McClellan was a great disciplinarian. So?

Might do well to remember that the Army Lil Mac took command of was pretty much demoralized what with Manassas and all. He gave them back their morale and that may be his greatest achievement.
 
Placing your army astride any sizable river is a bad move no matter if waiting for reinforcements or Alexander the Great.

McClellan detected Lee's movement two days before it started (he had very good int), and had moved to consolidate already. He was confused when Jackson was late.

To list one charge against him....dispel his failure to send in reserves against Lee at Antietnam?

That'd be the two divisions of Franklin's that force-marched onto the field arriving a few hours before nightfall?

He was cautious to the extreme during the Seven Days.
Criminal before 2nd Manassas.

He was surprisingly good in the Seven Days, and Lee recognised McClellan won, even if Lincoln didn't. He was actually in the middle of starting a counter-offensive when the order came to evacuate. He already knew it was coming when Burnside was ordered to Acquia Creek of course.

McClellan hadn't even reached Washington when 2nd Bull Run was fought, but was at Fort Monroe.

And downright insentient before and during Antietnam.

And one more thing did you just finish reading his Memoirs?

Never read them, I've read Rafuse's McClellan's War, Harsh's Confederate Tide Rising et. al. and tend to agree with the modern scholarship on the matter that McClellan was very good, but undermined by the sin of being a Democrat in a Republican dominated political establishment.
 
And one more thing did you just finish reading his Memoirs?

Just BTW:

McClellan was writing his memoirs after the war and was almost finished when a house fire destroyed his work and most of his source material. (Like some other generals in the war, McClellan thought HQ records were his personal property and had taken a chunk with him when relieved).

As a result, he had to start over, even further back because his references were gone now. Before he could finish, he died.

The executor of his estate cobbled together what he could and had McClellan's unfinished manuscript published. That same man also published a volume of McClellan's letters, which is how those letters to his wife made it into public view. I doubt McClellan himself would have published them.

Tim
 
Might do well to remember that the Army Lil Mac took command of was pretty much demoralized what with Manassas and all. He gave them back their morale and that may be his greatest achievement.

Yeah, though arguing that he was great for doing that might be going a touch too far - it would be interesting to see who else was available and weigh what they would have been able to do.

Certainly, it was no mean feat, but I'm not sure it justifies praising McClellan much more highly than any of the other reasonably competent officers of the war.

McClellan detected Lee's movement two days before it started (he had very good int), and had moved to consolidate already. He was confused when Jackson was late.

Still a bad move, and still we see Porter doing the bulk of the fighting (which may in part speak of McClellan's confidence in Porter's ability, but what is the rest of the army doing besides waiting for orders?)

That'd be the two divisions of Franklin's that force-marched onto the field arriving a few hours before nightfall?

A few hours is time enough to do something. But more importantly, the commited-only-marginally-at-best Fifth Corps, which was on the field all day. McClellan held Porter in reserve - fair enough, but reserves are there to be commited, not simply told to wait.

He was surprisingly good in the Seven Days, and Lee recognised McClellan won, even if Lincoln didn't. He was actually in the middle of starting a counter-offensive when the order came to evacuate. He already knew it was coming when Burnside was ordered to Acquia Creek of course.

He would have won if he hadn't pulled back after every attack, and if he was in the middle of starting a counterattack, he did a very poor job, at best, of communicating that to either history, or more relevantly, Lincoln.

As for the Seven Days in general: He retreated, and retreated, and retreated, and then retreated some more.

Additionally, he made very poor use of his forces doing the Seven Days...apparently, Lee's 180,000 troops were such a threat that pressing into (or at least at) Richmond while fending him (Lee) off with Porter never entered his head.

Never read them, I've read Rafuse's McClellan's War, Harsh's Confederate Tide Rising et. al. and tend to agree with the modern scholarship on the matter that McClellan was very good, but undermined by the sin of being a Democrat in a Republican dominated political establishment.

More like his unwillingness to take anything vaguely resembling a risk or much of an offensive (in the field) action.

Plenty of Democrats did fine. Plenty of Republicans didn't. What got Little Mac removed was not Republicans vs. Democrats but having the slows to a level that basically meant nothing would be done.
 
A few hours is time enough to do something. But more importantly, the commited-only-marginally-at-best Fifth Corps, which was on the field all day. McClellan held Porter in reserve - fair enough, but reserves are there to be commited, not simply told to wait.
This was the killer. A piecemeal, three battles and when Lee was backed up on his heels, the reserves were kept to make sure that McC wasn't defeated.

Here was a golden opportunity to throw in the reserves. Reserves are retained to support a potential breakthrough. At Sharpsburg, there were more than a few potential breakthroughs. But McC fought, not to win, but to avoid defeat. There were others with that mindset, both north and south. JE Johnston comes to mind. Generals like Grant, among others, kept winning first and foremost. When McC failed to go for the win, he terminally lost Lincoln's confidence. The next six weeks took up Lincoln's time in deciding who might be McC's replacement.

Just a thought.

Ole
 
Still a bad move, and still we see Porter doing the bulk of the fighting (which may in part speak of McClellan's confidence in Porter's ability, but what is the rest of the army doing besides waiting for orders?)

Maneuvring to counterattack. Porter's trains, baggage etc. had already been moved south of the Chickahominy when Lee struck. Porter was left in place to fight in a strong defensive position for a day in order to buy time for McClellan to realign his army facing north, and to complete the evacuation of White House landing (which shifted to Harrison's Point by sea).

In this, McClellan had correctly read Lee's intentions (to move east and cut the York River Railroad, then seize McClellan's supplies at WHL), but Lee had incorrectly read McClellan (who he thought would simply stand and fight rather than shift to a secure line). Thus McClellan's OODA loop is intact, and Lee's is disrupted.

A few hours is time enough to do something. But more importantly, the commited-only-marginally-at-best Fifth Corps, which was on the field all day. McClellan held Porter in reserve - fair enough, but reserves are there to be commited, not simply told to wait.

Sykes' was committed to support Burnside's right, and then Morell was committed to secure Sumner's line of retreat. Porter's Fifth Corps was fully committed.

Franklin's Sixth Corps, the last reserve, had force marched onto the field and had arrived with maybe 6,000 exhausted muskets. Their counterattack was aborted due to the poor state of Sumner's wing.

As for the Seven Days in general: He retreated, and retreated, and retreated, and then retreated some more.

No, Lincoln placed him in an untenable position. He placed himself in an impregnable position.

Additionally, he made very poor use of his forces doing the Seven Days...apparently, Lee's 180,000 troops were such a threat that pressing into (or at least at) Richmond while fending him (Lee) off with Porter never entered his head.

Lee's 116,000 certainly outnumbered the 50,000 effectives McClellan had available.
 
McClellan was a great disciplinrian, So?

Almost everyone of Lee attacks were beaten off, Yet, at the end of each day's success, McClellan orders a retreat.(Even Malvern Hill) where was the counterattacks 6thTigers believes, McClellan was planning as Porter fought off, A.P. Hill, D.H. Hill and Longstreet?
Lee only misjudged McClellan line of retreat, he wasn't wrong in anticipating little Mac's retreating. McClellan anticipated Lee's assault, but prepared for it by only changing the Base on which he planned to retreat.

P.S. How tired and exhausted were D.H. Hill's men when he forced marched them from Harper's Ferry, just in time to counterattack the last Union assault in the flank and saves Lee, at the last minute, at Antietam?
 
In this, McClellan had correctly read Lee's intentions (to move east and cut the York River Railroad, then seize McClellan's supplies at WHL), but Lee had incorrectly read McClellan (who he thought would simply stand and fight rather than shift to a secure line). Thus McClellan's OODA loop is intact, and Lee's is disrupted.


All very well and good - but where's the fighting other than by Porter? Practically nowhere.

Sykes' was committed to support Burnside's right, and then Morell was committed to secure Sumner's line of retreat. Porter's Fifth Corps was fully committed.

Franklin's Sixth Corps, the last reserve, had force marched onto the field and had arrived with maybe 6,000 exhausted muskets. Their counterattack was aborted due to the poor state of Sumner's wing.

That's not "fully commited". That's "held out of the fight". Sykes did very little to assist Burnside, and Morell could have and should have gone in either with or after Sumner.

Had McClellan been facing long odds, maybe what he did with Morell and Sykes would make sense. But vs. something closer to 40,000 to 75-85,000 (Lee vs. McClellan), he could have gone in for the kill with relatively little risk.

No, Lincoln placed him in an untenable position. He placed himself in an impregnable position.

Lincoln did nothing of the sort. McClellan did nothing to win Lincoln's confidence (despite getting to make the move he wanted in going to the Pennisula) and did even less to demonstrate Lincoln should have second thoughts by not doing anything to threaten Richmond after Lee began battering on him.

Lee's 116,000 certainly outnumbered the 50,000 effectives McClellan had available.

That sounds about twenty thousand too high for Lee, and is ignoring the rest of McClellan's army. Source for Lee's numbers?

Also, do you mean effectives in the sense the term was defined at the time? Just checking.

McClellan could have and should have defended with Porter and all and attacked with the rest, not cowered from Lee's imagined hordes and accused the adminstration of deliberately sacrificing his army.

He certainly had a healthy chance of something desirable had he pressed towards Richmond with those not engaged under Porter.

Incidently, OpnDownfall, if you'll pardon a nitpick, wrong Hill: Harvey is Lee's center, its A.P. who's coming up from Harper's Ferry.
 
Almost everyone of Lee attacks were beaten off, Yet, at the end of each day's success, McClellan orders a retreat.(Even Malvern Hill) where was the counterattacks 6thTigers believes, McClellan was planning as Porter fought off, A.P. Hill, D.H. Hill and Longstreet?
Lee only misjudged McClellan line of retreat, he wasn't wrong in anticipating little Mac's retreating. McClellan anticipated Lee's assault, but prepared for it by only changing the Base on which he planned to retreat.

Retreat, withdrawal, retrograde action. Whatever. The fact was Lee had a much larger force and was able to cover a much larger frontage. Had McClellan remained in place he would have been enveloped. McClellan is simply trading men for time in order to shift his line of supply.

P.S. How tired and exhausted were D.H. Hill's men when he forced marched them from Harper's Ferry, just in time to counterattack the last Union assault in the flank and saves Lee, at the last minute, at Antietam?

A.P. Hill. Daniel Harvey was commanding the Confederate centre and his Corps was the first to take position.

Ambrose nearly smashed his division in that march, more than half the division fell out of the march.
 
Retreat, withdrawal, retrograde action. Whatever. The fact was Lee had a much larger force and was able to cover a much larger frontage. Had McClellan remained in place he would have been enveloped. McClellan is simply trading men for time in order to shift his line of supply.

Had McClellan remained in place he would have beaten off more ill coordinated attacks.

And certianly, while Lee might be able to get an advantage against Porter - Porter can take care of it. What. Of. The Rest of the the army? Can't they threaten Richmond?

A.P. Hill. Daniel Harvey was commanding the Confederate centre and his Corps was the first to take position.

Ambrose nearly smashed his division in that march, more than half the division fell out of the march.

...Division, not corps. Harvey didn't have a corps until nearly a year later, and in another army.

As for Ambrose smashing his division: It worked. The other Ambrose was pushed back.

It may not be a gamble you'd want to try, but it could have been done - and if Franklin had six thousand, that's twice what Hill had.
 
Had McClellan remained in place he would have beaten off more ill coordinated attacks.

No, he would have been enveloped. His decision to relocate to Harrison's Landing is taken on the night of the 26th and he is then effectively "firing and maneuvring" by wings back to Harrison's Landing.

And certianly, while Lee might be able to get an advantage against Porter - Porter can take care of it. What. Of. The Rest of the the army? Can't they threaten Richmond?

See Rafuse, McClellan's War pgs 223-5 for an analysis of McClellan's options. He was four options:

1. Retreat to the York (what Lee hoped he would do)
2. Stand and fight for White House Landing (what Lee thought he would do)
3. Move his line to the James (what he did)
4. Split his army and defend WHL with one wing, while attacking Richmond with the other.

4 is the riskiest, unless everything is perfectly executed McClellan could be destroyed.

...Division, not corps. Harvey didn't have a corps until nearly a year later, and in another army.

DH Hill is the senior officer present of GW Smith's Corps, and it's de facto commander.

It may not be a gamble you'd want to try, but it could have been done - and if Franklin had six thousand, that's twice what Hill had.

and who'd protect the shattered 2nd and 12th Corps as they regroup if 6th is shattered too? Again, to someone who isn't risking the destruction of an army it's an easy decision.
 
No, he would have been enveloped. His decision to relocate to Harrison's Landing is taken on the night of the 26th and he is then effectively "firing and maneuvring" by wings back to Harrison's Landing.

Not unless Lee magically conjured up another corps worth of reinforcements (even assuming your 116,000 figure is correct, which seems quite high in terms of men and officers Lee could put into a fight...including those defending Richmond as "in a fight" for pruposes of this statement, McClellan has 90,000 at worst - hardly something Lee could easily envelop.)

See Rafuse, McClellan's War pgs 223-5 for an analysis of McClellan's options. He was four options:

1. Retreat to the York (what Lee hoped he would do)
2. Stand and fight for White House Landing (what Lee thought he would do)
3. Move his line to the James (what he did)
4. Split his army and defend WHL with one wing, while attacking Richmond with the other.

4 is the riskiest, unless everything is perfectly executed McClellan could be destroyed.
Lee has to defend Richmond with some of his force, and the more McClellan threatens Richmond, the more Lee has to do something about that.

Lee simply does not have the numbers or the situation to envelop any substantial part of the AotP.

So while it may be the "riskiest", that's because its the only one with any risk at all - but its also the only one capable of accomplishing any victory that won't just be holding blood soaked ground until sundown.

DH Hill is the senior officer present of GW Smith's Corps, and it's de facto commander.

Not relevant to the Antietam situation, which is where the other Hill is force marching.

There, Harvey is a division commander.

and who'd protect the shattered 2nd and 12th Corps as they regroup if 6th is shattered too? Again, to someone who isn't risking the destruction of an army it's an easy decision.

How about First Corps? How about the fact they're not more shattered than Jackson's troops?
How about McClellan's artillery in the area?

Again, for someone who actually is weighing the situation, and not the nightmare of Lee having over twice the numbers he actually did, it is certainly possible to do something.

A Grant, a Meade, a Thomas, a Rosecrans, a Hood, possibly even a Bragg, would have pushed on. A McClellan would imagine being outnumbered five to two at best no matter what the situation and would never win anything decisive.
 
McClellan was a great disciplinarian, So?

It always puzzled me that if little Mac really believed that Lee had any where close to 200,000 men, why was he even on the Peninsula in the first place.
 
It always puzzled me that if little Mac really believed that Lee had any where close to 200,000 men, why was he even on the Peninsula in the first place.

Because he didn't believe it at all. It was one figure out of several dozen that had come in from intelligence sources. It had been discounted, but was on the record enough for Halleck to grab at.

George B. McClellan said:
It will be seen from the report of the chief of the secret-service corps, dated March 8, that the forces of the rebel Army of the Potomac, at that date, were as follows: Men At Manassas, Centreville, Bull Run, Upper Oceoquan, and vicinity 80,000 At Brooks' Station, Dumfries, Lower Occoquan, and vicinity 18,000 At Leesburg and vicinity 4,500 In the Shenandoah Valley 13,000 115,500 About 300 field guns and from 26 to 30 siege guns were with the rebel army in front of Washington. The report made on the 17th of March, after the evacuation of Manassas and Centreville, corroborates the statements contained in the report of the 8th, and is fortified by the affidavits of several railroad engineers, conductors, baggage-masters, &c., whose opportunities for forming correct estimates were unusually good. These affidavits will be found in the accompanying reports of the chief of the secret-service corps.

Which is prettymuch on, about 500 short of their PFD
 
Not unless Lee magically conjured up another corps worth of reinforcements (even assuming your 116,000 figure is correct, which seems quite high in terms of men and officers Lee could put into a fight...including those defending Richmond as "in a fight" for pruposes of this statement, McClellan has 90,000 at worst - hardly something Lee could easily envelop.)

See Tenney's MA thesis: "Seven Days in 1862: Numbers in Union and Confederate Armies Before Richmond". Actually this has a slightly different figure of 109,992, but only includes forces immediately in the Richmond vicinity.

Meanwhile, McClellan reports he only had 50,000 with the colors. Not surprising when the Surgeon-General reports only 78,000 present, including a very large number of sick. Thus 78,000 is the very upper limit for forces McClellan had available, and indeed there's little reason to doubt the 50,000 figure.

Lee has to defend Richmond with some of his force, and the more McClellan threatens Richmond, the more Lee has to do something about that.

Lee simply does not have the numbers or the situation to envelop any substantial part of the AotP.

He has about a 2:1 advantage in effectives. This is very significant indeed.

So while it may be the "riskiest", that's because its the only one with any risk at all - but its also the only one capable of accomplishing any victory that won't just be holding blood soaked ground until sundown.

It also has a better than even chance of destroying the Army. On the James McClellan is far more threatening to Richmond, and caused apoplexy in Lee (see Rafuse's Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy for a discussion on Lee's fear of the James line).

There, Harvey is a division commander.

Division etc., the same title as used for Longstreet, Jackson, Smith etc. Longstreet and Jackson are both Division Commanders as well.

How about First Corps? How about the fact they're not more shattered than Jackson's troops?

but recovering from an absolute shellacking. It was fit to fight the next day, but not the evening of the 17th.

How about McClellan's artillery in the area?

Dominates the centre, not the CS left.

Again, for someone who actually is weighing the situation, and not the nightmare of Lee having over twice the numbers he actually did, it is certainly possible to do something.

Only if you can enable a Cheat Mode.

A Grant, a Meade, a Thomas, a Rosecrans, a Hood, possibly even a Bragg, would have pushed on. A McClellan would imagine being outnumbered five to two at best no matter what the situation and would never win anything decisive.

No, none of those would have pushed in that situation, all where too sane.
 
He has about a 2:1 advantage in effectives. This is very significant indeed.

Even if so (which is at best extremely dubious), that is not enough to envelop McClellan.


It also has a better than even chance of destroying the Army. On the James McClellan is far more threatening to Richmond, and caused apoplexy in Lee (see Rafuse's Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy for a discussion on Lee's fear of the James line).

The only army at risk of being destroyed is Lee's. McClellan's is pretty safe.

Division etc., the same title as used for Longstreet, Jackson, Smith etc. Longstreet and Jackson are both Division Commanders as well.

At Antietam? No. At Antietam, Harvey is a division commander, not a de facto "wing" commander.

but recovering from an absolute shellacking. It was fit to fight the next day, but not the evening of the 17th.

If we can assume Jackson's wing is fit to fight, we can assume Hooker's corps is.

Dominates the centre, not the CS left.

So move it.

Only if you can enable a Cheat Mode.

No, if I can act with tolerably accurate intelligence and aggressiveness.

No, none of those would have pushed in that situation, all where too sane.

No, all of them except possibly Bragg would have, because McClellan is facing <45,000 rebels with 75,000+ federals.

Hardly long odds.

As for the Seven Days: According to http://www.brettschulte.net/CWBlog/...al-level-orders-of-battle-the-seven-days-oob/ (using Tenney's thesis), the two (not counting McDowell) have roughly the same.

Since that counts Richmond's defenses and Holmes, that leaves Lee with 5:4 odds against him.

So much for double McClellan's numbers by this essay.
 
McClellan was a great disciplinarian, So?

Given Mac's history of playing fast and loose with numbers, there is every reason to doubt any numbers he quotes, especially if it refers to how many men he may have in his army, at any one time.
The important fact that comes through to me is that there is a discrepancy of 28,000 men between McClellan's and his Surgeion-General's.
Given his history, it is difficult to believe that if Lee actually had a 2:1 advantage over the AoP, he would not have crushed McClellan like a bug.
Following The Seven Days, Lee had little Mac's number. After a little rest, Lee calmly turned his back and left the AoP and the 'Young Napoleon' to their own devices
on the Peninsula and took his army to its namesake, Northern Virginia. So much for McClellan being a threat on the Peninsula.
 
It always puzzled me that if little Mac really believed that Lee had any where close to 200,000 men, why was he even on the Peninsula in the first place.

It isn't really surprising that McClellan's intel estimated too high for Confederate strength. The people doing the work had no military intel experience, and that is a highly specific skill difficult to acquire. Pinkerton and the others were giving McClellan estimates based on estimates.

To give you an example, they were estimating Confederate infantry regiments at a strength of 700 men, IIRR -- but they knew or should have known that the regiments in the Federal army were averaging about 500. Why they thought the Rebels could supply and maintain regiments better than the Union could, I don't know.

Beyond that, McClellan himself was taking the numbers he got from his staff and inflating them before he passed them on to Washington. Why he did that I don't know. Maybe he figured he'd put in a fudge factor to be on the safe side. Maybe he was trying to strengthen his case. Maybe he figured his staff was too inexperienced to get it right. He's dead, and no one figured this out until 100 years after he died, so it is unlikely we'll ever know.

Tim
 
Administrative Generals vs Field Generals

Mac was an administrator...and a good one... so was Pemberton, and Eisenhauer...and Colin Powell

These men, for the most part spent their careers behind a desk instead of on a horse (or tank, etc)..
What would have happened in N. Africa if Eisenhauer had been in command... given that he had never held a wartime combat command.. or Powell in Desert Storm.. we already know about Pemberton and Mac...
Not everyone is a Lee, a Grant, a Patton or a Swartskopf.. and not everyone is a McCellan, a Pemberton or an Eisenhauer or Powell...

No one can tell in advance who will do well in combat and who will not. Some who everyone think will succeed fail; some who no one believes in succeed. The Civil War is filled with examples, but so are other wars.

In the quick list given,

Colin Powell was a City College graduate from NY, a ROTC officer who ended up loving the Army. But we should note that in 1963 Powell was one of those few US advisors in Viet Nam. On that tour, he accumulated a Purple Heart (punji stake) and a Bronze Star. On his next tour, he was awarded the Soldier's Medal for saving soldiers in a helicopter crash (he was on the same copter). But he was also G-3 of the Americal Division, peripherally involved in the early investigation (coverup) of My Lai.

Pemberton was a very rigid man, well known to other Army officers. Grant served in Mexico with him and told a humorous story about Pemberton in those days; Grant said he was never too worried about handling an Army against Pemberton. But Pemberton saw extensive action with the 4th Artillery in Mexico under Taylor (Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterrey) and Scott (Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City. He was wounded, and he received a brevet to Major for his actions. After that, he did two tours in Florida against the Seminoles, was in the Utah Expedition of A. S. Johnston, and at a couple of frontier posts in KS, NM and MN. That's actually a lot of combat experience. (Pemberton, Meade, and McClellan all knew one another as children in Philadelphia before going to West Point, despite the age differences.)

Eisenhower came out of West Point in 1915, an infantry officer and then became one of the top young officers in the new US Tank force (he was #3). That's where he met Patton, who he was very close with at the time. In the drawing of straws to see who went to France and who stayed to train and organize the new troops, the younger Eisenhower lost out. Patton went. When the time came for Ike to go, the war ended. After that, nobody in the Army had a combat command (unless they went to Siberia in 1919). Eisenhower never had a field command above a battalion (1927) before WWII.

Tim
 
Estimating Numbers (Part I)

Trice, et al.,



Your assessment pretty much agrees with what I have too. Just FWIW, I'm reposting something I had posted on another forum; might find it interesting (sorry for the length of the post) :



Excerpt from:
"The Secret War for the Union"
Edwin C. Fishel
Houghton Mifflin
© 1996

"A consensus of historical belief holds Allan Pinkerton's severe overestimating of Confederate numbers largely responsible for the extreme cautiousness that brought about General McClellan's failures - failure that delayed the successful prosecution of the war by a year or more. According to this view, Pinkerton, though a highly successful detective, was incompetent at the business of military intelligence, and McClellan, brilliant organizer and administrator though he was, was thoroughly deceived by Pinkerton's inflated estimates.

Neither half of this widely shared judgment is correct. As already seen Pinkerton was successful in spy-chasing (counterintelligence). In positive intelligence his early performance was weak, but before the end of his service he was keeping track of the composition of the opposing army with surprising accuracy. As for McClellan, he could not have been deceived by Pinkerton's overestimates, for he was party to them - the dominant party, in fact.

The first of the famous exaggerations of Confederate strength was the 100,000 figure McClellan gave in his August 8 letter than General Scott branded a false alarm. Pinkerton probably did not contribute to that estimate, for on the day it was written he had just begun setting up shop, with only three of his detectives on hand. And for some weeks or months he was preoccupied with tracking the activities of spies and would-be spies in the secessionist population of Washington.

The spies that McClellan said were among the sources of his 100,000 estimate could have been members of the short-lived bureau headed by William C. Parsons; but that group was disbanding at this time, and its positive-intelligence activity is not known to have extended beyond the vicinity of Washington and Alexandria. Thus it is more likely that the spies McClellan referred to were self-appointed amateurs. However, the likeliest single source was not a spy but a Confederate deserter, a Kentuckian named Edward B. McMurdy. McMurdy claimed that he had been impressed into the Confederate service at New Orleans, had been in the Bull Run battle, and had made his way to Washington, via Harpers Ferry, to seek an army commission. According to his later account, McClellan took him to see General Scott, whom they found with Lincoln and Secretary Seward.

Those officials, McMurdy said, "thought my views of the resources of the Rebels to be extravagant." After the interview McMurdy was a guest in McClellan's house, where the general "told me I had saved Washington City and in all probability the very existence of the Government." It may be that until McMurdy appeared McClellan's view of Confederate numbers had not reached so alarming a level.

McClellan kept the estimates flowing. In letters to his wife he gave the enemy "3 or 4 times my force"; then 150,000 to his own 55,000; after new troop arrivals at Washington; the enemy still had, he said, double his own strength. On September 8, in a letter to Secretary Cameron, he lowered the enemy's estimated total to 130,000, against which he could oppose only 70,000. Five days later, again writing to Cameron, he revised the 130,000 figure to 170,000, and his own total to 81,000. Although the Confederates' Manassas army during these weeks received a new brigade from Georgia and half a dozen regiments from other states, it still numbered only about 35,000. And though other substantial accretions were to follow, McClellan's estimate of enemy strength grew at an even faster rate.

McClellan claimed that in issuing these estimates he was giving figures below the "real strength" of the enemy, while taking "the reverse course as to our own [strength]." His superiors would have wondered why he did not give the figures he believed "real," instead of some other figures. Predicting an early advance by the enemy, he urged that the entire regular army except for artillerists, and all volunteer troops from other theaters of war, be placed in his own army. So extreme a proposal indicates that he really believed, as McMurdy claimed, that "the very existence of the Government" was threatened.

With those communications McClellan's preoccupation with troop counts and presumed enemy advantages is in full view. The 100,000 estimate he gave Scott, after only two weeks in command, committed him to six-figure estimates for a Confederate army that in four years of war would never reach that level. When Scott pointed out that McClellan had thus placed himself on record, the old general was implying that that commitment might embarrass him in the future. But McClellan proved to be impervious to such embarrassment.

The proposal to strip other theaters for reinforcements, relying on the Federals' regular artillery to maintain a defensive stance there, indicates that McClellan was crediting the Confederates with having so many men in uniform that they could place a huge force in northern Virginia without seriously depleting their strength elsewhere. Although the South had scarcely a third of the white population of the North, it had mobilized a far greater proportion of its men of military age. This fact repeatedly came to McClellan's attention when Pinkerton reported on his interrogations of Northerners and foreigners who were in the South at the outbreak of the war, had been forced into Rebel regiments, and deserted to the Federals.

How McClellan was deriving the estimates that appear in these letters is, except for the August 8 letter to Scott, unknown and unknowable. No strength reports traceable to Pinkerton appear in the records of these weeks; if bits and pieces of information about the Confederate armies were diverting his attention from the search for enemy spies, he may have delivered them to McClellan orally. Apparently McClellan already had begun the practice, quite evident in later months, of reporting intelligence from sources independent of Pinkerton. He did not identify these; he also avoided naming Pinkerton, and, so far as records reveal, he withheld Pinkerton's reports from Lincoln and his military superiors. Such was the obscurity with which he surrounded his estimating of enemy numbers that we are led to assume that some of these figures were inventions, made by guessing, on the basis of what the Confederates were believed to have had last week, how many they probably had this week.

When Pinkerton finally accumulated enough enemy information to produce a strength estimate, it seriously overrated Confederate numbers, but not nearly enough to support the 170,000 that was McClellan's latest estimate. Pinkerton's report, written October 4, gave the opposing army 98,400, more than double its true strength, which was somewhere between 40,000 and 45,000 at that time. Pinkerton made no reference to the fact that this estimate flew in the face of McClellan's much higher figures. He may have simply been avoiding an argument with his chief, but more probably he was unaware of what McClellan had been telling his superiors about enemy numbers." [End quote]


There's more of this (this is only the first couple paragraphs of the chapter). Two things stuck out to me: (1) the text seems to be implying that McClellan's inflated numbers might have resulted from him being unwilling to detach himself from a statement of troop strength he had gone 'on record' for (i.e., if he was wrong about that, he could easily be wrong about any other number/modification he made subsequent to that); and (2) McClellan's method of predicting troop strength is unknown and unknowable (Fishel - and perhaps, by extension, any other historian wasn't able to find anything on what sort of 'logic' McClellan might have used). Additionally, Fishel suggests that this business of exaggerating troop strength was largely McClellan's initiative and less so Pinkerton's.

A couple of observations for now (based on some of the subsequent material):

(1) Even though Fishel intimates that Pinkerton and McClellan were somewhat in collusion on this (more so on McClellan's part) - Pinkerton's number (98,400 provided in early October '61) was far short of McClellan's 150,000 (and even as high as 170,000 provided to Cameron in September '61). Notwithstanding that Pinkerton's number was also grossly overstated (at 98K)…Pinkerton had applied a liberality based on 'assuming the worst' (which is not necessarily an unprecedented - nor unwarranted - practice). Fishel states that McClellan didn't want to include Pinkerton's numbers in his final reports (to Lincoln) because they failed to match McClellan's: "But a stronger reason for withholding, at least at this stage, was that Pinkerton's generous estimate still fell far short of the figures McClellan had been claiming. Pinkerton's 98,400 figure on October 4 should at least have reined McClellan in from his own hard-charging estimating, but it did not [ibid]." Fishel doesn't come right out and say it directly, but one gets the impression that McClellan doesn't want to present any kind of significant discrepancy in intelligence reports; since McClellan had started with a six-figure number - and went 'on record' with it, McClellan was unwilling (for whatever reason) to lower it.

(2) Fishel states that McClellan would explain that his 150,000 figure (and other variations on that number) represented the entire force (in Virginia) of the Confederates contrasted to what McClellan referred to as his maneuverable force (subtracting everyone on guard duty, etc.) of 76,000. Fishel doesn't understand why McClellan didn't subtract the same category populations from the Confederate force (i.e., those sick, those guarding, etc., not available for combat).

(3) Fishel provides the following to explain where McClellan might have gotten these numbers:

"All his sources agreed on the 150,000 figure, he [McClellan] declared. In this case we finally have a clue as to how he acquired his six-figure estimates. Frank Ellis, at this stage not yet considered to be working for the Confederates, had just come in from Richmond, reporting 80,000 at Manassas-Centerville and 20,000 on the lower Potomac. Ellis gave as his source Jefferson Davis and the three cabinet members with whom he said he had dined. (McClellan chose to ignore the certainty that the Confederate leaders would not have entrusted Ellis with the truth about General Johnston's numbers). Another recent report, arriving at third hand from a Unionist citizen of Fairfax County, gave Johnston 100,000 at Manassas-Centerville and 30,000 at Leesburg. By taking the higher (but less reliable) of the two Manassas-Centerville figures, the 20,000 from downriver, and the grotesquely exaggerated 30,000 for Leesburg - thus straining to get to the highest possible total - McClellan could have produced that round 150,000. Another possibility of course is that the figure was simply a shot in the dark.

Part of the draft of McClellan's paper is in the handwriting of Edwin M. Stanton, the future secretary of war, who was at that time practicing law in Washington and serving McClellan as a confidant. Stanton's professional experience would have told him that McClellan's claim of unanimity among a variety of sources was unlikely to be true; he also may have had his doubts about the validity of the 150,000 total. But that figure satisfied his lawyerlike proclivity for putting the client's case in the strongest possible terms." [ibid]

(4) Fishel goes on to show various (possible) contributing factors such as logically poor arithmetic (reducing a quantity by 1/15 rather than 15%), poor statistical skills for the time period, and other such factors.

(5) Dovetailing off of #4, to my knowledge, there was no 'intelligence agency/bureau' in existence in the Army or government at large at any time prior to the Civil War. To this end, there's no Jomini or Clausewitz equivalent on intelligence and intelligence gathering (protocols, procedures, training, lessons-learned)….nothing. From what I can gather Pinkerton's detective skill was respectable; but intelligence gathering is something of a different animal.







CC
 
Back
Top