McClellan Replacements

Joined
Apr 23, 2012
I know at some point during the winter of 1861 McClellan was temporarily incapacitated with Typhoid fever. Did the Army of the Potomac have an acting commander during that time? If so, who was he?

This leads into my next question...did George ever designate an acting commander in case he was ever incapacitated while in command? Did the AoP have a number 2 commander established at any point during McClellan's campaigning?
 
I know at some point during the winter of 1861 McClellan was temporarily incapacitated with Typhoid fever. Did the Army of the Potomac have an acting commander during that time? If so, who was he?

This leads into my next question...did George ever designate an acting commander in case he was ever incapacitated while in command? Did the AoP have a number 2 commander established at any point during McClellan's campaigning?

I know that Edwin Sumner would have been the senior officer after McClellan but I know that the last thing that McClellan would have done is turn the army over to Sumner.

R
 
I know at some point during the winter of 1861 McClellan was temporarily incapacitated with Typhoid fever. Did the Army of the Potomac have an acting commander during that time? If so, who was he?
No. When Lincoln wanted to try to get things moving while McClellan was sick he met with McDowell and Franklin , but neither of them was "acting commander".
 
One spin off from our war experiences of WWII was the need to train every man, every leadership job, so that say a Squad Lead is killed, one of the Corporals or Buck Sergeants can move right into that position without losing a beat. I know from my time at the Infantry School, we taught that lesson from the Basic Trainee up to the Officer Advanced class. We also used that same doctrine when instructing foreign students (School of the Americas for instance.)

Today's military plans for 40-50 different scenarios of every action. When reading about military command prior to the 20th Century, I find a distinct lack of scenario planning. When looking at the differences, I see that we sometimes get so far into the weeds today, we miss the really big tree on an open plain, but for the life of me, cannot understand how Commanders of yore would not put some rudimentary effort into planning for a few contingencies, especially considering the lead from the front style of leadership of the day.

One reason could be the exceptional growth of the Staff. When my son was in Afghanistan, he spent some time in the S3 shop as the Major's deputy prior to being assigned as the liaison officer to the Afghan Army. He reported that the Squadron S3 had a staff of about 40 men. I laughed when I heard that, the entire S shop (S1-6) for a Regiment had about 40 men when I was in the Army.

During WWII, Gen Eisenhower had a staff of 16,000 men to plan Operation Overlord, which in addition to effectively launching 12,000 aircraft, 7,000 vessels, landing 24,000 paratroopers and 160,000 men landing on the beaches, had to plan the logistics, the docks, piers refueling issues and the campaign of subterfuge in getting the Germans to believe they were hitting a different area.

To put it into simple terms, had Ike been in Afghanistan in 2009, planning an invasion with roughly 180,000 men, using the modern S Shop numbers, his S3 section alone would have consisted of about 32,000 men

I have not looked into the staff numbers during the Civil War specifically, but would assume that General Officers had relatively small staffs, even at the Corps level. Going out on a limb here, I would suspect the Civil War staff for an Overlord sized force would probably be a few hundred staff officers, but probably would not reach more than a 1,000. One would think someone would have come up with a plan of succession in the event of death or long term separation from duty of Commanders.
 
From what I can tell, McClellan was much to egocentric, to have had a second in command. While convelesceing he continued to command the AoP from his Hotel Room through cor4iers carrying his orders and instructions of his Chief of Staff and the system did create problems(at least with Lincol)wherein Lincoln had to call a council of the AoP corps commanders to ascertain what was to become of the Army if McClellan remained incapacitated, much longer.


P.S. the news of the council, brought little Mac out of his sick bed and he remained active, so perhaps that had been Lincoln's intent, all along(although little mac didn't think so)
 
From what I can tell, McClellan was much to egocentric, to have had a second in command. While convelesceing he continued to command the AoP from his Hotel Room through cor4iers carrying his orders and instructions of his Chief of Staff and the system did create problems(at least with Lincol)wherein Lincoln had to call a council of the AoP corps commanders to ascertain what was to become of the Army if McClellan remained incapacitated, much longer.


P.S. the news of the council, brought little Mac out of his sick bed and he remained active, so perhaps that had been Lincoln's intent, all along(although little mac didn't think so)

Lincoln asked McClellan if being an army Commander and General in Chief weren't too much to handle & Mac replied, "I can do it all."
 
I think it is possible that McClellan may have used his right-hand man, Fitz-John Porter as a sort-of, unofficial second in command, from time to time.
 
One spin off from our war experiences of WWII was the need to train every man, every leadership job, so that say a Squad Lead is killed, one of the Corporals or Buck Sergeants can move right into that position without losing a beat. I know from my time at the Infantry School, we taught that lesson from the Basic Trainee up to the Officer Advanced class. We also used that same doctrine when instructing foreign students (School of the Americas for instance.)

Today's military plans for 40-50 different scenarios of every action. When reading about military command prior to the 20th Century, I find a distinct lack of scenario planning. When looking at the differences, I see that we sometimes get so far into the weeds today, we miss the really big tree on an open plain, but for the life of me, cannot understand how Commanders of yore would not put some rudimentary effort into planning for a few contingencies, especially considering the lead from the front style of leadership of the day.

One reason could be the exceptional growth of the Staff. When my son was in Afghanistan, he spent some time in the S3 shop as the Major's deputy prior to being assigned as the liaison officer to the Afghan Army. He reported that the Squadron S3 had a staff of about 40 men. I laughed when I heard that, the entire S shop (S1-6) for a Regiment had about 40 men when I was in the Army.

During WWII, Gen Eisenhower had a staff of 16,000 men to plan Operation Overlord, which in addition to effectively launching 12,000 aircraft, 7,000 vessels, landing 24,000 paratroopers and 160,000 men landing on the beaches, had to plan the logistics, the docks, piers refueling issues and the campaign of subterfuge in getting the Germans to believe they were hitting a different area.

To put it into simple terms, had Ike been in Afghanistan in 2009, planning an invasion with roughly 180,000 men, using the modern S Shop numbers, his S3 section alone would have consisted of about 32,000 men

I have not looked into the staff numbers during the Civil War specifically, but would assume that General Officers had relatively small staffs, even at the Corps level. Going out on a limb here, I would suspect the Civil War staff for an Overlord sized force would probably be a few hundred staff officers, but probably would not reach more than a 1,000. One would think someone would have come up with a plan of succession in the event of death or long term separation from duty of Commanders.

I really appreciate your first-hand input, especially about current operations. But it's awfully hard to get my head around the idea of comparing the numbers involved in the Civil War vs. WWII or later.

Lee had a very small staff, and spent a lot of hours digesting reports which would normally be the province of intelligence officers, Yet he had the ability to turn the "chessboard" around and view the upcoming campaigns from his opponants perspectives, and plan accordingly. For example, the first full day of Chacellorsville was taken up by Lee waiting for reports from his cavalary and, once Hooker's choice of routes was determined, Lee's strategy for that option came into play. But as best I can determine, this was mostly done in his head, and was a product of the extraordinary amount of work Lee did on a daily basis.
 
I really appreciate your first-hand input, especially about current operations. But it's awfully hard to get my head around the idea of comparing the numbers involved in the Civil War vs. WWII or later.

Lee had a very small staff, and spent a lot of hours digesting reports which would normally be the province of intelligence officers, Yet he had the ability to turn the "chessboard" around and view the upcoming campaigns from his opponants perspectives, and plan accordingly. For example, the first full day of Chacellorsville was taken up by Lee waiting for reports from his cavalary and, once Hooker's choice of routes was determined, Lee's strategy for that option came into play. But as best I can determine, this was mostly done in his head, and was a product of the extraordinary amount of work Lee did on a daily basis.

My comments stemmed from a group of discussion my youngest son and I have had since he received his commission. It is kind of a running joke that staff has become almost as large as the fighting force. I point out the disparity in staff size merely as one cog in the wheel, if you will. Maybe it is my around the barn, over the paddock and past the hen house approach to looking at the Higher Headquarters functions as a whole. My long winded tangent took me off my own point; certainly one of the staff officers for Mac, regardless of the size, be it one, two or two hundred, should have been doing some contingency planning.

As pointed out in previous posts, which I concur with, Mac's ego would certainly have come into play in reducing or eliminating any discussions of contingencies as irrelevant. Maybe it is just that ego which prevents me from fully understanding how a man, so qualified on paper, could have done or not done the things that he did or did not do. I have vacillated back and forth over his own personal courage, but have eliminated that line of thought in favor of the fear of failure notion.

In his letters, Mac consistently evokes the victim mentality, maybe an indication of an underlying mental disorder, specifically paranoia. He seemed to believe everything he stated as the gospel, but apparently had a great deal of mistrust of others. I could be entirely off base and in fact, he may have just been a perpetual showman with a flair for serial exaggeration.
 
One spin off from our war experiences of WWII was the need to train every man, every leadership job, so that say a Squad Lead is killed, one of the Corporals or Buck Sergeants can move right into that position without losing a beat. I know from my time at the Infantry School, we taught that lesson from the Basic Trainee up to the Officer Advanced class. We also used that same doctrine when instructing foreign students (School of the Americas for instance.)

Today's military plans for 40-50 different scenarios of every action. When reading about military command prior to the 20th Century, I find a distinct lack of scenario planning. When looking at the differences, I see that we sometimes get so far into the weeds today, we miss the really big tree on an open plain, but for the life of me, cannot understand how Commanders of yore would not put some rudimentary effort into planning for a few contingencies, especially considering the lead from the front style of leadership of the day.

One reason could be the exceptional growth of the Staff. When my son was in Afghanistan, he spent some time in the S3 shop as the Major's deputy prior to being assigned as the liaison officer to the Afghan Army. He reported that the Squadron S3 had a staff of about 40 men. I laughed when I heard that, the entire S shop (S1-6) for a Regiment had about 40 men when I was in the Army.

During WWII, Gen Eisenhower had a staff of 16,000 men to plan Operation Overlord, which in addition to effectively launching 12,000 aircraft, 7,000 vessels, landing 24,000 paratroopers and 160,000 men landing on the beaches, had to plan the logistics, the docks, piers refueling issues and the campaign of subterfuge in getting the Germans to believe they were hitting a different area.

To put it into simple terms, had Ike been in Afghanistan in 2009, planning an invasion with roughly 180,000 men, using the modern S Shop numbers, his S3 section alone would have consisted of about 32,000 men

I have not looked into the staff numbers during the Civil War specifically, but would assume that General Officers had relatively small staffs, even at the Corps level. Going out on a limb here, I would suspect the Civil War staff for an Overlord sized force would probably be a few hundred staff officers, but probably would not reach more than a 1,000. One would think someone would have come up with a plan of succession in the event of death or long term separation from duty of Commanders.

Up until WWII, US Army officers generally thought of many staff assignments as things to be avoided if possible; getting stuck in intelligence was regarded as a potential career-killer. In his autobiography A Soldier's Story, Omar Bradley proudly recounts how proud he was to have avoided that duty up until he got to North Africa and discovered just how much better the average Allied officer was on intelligence than any American officer.

Robert E. Lee ran the ANV with a staff of essentially four men plus clerks and messengers. He deliberately placed many of his talented people in combat slots, then pushed what should have been staff functions down to subordinate HQ. He managed that because he had Stuart, Longstreet, and Jackson (Longstreet had the best of the Confederate corps-level staffs).

In 1860, the entire US Army had a little over 1,000 officers in a force of some 16,000. A standard one-battalion regiment of infantry at full war strength (10 x 100 man companies) was 1,038 officers and men. That was 1 Colonel, 1 Lt. Colonel, 2 Majors, 10 Captains, 20 Lieutenants, and four specialists plus the companies IIRR.

Of the serving officers of 1860, 313 "went South" (about 28%).

Tim
 
Up until WWII, US Army officers generally thought of many staff assignments as things to be avoided if possible; getting stuck in intelligence was regarded as a potential career-killer. In his autobiography A Soldier's Story, Omar Bradley proudly recounts how proud he was to have avoided that duty up until he got to North Africa and discovered just how much better the average Allied officer was on intelligence than any American officer.

Robert E. Lee ran the ANV with a staff of essentially four men plus clerks and messengers. He deliberately placed many of his talented people in combat slots, then pushed what should have been staff functions down to subordinate HQ. He managed that because he had Stuart, Longstreet, and Jackson (Longstreet had the best of the Confederate corps-level staffs).

In 1860, the entire US Army had a little over 1,000 officers in a force of some 16,000. A standard one-battalion regiment of infantry at full war strength (10 x 100 man companies) was 1,038 officers and men. That was 1 Colonel, 1 Lt. Colonel, 2 Majors, 10 Captains, 20 Lieutenants, and four specialists plus the companies IIRR.

Of the serving officers of 1860, 313 "went South" (about 28%).

Tim

One of the reasons Lee kept his staff so small was that he knew there were strong tendencies for a staff to keep growing in size. Influential persons would ask that their sons be assigned to a staff so that they would be more safe than in a front-line unit. Division and corps generals would feel that they needed to compete with one another to have at least "equal" numbers of staff. And, of course, as anyone familiar with any business knows, there are always excuses to add more people. This took away men which might be of value on the line units, and dramatically increased the size of each wagon train assigned to a headquarters (division, corps, army). So Lee set the example by having a small staff, and few subordinates dared to presume that they were entitled to a larger headquarters staff than Lee.
 
One of the reasons Lee kept his staff so small was that he knew there were strong tendencies for a staff to keep growing in size. Influential persons would ask that their sons be assigned to a staff so that they would be more safe than in a front-line unit. Division and corps generals would feel that they needed to compete with one another to have at least "equal" numbers of staff. And, of course, as anyone familiar with any business knows, there are always excuses to add more people. This took away men which might be of value on the line units, and dramatically increased the size of each wagon train assigned to a headquarters (division, corps, army). So Lee set the example by having a small staff, and few subordinates dared to presume that they were entitled to a larger headquarters staff than Lee.

Yes, that was true as well.

The problems with Lee's staff show up later in the war. Jackson dies, and neither A. P. Hill nor Ewell can handle things as he did. Stuart is missing for a few days during the Gettysburg Campaign -- and no one at HQ does anything much to fill the gap caused by Stuart (not the cavalry) being absent. Then Stuart dies in May 1864, and the ANV is fortunate to discover they have a capable replacement in Hampton. Then Longstreet gets severely wounded and is absent from the ANV for months.

Lee's army still fights well, but Lee's control over it slips a little and details start to slip through the cracks. Just before Cold Harbor, Lee desperately needs to order Breckinridge to his right, and no one on Lee's staff can find Breckinridge -- so Lee heads out and tracks Breckinridge's division down himself. Breckinridge arrives just in time to plug the hole fights hard and well -- probably saving the Confederacy for a few months. If Lee had not found him, it is quite likely Richmond would have fallen in early June of 1864 and Lee's ANV might have been destroyed then and there.

Tim
 
Yes, that was true as well.

The problems with Lee's staff show up later in the war. Jackson dies, and neither A. P. Hill nor Ewell can handle things as he did. Stuart is missing for a few days during the Gettysburg Campaign -- and no one at HQ does anything much to fill the gap caused by Stuart (not the cavalry) being absent. Then Stuart dies in May 1864, and the ANV is fortunate to discover they have a capable replacement in Hampton. Then Longstreet gets severely wounded and is absent from the ANV for months.

Lee's army still fights well, but Lee's control over it slips a little and details start to slip through the cracks. Just before Cold Harbor, Lee desperately needs to order Breckinridge to his right, and no one on Lee's staff can find Breckinridge -- so Lee heads out and tracks Breckinridge's division down himself. Breckinridge arrives just in time to plug the hole fights hard and well -- probably saving the Confederacy for a few months. If Lee had not found him, it is quite likely Richmond would have fallen in early June of 1864 and Lee's ANV might have been destroyed then and there.

Tim

I guess that also explains the ANV failure to take advantage of a portion of the AoP's temporary vulnerability at the North Anna line. Stuart dead, A.P. Hill sick, Longstreet wounded and absent, and Lee suffering from his heart condition. Nobody left to do the required headquarters work, although Lee tried to do it all himself.
 
Yes, that was true as well.

The problems with Lee's staff show up later in the war. Jackson dies, and neither A. P. Hill nor Ewell can handle things as he did. Stuart is missing for a few days during the Gettysburg Campaign -- and no one at HQ does anything much to fill the gap caused by Stuart (not the cavalry) being absent. Then Stuart dies in May 1864, and the ANV is fortunate to discover they have a capable replacement in Hampton. Then Longstreet gets severely wounded and is absent from the ANV for months.

Lee's army still fights well, but Lee's control over it slips a little and details start to slip through the cracks. Just before Cold Harbor, Lee desperately needs to order Breckinridge to his right, and no one on Lee's staff can find Breckinridge -- so Lee heads out and tracks Breckinridge's division down himself. Breckinridge arrives just in time to plug the hole fights hard and well -- probably saving the Confederacy for a few months. If Lee had not found him, it is quite likely Richmond would have fallen in early June of 1864 and Lee's ANV might have been destroyed then and there.
What does that mean?

Lee was able to get by with such a tiny staff because he pushed tasks down the line to Longstreet, Jackson, and Stuart that really should have been handled up at the Army HQ. As those men went down or became absent/unavailable, their replacements were not up to handling what those very talented men could do.

This is what happens when Stuart is away from the Army during the Gettysburg Campaign. If Stuart had remained behind, leaving Hampton to run the raid, lots of issues would have disappeared. To begin with, Robertson would not have been so late bringing his two brigades north; Stuart would have had them moving earlier and brought them through the lower gaps to the other side of South Mountain (as already outlined in the orders he had given Robertson that Robertson didn't follow). But more than that, Stuart was essentially all of Lee's intel-gathering in one body: he handled interrogations and interviews of civilians and POWs; he provided Lee with summaries of what was known and suspected about the enemy. With Stuart gone, nobody at Lee's HQ even thought about what Robertson's 2 brigades were doing until the sudden discovery that Meade was in command, north of the Potomac and coming fast -- then they suddenly sent messengers pounding south to hurry him up.

Jackson and Longstreet effectively acted as two independent commands taking guidance from Lee. In the Spring of 1863, Lee was resisting the idea of changing to three corps instead of two because he saw no one else who could handle that work; then Jackson dies and Lee suddenly says he has been thinking of going to three corps for some time. For a brief time, Ewell looked like the answer, right up to July 1st; Hill OTOH looks overwhelmed as Gettysburg happens.

I cannot picture Jackson not looking for Stuart in late June, or not having a flank guard out there doing more even if it wasn't specifically looking for Stuart. Jackson paid far more attention to that kind of detail than Ewell ever did. Ewell and Hill needed more looking after; they showed less ability to handle things on the fly; they required more assistance.

This isn't to say Ewell and A. P. Hill were bad Corps commanders. They just weren't Longstreet and Jackson. They couldn't handle quite as much as those men did, and that shifted the weight back to Lee's tiny staff, with little noticeably outstanding about any of them. They were decent enough, but not what the South needed to replace Jackson.

Tim
 
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