Status Updates From McClellan's War: The Failur...

"To McClellan The Civil War was a result of the great Whig fear coming to fruition: the forces of passion & extremism - secessionist fire-waters in the South & antislavery fanatics in the North - gaining ascendancy & stirring up irrational fears in the people for personal gain."

At the end of October 1862 the army of the Potomac consisted of just under 160,000 (plus horses etc), by comparison in 1860 Washington had a population of 61,122. Logistics forthe army was a challenge.

After his quartermaster returned from Hagerstown, Reynolds reported that he was only able to replenish the 1st corps's supply of overboard & pants. ' There are no shoes, tents, blankets, knapsacks, or other clothing...this leaves many of the men yet without a shoe'.

- it's one thing to march & to the for your country, another entirely to have to do that without shoes or trousers.

"Nonetheless, Halleck continued to express irrational concern for the safety of Washington".

Sentences very much like this occur often in the book, & yet Washington was their capital, and such concern speaks to a profound lack of faith in McClellan's military operations.

"Delegating tactical management of the battle for Turner's Gap to Burnside, McClellan Then devoted his energies to inspiring the men as they marched past his position"
This consisted of sitting on his horse pointing in the direction that they had to march - the soldiers were very inspired & cheered & broke ranks to hug the horse' legs. War is a strange business.

"The only way the South could win its independence, Lee believed, was through a string of battlefield victories that would exhaust the North's will to fight before Northern manpower & material resources overwhelmed the South."
This seems as fanciful as McClellan's ambition to through a stunning battlefield victory to get the South to return to the Union on the basis of maintaining the pre-war constitution

Not only had Lincoln lost faith in conciliation but his belief that McClellan & his approach to operations were the most effective way to achieve the victories the Northern cause needed was about exhausted as well in July 1862.

The exhaustion of Northern patience with conciliation was not only manifest in the confiscation Act & Lincoln's decision to issue an emancipation proclamation. In the month after the Seven Days Battled extinguished hopes for a quick and to the war, the last vestiges of the conciliatory policy were swept away by two of its former champions, Grant & Sherman.

If he hoped to save Richmond, Lee recognised he had to change the contest from a 'battle of posts' in which Northern superiority in artillery & engineering would be decisive, to a war of manoeuvre, where the odds would be more favourable to the Confederacy.

June 1862. McClellan suffering from maleria & dysentry, his army advancing however on Richmond, McClellan planning through engineering and artillery to batter the enemy into submission. Confederate commander Johnston wounded, Robert E. Lee takes command with full political support. Conscription enacted. By end June Lee has numerical superiority.

April 1862 "after making a hard match through a driving storm, the Federals found the Warwick River did not flow from west to east as indicated on their maps but actually flowed directly across their line of march"

Like McClellan, Grant had political roots in the antebellum Whig party, became a Democrat by default during the euros in reaction against the rise of the Republican Party, & began the War committed to conciliation. Giant's commitment to conciliation was further reinforced in early 1862 by his sense after Fort Donelson that the war was almost over & tougher measures were unnecessary.

"Unlike McClellan, who priced cool reason, moderation, & personal refinement, (Edwin) Stanton (the new Secretary of War) was a man of fiery impulses & irrepressible passion."
The description of him that follows is quite different from that which I have read in other books, however he and McClellan start as allies but Stanton soon drifts away...

Something that I find interesting that I don't remember from the first time That I read this book is how political it is - the scheming, back biting, and manoeuvring, the leaks to the press. The political groupings and patronage networks. The realities of the informal, irrational, and charismatic versus the ideals of formal structures and professional expertise.

December1861 McClellan catches tyhoid fever -and he called in two homeopathic doctors to treat him. George Meade wrote to his wife to that this astonished his friends and shook public opinion in McClellan's judgement.

To the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War the West Pointers' political conservativism & commitment to conciliation suggested an unseemly sympathy for Southerners; their emphasis on careful preparation & military science suggested cowardice & an unwillingness to hurt the enemy.

November 1861: Lincoln accompanied by Seward & Hay , paid a visit at the general's house. When McClellan arrived home an hour later, having attended a wedding, he unconscionably ignored his potter's announcement that Lincoln was waiting to see him & went to bed without acknowledging his guests. They waited for another half- hour before finally being informed that McClellan had gone to bed.

The army of the Potomac, " McClellan's enduring legacy & proudest accomplishment, would depart from it's camps in 1862 the embodiment of his Whig values - an efficient, disciplined force guided by a paternalistic, professional hand, a rational tool to serve his rational ends."

McClellan's perception of himself as the reasoned, dispassionate statesman-general & all those who opposed him as self-serving politicians had the unfortunate effect of exacerbating a steak of petulance & self-righteousness that had been a feature of his character throughout his adulthood.

McClellan realises the success of his efforts would depend heavily on the support he received from Lincoln...over time...Lincoln & McCellan would clash and their relationship would deteriorate dramatically. Although this was by no means inevitable, deep-rooted personal & political differences were present from the outset.

Oratory...was The field of a select few who were almost uniformly Whit in their politics. The great orators of the age, such as George Ticknor Curtis, Abraham Lincoln, Edward Everett, & Charles Summer, were all men of learning who used oratory as a tool for shaping the character of Americans, a task Jacksonians, with their faith in the native wisdom & good sense of the individual, viewed as unnecessary.

McClellan visits the Onion state arsenal finds:"a few boxes of smooth-note muskets...rusted and damaged. No belts,cartridge-boxes or other accoutements...2 or 3 smoothbore bread fieldpieces...honeycombed by firing salutes...a fine stock of munitions on which to begin a great war"

1861 The governor of Ohio "accepted any & all men who volunteered & soon had enough men to form twice as many regiments as Washington had authorised & far more than he was capable of handling. Would-be soldiers were all over the place, directionless, clueless, & feeding themselves at restaurants & shattering themselves in hotels at state expense"

The officer corps' dislike for the divisiveness of Jacksonian political culture also reflected a disdain for extremism & ideological zealotry rooted in the national character of the army.

Both the southern antebellum southern gentry & the northern bourgeois middle class: "shared an attachment to the notion that leadership should rest with an enlightened, paternalistic elite & were greatly concerned about the threat that the rise of unbridled individualism & egalitarian democracy posed to the maintenance of a stable social order."
So McClellan at West Point finds all his friends are Southerners