McClellan McLellan

[David Ireland]

1. Was McLellan really going to surrender if he'd been elected in 1864? If he was, did he have many enlisted men vote for him, so far as we can tell?

2. Was he really the timid cowardly man he's said to be, or were there legitimate reasons for him being so cautious? What's the "benefit of the doubt" case FOR McLellan?

 

[JeffFromSyracuse]

1) Surrender? No. Stop fighting, maybe? Although, IIRC, McClellan wasn't fully onboard with his party's official platform.

2) McClellan was neither timid nor a coward. Overly-cautious, probably. In my opinion, Mac's reputation was his primary concern. Combined with his exposure to European tactics (including sieges and coup de mains), Mac's ideas usually failed because he never moved fast enough to maintain the all-important initiative.

 

[GwilymT]

Little Mac was a lot of things but coward is not one of them.

 

[Pat Answer]

1. If the Democratic Party had won the 1864 election it would have been seen as a clear repudiation of Lincoln's platform of union with emancipation. The party platform included a call for armistice; McClellan himself wanted to continue the war until the Union was restored. He would not be calling the shots until March 1865, by which time it might be obvious that Federal victory was right around the corner. As he was not as concerned that slavery end he might have been able to hold together enough support to finish the war while holding out that carrot for the Confederates. In any case he would not be an advocate for "surrender."

2. Too big a topic but nothing ventured, nothing gained: McClellan the "slow"… McClellan the "cautious"… McClellan the paranoid, bold-talking but non-acting commander… McClellan the inventor of phantom numbers… these have become such entrenched memes that getting at the truth is hard. I lean toward defense of his overall military judgment, as I tend to do with most generals facing the problems of this war. (No one seems to mind a careful war leader when his/her son is in the ranks.) I think the picture we have is in large part because we view him through Lincoln's eyes - meaning through prevalent civilian amateur ideas about how wars work, and the pressure Lincoln was under to be seen to produce decisive results quickly. McClellan's preference for a well-trained army, his (in my opinion sound) argument for using Virginia's rivers against the Confederate defense rather than the politically favored overland approach, and his reluctance to continually explain himself can all be interpreted in the best or worst light; for many it's the worst - and, no, his bombastic correspondence with the Mrs revealing a streak of self-importance in his inner world doesn't help. Ultimately though McClellan is a War Democrat increasingly unable to work with a Republican administration. In the political arena, "deliberate" becomes "cowardly" or "traitorous" with great ease.

Others are likely to be along shortly with well-researched details about the pros and cons of his military decisions/actions on the ground…

 

[Miles Krisman]

1. Was McLellan really going to surrender if he'd been elected in 1864? If he was, did he have many enlisted men vote for him, so far as we can tell?

2. Was he really the timid cowardly man he's said to be, or were there legitimate reasons for him being so cautious? What's the "benefit of the doubt" case FOR McLellan?

History is written by the Victors. I would encourage you to look beyond the character assassinations left us by the Radical Republicans.

 

[David Ireland]

History is written by the Victors. I would encourage you to look beyond the character assassinations left us by the Radical Republicans.

I rely here not on radicals although I would have counted myself in their number. I relied on Lincoln's letter saying he was going to lose the election and only had a few months to save the Union because McLellan wouldn't be inclined to do so.