McClellan's War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union

by Ethan S. Rafuse

"A superb piece of historical scholarship. Rafuse has crafted a book that is groundbreaking in its conception." —Joseph L. Harsh, author of Confederate Tide Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861–1862 "Brings something new, or at least relatively unknown, to the 'McClellan debate.'... It is the first work I have read that explains McClellan's approach in a way that is both somewhat favorable and satisfactory, showing the basis of McClellan's views." —Brian K. Burton, author of Extraordinary The Seven Days Battles This biography of the controversial Union general George B. McClellan examines the influences and political antecedents that shaped his behavior on the battlefield, behavior that so frustrated Lincoln and others in Washington that he was removed from his command soon after the Union loss at Antietam. Rather than take sides in the controversy, Ethan S. Rafuse finds in McClellan's politics and his desire to restore sectional harmony ample explanation for his actions. Rafuse sheds new light on the general who believed in the rule of reason and moderation, who sought a policy of conciliation with the South, and who wanted to manage the North's military resources in a way that would impose rational order on the battlefield.

Genres: Civil War, History, American Civil War

525 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2005

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

"There is...only one safe rule in war - ie to decide what is the very worst thing that can happen to you and prepare to meet it" (p.93)
McClellan to Governor Denison of Ohio in 1861.

At one time, I read a few books about the American Civil War, at the time the exchange rate meant that the dollar was cheap and you could joyfully haunt the websites of university bookshops. I have a vague memory that there was something strange about the packaging that this book arrived in - could it have really come in a burlap bag? Well maybe not.

I was interested in this book because the figure of McClellan is a curious one, on the one hand a very effective organiser who was popular with the army, yet arguably he never lived up to his initial promise and was certainly less effective than the Union politicians had hoped as a general in charge of the Army of the Potomac -which operated in the Eastern United States.

The book does more than just explore that dichotomy. One important theme is the formation of McClellan's politics, another is that if war is a continuation of politics by other means as Clausewitz observed, then the conduct of war and military operations will themselves be political. The way that this manifests will vary between different political regimes and in a democratic society there will be democratic pressures on the military commanders: public opinion, the press, the elected representatives all mattered.

McClellan had had a professional military education at West Point, he also came from a Whig party background and these both, Rafuse argues, stressed the enlightened leadership of the elite, an elite who might, like McClellan himself, have professional expertise. This clashed with a more egalitarian tendency in the United States that was political represented by the Democratic Party in the era of Andrew Jackson, (although he himself was a supporter of West Point and military professionalism) a feeling that if everybody ie all white men is political equal than this meant that anybodies opinion is equally good as anybody else's: "The rise of popular government, especially in the United States, was also accompanied by an egalitarian spirit that celebrated the natural wisdom & virtue of the common man & was manifest in impatience with man-made restraints, rejection of the notion that any human endeavour required special expertise, & an insistence that all activities of the state, including warfare, confirm to the demands of public opinion" (p.391). You may recognise that something like this attitude can be observed in other places and times too.

Democracy also had an impact upon military theory, Dennis Hart Mahan, who taught at West Point, stressed to cadets that military operations needed to preserve the lives of citizen soldiers as far as possible. In practical terms this meant a stress on digging in and field fortifications. A consequence of this was the development of engineering specialists as an elite within the military, and many of the graduates found work in civilian enterprises as opportunities for promotion within the small professional army before the civil war were limited. McClellan himself spent some years working for a Railroad company in which capacity he worked with Abraham Lincoln who did some legal work for the company.

Anyway if you know a thing or two about the American Civil War you may well conclude that if military doctrine stressed the preservation of citizen soldier's lives then Liebnitz must have been right and that we do live in the best of all possible worlds as apparently the slaughter could have been far greater.

The dominant theme is the clash between political and military leadership. You might recognise that if you yo have read Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, but here we see some of the same material but viewed from a different perspective.

McClellan rises to leadership during the civil war very rapidly, first organising and commanding the forces raised in Ohio and then operating and winning control over West Virginia. At this point various figures in Lincoln's cabinet are backing different generals in different theatres based on their political sympathies.

McClellan's role in charge of the army of the Potamac was always limited by competing political interests, there were tensions over the troops he was able to command, and most dramatically, over strategy.

Refuse shows McClellan as committed to the Constitution and the preservation of the Constitution by wise statesmen, militarily this required him to achieve a brilliant victory sufficient for the Confederate leadership to agree to return to the Union on the basis of the pre-war status quo. In this you can see the shadows of Napoleon and the ideal of the victory that is both militarily and politically decisive. Typing it also strikes me as naive, requiring that the Confederate leadership would share McClellan's outlook and that they too were hoping for wise statesmen who would preserve the traditional constitution and that they were not the impetuous hotheads rushing towards radicalism that moderates saw as the cause of all the problems.

McClellan's attitudes remained relatively fixed at a time when many people's thinking was rapidly shifting particularly among officers serving in the west where guerrilla warfare was an issue, leading to an acceptance of destroying the ability of the enemy to fight as much as defeating any military forces. McClellan's constitutionalism and unwillingness to deprive southerners of their property rights by emancipating slaves over time left him without political support, while equally he failed to achieve the dramatic and decisive victory that he sought.

It was noticeable how regularly he seemed to become ill at critical moments. I appreciated that this was a very historical book, we see McClellan formed in the 1830s and 40s operating in the 1860s, he is not a blank canvas in Rafuse's book but we see that he brought attitudes and preconceptions to the political situation that he found himself in during the civil war.


Looking back over what I have written I am reminded of the letter that Pascal wrote to a friend in which he apologises for the length of his letter: if I had more time I would have written a shorter letter. But it's time for me and this book to say goodbye, and I must send it on its way to find a new reader out in that wide and wicked world.


"McClellan's mindset rendered him incapable of attributing the unwillingness of Lincoln & other politicians to accept the irrefutable military logic of basing operations on the river's of the Virginia tidewater- or to at least defer to the military statesman on this military matter - to anything but ignorance or political motives." (p.393)

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rafuse has come to praise Mcclellan not to bury him and that alone makes this an interesting effort, as you'll be hard put to find too many works out there which favor Little Mac. The author strives mightily to put Mcclellan in the context of his time and present him as a Man of Reason. He presents Mac's war aims as an effort to dissuade the Confederacy from its path of separation by convincing them that resistance is futile but not by crushing them on the battlefield. and he was constantly concerned that any loss on the battlefield would harden Southern resolve. Of course, determining the ultimate political goals for the war wasn't really his to decide. and not winning battles, did nothing to weaken Southern resolve either.

However, I think the book's biggest failing is not making a serious effort to conclude whether Mac's more modest goals would ever have received serious consideration in the Confederacy. The author's presentation of the Peninsular Campaign is peculiar in many respects as he appears to regard the siege of Yorktown as something of a master stroke, even though it badly bogged down the advance on Richmond and allowed Confederate resistance to form and ultimately overwhelm the Northern offensive. In doing so, he neglects to mention the very small size of the forces blocking Mac's advance or that many of the cannons in the fortifications were painted logs, and quickly glosses over the fact that the Confederate forces were able to completely escape. The book is not without any criticism of Mcclellan, which would turn it into a work of fiction. still, an interesting effort.

[Jeni · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the efforts of trying to paint McClellan in the best possible light (even though I’m not a fan) and contextualizing him as a man of his time (toning down his abrasive personality as well), as he has occasionally been mistreated by history. He wasn’t a coward or a traitor, as some have called him. And sometimes, in our praise of Lincoln, his mistakes get ignored, many of which happened with McClellan, so it’s just easier to make one the good guy and one the bad guy and not show the nuances. This mostly came through in how Lincoln’s limited military background showed his lack of knowledge about logistics, which any actual military commander knows is the most important part of the battle, if the least glamorous.

The problem is the author acknowledges some of the man’s faults, but ignores others. There was no mention of the quaker guns that fooled McClellan (the Confederate general even said, “No one but McClellan would have hesitated to attack.”) Or when he stopped the momentum he had to focus on supply lines at the cost of winning battles and took so long to plan things meticulously he lost precious time. The general’s biggest problem was that he wasn’t playing to win, he was playing not to lose, and yes, the Union had more manpower and supplies and in 10 years would’ve won that way anyway. But 10 years is a long time to be at war, especially when northerners didn’t support the war the way the south did and Lincoln did struggle with reelection in ‘64 (until Thomas and Sherman helped him out), and by dragging it out, he would’ve (and did) cause a lot more death than bloodier commanders like Grant. I get why his men appreciated that he didn’t take risks, but without big risks there are no big victories. Lee and Grant understood this, but McClellan never did.

Also, minor problem with the book was that there were a few typos/grammatical errors. I can write off one as human, but more than that -- this is supposed to be a professional publication, get an editor.

[Sean Chick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best and most fair take on McClellan, the whipping boy of ACW studies for his "sin" of not recognizing Lincoln's "brilliance" and "military genius."

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written, foot-noted, and researched book with a different perspective on McClellan and particularly the Peninsular campaign. Interesting discussions of the evolution of societal and political ideas in the 1800s. Favorable to McClellan, sometimes perhaps too much so, yet also balanced in presenting his flaws.

[Mark Harden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. This book will give you a better understanding, not only of McClellan, but of the entire Union war effort from start to finish.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

The focus of McClellan's War is on the environmental factors that influenced George McClellan's philosophy and actions as the commander of the Army of the Potomac through the time of his dismissal from his command in November 1863. Raised in a Whig home, where values included conservatism, improvement, and compromise, and educated at West Point, where those same values in inculcated in the cadets, McClellan sought a path that would woo the South back to the Union. This was reflected in his prosecution of the war and ultimately would conflict with the direction taken by the administration.

I found the book interesting, but there was an element of detail that made some sections of the book a real slog. The author, while presenting this material as an apologetic defending McClellan, is actually pretty even-handed in dealing with the personalities in the administration and the military.

[Kbullock · Rating 4 out of 5]

A worthwhile read, if only because the author gamely takes on the negative view of McClellan that has been the consensus of Civil War historians for well over a century. He does acknowledge some of McClellan's most obvious failures, such as his absence from the battlefield at critical moments of the Peninsular Campaign and his delay in sending reinforcements to Pope before Second Bull Run, but he overlooks others. At times he appears to fall into the typical biographers' trap of advocating for his subject. Still, the author makes a strong case that McClellan's caution at Antietam should not be attributed to sinister motives.

I docked it a star because of the inadequate maps and the poor editing. There are many awkward turns of phrase and a few typos, which shouldn't occur in a scholarly book published by a major university.

[Marko Perisic · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-argued reconsideration of a much-maligned figure. Rafuse does justice to the often-maligned general, relentlessly contextualising his military conduct in order to avoid the farcical caricature that follows the general even to this day. McClellan as Rafuse present him is a man of both exceptional weaknesses and exceptional strengths; not a raging incompetent or a tragic genius. Sometimes Rafuse might veer into strange defence of his character, as he did after his analysis of Antietam campaign. Writing can be a bit dry, especially for an inexperienced ACW reader such as myself. Otherwise, this is a worthy piece of historical analysis.

[Mario Mattei · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very good book for anyone with a real interest in the Civil War. It is not an easy read or a page-turner because of the extensive research and details provided. It may be the definitive work on Gen. McClellan. It starts out a little slow but once you get into the battles the details about the strategy and tactics and battle plans are so good and explained so well that at that point the writing just absorbs you.

I plan to read any other books Mr. Rafuse has written and suggest that serious Civil War readers put the time aside for this insightful work.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a good book about a Civil War general who I didn't know that much about. It drags at times; but it's a good read. I recommend it for anyone who is interested in either the Civil War or is interested in General McCellan. It does, at times, seem to be pro-McCellean. But it can be overlooked.