George B. McClellan
George Brinton McClellan (December 3, 1826 – October 29, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 24th governor of New Jersey and as Commanding General of the United States Army from November 1861 to March 1862. He was also an engineer, and was chief engineer and vice president of the Illinois Central Railroad, and later president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad in 1860.
"George McClellan" redirects here. For other people with the same name, see George McClellan (disambiguation).
George B. McClellan
October 29, 1885 (aged 58)
West Orange, New Jersey, U.S.
- George McClellan (father)
- Randolph B. Marcy (father-in-law)
- George B. McClellan Jr. (son and mayor of New York City)
- Little Mac
- The Young Napoleon[1]
United States (Union)
- 1846–1857
- 1861–1864
A West Point graduate, McClellan served with distinction during the Mexican–American War before leaving the United States Army to serve as a railway executive and engineer until the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. Early in the conflict, McClellan was appointed to the rank of major general and played an important role in raising the Army of the Potomac, which served in the Eastern Theater.
McClellan organized and led the Union Army in the Peninsula campaign in southeastern Virginia from March through July 1862. It was the first large-scale offensive in the Eastern Theater. Making an amphibious clockwise turning movement around the Confederate Army in northern Virginia, McClellan's forces turned west to move up the Virginia Peninsula, between the James River and York River, landing from Chesapeake Bay, with the Confederate capital, Richmond, as their objective. Initially, McClellan was somewhat successful against General Joseph E. Johnston, but the emergence of General Robert E. Lee to command the Army of Northern Virginia turned the subsequent Seven Days Battles into a Union defeat. However, historians note that Lee's victory was in many ways pyrrhic as he failed to destroy the Army of the Potomac and suffered a bloody repulse at Malvern Hill.
McClellan and President Abraham Lincoln developed a mutual distrust, and McClellan was privately derisive of Lincoln. He was removed from command in November, in the aftermath of the 1862 midterm elections. A major contributing factor in this decision was McClellan's failure to pursue Lee's army following the tactically inconclusive but strategic Union victory at the Battle of Antietam outside Sharpsburg, Maryland. He never received another field command and went on to become the unsuccessful Democratic Party nominee in the 1864 presidential election against the Republican Lincoln. The effectiveness of his campaign was damaged when McClellan repudiated his party's platform, which promised an end to the war and negotiations with the Confederacy. He served as the governor of New Jersey from 1878 to 1881; in McClellan's later writings, he vigorously defended his Civil War conduct.
Career[edit]
Mexican–American War 1846–1848[edit]
McClellan's first assignment was with a company of engineers formed at West Point, but he quickly received orders to sail for the Mexican War. He arrived near the mouth of the Rio Grande in October 1846, well prepared for action with a double-barreled shotgun, two pistols, a saber, a dress sword, and a Bowie knife. He complained that he had arrived too late to take any part in the American victory at Monterrey in September. During a temporary armistice in which the forces of Gen. Zachary Taylor awaited action, McClellan was stricken with dysentery and malaria, which kept him in the hospital for nearly a month. Malaria would recur in later years; he called it his "Mexican disease."[10] He served as an engineering officer during the war, was frequently subject to enemy fire, and was appointed a brevet first lieutenant for his services at Contreras[11] and Churubusco[12] and to captain for his service at Chapultepec.[1] He performed reconnaissance missions for Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott, a close friend of McClellan's father.[13]
McClellan's experiences in the war would shape his military and political life. He learned that flanking movements (used by Scott at Cerro Gordo) were often better than frontal assaults, and the value of siege operations (Veracruz). He witnessed Scott's success in balancing political with military affairs and his good relations with the civil population as he invaded, enforcing strict discipline on his soldiers to minimize damage to property. McClellan also developed a disdain for volunteer soldiers and officers, particularly politicians who cared nothing for discipline and training.[14]
Peacetime service[edit]
McClellan returned to West Point to command his engineering company, which was attached to the academy for the purpose of training cadets in engineering activities. He chafed at the boredom of peacetime garrison service, although he greatly enjoyed the social life. In June 1851, he was ordered to Fort Delaware, a masonry work under construction on an island in the Delaware River, forty miles (65 km) downriver from Philadelphia. In March 1852, he was ordered to report to Capt. Randolph B. Marcy at Fort Smith, Arkansas, to serve as second-in-command on an expedition to discover the sources of the Red River. By June the expedition reached the source of the north fork of the river and Marcy named a small tributary McClellan's Creek. Upon their arrival on July 28, they were astonished to find that they had been given up for dead. A sensational story had reached the press that the expedition had been ambushed by 2,000 Comanches and killed to the last man. McClellan blamed the story on "a set of scoundrels, who seek to keep up agitation on the frontier in order to get employment from the Govt. in one way or other."[15]
In the fall of 1852, McClellan published a manual on bayonet tactics that he had translated from the original French. He also received an assignment to the Department of Texas, with orders to perform a survey of Texas rivers and harbors. In 1853, he participated in the Pacific Railroad surveys, ordered by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, to select an appropriate route for the planned transcontinental railroad. McClellan surveyed the western portion of the northern corridor along the 47th and 49th parallels from St. Paul to the Puget Sound. In doing so, he demonstrated a tendency for insubordination toward senior political figures. Isaac Stevens, governor of the Washington Territory, became dissatisfied with McClellan's performance in his scouting of passes across the Cascade Range.
McClellan selected Yakima Pass (47°20′11″N 121°25′57″W / 47.3365°N 121.4324°W) without a thorough reconnaissance and refused the governor's order to lead a party through it in winter conditions, relying on faulty intelligence about the depth of snowpack in that area. In so doing, he missed three greatly superior passes in the near vicinity, which were eventually used for railroads and interstate highways. The governor ordered McClellan to turn over his expedition logbooks, but McClellan steadfastly refused, most likely because of embarrassing personal comments that he had made throughout his adventures.[16]
Returning to the East, McClellan began courting his future wife, Ellen Mary Marcy (1836–1915), the daughter of his former commander. Ellen, or Nelly, refused McClellan's first proposal of marriage, one of nine that she received from a variety of suitors, including his West Point friend, A. P. Hill. Ellen accepted Hill's proposal in 1856, but her family did not approve and he withdrew.[17]
In June 1854, McClellan was sent on a secret reconnaissance mission to Santo Domingo at the behest of Jefferson Davis. McClellan assessed local defensive capabilities for the secretary. (The information was not used until 1870 when President Ulysses S. Grant unsuccessfully attempted to annex the Dominican Republic.) Davis was beginning to treat McClellan almost as a protégé, and his next assignment was to assess the logistical readiness of various railroads in the United States, once again with an eye toward planning for the transcontinental railroad.[18] In March 1855, McClellan was promoted to captain and assigned to the 1st U.S. Cavalry regiment.[1]
Due to his political connections and his mastery of French, McClellan received the assignment to be an official observer of the European armies in the Crimean War in 1855 as part of the Delafield Commission, led by Richard Delafield. Traveling widely, and interacting with the highest military commands and royal families, McClellan observed the siege of Sevastopol. Upon his return to the United States in 1856, he requested an assignment in Philadelphia to prepare his report, which contained a critical analysis of the siege and a lengthy description of the organization of the European armies. He also wrote a manual on cavalry tactics that was based on Russian cavalry regulations. Like other observers, though, McClellan did not appreciate the importance of the emergence of rifled muskets in the Crimean War, and the fundamental changes in warfare tactics it would require.[19]
The Army adopted McClellan's cavalry manual and also his design for a saddle, dubbed the McClellan Saddle, which he claimed to have seen used by Hussars in Prussia and Hungary. It became standard issue for as long as the U.S. horse cavalry existed and is still used for ceremonies.
Civil War[edit]
Ohio[edit]
At the start of the Civil War in 1861, McClellan's knowledge of what was called "big war science" and his railroad experience suggested he might excel at military logistics. His old report from his tour in the Crimean war was quickly rushed for publication. This placed him in great demand as the Union mobilized its militia and its armies. The governors of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, the three largest states of the Union, actively pursued him to command their states' militia. McClellan expressed desire to command the state militia of his home state of Pennsylvania, but when the despatch did not arrive to him as early as he expected it, he departed Illinois for Pennsylvania with the intent of commanding its state militia. On his way there, he stopped at Columbus to discuss the military situation in the Ohio valley with Ohio governor William Dennison. Dennison was impressed with McClellan and offered him command of the state militia on the spot, which he accepted. Pennsylvania's governor had in fact already sent a wire to McClellan offering him command of the Pennsylvania state militia, but he did not receive this until the next day. McClellan was commissioned a major general of volunteers and took command of the Ohio militia on April 23, 1861. Unlike some of his fellow Union officers who came from abolitionist families, he was opposed to federal interference with slavery. For this reason, some of his Southern colleagues approached him informally about siding with the Confederacy, but he could not accept the concept of secession.[23]
On May 3 McClellan re-entered federal service as commander of the Department of the Ohio, responsible for the defense of the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and, later, western Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and Missouri. On May 14, he was commissioned a major general in the regular army. At age 34, he outranked everyone in the Army except Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, the general-in-chief. McClellan's rapid promotion was partly due to his acquaintance with Salmon P. Chase, Treasury Secretary and former Ohio governor and senator.[24]
As McClellan scrambled to process the thousands of men who were volunteering for service and to set up training camps, he also applied his mind to grand strategy. He wrote a letter to Gen. Scott on April 27, four days after assuming command in Ohio, that presented the first proposal for a strategy for the war. It contained two alternatives, each envisioning a prominent role for himself as commander. The first would use 80,000 men to invade Virginia through the Kanawha Valley toward Richmond. The second would use the same force to drive south instead, crossing the Ohio River into Kentucky and Tennessee. Scott rejected both plans as logistically unfeasible. Although he complimented McClellan and expressed his "great confidence in your intelligence, zeal, science, and energy", he replied by letter that the 80,000 men would be better used on a river-based expedition to control the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy, accompanied by a strong Union blockade of Southern ports. This plan, which would require considerable patience of the Northern public, was derided in newspapers as the Anaconda Plan, but eventually proved to be the outline of the successful prosecution of the war. Relations between the two generals became increasingly strained over the summer and fall.[25]
Western Virginia[edit]
Governor Dennison encouraged and pressured McClellan to conduct offensive operations in Northwestern Virginia, where unionist sentiment was strong and West Virginians were clamoring for secession from east Virginia. Dennison's office was barraged by many letters from northwestern Virginians requesting military occupation of Northwestern Virginia to protect from potential reprisals from secessionists. McClellan's first military operations were to occupy the area of western Virginia that wanted to remain in the Union and subsequently became the state of West Virginia. He had received intelligence reports on May 26 that the critical Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bridges in that portion of the state were being burned. He quickly implemented plans to invade the region. Confederate general George A. Porterfield was in charge of defending western Virginia with most of the rebel forces based at Grafton. McClellan triggered his first serious political controversy by proclaiming to the citizens there that his forces had no intentions of interfering with personal property—including slaves. "Notwithstanding all that has been said by the traitors to induce you to believe that our advent among you will be signalized by interference with your slaves, understand one thing clearly—not only will we abstain from all such interference but we will on the contrary with an iron hand, crush any attempted insurrection on their part." He quickly realized that he had overstepped his bounds and apologized by letter to President Lincoln. The controversy was not that his proclamation was diametrically opposed to the administration's policy at the time, but that he was so bold in stepping beyond his strictly military role.[26]
As his forces moved rapidly into West Virginia across the Beverly-Fairmont turnpike towards Grafton, Confederate forces under the command of General Porterfield retreated quickly before McClellan's superior forces towards Philippi, where Porterfield ordered his forces into a momentary rest before continuing the retreat. McClellan planned to encircle Porterfield's command at Philippi through a complex plan that required coordination between three separate forces. This coordination failed, and the bombardment of the village commenced with a false signal. The confederates at Philippi were completely routed, but they did not retreat towards a prepared line of union troops as the plan originally envisioned. This was the first land conflict of the war. McClellan then split his forces up, one column went under the command of general Thomas A. Morris, marched to the Beverly-Fairmont turnpike to attack confederate troops defending Laurel Mountain, who were under command of confederate general Robert S. Garnett, and secure the northern road leading to the valley east of the mountains. This force beset the rebels at Laurel Mountain on July 7. His first personal command in battle was at Rich Mountain, where McClellan was plagued by hesitation and his erroneous idea that he was facing a sizeable confederate force. McClellan wished to flank the strong confederate position at Rich mountain but found no avenue to do so, and ordered his forces into a preliminary siege. A young boy from the Hart family, whose house was on Rich mountain, behind the confederate position, a family with unionist sympathies, walked into McClellan's camp and offered to show the unionist troops a route through the woods around the confederate left, this small trail would eventually turn north and link up with the Buckhannon-Beverly pike that cut through Rich mountain eastwards to the valley, and then to cheat river. McClellan was pleased and ordered his subordinate, Colonel William S. Rosecrans, to lead a contingent of troops, flank the confederates and take them by surprise. Due to intense rain, a movement that was originally estimated to take an hour or two at most, took more than 7 hours.
After a long time without receiving news from Rosecrans, McClellan grew nervous and dispatched an order to call off this attack, but the orders never reached Rosecrans. Finally, after an exhausting march, Rosecrans took up positions south of the Hart home and launched a vigorous attack up the hill to the Hart farm. Confederate troops, who were under the overall command of general John Pegram, attempted a defense and moved two guns to the road to repulse this attack, which was well east of the main confederate position on Rich Mountain. Another regiment was ordered out of Beverly to link up with the confederate position at Rich mountain, this regiment had arrived too late and found the unionist troops had overrun the road, captured a Confederate cannon and were holding the road between Beverly and the confederate troops west of their position on Rich Mountain (behind the rebel defensive line on the road). McClellan heard the sounds of battle from his headquarters but being hesitant, unsure and nervous, ordered no attack on the mountain. The next day the demoralized confederate troops retreated from Rich Mountain through trails that took them northwards and then attempted to move eastwards back to Beverly on the Tygart valley. A harrowing pursuit caused several hundred, including Pegram, to surrender next day, and the battle of Rich Mountain ended in a decisive unionist victory. Confederate troops 15 km north-west, defending Laurel Mountain on the Beverely-Fairmont turnpike, retreated in great disorder after hearing of the rebel defeat on Rich Mountain. McClellan in his later report severely criticized Morris for his purported late pursuit of the confederates after their retreat from there, even though he had extensively instructed Morris earlier to be very cautious and wary in his advance against enemy forces. Rosecrans bitterly complained that his attack on Rich Mountain was not reinforced as McClellan had agreed.[27]
McClellan was obliged to absorb all credit for the victory at Rich Mountain, and lent no credit to Rosecrans' performance during the battle. These victories propelled McClellan to the status of national hero.[28] The New York Herald entitled an article about him "Gen. McClellan, the Napoleon of the Present War".[29] After the defeat of confederate forces at Rich Mountain and Laurel Mountain, unionist troops sharply pursued them eastwards across the Tygart Valley all the way to Cheat River & Cheat Mountain. Confederate general Garnett was killed in a rearguard action on Cheat River at Corrick's ford by Morris' force, and thus confederate presence had been completely ejected from West Virginia, although confederate troops were still present in Kanawha under the command of Henry A. Wise and John Floyd. McClellan proceeded to bombastically proclaim that secessionist presence in West Virginia has been completely crushed. McClellan organized a defensive network of the region spanning Cheat Mountain, Allegheny Mountain all the way to Gauley Bridge in Kanawha. McClellan chose Rosecrans as his successor and briefed him on the situation before departing for Washington upon being summoned to reorganize the routed Unionist Army of Northeastern Virginia after the defeat at Bull Run.
Building an army[edit]
After the defeat of the Union forces at Bull Run on July 21, 1861, Lincoln summoned McClellan from western Virginia, where McClellan had given the North the only engagements bearing a semblance of victory. He traveled by special train on the main Pennsylvania line from Wheeling through Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and on to Washington City, and was greeted by enthusiastic crowds that met his train along the way.[30]
Retirement and death[edit]
The concluding chapter of his political career was his strong support in 1884 for Grover Cleveland. He was interested in the position of Secretary of War in Cleveland's cabinet, but Senator John R. McPherson, who had opposed McClellan for governor in 1877, succeeded in blocking his nomination.[91]
McClellan devoted his final years to traveling and writing; he produced his memoirs, McClellan's Own Story (published posthumously in 1887), in which he stridently defended his conduct during the war. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 58 at Orange, New Jersey, after suffering from chest pains for a few weeks. His final words, at 3 a.m., October 29, 1885, were, "I feel easy now. Thank you." He was buried at Riverview Cemetery in Trenton.[92]
Family[edit]
McClellan's son, George B. McClellan Jr. (1865–1940), was born in Dresden in the Kingdom of Saxony during the family's first trip to Europe. Known within the family as Max, he too became a politician, serving as a United States Representative (1893–1903) and as Mayor of New York City from 1904 to 1909. McClellan's daughter, Mary ("May") (1861–1945), married a French diplomat and spent much of her life abroad. Both remained childless.
McClellan's wife, Ellen, died in Nice, France, in 1915 while visiting Mary at her home "Villa Antietam".[93][94]
