George B. McClellan Biography
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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.
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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.
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
& Mississippi.
American Civil War
Western portion of Virginia
McClellan rejoined the military when 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.
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.
He brought a much higher degree of organization to this army, and on
November 1, 1861, he became supreme commander over all Union armies
after General Winfield Scott's retirement. In late 1861 and early 1862,
many became impatient with McClellan's slowness to attack while he
insisted the troops were still not ready. Lincoln urged McClellan to
attack 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). This
campaign is known as the Peninsula Campaign. Lincoln removed McClellan
from the supreme command of all Union armies in March 1862, leaving him
in command of the Army of the Potomac.
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 a
line across the peninsula, anchored by Yorktown. 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. 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.
McClellan 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, they destroyed
McClellan's nerve and convinced him to withdraw his army farther from
Richmond to a base on the James River. 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.
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.
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.
Resumption of civilian career
McClellan was nominated by the Democrats to
run against Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 U.S. presidential election.
He supported the war but the party
convention wrote a 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.
****
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Date Article Copied:
March 17, 2006
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