ColorizedPast
Corporal
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2016
- Location
- Hangzhou, China (Wisconsin, USA)
Major General George Brinton McClellan (USA)
George Brinton McClellan was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 3 December 1826 to a prominent Pennsylvania family. He attended the University of Pennsylvania at age twelve studying law but soon changed his goal to military service. In 1842, he was accepted at the United States Military Academy, two years younger than the normal minimum age of sixteen. At West Point, he was deeply interested in the teachings of Dennis Hart Mahan and the theoretical strategic principles of Antoine-Henry Jomini. His closest friends were Southerners James Stuart, Dabney Maury, Cadmus Wilcox, and A.P. Hill. He graduated second in his class in 1846 missing the top position only because of poor drawing skills. McClellan was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers.
Quickly dispatched to the Mexican War front, McClellan missed the Battle of Monterrey and was then confined to the hospital for a month with dysentery and malaria – the malaria would recur in later years which he called his “Mexican disease”. Serving as an engineering officer, he was appointed brevet first lieutenant for his services at Contreras and Churubusco and to captain for his service at Chapultepec.
His experiences in the war would shape his military and political life. He learned flanking movements were often better than frontal assaults and the value of siege operations. He also witnessed Winfield Scott’s success in balancing political and military affairs, his good relations with the civil population as he invaded, and his strict discipline to minimize damage to property. McClellan also developed a disdain for volunteer soldiers and officers, particularly politicians.
Following the war, McClellan spent time at West Point training cadets and worked on a number of engineering and surveying projects. He served as second-in-command on an expedition under his future father-in-law Captain Randolph B. Marcy to discover the source of the Red River. In 1856, he proposed marriage to Marcy’s daughter Ellen but was rejected. He was one of nine suitors including A.P. Hill. In May 1860, McClellan finally wed Ellen.
On 23 April 1861, Ohio Governor William Dennison commissioned McClellan a major general of volunteers to command the Ohio militia. Re-entering federal service in May as commander of the Department of the Ohio, he was commissioned a major general in the regular army, at age 34 outranking everyone in the Army except Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott.
His first operations were to occupy the northwestern section of Virginia, which eventually became West Virginia, to protect the vital Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. He caused controversy when he proclaimed that his forces had no intentions of interfering with personal property including slaves. Realizing he had overstepped his bounds, he quickly apologized to President Abraham Lincoln. His forces, led by William Rosecrans, were victorious at the Battle of Philippi. McClellan took personal command at Rich Mountain, securing victory only after displaying a strong sense of caution and reluctance to commit reserves. Nonetheless, McClellan was a national hero.
Following the Union defeat at Bull Run on 21 July 1861, Lincoln brought McClellan east and appointed him command of the Military Division of the Potomac. He created defenses for Washington and trained the Army of the Potomac. Tensions rose between McClellan and Winfield Scott over strategy and Scott retired in November and McClellan became general-in-chief. He came into opposition with many Radical Republicans due to his antipathy to emancipation of slaves.
Lincoln and the government grew impatient with McClellan’s slowness to attack Confederate forces still near Washington. McClellan was convinced he was greatly outnumbered, a fatal flaw that plagued him during his entire Civil War service despite regularly outnumbering his opponent two to one.
His first plan of attack was to ship his army to Urbanna, Virginia, on the Rappahannock River, outflanking the Confederates near Washington and then marching overland to capture Richmond. However, Lincoln overrode this plan ordering the Army of the Potomac to march overland directly from Washington to Richmond clearing away the Confederate forces at Manassas along the way. He also named specific officers as corps commanders in the Army of the Potomac. This upset McClellan who wanted to evaluate his division commanders’ performance before selecting corps commanders.
Confederate forces near Washington under Gen. Joseph Johnston withdrew to new positions south of the Rappahannock, nullifying McClellan’s Urbanna strategy. McClellan now proposed to disembark at Fort Monroe, Virginia, and advance up the Virginia Peninsula to Richmond. On 11 March 1862, Lincoln removed McClellan as general-in-chief, allowing McClellan to focus entirely on the Peninsula Campaign but leaving it ambiguous as to whether McClellan would be reinstated following a successful campaign.
McClellan’s advance up the Peninsula was slow and stalled when he chose to besiege Yorktown rather than immediately assault it with his superior numbers or bypass it. Confederate General John B. Magruder masterfully tricked McClellan into thinking he had a numerically superior force. The delay allowed Joseph Johnston to shift his forces to the Peninsula. Just before McClellan assaulted Yorktown, the Confederates withdrew to Williamsburg. Despite a Union victory at Williamsburg on 5 May, Johnston’s army was able to withdraw into Richmond’s outer defenses.
Over the next three weeks, McClellan’s army cautiously inched towards Richmond coming to within four miles of it. On 31 May, Johnston attacked the Army of the Potomac which was split in half by the rain-swollen Chickahominy River. McClellan was incapacitated by malarial fever, but his subordinates were able to repel the uncoordinated rebel attacks at the Battle of Seven Pines (Fair Oaks). Johnston was wounded, and General Robert E. Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia.
McClellan spent the next three weeks repositioning his troops and waiting for promised reinforcements, while Lee strengthened Richmond’s defense. At the end of June, Lee began a series of attacks that became known as the Seven Days Battles. Despite little tactical gain at the first battle at Mechanicsville, Lee rattled McClellan’s nerve with the sudden appearance of Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s troops in the battle. McClellan reported the Confederates had 200,000 men; they had 85,000.
McClellan eventually withdrew his army to Harrison’s Landing, saving it, but losing the opportunity to invest Richmond. During the Seven Days Battles, McClellan was absent from the fighting and had named no second-in-command. Lincoln named Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck general-in-chief and offered command of the Army of the Potomac to Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, who refused.
In Washington, units were reorganized to create the Army of Virginia under Maj. Gen. John Pope. McClellan resisted calls to reinforce Pope’s army and delayed return of the Army of the Potomac until the Northern Virginia Campaign was already underway. Lee, confident McClellan would remain on the defensive, removed significant units from the Peninsula to attack Pope, defeating him at Second Bull Run in August.
Lincoln turned to McClellan to integrate Pope’s shattered army into the Army of the Potomac just as Lee launched his Maryland Campaign. Lee divided his army but did not fear the lethargic McClellan, however, Union soldiers discovered a copy of Lee’s orders dividing his army which McClellan received on 13 September. McClellan exclaimed, “Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be willing to go home.”
Despite the intelligence, McClellan was slow to cut off the South Mountain passes and destroy Lee’s army. During the delay, Lee learned that McClellan knew his plans. The delay also doomed the Federal garrison at Harpers Ferry which surrendered to Stonewall Jackson. In the Battle of South Mountain, McClellan was able to push through the defended passes to reach Lee, but the battle gave Lee time to concentrate his forces at Sharpsburg, Maryland.
During the Battle of Antietam on 17 September 1862, McClellan was unable to concentrate his forces effectively. He also refused to employ his sizeable reserve (larger than the entire rebel army) to exploit localized successes. Antietam was the bloodiest day in American military history and was a tactical draw but was considered a turning point in the war and a Union victory because it ended Lee’s first invasion of the North. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on 22 September. Despite successfully blunting Lee’s invasion, McClellan failed to aggressively pursue Lee; Lincoln removed him from command on 5 November replacing him with Burnside.
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton ordered McClellan to Trenton, New Jersey to await further orders – orders which never came. Over the next year, there were many calls to return McClellan to a prominent command. When Ulysses S. Grant became general-in-chief in 1864, he discussed returning McClellan to an unspecified position, but these opportunities proved impossible given the opposition within the administration and the threat McClellan, now openly a Democrat, posed politically.
McClellan was nominated to run against Lincoln in the 1864 U.S. presidential election. Like Winfield Scott, he ran as a U.S. Army general still on active duty resigning his commission on election day, 8 November 1864. He supported continuation of the war and restoration of the Union but not the abolition of slavery, but the Democratic Party platform was opposed to this position. The platform called for a negotiated peace with the Confederacy. His running mate, George H. Pendleton of Ohio, was also a peace candidate. Lincoln won the election with 212 Electoral College votes to 21. McClellan failed to secure the support of the troops who voted for Lincoln nearly 3 to 1. 70% of the Army of the Potomac voted for Lincoln.
He and his family went to Europe until 1868. The Democratic Party expressed interest in nominating him again in 1868, but Grant became the Republican nominee and interest died. He worked on various engineering project, served as chief engineer of the New York City Department of Docks, and president of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad. He served one term as Governor of New Jersey from 1878 to 1881. He supported Grover Cleveland for President in 1884 and sought the position of Secretary of War, but political rivals from New Jersey blocked his nomination.
He spent his final years travelling and writing his memoirs McClellan’s Own Story, in which he stridently defended his conduct during the war. McClellan died of a heart attack at age 58 in Orange, New Jersey, on 29 October 1885.