McClellan Re-evaluating George McClellan

[SSVilla]

I think Grant's assessment is correct. But Grant also said or wrote, that McClellan became Lincoln's rival. A year after the death of Stephen A. Douglas it became clear to Lincoln, and Seward too most likely, the General McClellan was positioning himself as a future presidential nominee.

That's absolutely true. His two criticisms of Mac were that he allowed himself to become Lincoln's political rival and he was disappointed by his failure to crush Lee at Antietam. To speak plainly, Mac was too young, rose too fast, and wasn't ready in terms of experience — as none of them were — when it all devolved upon him. Then it all went to his head, and he "allowed himself" to be influenced by politicians that in the end caused his downfall.

Here's the quote:

From Conversations with Grant.

 

[Belfoured]

The actor grew up in Paris. So that's not even a fake French accent.

Ryan

Then he did a great job of making it sound like a fake French accent. He may have watched too many Pink Panther movies.

 

[67th Tigers]

I can't get mad about the quaker guns thing. Deception is meant to decieve.

The thing is, there were a lot of real guns at Centerville. In December, Johnston had Beauregard prepare enough "log guns" to fill the whole of the works. On 27th January 1862 a deserter from the 6th Louisiana, who'd been in the working party, reported that all the fortifications facing Washington were bereft of guns, and it was decided to check on this. However, just after this a detailed report from the spy Timothy Webster came in, who'd observed part of the Centerville defences around a week before. He reported no Quaker guns but reported on the artillery he saw, and he saw the Washington Artillery's guns amongst others. They were installing proper siege artillery in January.

It's unclear how many, if any, of the Quaker guns were in the positions before the evacuation. The instructions were to cover them with branches etc. because they were so obviously not guns. They don't even look like guns - bronze and iron is easy to tell from painted wood. None of the pictured guns photographed at Centerville is properly set up, and may even have just been lying around and placed in the position for the photos.

Now, some of the positions may have had wooden logs, since in late November it was decided to take all the brigade batteries out of the works, and have only the Artillery Reserve (9 batteries) and Washington Artillery (4 batteries) in position. 13 redoubts/ lunettes etc., and 13 batteries - one for each. Some positions were designed for more than 4 or 6 guns of a battery, such as Artillery Hill (a 10 gun all-round work). Some of those may certainly have been filled with logs, but most works were 4 or 6 guns, and so the batteries probably filled them. The 9 brigade batteries, meanwhile, were encamped a little west and ready to be rushed forward.

However, there were 13 batteries in position in January '62...

 

[SSVilla]

Contemporary opinion

Thanks for posting this. I finally got around to watching it. He summed him up to a T, giving an accurate assessment of him, just from his military skill, without even getting into a discussion of any of the problems that originated from his political ambitions or his rivalries with the Republicans of his time.

I had to look up his book and download it.

 

[67th Tigers]

Thanks for posting this. I finally got around to watching it. He summed him up to a T, giving an accurate assessment of him, just from his military skill, without even getting into a discussion of any of the problems that originated from his political ambitions or his rivalries with the Republicans of his time.

I had to look up his book and download it.

Except Rusling was never on McClellan's staff. He was the brigade quartermaster for Starr's brigade. Much of what he wrote, excepting his own personal observations of McClellan's coolness under fire, is quoting election propaganda either directly or indirectly. Indeed, Rusling states that he thought McClellan was a good commander at the time, but later (probably around the 1864 election) converted to the idea that McClellan should have been shot.

This is someone who bought into the "swift-boating" of McClellan post-facto.

 

[wausaubob]

General McClellan was late to give up the illusion that the Confederacy would agree to reunification under any terms other than absolute defeat. And he never accepted that the US could win the Civil War without destroying slavery in the process. Those wishful illusions were quite common when the Civil War began. But most people gave up those hopes by July 1862.

 

[SSVilla]

General McClellan was late to give up the illusion that the Confederacy would agree to reunification under any terms other than absolute defeat. And he never accepted that the US could win the Civil War without destroying slavery in the process. Those wishful illusions were quite common when the Civil War began. But most people gave up those hopes by July 1862.

I think you meant to write: that the "US could [not] win Civil War without destroying slavery…" and yup, completely agree.

Do you know of the incident with Major Key?

"In response to a question asked by Maj. Levi C. Turner why the Rebel army was not "bagged" by McClellan at Antietam, Maj. Key replied, "That is not the game; the object is that neither army shall get much advantage of the other; that both shall be kept in the field till they are exhausted, when we will make a compromise and save slavery."​

There's this article about it and a book someone cited very early in this thread, Styple, William B. McClellan's Other Story : The Political Intrigue of Colonel Thomas M. Key, Confidential Aide to General George B. McClellan. Belle Grove Pub. Co., 2012.

I am still reading Sears first and Catton, so that one is far on my reading list but it's interesting.

 

[wausaubob]

I think you meant to write: that the "US could [not] win Civil War without destroying slavery…" and yup, completely agree.

Do you know of the incident with Major Key?

"In response to a question asked by Maj. Levi C. Turner why the Rebel army was not "bagged" by McClellan at Antietam, Maj. Key replied, "That is not the game; the object is that neither army shall get much advantage of the other; that both shall be kept in the field till they are exhausted, when we will make a compromise and save slavery."​

There's this article about it and a book someone cited very early in this thread, Styple, William B. McClellan's Other Story : The Political Intrigue of Colonel Thomas M. Key, Confidential Aide to General George B. McClellan. Belle Grove Pub. Co., 2012.

I am still reading Sears first and Catton, so that one is far on my reading list but it's interesting.

You catch my drift. It seemed possible at first, that the war could be kept within certain bounds, and reunification might follow some compromise that saved slavery. Many events in 1862 made that possibility very unlikely. The battles of Shiloh Church, and General Lee's successful of Richmond demonstrated that either the US won and achieved military unification or both nations would be permanently militarized and involved in a long and destructive competition. It became obvious that it was slavery vs manifest destiny.

 

[67th Tigers]

Further, I have the survey made after the works were captured. The works were:

Right to left along the eastern line:

1. 7 embrasures, all round (2 forward, one each side and 3 to the rear). Closed work
2. 6 embrasures (4 forward, one each side). Open back with a stockade.
3. Advanced work (in front of 2) with 3 embrasures in front.
4. 4 embrasures (2 front, one left and one rear-left). Closed work
5. (Fort Johnston) 9 embrasures (all round, 5 "forward" one each side and 2 to the rear). Closed work
6. 7 embrasures (4 forward, 3 left). At the corner.
7. 4 embrasures (2 forward, one each side). Open back, and "round the corner"

= 42 embrasures

Northern Line:

• 4 embrasures. Demi-lune
• 6 embrasures. Battery
• 2 embrasures. Demi-line
• 4 embrasures. Battery

= 16 embrasures

Reserve Positions

• Artillery Hill - 10, all round
• The battery manned by Dance - 6 embrasures

= 16 embrasures

There were positions for 74 guns, and, after the brigade batteries were withdrawn, the Washington Artillery and Artillery Reserve manned them with 64 guns. This suggests there were 10 empty embrasures. Those that had Quaker Guns put in them had a poll system constructed over them and a roof made to conceal their nature from the balloons. Oddly, the pictures of Quaker guns on the front don't have this, suggesting they did not contain Quaker guns, at least until the retreat...

 

[TallTallMan]

After a week's lull I was hoping--hoping and praying that it was finally over. But it never ends.

 

[Belfoured]

After a week's lull I was hoping--hoping and praying that it was finally over. But it never ends.

It's like burying nuclear waste. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it isn't percolating into the drinking water.

 

[1SGDan]

McClellan's primary concern is that he has three corps commanders, all of whom he has a low opinion of; he has nine divisions in total, and he has two division commanders (Porter and Franklin) who he thinks relatively highly of.

McClellan's primary concern should have been for his own performance which lacked aggressiveness, speed of action and an excuse making attitude. The two, and now apparently three blah, blah, blah's have totally missed the point; Mac was a failure.

 

[Saphroneth]

McClellan's primary concern should have been for his own performance which lacked aggressiveness, speed of action and an excuse making attitude. The two, and now apparently three blah, blah, blah's have totally missed the point; Mac was a failure.

An army on the scale of a hundred thousand men cannot be controlled effectively as a unit. It is essential to delegate much of the command to subordinate officers; what do you do when many of your subordinate officers, who you cannot replace, are men who your evaluation concludes are poor?



This is a point that needs to be emphasized, I think. Armies are geographically large and information and orders take time to travel between components of them; even if the Army of the Potomac at that point had all been on one field and had formed a single continuous line of battle, with half the force in reserve behind the first line, it would have been approximately eight miles wide and it would have taken information an hour to get from one end to the other by horse; if McClellan is in the middle then he may well not hear about the enemy doing something on one flank for thirty minutes, and then his orders to do something about it would take another thirty minutes to arrive.

Notably, McClellan attempts in many of the battles he commands (the actions around Richmond from Seven Pines to Gaines Mill, Glendale, Antietam) to use semaphore and other forms of signalling to reduce that lag time; similarly standing on a hill, if one is available, means that it's at least possible to see things happening and cut down on the decision loop. But conversely if he's trying to do something operationally noteworthy (which is what he's doing with half the army slated to move to Eltham's Landing while the other half engages in what will become Williamsburg) then no matter where McClellan is some large part of his army is going to be hours away from him.



This means that it is completely unavoidable to have subordinate commanders with wide latitude. This is a natural consequnce of the increasing size of armies (a full-strength division deployed in single line of battle is on the order of a mile wide, a full-strength corps on the order of three, and an army of multiple corps just keeps getting wider; furthermore, corps-sized forces may operate independently and march along different roads entirely, sometimes called battalion carre and resulting in corps being a full day's foot march apart) and is one of the reasons why corps command exists, but the corps commander having specifically a wide latitude is because the corps commander is likely to be many miles (and consequently upwards of an hour) out of direct contact with the army commander, and things happen on battlefields which require good decision making on a shorter timescale than that.


That is why (as was the topic I was discussing) a key part of McClellan's reaction to the outcome of the Williamsburg operation was to put at least some of his force under the commanders who he feels he can trust. McClellan originally trusted Sumner to handle Williamsburg while McClellan was doing something else (something equally important to the army, since it was the move of half of it to Eltham's Landing, as planned); since McClellan cannot be in both places at once he delegates one of them to a senior commander. He's actually giving Sumner the task which Sumner should have been better suited to, the fairly conventional pursuit operation not the odd littoral blocking manoeuvre.
As actually happened, things went wrong (Union over-commitment to attacking) roughly until McClellan showed up and reinforced Hancock. But this only emphasizes the need for there to be at least some commanders who can be trusted to work okay where McClellan is not - and that's what drives McClellan's modifications to the original structure.

 

[1SGDan]

An army on the scale of a hundred thousand men cannot be controlled effectively as a unit. It is essential to delegate much of the command to subordinate officers; what do you do when many of your subordinate officers, who you cannot replace, are men who your evaluation concludes are poor?



This is a point that needs to be emphasized, I think. Armies are geographically large and information and orders take time to travel between components of them; even if the Army of the Potomac at that point had all been on one field and had formed a single continuous line of battle, with half the force in reserve behind the first line, it would have been approximately eight miles wide and it would have taken information an hour to get from one end to the other by horse; if McClellan is in the middle then he may well not hear about the enemy doing something on one flank for thirty minutes, and then his orders to do something about it would take another thirty minutes to arrive.

Notably, McClellan attempts in many of the battles he commands (the actions around Richmond from Seven Pines to Gaines Mill, Glendale, Antietam) to use semaphore and other forms of signalling to reduce that lag time; similarly standing on a hill, if one is available, means that it's at least possible to see things happening and cut down on the decision loop. But conversely if he's trying to do something operationally noteworthy (which is what he's doing with half the army slated to move to Eltham's Landing while the other half engages in what will become Williamsburg) then no matter where McClellan is some large part of his army is going to be hours away from him.



This means that it is completely unavoidable to have subordinate commanders with wide latitude. This is a natural consequnce of the increasing size of armies (a full-strength division deployed in single line of battle is on the order of a mile wide, a full-strength corps on the order of three, and an army of multiple corps just keeps getting wider; furthermore, corps-sized forces may operate independently and march along different roads entirely, sometimes called battalion carre and resulting in corps being a full day's foot march apart) and is one of the reasons why corps command exists, but the corps commander having specifically a wide latitude is because the corps commander is likely to be many miles (and consequently upwards of an hour) out of direct contact with the army commander, and things happen on battlefields which require good decision making on a shorter timescale than that.


That is why (as was the topic I was discussing) a key part of McClellan's reaction to the outcome of the Williamsburg operation was to put at least some of his force under the commanders who he feels he can trust. McClellan originally trusted Sumner to handle Williamsburg while McClellan was doing something else (something equally important to the army, since it was the move of half of it to Eltham's Landing, as planned); since McClellan cannot be in both places at once he delegates one of them to a senior commander. He's actually giving Sumner the task which Sumner should have been better suited to, the fairly conventional pursuit operation not the odd littoral blocking manoeuvre.
As actually happened, things went wrong (Union over-commitment to attacking) roughly until McClellan showed up and reinforced Hancock. But this only emphasizes the need for there to be at least some commanders who can be trusted to work okay where McClellan is not - and that's what drives McClellan's modifications to the original structure.

Blah, blah, blah. Just a reminder (again) that getting fired twice is not an indicator of success. Its that simple.

 

[67th Tigers]

Of course, Saphroneth is right, and making an argument of "blah, blah, blah" is conceding that he is right.

As armies expanded, they became collections of individual armies, and the individual armies became called "army corps." Each corps commander was an army commander in his own right, because intimate control only extends a certain distance.

Thus, the ability of these "little army commanders" is crucial in the transformation of the commanders intent into action. Very few generals commanded a force much more than 50,000 in the field. Grant didn't until the Overland Campaign, and Sherman didn't until the Atlanta campaign. Both had huge problems actually commanding these large forces, but were helped immensely by good subordinates. In fact, only eight Federal generals ever commanded a full sized army:

1. McClellan
2. Halleck (Corinth)
3. Pope
4. Burnside
5. Hooker
6. Meade (at Gettysburg, soon reduced)
7. Grant
8. Sherman

Halleck, Pope, Burnside and Hooker were obviously hopeless, and Meade's post-Gettysburg command isn't that inspiring. We are left with three generals capable of commanding a full-sized army at least reasonably competently; McClellan, Grant and Sherman. The latter two had the advantage of good, battle-tested subordinates, whereas McClellan was saddled with some abysmal subordinates (although one of the worst, Burnside, was also inflicted on Grant).

 

[Belfoured]

Of course, Saphroneth is right, and making an argument of "blah, blah, blah" is conceding that he is right.

As armies expanded, they became collections of individual armies, and the individual armies became called "army corps." Each corps commander was an army commander in his own right, because intimate control only extends a certain distance.

Thus, the ability of these "little army commanders" is crucial in the transformation of the commanders intent into action. Very few generals commanded a force much more than 50,000 in the field. Grant didn't until the Overland Campaign, and Sherman didn't until the Atlanta campaign. Both had huge problems actually commanding these large forces, but were helped immensely by good subordinates. In fact, only eight Federal generals ever commanded a full sized army:

1. McClellan
2. Halleck (Corinth)
3. Pope
4. Burnside
5. Hooker
6. Meade (at Gettysburg, soon reduced)
7. Grant
8. Sherman

Halleck, Pope, Burnside and Hooker were obviously hopeless, and Meade's post-Gettysburg command isn't that inspiring. We are left with three generals capable of commanding a full-sized army at least reasonably competently; McClellan, Grant and Sherman. The latter two had the advantage of good, battle-tested subordinates, whereas McClellan was saddled with some abysmal subordinates (although one of the worst, Burnside, was also inflicted on Grant).

And this is what a true cult looks like. Pathetic.

 

[Belfoured]

Blah, blah, blah. Just a reminder (again) that getting fired twice is not an indicator of success. Its that simple.

McClellan is the hockey team that "looks good getting off the bus". The only puzzling aspect is that even if he was infallible - which the cult enthusiastically assumes - infallible icons don't fail for any reason, including by being "saddled with abysmal subordinates" (at least one of whom he personally selected and contrived a corps command for, by the way).

 

[TallTallMan]

Meade's post-Gettysburg command isn't that inspiring.

Maybe a red herring but Meade was answering to Grant over his shoulder at this point, so he wasn't it the best position to flex his muscles like at Gettysburg.

He was obviously one of the best AOTP commanders, outside of however we view Mac's reputation.

Furthermore I would not call Hooker "hopeless". I would call that bold. I wouldn't even say that about Bragg, and Hooker was ten levels above him.

 

[SSVilla]

After a week's lull I was hoping--hoping and praying that it was finally over. But it never ends.

I now understand a little better why you were kinda upset with me for bumping this up.

It's kind of a shame. I would have chatted much more about Mac if it wasn't for the radioactive stuff in the ground Belfoured mentioned.

As an aside here, I had the impression at times from reading The Young Napoleon that McClellan used politicians as much as they used him. I came away with the impression he was more interested in salvaging his reputation and his pride at times, and politicians helped him on that for their own reasons.

 

[SSVilla]

One thing that struck me about Mac that I didn't know prior to reading the book was that he was such a hard worker who exhausted himself and was often sick… however he seemed incapable of delegating, didn't trust anyone and micromanaged to such an extent. There's sort of an inference that Sears makes that it was because of his distrust in others.