Democrat, serving from 1878 to 1881. His final years were devoted to traveling and writing. He justified his military career in McClellan’s Own Story, published in 1877.

He died in 1885 at Orange, New Jersey, and is buried at Riverview Cemetery in Trenton.

His son, George B. McClellan, Jr., was also a politician, and, among other things, served as Mayor of New York City from 1904 to 1909.

[edit]