The Peninsula McClellan's Peninsula Plan (earlyFebruary)

Intelligence gathering is always difficult. In the US Army, it was universally looked down on as a job even into WWII (Omar Bradley was proud that he'd managed to avoid ever being assigned to it up until he went to North Africa and discovered how far ahead the average British officer was on intelligence matters).

At the start of the Civil War, there was no intelligence operation in the US Army at all. When secession started, Scott began to make some efforts to gather intel, but had no organization in place to use. Traditionally, this would mean "scouts" or spies -- but Army tradition said that should be handled through the Quartermaster's department (i.e., he was to handle paying them and getting their reports). Since it looked like QM-General Joe Johnston would "go South" when Virginia seceded, Scott didn't want to do that and tried to handle the arrangements himself. He was apparently still doing that in July 1861.

McClellan took that over when he came East. He dragged Pinkerton (who he knew as someone he employed in his days running a RR out in Illinois, like the lawyer Lincoln, or Burnside in the late 1850s) in.
I would like to differ with you a little here. Only one year after McClellan's landing at Fortress Monroe, Colonel George Sharp's Bureau Of Military Information (BMI) used about seventy full-time agents and was providing Joe Hooker with excellent intelligence. Even earlier, JEB Stuart was a master of gathering military intelligence for Lee.
 
The closer you look, the more Pinkerton looks like a fraud. He understood perfectly that clients for his detective service (including the US) hired him out of fear or paranoia, and then he played on that fear to balloon his profits. He did this notably with his railroad clients and in his various anti-union campaigns.

Pinkerton was a great promoter of his services, for sure, and in the nature of his business that necessarily involved playing to the fears of those who will pay you. Not really any different than any private security service, although perhaps a bit excessive in Pinkerton's case (which might be part of why the Pinkerton agency was so successful).

In the case of McClellan in August 1861: he had no existing people with intel expertise to rely on in the Army. Scrambling to get something put together, it would have been natural for him to cast through his acquaintances for anyone he might think would fit the bill. Pinkerton might easily have been the only one he came up with. Very few in America would have had any credentials for the job. Pinkerton, however, had no military background which probably was a big part of the problem.

Scott, meanwhile, had hired Lafayette C. Baker to run his intel effort. Pinkerton and Baker did not play well together. Lincoln hired William A. Lloyd.
 
It may seem obvious in retrospect, but a big problem with the plan was lack of attention to intelligence gathering. We now know that McClellan was grossly misinformed about the strength of the Confederate forces, which affected his decision making.

That is not true. McClellan's estimates of enemy troop strength at Yorktown were uncannily accurate.

He estimated 18-20,000 just before he made contact with the enemy line on the Warwick. There were approximately 16,000 infantry, 3,000 gunners and 2,000 cavalrymen on that line (rounding down).

On the 7th April McClellan indictated he thought there were 30,000 at Yorktown, which is an underestimate. The 3rd Virginia and 4 regiments under Cobb had arrived (total 4,000), along with Rodes' and Kershaw's brigades, and most of Early's brigade (all but 23rd NC) had arrived (ca. 9,500). The line was manned by ca. 33-34,000 men by this point.

By later in the siege their strength is 75-80,000 and McClellan estimated it at 80,000.

There is no doubt that McClellan knew very well what the enemy strength was during the Yorktown operations.
 
I would like to differ with you a little here. Only one year after McClellan's landing at Fortress Monroe, Colonel George Sharp's Bureau Of Military Information (BMI) used about seventy full-time agents and was providing Joe Hooker with excellent intelligence. Even earlier, JEB Stuart was a master of gathering military intelligence for Lee.

Yeah, Fishel exaggerated a lot about how efficient they were. Remember that that gave a 50% overestimate of Lee's strength at Gettysburg, which is far worse than the grossest overestimate Pinkerton ever gave.
 
Pinkerton was a great promoter of his services, for sure, and in the nature of his business that necessarily involved playing to the fears of those who will pay you. Not really any different than any private security service, although perhaps a bit excessive in Pinkerton's case (which might be part of why the Pinkerton agency was so successful).

In the case of McClellan in August 1861: he had no existing people with intel expertise to rely on in the Army. Scrambling to get something put together, it would have been natural for him to cast through his acquaintances for anyone he might think would fit the bill. Pinkerton might easily have been the only one he came up with. Very few in America would have had any credentials for the job. Pinkerton, however, had no military background which probably was a big part of the problem.

Scott, meanwhile, had hired Lafayette C. Baker to run his intel effort. Pinkerton and Baker did not play well together. Lincoln hired William A. Lloyd.

I attended an interesting presentation on the legend of the Molly McGuires recently. It is pretty well documented that Pinkerton fabricated "intelligence," lied promiscuously to his clients, and engaged in criminal activity (fraud, perjury, maybe worse) in that case. That's worse than being a skillful promoter of his own services.
 
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I would like to differ with you a little here. Only one year after McClellan's landing at Fortress Monroe, Colonel George Sharp's Bureau Of Military Information (BMI) used about seventy full-time agents and was providing Joe Hooker with excellent intelligence. Even earlier, JEB Stuart was a master of gathering military intelligence for Lee.

That is certainly true about the Civil War once it had started. There was nothing in place when the war began, and after the war, intel positions got short-shrift again.

No glory, advancement, or prestige attached, so ambitious officers avoided such postings like the plague. Intel got a bumb in wartime, got cut back after the war. This kept on until WWII started (when intel branches did exist in the Army and Navy, but were usually regarded as dead-end jobs). Several government departments had small efforts, totally uncoordinated. This is when "Wild Bill" Donovan organized the Office of Strategic Services (1942) as the result of a British suggestion to FDR. Truman dissolved the OSS in September 1945 when Japan surrendered. A different group, the CIG, was started in January 1946 as the Cold War started to catch attention. In 1947, Congress created the CIA.

Edwin C. Fishel's book, The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War, is a great place to take an in-depth look at the issues you are describing.

Here's a link to Guide to Civil War Intelligence, a quick and interesting overview of Civil War intelligence issues, North and South.
 
That is not true. McClellan's estimates of enemy troop strength at Yorktown were uncannily accurate.

He estimated 18-20,000 just before he made contact with the enemy line on the Warwick. There were approximately 16,000 infantry, 3,000 gunners and 2,000 cavalrymen on that line (rounding down).

On the 7th April McClellan indictated he thought there were 30,000 at Yorktown, which is an underestimate. The 3rd Virginia and 4 regiments under Cobb had arrived (total 4,000), along with Rodes' and Kershaw's brigades, and most of Early's brigade (all but 23rd NC) had arrived (ca. 9,500). The line was manned by ca. 33-34,000 men by this point.

By later in the siege their strength is 75-80,000 and McClellan estimated it at 80,000.

There is no doubt that McClellan knew very well what the enemy strength was during the Yorktown operations.

But isn't it also true that he was claiming the Confederate forces numbered about 200,000 (or twice the true number) at the time of the Battle of Seven Days? I know this is one of your areas of expertise, and I am only relying on recollection from reading Sears and posts I've seen on this site.
 
I attended an interesting presentation on the legend of the Molly McGuires recently. It is pretty well documented that Pinkerton fabricated "intelligence," lied promiscuously to his clients, and engaged in criminal activity (fraud, perjury, maybe worse) in that case. That's worse than being a skillful; promoter of his own services.

That's maybe, but the last time one of Pinkerton's agents was at Yorktown (Timothy Webster, 27th Jan) he found "1,200 cavalry and 27 regiments of infantry", and in March Wool reported he'd had an agent who reported "15,000-20,000".

McClellan, in the knowledge that additional regiments had crossed the James, pegged them at "18,000-20,000" when writing to Sumner in early April, and that was a very accurate estimate.

But isn't it also true that he was claiming the Confederate forces numbered about 200,000 (or twice the true number) at the time of the Battle of Seven Days? I know this is one of your areas of expertise, and I am only relying on recollection from reading Sears and posts I've seen on this site.

He stated that if the rumour was true that Beauregard's army had come east he'd have to fight 200,000. At this time Pinkerton was estimating 180,000 in 200 regiments, with a strong implication that this was the "grand aggregate present and absent" (see 900 men per regiment). The true number "present" was ca. 140,000. McClellan was outnumbered, but nowhere near 2:1. In round terms the estimates were ca. 5:4 vs the real number. Pinkerton had falsely identified 36 regiments as being with Lee's army (i.e. a "grand division"'s worth, which was compounded as Pinkerton still had GW Smith as a commander).
 
He stated that if the rumour was true that Beauregard's army had come east he'd have to fight 200,000. At this time Pinkerton was estimating 180,000 in 200 regiments, with a strong implication that this was the "grand aggregate present and absent" (see 900 men per regiment). The true number "present" was ca. 140,000. McClellan was outnumbered, but nowhere near 2:1. In round terms the estimates were ca. 5:4 vs the real number. Pinkerton had falsely identified 36 regiments as being with Lee's army (i.e. a "grand division"'s worth, which was compounded as Pinkerton still had GW Smith as a commander).

I'm not quite following. Pinkerton's estimate was 180,000? or 140,000?

Wiki estimates the size of the Confederate forces at 92,000 with McClellan's army at 105,000 to 114,000. Do you have alternate estimates that you are using?
 
Wiki estimates the size of the Confederate forces at 92,000 with McClellan's army at 105,000 to 114,000. Do you have alternate estimates that you are using?
92k is from the Seven Days wiki correct? I think they are going off only the late May-early June numbers. The broader Peninsula Campaign wiki gives the larger figure of 112k with arrival of Jackson.
 
I'm not quite following. Pinkerton's estimate was 180,000? or 140,000?

Wiki estimates the size of the Confederate forces at 92,000 with McClellan's army at 105,000 to 114,000. Do you have alternate estimates that you are using?

92k is from the Seven Days wiki correct? I think they are going off only the late May-early June numbers. The broader Peninsula Campaign wiki gives the larger figure of 112k with arrival of Jackson.

The 92,000 wikipedia offers is from Sears, who takes his figures from Longstreet's Century/ B&L article. The 112-113k PFD is from the Confederate regimental records directly - the late Prof. Harsh had a MA student go through them using Busey & Martin's methodology.

However PFD is not "aggregate present", which was the term Pinkerton was certainly using in late '61 (and the conversion PFD = 5/6 Present stuck). When I graphed all the ANV's returns the 5/6th conversion was right. With rounding the PFD from the records becomes ca. 140,000 present. Pinkerton was estimating this force at 180,000 probably in that strength category.

However, that 112k is PFD, and rebel PFD excluded men on extra duty etc., whereas the Federal PFD included men on extra duty. Personally, I reckon if you exclude the defences of Richmond and Petersburg (which you should count when weighing the possibility of attacking Richmond, but otherwise ignore) in terms of combatants in the field the rebels had 100,000 and the Federals ca. 80,000. However, apparently both sides straggled heavily during the action as they became disorganised and so fighting strengths of units on both sides seem to plummet much more than their battle casualties suggest.

What I regard as important is that the rebels, by massively concentrating against McClellan, actually did achieve a significant manpower advantage, and in fact their most significant one of the whole war.

This however has little to do with April '62, where McClellan had a very good grasp of the enemy strength.
 
The 92,000 wikipedia offers is from Sears, who takes his figures from Longstreet's Century/ B&L article. The 112-113k PFD is from the Confederate regimental records directly - the late Prof. Harsh had a MA student go through them using Busey & Martin's methodology.

However PFD is not "aggregate present", which was the term Pinkerton was certainly using in late '61 (and the conversion PFD = 5/6 Present stuck). When I graphed all the ANV's returns the 5/6th conversion was right. With rounding the PFD from the records becomes ca. 140,000 present. Pinkerton was estimating this force at 180,000 probably in that strength category.

However, that 112k is PFD, and rebel PFD excluded men on extra duty etc., whereas the Federal PFD included men on extra duty. Personally, I reckon if you exclude the defences of Richmond and Petersburg (which you should count when weighing the possibility of attacking Richmond, but otherwise ignore) in terms of combatants in the field the rebels had 100,000 and the Federals ca. 80,000. However, apparently both sides straggled heavily during the action as they became disorganised and so fighting strengths of units on both sides seem to plummet much more than their battle casualties suggest.

What I regard as important is that the rebels, by massively concentrating against McClellan, actually did achieve a significant manpower advantage, and in fact their most significant one of the whole war.

This however has little to do with April '62, where McClellan had a very good grasp of the enemy strength.

So, you would contend that Pinkerton's inflation was only moderate and not an important factor in the McClellan's decision-making?

Who was it that finally fired Pinkerton? Stanton?
 
Interaction with the Navy is a big one (routine inter-service rivalry, no unified command, no Navy man in charge and on-site committed to making McClellan's plan work).
Hard to blame McClellan for that one as he'd been promised support by the Navy (Fox promised it, but it was qualified as "for landing 1st Corps" and not for anything else explicitly).

Interaction with the administration is another (McClellan had not really gotten the President/Stanton/the War Department involved enough, committed enough, informed enough -- which leads directly to a bunch of other issues).
While arguably true, you have to ask how he could have done much better on this aspect - given he was also planning and implementing a war strategy himself. There's only so much time to do things in, and we've already seen that McClellan was being promised things by the administration they either could not or would not provide (i.e. naval support).
If someone promises support, then that's usually taken to mean they're on board... but it's actually worse than this, as all of McClellan's planning had been towards Urbanna. McClellan definitively committed to this in mid March, and then Stanton insisted it be put to a vote of the corps commanders (who, it so happens, were the four who'd decided against Urbanna during the vote of the division commanders on the 8th of March - their promotions all activated on or about the 13th). They of course came down against the Urbanna movement, and McClellan was required to go for the fallback of the Monroe option - thus there was relatively little planning done towards the Monroe option because it was not the primary plan.

This was a big problem because Shields had estimated it would take six weeks to get past Yorktown (back in January).

Lack of intelligence on the target area is a major problem -- and since McClellan is the intelligence chief, he can't avoid the responsibility for that.
This is an odd argument, to be honest (especially when taken in conjunction with the above). Either the buck stops with the person who screwed up or it stops with the person with the highest responsibility, surely - but here, in your cases (2) and (3) (and possibly in (1)) you seem to assume the buck stops with McClellan. You blame him for his superiors misunderstanding a military situation and you also blame him for an action that is essentially that of his subordinate (Wool, who provided the maps of the Yorktown area) - though Wool insisted he was an independent commander not under McClellan and Washington confirmed this.

As it happens, the maps showed the Warwick was normally 2 feet deep and 15 feet wide above Lee's Mill (but downstream from Lee's Mill formed a hollow 400 ft wide with 40 ft bluffs on either side). The dams made it 5 feet deep at the fords and 50 feet wide, with Magruder reporting that "passage is impracticable for either artillery or infantry".
The last time a spy was present at Yorktown (26-28 Jan) he stayed somewhere he should have seen the dams if they were present, but did not report it - so the situation had changed over the last two months.

Also, the Prince de Joinville was the intel chief.

Right there, around March 31- April 4, McClellan's plan is unraveling. Much of that could have been avoided by better work ahead of time.
With clairvoyance, yes. In many cases McClellan hasn't avoided doing the work, he's done the work and the information he's had is actively misleading:

(1) Naval cooperation.
McClellan has been assured of naval support, which turned out to be a promise the Administration could not keep. The
(2) Buy in by Lincoln etc.
McClellan got their approval in person, and specifically planned a phased movement to the Peninsula so as to avoid leaving Washington vulnerable too early in the campaign (including accepting a modification, the removal of Blenker's division, to provide further security for the capital). Almost as soon as he left, however, his GiC appointment was suspended and his papers taken - and his plan of campaign crippled, with the important 1st Corps removed simply because it was larger. (This also released the Navy from their promise to help, not that they'd done much of that before it happened.)
If someone's told you directly that no more troops will be removed from your army, then that's generally considered sufficient - instead McClellan had another huge chunk of his army stripped away as a direct violation of that promise. McClellan should presumably not assume the POTUS is going to lie to his face, and either Lincoln was lying or he changed his mind after McClellan left - and in the latter case there's not really much McClellan can do.
Now, maybe McClellan should have taken the Urbanna option, but as we've seen there was some considerable effort by Stanton to sabotage that option (rigging the vote of the commanders as to which option should be taken) and he was forced to fall back on his Monroe option which had only ever been a much later choice. In this light it seems as though the only option Lincoln would be willing to actually accept is the Overland option, but that's both much bloodier (as we saw historically) and something Lincoln was never willing to order - he just picked away at plans he didn't like, without ever accepting responsibility.
All signs indicate that if Lincoln had given McClellan an order to follow the Overland then McClellan would have followed it - but he would have respectfully disagreed...
(3) Intelligence.
If McClellan had not bothered to procure maps, that would be one thing - but McClellan did secure maps from the local commander (i.e. Wool) so he did take action on this front. Worse, if the maps procured by Wool and whatever additional maps he could have obtained by intelligence (presumably old ones, as one doubts the possibility of landing survey teams on the Peninsula in the middle of a war) had a discrepancy, the sensible thing to do would be to assume the locally obtained maps were correct.
As it happens, there's a map from the LoC which purports to be from 1861 and produced in NY, and it does show the Peninsula - but it shows Yorktown as isolated and the Warwick river as reaching barely halfway across the Peninsula. If McClellan used this map he'd assume there were four and a half miles of open terrain between Yorktown and the Warwick - easily enough to fight an open field battle, even against 20,000 effectives. The maps McClellan actually got were more detailed, but were for January - and showed no sign of the considerable flooding and dam building work.
 
Wiki estimates the size of the Confederate forces at 92,000 with McClellan's army at 105,000 to 114,000. Do you have alternate estimates that you are using?
If one uses like for like figures, then McClellan does not come off larger. The numbers vary, but McClellan doesn't come off larger in any case (for the Seven Days, at least).

The cause of a lot of confusion is the Lost Causers, who wanted to show that "one Reb could whup three Yanks" by taking the largest estimate of Union strength and comparing it with much-discounted Rebel strength estimates, and this is compounded by a few errors Livermore made doing his own calculations which distort things for the early Civil War.
 
If one uses like for like figures, then McClellan does not come off larger. The numbers vary, but McClellan doesn't come off larger in any case (for the Seven Days, at least).

The cause of a lot of confusion is the Lost Causers, who wanted to show that "one Reb could whup three Yanks" by taking the largest estimate of Union strength and comparing it with much-discounted Rebel strength estimates, and this is compounded by a few errors Livermore made doing his own calculations which distort things for the early Civil War.

I'm looking forward to reading more about the Peninsula Campaign. I've been studying the Sears book and am planning to move on to Clifford Dowdy's book next.
 
92k is from the Seven Days wiki correct? I think they are going off only the late May-early June numbers. The broader Peninsula Campaign wiki gives the larger figure of 112k with arrival of Jackson.

Wiki could be clearer on this. It cites 92,000 for CSA forces at Seven Days but then cites a higher number -- 112,000 -- in the footnote.
 
Wiki could be clearer on this. It cites 92,000 for CSA forces at Seven Days but then cites a higher number -- 112,000 -- in the footnote.
I think they're using Sears, who didn't go into enough detail (deliberately or not).
The headline numbers on Wiki essentially seem to compare McClellan's whole force including troops which were not actually under his command (Dix) by "Present for Duty, Effective" (i.e. present for duty minus general staff and a few hundred others) with a measure for the Confederates which appears to be discounted by 12,000 north of the Chickahominy (true figure 67,000) and 8,500 south (true figure 45,000). It further relegates 7,300 of those in this badly discounted figure to "reserves", which means that in PFD it's reported on Wikipedia as

McClellan's PFD plus a division (+9,250)
versus
Lee's PFD minus two divisions (-20,500)

in the headline numbers.

This obviously makes a big difference.*

67th has done some analysis of the differences including in Livermore's numbers, and his conclusion is that in Effectives at Savage Station / Glendale / Malvern (i.e. after McClellan has been forced away from Richmond, so the Richmond defences may no longer be counted) the CS count is 91,341 and the US count is 73,543.

The reason the Union reported PFD and the Confederates reported Effectives is, I think, partly because of the heavier use of non-combat logistics for the CSA (i.e. slaves, free blacks) whereas the Union used enlisted men to form their log trains.

*It's the reverse of when people try to prove Grant was outnumbered during Vicksburg, by counting Confederate units dozens of miles away but not Union units directly across the river from them - or indeed from him, waiting to cross. Here McClellan's being counted as having Dix, dozens of miles away, but Lee appears to be counted as not having men who are right there in Richmond.
 
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