Was McClellan largely responsible for the reverses the Union suffered up to sept 1862

[milhistbuff1]

For the past 140 years Lil' Mac has been known alternately as an excellent general and conversely as one of the bigger buffoons to command the Army of the Potomac. Perhaps his troops were inexperienced, but he had some very experienced commanders such as Hancock, Reynolds and others who were in the graduating classes at West Point prior to 1848 who had combat experience in Mexico to rely on. Fellow CWT members, your thoughts?
Respectfully,
Matt

[CChartreux]

Matt -- Thanks for starting the thread; I'll be back!

[ewc]

Basically, Matt, the answer is yes. Little Mac excelled at organizing, administering, training, and instilling pride in the army he created, as well as a knack for putting good people in the right places. He however fell woefully short of actually doing anything constructive with this marvelous army of his. They lacked for nothing, the Army of the Potomac, save solid field leadership at the very top. McClellan had the full might of the Union behind him and a civil administration backing him and ready to give him everything he needed. Yet he antagonized that leadership, stalled and whined, and needed everything perfect, and then stalled and whined some more. By failing to move and, in Lincoln's words, 'crowd the Rebs a bit,' he sat and lost opportunity after advantage. He was a victim of faulty intelligence, but he created the intelligence and got from it what he wanted to hear. He disliked taking the field when the troops were under fire, and was lethargic getting his men into place in a timely fashion. He allowed his politics and his arrogance to influence his control of the army, to everyone's detriment. Finally he became almost totally unable to work with Washington and Lincoln, a failing absent in all subsequent commanders of the Army of the Potomac.

That said, he fought well when himself pressed, though he allowed that pressure to come from a smaller and ill equipped foe. Had he been permitted to stay before Richmond when he got there, he would have made life extremely difficult for the Confederates.

And too, it all can't be laid at his door. The excellent Rebel leadership and fighting man and elan had a good deal to do with Little Mac's discomfiture.

[william42]

Hey Matt, thanks for posting this. I'd have to agree with Ed. McClellans organizing skills were excellent and he injected the AOP with a great deal of badly needed morale. But when it came down to actually sending his army into a fight and actually managing the fight with the necessary aggressiveness to win, he flopped badly.

Lincoln sent him a note, I believe it was before either the Seven Days, or maybe Antietam, correct me if I'm wrong, when he simply could not get McClellan to move off dead center. Part of it said: "If you don't want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while. Yours respectfully, A. Lincoln."

Terry

[milhistbuff1]

Terry,
I remember Lincoln saying something similar about the situation. Something like "sending that man reinforcements is like shoveling fleas across a barnyard." I guess the question becomes, who do you stick in his place after the army is organized without ruffling feathers in the chain of command?

ewc,
Concerning the subsequent commander comment, wouldn't Hooker be guilty of the same problem, excellent for morale, but when plans fell apart, instead of creating a new one he ran.

Respectfully,
Matt

[nbforrest]

McClellan certainly deserves credit for his organization of the AOP. But his Peninsula campaign was just deplorable. Laying siege to the Yorktown line after Lee's Mill? Totally ridiculous, then setting himself up for near disaster at Seven Pines. He really didn't need to retreat...he lost his nerve and gave up the initiative. Most of the credit for the good handling of the retreat has to go to McClellan's corps commanders. Antietam and South Mountain...he wasn't as slow as usual...but still stumbled. Certainly he should have at the very least saw that Franklin attempted to move beyone Pleasant Valley. He also deserves censure for Antietam itself...he didn't oversee his attacks and let them become disjointed and then failed to put in his considerable reserves.
I suppose his cautiousness prevented a catastrophic defeat...but I don't see much in his career to make me re-think his negative reputation.

Respectfully

[ewc]

Originally Posted by milhistbuff1

I guess the question becomes, who do you stick in his place after the army is organized without ruffling feathers in the chain of command?

Matt, exactly, Lincoln couldn't and wouldn't though heavily pressed by important members of his own party and cabinet to remove McClellan prematurely. It must needs be a matter of utter necessity and not just frustration before he could make such a monumental move. I think in fact had Lincoln held off a bit in November of '62, McClellan who was actually starting to 'grow up' into the exalted position he held would have done creditably and would in no way have got the Army of the Potomac into the pickle Burnside did. In the end, it may have just been too much for Lincoln, as one of the things Little Mac would have to improve was his relations with his commander, which Mac allowed to dissolve past a tolerable point, and he seemed disinclined to do so, that too is his own fault.

Originally Posted by milhistbuff1

... wouldn't Hooker be guilty of the same problem, excellent for morale, but when plans fell apart, instead of creating a new one he ran.

Hooker worked well with Lincoln and was an 'administration man.' his primary fault was his inability to work with Halleck, which regrettably he couldn't shelve for the good of the Union or the Army. He blew it at Chancellorsville unquestionably, and he knew it. What to do about it he would need much more time than General Lee was willing to give him to figure out. But Hooker is much maligned here where I don't hold it is warranted. He did have a plan once Lee started North, he sent his cavalry out to screen and engage Stuart, the best use of the cavalry in the East till Sheridan and his Yellow Tavern march. Hooker wanted to move on Richmond. This move though was countered by Lincoln who wanted this army instead to shield Washington. In the meantime, Hooker kept the army well positioned and fast moving, much faster than Lee anticipated, Stuart as well, who had to detour widely around this moving mass and thus ultimately arrived too late at Gettysburg.

That he should be removed from command before again engaging the ANV is another matter, in which i would concur.

[CChartreux]

[Everyone - this is a really long post....you better go get something to drink, go to the bathroom, let the dog out....or something! ]

Okay….I’m going to try and spell this out as best as I can. The obvious caveat is that I am relatively new to the Civil War, so these are observations made on a ‘first impression’ basis only and have not the quality of a comprehensive and thorough analyses. As such, six months from now, I may very well find myself with a new set of opinions…which, of course, will again be subject to change an additional six months from then as well.

Let me start off by saying (perhaps a little emphatically) that I am not doubting that McClellan had limitations; I’m certain he did. What I find (presently) distasteful vis-à-vis McClellan is what I perceive to be the lack of thoughtful and careful consideration of what is, in reality, a situation with a lot of moving parts. This is further exacerbated by how history is distorted. What I mean by that (and in my opinion) is there’s a certain distortion that occurs (for the most part unconsciously) because we know the outcome of events of something (for example, William Shirer (Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) can call Neville Chamberlain an idiot in 1955, but he can’t do it in 1939. In 1955, Shirer knows the outcome of the war – and because he does know the outcome – he can look back from his perspective and see some ‘causal’ link with regard to the Chamberlain/Hitler element. Because Shirer already knows the outcome of events, it’s difficult to put himself in a frame of mind whereby he fully embraces the fact that Chamberlain had no idea what Hitler was about to do, how could he?) There’s a variety of examples of this sort of approach to something (9/11 might be the most recent). So, my point in all this, it that ‘understanding’ history is a slippery sort of thing and there are limitations built in to any pursuit of it….namely, if you know the outcome of events going into something, you’re going to have a tough time disabusing yourself of that knowledge and one risks being in possession of faulty cause-and-effect linkages (i.e., here’s the ‘effect’, now let’s go dig up some ‘causes’ that we can tie it to….forgetting for the moment, that at the actual time the event was occurring the participants could only work with what they specifically knew as the time).

Sorry to go on so long about that, but I felt that I should put that out there first because (in my opinion) that’s where the McClellan issue suffers a lack of some sort. I’ll grant that not all historians succumb to this ‘we already know the outcome of events analysis’, but it seems to me that the seductive essence of ‘cause-and-effect’ is almost irresistible as a means to put forward some point of view. And, while some of that stuff makes for interesting reading, it leaves the reader vacant of what the facts were at the time of the event in question (not the ‘facts’ that came out in post-war analysis and all the dots, so to speak, can be connected to form some sort of picture).


Okay….McClellan’s lack of action or slowness. There seems to me anyway (and another example of what I was getting at above) a sort of unspoken, or at least unconscious, thought process that would suggest: war starts…..hordes of armies come blazing out of the closet where they were (evidently) hidden for years…..just waiting for this cataclysmic war to begin. I know we don’t ‘literally’ think this, but why is that we apparently expect McClellan to launch a blitzkrieg on Virginia within a few months? Moreover, has anyone done a comprehensive analysis of exactly what McClellan would have conceivably been able to do given the situation? It seems to me that the country (both of them, but more so the Union) spends a certain amount of time in denial about the reality of the war (i.e., the war is only going to last 90 days, etc., and so forth). The incredible scope of the Civil War (while readily apparent to us today) is not resident in people’s minds at the time of its genesis. Indeed, Sherman (on a near psychic level) is the only one who senses the impending doom and the enormity of the conflict. The sense of urgency we seem to require from McClellan exists because we can see today that lack of action in the beginning of the war had unfortunate consequences; but at the time, the reluctance to act is a byproduct (in my opinion) of a more systemic problem.

I think in terms of how we think about the Civil War today, we lose sight of the fact that the Civil War is a war so far beyond the scope of anything the country or the army had ever experienced and it provides a backdrop (if you will) to fully understanding the difficulty of moving from point A to point B…especially logistically and geographically. Moreover, the army doesn’t really know how to fight this war; it’s never faced a war of this magnitude ever (not even close to it). McClellan is often given credit for ‘organizing and training’ troops, but it’s said (or so it seems to me) in a way that is almost somewhat dismissive and as though it were nothing more than a segue into the long list of things McClellan did wrong. But, do we even really fully consider what this means? This isn’t bootcamp with a couple guys getting their hair cut and learning how to march and fire a gun with all the accoutrements of a standing army. This is 90,000 volunteers showing up and having absolutely no idea what they’re going to be doing. It’s one thing to organize and train some little cadre of 500 enthusiastic guys ready to die for their country….it’s quite another to take on 90,000 of them. The organizational and leadership skills required for something like this is nearly unimaginable; and while McClellan is given credit for this, I don’t think the credit is emphatic enough given the size of this undertaking….it’s huge! It takes a long time to build an army from scratch, especially when the degree of the conflict isn’t really fully understood yet. Moving an army is even harder. It seems to me that we forget the geographic size of the theatre of engagement. Most European countries are the size of states in the United States and while the existence of trains will make moving around somewhat easier, the vast expanse of land on which these armies will fight is basically ‘untamed’ wilderness. I don’t know, it just seems to me that the logistics of the Civil War are nearly unfathomable and I have no idea how anyone (no matter how brilliant) could have had clear enough vision of the ‘big picture’ at the time (i.e., they really don’t know how to fight this war yet).

Pursuing this ‘organizing and training’ the army thing even further, it seems to me that here we arrive at what might be deemed as a conflict within McClellan himself. There’s a couple of attending points to this, so let me get through them as best I can. Unlike most other generals, McClellan did not ‘inherit’ his army….he built it himself (Lee took over Johnston’s army, he didn’t ‘build’ it). And, while probably all generals (well, except for maybe a few) ‘loved’ their soldiers, McClellan’s emotional attachment to his army includes a ‘pride of ownership’ element not apparent in any of the other general/army relationships. It seems to me that McClellan is accused of having a fear of failure….but is that really it? A man facing a hail of bullets and certain death is indeed an act of valor, but having to order that man to face that hail of bullets and certain death is a darkish kind of courage on a profound level. I cannot imagine the searing emotional trauma of sending a man to his death, but knowing, all the while, that it must be done. Obviously some are able to do it better than others, but that McClellan built his army with his own hands would seem to lend itself to an even more poignant and tragic emotional dilemma….he must now kill it. McClellan loved his soldiers and his soldiers loved him…..making it all the more difficult to put them in harm’s way. This isn’t an excuse, it’s just an observation (on my part) that McClellan’s emotional affinity with his army is unappreciated and largely ignored.

In addition, however, to whatever emotional attachment McClellan might have had towards his army is the proximity of the Peninsula Campaign to Shiloh. Here’s what I mean: In my mind, the Civil War really doesn’t get started until Shiloh. After months of not really understanding the gravity of this conflict (i.e., looks like it’s gonna go for longer than 90 days there!), collecting soldiers (clothing them and arming them), and what amounts to a cake-walk (by comparison) at Manassas…..Shiloh literally stuns the nation (both of them) and shakes it out of its dream-like state. This is now a ‘real’ war and Shiloh delivers up the casualty list to prove it (indeed, Grant lost his job over it). Both sides were completely unprepared for blood-letting of that magnitude. To us today, Shiloh is whatever it is….just another exciting battle to add to the list; but for those people back then, Shiloh is horrifying. The Peninsula Campaign will take place shortly after Shiloh….is it any wonder then that McClellan (fully aware of the national outrage regarding Shiloh) informs President Lincoln that he has no intention of paying for victory in a currency of blood on the level of Shiloh? Indeed, McClellan gives himself away when he so much as admits he’s unwilling to incur the casualties required.


Well, I’ve probably gone on long enough for now. Again, I’m not suggesting that McClellan isn’t guilty of some bumbling (Antietam is nothing short of bizarre). What I’m proposing is that (in my observation) criticism of McClellan isn’t measured against what circumstances and realities he was contending with at the time (or, at best, certainly a wider-angled lens perspective); the criticism of McClellan seems built around what he should have done in light of the fact that we know the outcome of events. To this end, McClellan becomes an easy target and I don’t know that there’s been an even-handed and fair assessment of McClellan within the context of his immediate circumstances.

I’d be interested in what others have to say about this; I know this is a long post, so thanks for listening. In the end, I think McClellan loved his army too much and that may very well be an overly romantic sentiment. But I can’t help wondering how things might have been different if he’d simply taken command of an already existing army that already had its own sense of identity.

[ewc]

Chartreux, a very perceptive post. You bring much with you into your study of the Civil War, i appaud you. Truly, one must ever beware the error of concluding from results and not happenings. McClellan was indeed given a task of the greatest importance and complexity. Based on what?- brilliance at West Point and engineering in the army before being hugely successful in the outside world afterward, and his success in preserving Western Virginia to the Union, a little campaign of brilliance itself and of such huge consequences. His new task was staggering if not infinite, the complete building up of all phases of his new (but alreasy defeated) army, greater than any ever seen before in a democracy. In such a place, one's abilities, decisions, and also failings are going to be highly magnified. That he succeeded actually in building, training, and making this army one can say he indeed did save the Union.

Succeding so well in this sphere, arguably his most important, contrasts so greatly with his failures in others. To his great credit, and it translates to the Army of the Potomac, he loved these men and this army. Psychologically, he proved to be not strong enough (as looking at Lee for instance) to use it for its ultimate purpose. He seems to have just never overcome this antipathy. He misreads or interprets to his beliefs intelligence reports that show he is vastly outnumbered, making secure his belief that this army must be husbanded and not risked. He will not move fast enough nor with force enough to 'endanger' his army at large. The problem was that there were men and authorities on hand at the time who knew things were not right on this score. That leads me to the next point, his what proved to be utter inability to work with the administration- his 'bosses' as it were. He allowed politics, personal beliefs, and his disdain for the political and civil authorities to negatively color his judgment. Given, he had little from which to study to take his cue. But that said, he was only going to be successful working with the administration and not at odds with it. This is a bit of logic that escaped him, it may be he simply didn't grasp the issue or it escaped him entirely due to his arrogance and psychological makeup, or the pressing details of his command did not adequately give him time and a chance to work it out. Unfortunately, he beleived himself impaired and working despite the administration. Indeed, he was thrust immediately into the fire and did not have time to develop his abilites like the later successful commanders in the war were able to do. Grant in his memoirs states that he believes that McClellan, given a chance to learn the makings of this war a little at a time like he, Sherman, and others had, would have proved to be an excellent commander.

It is ultimately his inability to work with the administration that is his undoing, and what forced Lincoln's hand. In a republic, the commander of its' armies must have that confidence. When Lincoln wanted him to 'crowd the enemy a bit,' that is precisely what the army commander should have done. not doing it cost him immense political capital he would have been better to have husbanded like he did his army. Lincoln certainly gave him plenty of rope to work with. It is a misfortune Little Mac used a good bit of it to hamstring himself. This is how the administration did see it.

We must remember too that Little Mac's (and Lincoln's) problems weren't necessarily unique to them. The other side suffered from these very same issues as well- in many cases, much more acutely than the Union. Lincoln seems to have had a good grasp from this early on- note his admonishment to a reluctant to advance McDowell, 'It is true your men are green, but you are all green alike.' McClellan could never see that what were his problems and vexations his opponents also possessed, often triplefold. This Lincoln had the very devil of a time making his commanders understand. It was, like many things you point out, Chartreux, one of those many unlimited and unknowing things the country, the army, and the leaders would have to learn as the war progressed.

Lastly i would point out that there were plenty of folks in Chamberlain's time very much ready to judge the man an ***. Shirer may well have been one of them at the time who saw that appeasement in the face of Hitler's continual and unrelenting aggressions was simply not going to work and was an answer for nothing.

Chartreux, if you have not yet, I suggest to you to go to the Ballot Box section of cwt and partake of the poll discussing the post-Antietam McClellan. regards, ed

[nbforrest]

Chartreux,

You raise some good points. And I think they did factor into McClellan's actions, or lack there of. But those same factors affected the other generals of the time; inexperience, logistics, etc. And some of them overcame them. Certainly some of the kinks needed to be worked out in both armies, but there were successful operations in 62; Ft. Henry/Donelson for example. Given the limitations of early war...one still can't excuse Mac's slowness on the Peninsula. Mac, I think, just had a fear of closing with the enemy. He was afraid of taking casualties. However, generals like that often end up taking more casualties than if they had offered a swift, decisive move rather than trying to avoid casualties. Montgomery in WWII comes to mind. Mac would have been good behind a desk in DC; maybe he would have been ok in command of the Middle Department or something where he could guard his supply depots.

Respectfully