DBWI: George B. McClellan does not crush Lee during the Peninsula Campaign

Some members of the Lincoln administration reacted to George McClellan's subtle moves in the campaign to be the result of cowardice and not a way of luring Lee to his doom by encouraging Lee's insane attacks. Would Johnston's cool headed decision not to risk the entire army in foolhardy attacks look less savy and more over cautious? How much longer than the year it took to win would the war have lasted? Would slavery have lasted past 1890?

OOC: Little Mac worried about getting sacked at the end of the Seven Days attacks and crushes Lee's army instead of retreating. The US outlaws slavery in 1890 due to representation of Western States and the fact that the South can't even run the bluff of seceding. It already tried that, got beaten badly and now is far weaker compared to the North than 1862.
 
Some have said the only way for the South to win is a lot of risk taking. That Lee had to gamble like that for the South to win. Maybe the South need to take risks. But was "Granny Lee" the one to do it? Did he do ANYTHING but screw up? He screwed up in WV and he screwed up here. I realize he was highly regarded before the war but when the crunch came he failed. To me he will always be nothing but a massive screw-up!
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
At least Johnston waited until he achieved a tactical advantage and the federal army was divided in two before he attacked. Lee just tried a series of direct front assaults against a force considerably larger than his own. McClellan was far from a perfect general, but when faced against an opponent as rash and foolhardy as Lee, he was more than enough.

As to what might have happened had McClellan not won the campaign, I have a hard time seeing it. Even had Lee been completely successful in his attacks (which is close to ASB in my opinion), he clearly lacked the strength to drive McClellan very far from Richmond. And even then, another federal army was forming in northern Virginia and would have driven south against Richmond. The two forces would have obviously cut Lee in a pincer movement and crushed him.

So not much long term change that I can see.
 
At least Johnston waited until he achieved a tactical advantage and the federal army was divided in two before he attacked. Lee just tried a series of direct front assaults against a force considerably larger than his own. McClellan was far from a perfect general, but when faced against an opponent as rash and foolhardy as Lee, he was more than enough.

As to what might have happened had McClellan not won the campaign, I have a hard time seeing it. Even had Lee been completely successful in his attacks (which is close to ASB in my opinion), he clearly lacked the strength to drive McClellan very far from Richmond. And even then, another federal army was forming in northern Virginia and would have driven south against Richmond. The two forces would have obviously cut Lee in a pincer movement and crushed him.

So not much long term change that I can see.


Exactly, Lee was a foolhardy idiot. The only thing Lee knew how to do is to lauch a bunch of direct frontal assaults on entrenched lines and was amazed his army was torn to pieces.

It is hard to see how much better McClellan could be as a general. He obviously knew training, logistics, tatics and strategy. What more can you want? It appeared for a while he had a lack of nerve that would have ruined it all but that turned out to be just a cunning manuever to outfox the enemy.

Lee winning the campaign is near ASB. Lee winning anything important is near ASB. The man was far too reckless.
 
The thing about that point in 1862 is that the one time Southern armies did fight hard, at Pittsburg Landing they got another whipping from General Grant, who won the biggest victories in the West. From Thomas's victory at Mill Springs, the falls of Forts Henry and Donelson (the only time a US general captured an entire army in the war), the fall of New Orleans, and the defeat of the best CS general of the war by Grant I can't see anything any CS general in Virginia can do.

The key thing to me is Halleck and Buell relied on their subordinate generals, McClellan's overseeing 90,000 men on the battlefield meant that when Lee did that idiotic idea of a frontal assault he could not but lose in an open-field engagement. The idea of a protracted war with the Confederacy, which collapsed the moment it faced a real fight, is nothing but silliness on the part of a few Southerners embarrassed about the whole business.

For me, I like General Thomas, and think he would have gone on to command the entire US army if the war lasted longer. Grant was too reckless and had no inclination to obey orders, he's unlikely to rise higher than Major General. George Thomas, victor of Mill Springs and General-in-chief of the last Indian Wars is unlikely to be neglected and I can't see the US leadership overlooking his tactical and strategic genius.

In fact I daresay that in a protracted war that fool Lee would be forgotten and Thomas's star rise. Thomas's ideas created our modern intelligence-dependent and firepower dependent US Army with its doctrine of envelopment in combined arms warfare. The United States certainly picked the right man to succeed George McClellan as General-in-chief and it's no wonder Virginia prefers to remember Thomas to Lee.
 
The thing about that point in 1862 is that the one time Southern armies did fight hard, at Pittsburg Landing they got another whipping from General Grant, who won the biggest victories in the West. From Thomas's victory at Mill Springs, the falls of Forts Henry and Donelson (the only time a US general captured an entire army in the war), the fall of New Orleans, and the defeat of the best CS general of the war by Grant I can't see anything any CS general in Virginia can do.

The key thing to me is Halleck and Buell relied on their subordinate generals, McClellan's overseeing 90,000 men on the battlefield meant that when Lee did that idiotic idea of a frontal assault he could not but lose in an open-field engagement. The idea of a protracted war with the Confederacy, which collapsed the moment it faced a real fight, is nothing but silliness on the part of a few Southerners embarrassed about the whole business.

For me, I like General Thomas, and think he would have gone on to command the entire US army if the war lasted longer. Grant was too reckless and had no inclination to obey orders, he's unlikely to rise higher than Major General. George Thomas, victor of Mill Springs and General-in-chief of the last Indian Wars is unlikely to be neglected and I can't see the US leadership overlooking his tactical and strategic genius.

In fact I daresay that in a protracted war that fool Lee would be forgotten and Thomas's star rise. Thomas's ideas created our modern intelligence-dependent and firepower dependent US Army with its doctrine of envelopment in combined arms warfare. The United States certainly picked the right man to succeed George McClellan as General-in-chief and it's no wonder Virginia prefers to remember Thomas to Lee.

True, Grant did very well in the west. You are also right that the South collapsed the moment it got itself in a real fight. The North held all the cards. Not only did it produce more than the South in virtually every catagory outside cotton and tobbacco it faced the three best generals of the war: Grant, Thomas and McClellan. What did the South throw at them? Lee, Johnston and Beuregaurd? No wonder they were sent packing!!
 
True, Grant did very well in the west. You are also right that the South collapsed the moment it got itself in a real fight. The North held all the cards. Not only did it produce more than the South in virtually every catagory outside cotton and tobbacco it faced the three best generals of the war: Grant, Thomas and McClellan. What did the South throw at them? Lee, Johnston and Beuregaurd? No wonder they were sent packing!!

A man whose idea of war was headlong attacks against a force superior in numbers, leadership, logistics, and organization, the war's greatest retreater, and a man whose brilliant idea was to ape the plan that lost Napoleon Waterloo. Yeah, there's no way a country with that pack of jokers would last long. To make it even worse for those of us in the South, our "best" general according to more modern scholarship essentially showed himself unfit to command anything more than a regiment and bungled a battle that no competent general should have lost. Surprise and superior numbers and that curbstomp that followed, executing the plan that lost, as opposed to won, Waterloo?

If that's the CSA's best, I'd hate to see its worst. There was one corps commander, Braxton Bragg, who seemed promising. Who knows, maybe he would have actually done something. :rolleyes:
 
A man whose idea of war was headlong attacks against a force superior in numbers, leadership, logistics, and organization, the war's greatest retreater, and a man whose brilliant idea was to ape the plan that lost Napoleon Waterloo. Yeah, there's no way a country with that pack of jokers would last long. To make it even worse for those of us in the South, our "best" general according to more modern scholarship essentially showed himself unfit to command anything more than a regiment and bungled a battle that no competent general should have lost. Surprise and superior numbers and that curbstomp that followed, executing the plan that lost, as opposed to won, Waterloo?

If that's the CSA's best, I'd hate to see its worst. There was one corps commander, Braxton Bragg, who seemed promising. Who knows, maybe he would have actually done something. :rolleyes:

Who was your "best" general according to modern scholarship? As far as Bragg is concerned even if he was the greatest general since Napoleon he wouldn't be able to win with the clowns running the CSA government. They may have been even worse than the generals. :eek:
 
Who was your "best" general according to modern scholarship? As far as Bragg is concerned even if he was the greatest general since Napoleon he wouldn't be able to win with the clowns running the CSA government. They may have been even worse than the generals. :eek:

Of the Confederate generals? Probably Samuel Cooper but then he was a line officer. :D

Of the Union? McClellan justly deserves the title. The Army of the Potomac was the biggest army in US history to that time and he used it to backhand the CS Army of Northern Virginia to death. In terms of their whole careers, maybe Thomas, the man was generations ahead of his times in combined-arms concepts, and he was a career officer with a long history of success.

Grant to me won big, but he also commanded a small army during the war and unlike Thomas's his army had too many defects as a military force to serve as the core of a war-winning force on its own. And Pittsburg Landing to me raises the question of whether it'd be the Grant taken by complete surprise when it was completely inexcusable or the guy who won Fort Donelson in the most ballsy single campaign of the war who'd win. And even at Pittsburg Landing he won decisively a battle military logic should have said he'd utterly lose.

For commanding the decisive and victorious campaign that closed the war, though, McClellan without a doubt was the best general of the Slaveholder's Revolt.
 
Of the Confederate generals? Probably Samuel Cooper but then he was a line officer. :D

Of the Union? McClellan justly deserves the title. The Army of the Potomac was the biggest army in US history to that time and he used it to backhand the CS Army of Northern Virginia to death. In terms of their whole careers, maybe Thomas, the man was generations ahead of his times in combined-arms concepts, and he was a career officer with a long history of success.

Grant to me won big, but he also commanded a small army during the war and unlike Thomas's his army had too many defects as a military force to serve as the core of a war-winning force on its own. And Pittsburg Landing to me raises the question of whether it'd be the Grant taken by complete surprise when it was completely inexcusable or the guy who won Fort Donelson in the most ballsy single campaign of the war who'd win. And even at Pittsburg Landing he won decisively a battle military logic should have said he'd utterly lose.

For commanding the decisive and victorious campaign that closed the war, though, McClellan without a doubt was the best general of the Slaveholder's Revolt.


Do you agree with me that the Rebel governmet itself was as bad if not worse than its generals? I know it is a hard thing to do but with Jeff Davis, Alex Stephans and Robert Toombs I think they are in the running.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
OOC:

Lee was not suicidally committed to the frontal attack. In fact prettymuch each attack Lee committed to in the Seven Days was at least notionally a turning movement which went wrong.

At Mechanicsville/ Gaines' Mill really a single 2 day battle) Lee intends to turn Porter with Jackson, but Jackson was "characteristically uncharacteristic" and ballsed up the turning movements. Only the fix function actually happened, not the strike.

At Savage's Station/ Glendale/ White Oak Swamp (again, really a single battle) Lee intends to envelop McClellan but fails. The final assault at the Charles City Crossroads was launched because he could see his last chance to get at McClellan's trains was fading.

At Malvern Hill Lee intends again to turn McClellan's right, but Longstreet proves his general crapness that day and fails to move with any alacrity. The assault was a mistake initiated by an attempt to clear skirmishers by the directing brigade. Unfortunately for Lee by the time Longstreet has enveloped Malvern Hill the next morning McClellan has stepped back.

No concept of operations included frontal break ins. The complete failure of all turning movements can largely be attributed to poor command at Division level (Longstreet and Jackson especially) and the overall rawness of the Confederate troops.

Just because Lee is a saint in the eyes of the Last Cause school doesn't mean he wasn't a competent or even superb general. In fact he was probably one of the best army commanders on either side. He outgeneralled every commander sent against him except McClellan and Meade.
 
OOC:

Lee was not suicidally committed to the frontal attack. In fact prettymuch each attack Lee committed to in the Seven Days was at least notionally a turning movement which went wrong.

At Mechanicsville/ Gaines' Mill really a single 2 day battle) Lee intends to turn Porter with Jackson, but Jackson was "characteristically uncharacteristic" and ballsed up the turning movements. Only the fix function actually happened, not the strike.

At Savage's Station/ Glendale/ White Oak Swamp (again, really a single battle) Lee intends to envelop McClellan but fails. The final assault at the Charles City Crossroads was launched because he could see his last chance to get at McClellan's trains was fading.

At Malvern Hill Lee intends again to turn McClellan's right, but Longstreet proves his general crapness that day and fails to move with any alacrity. The assault was a mistake initiated by an attempt to clear skirmishers by the directing brigade. Unfortunately for Lee by the time Longstreet has enveloped Malvern Hill the next morning McClellan has stepped back.

No concept of operations included frontal break ins. The complete failure of all turning movements can largely be attributed to poor command at Division level (Longstreet and Jackson especially) and the overall rawness of the Confederate troops.

Just because Lee is a saint in the eyes of the Last Cause school doesn't mean he wasn't a competent or even superb general. In fact he was probably one of the best army commanders on either side. He outgeneralled every commander sent against him except McClellan and Meade.

OOC: The first sentence is entirely incorrect. At the Wilderness, at Gettysburg, at Malvern Hill he all deliberately ordered frontal attacks. He behaved like the caricature of Grant without the resources to justify this. Longstreet was by far the better tactician between Jackson and he, there were Cedar Mountains to his credit. Lee was outgeneraled from the Wilderness to Petersburg, Grant moving 115,000 men right under his nose to the gates of Petersburg shows who was the better of the two.

He was competent but he had far too much of a preference for bloodthirsty means of waging war and nothing to justify it. That McClellan viewed his victory at Malvern Hill as a defeat is to be expected when he prefers to sup with French nobles and ignores his own troops fighting and kicking the shit out of the Confederacy.
 
Give me John Pope every day of the week. His campaign down the Mississippi was a masterful combined arms demonstration.

True. Grant was the only guy to actually capture an enemy army I might note. It's weird because McClellan and Thomas sought to annihilate the armies on the field and he sought to capture them. If he'd risen Reconstruction would have been a disaster from that naivete.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
OOC: The first sentence is entirely incorrect. At the Wilderness, at Gettysburg, at Malvern Hill he all deliberately ordered frontal attacks. He behaved like the caricature of Grant without the resources to justify this. Longstreet was by far the better tactician between Jackson and he, there were Cedar Mountains to his credit. Lee was outgeneraled from the Wilderness to Petersburg, Grant moving 115,000 men right under his nose to the gates of Petersburg shows who was the better of the two.

Wilderness? He turned Grant, although not decisively.

Gettysburg? He attacked en echelon, which is a variant of a turning movement against a flank secure position.

Malvern Hill? He didn't order the attacks. They started spontaneously.

The Overland Campaign? Lee continually outgeneralled Grant to the point Grant conceded defeat and settled down for a siege.

He was competent but he had far too much of a preference for bloodthirsty means of waging war and nothing to justify it. That McClellan viewed his victory at Malvern Hill as a defeat is to be expected when he prefers to sup with French nobles and ignores his own troops fighting and kicking the shit out of the Confederacy.

Anyone with sense enough to look at a map knows Malvern Hill is not a tenable position. If he'd have stood on Malvern Hill Longstreet would have enveloped him and the Army of the Potomac would have been destroyed.
 
Wilderness? He turned Grant, although not decisively.

Gettysburg? He attacked en echelon, which is a variant of a turning movement against a flank secure position.

Malvern Hill? He didn't order the attacks. They started spontaneously.

The Overland Campaign? Lee continually outgeneralled Grant to the point Grant conceded defeat and settled down for a siege.

"We must keep Grant from reaching the James River, if he does it will mean a siege and from there it is a matter of time." Lee did not outgeneral Grant at any point, Grant's outgeneraling him starts with forcing Lee to fight piecemeal and breaking his offensive power in the first battle, capturing an entire division of Lee's army and breaking his line twice in the second, thwarting Lee's attempts to ambush him in the skirmishes, moving 115,000 men right under his nose without a hostile shot being fired at them, and forcing Lee to fight the kind of static warfare that would destroy his army. If McClellan had been suited to command a corps, let alone an army this all would have happened 2 years earlier.

The most crucial part of why Lee was outgeneraled was that he never realized what Grant was after: Grant never wanted Richmond, he was after Lee's army the whole time. Failure to recognize why Grant was hovering near Richmond was why the Lee magic that died at Gettysburg stayed dead.

Saying that he simply permitted his army to get chewed up by artillery hardly reflects well on him. Victory mitigated this at Missionary Ridge, Malvern Hill frankly is the classic Lee battle.

Anyone with sense enough to look at a map knows Malvern Hill is not a tenable position. If he'd have stood on Malvern Hill Longstreet would have enveloped him and the Army of the Potomac would have been destroyed.

Yes, Lee could have kept sending his troops against overwhelmingly superior artillery and given McClellan the war by default. :)

IC: To make matters sillier, the Confederacy turns to the man that fails in West Virginia and the Carolinas and expected this to work well for them? It's either desperation or a sign that the Confederacy was unable to let Beauregard do anything.
 
Just because Lee is a saint in the eyes of the Last Cause school doesn't mean he wasn't a competent or even superb general. In fact he was probably one of the best army commanders on either side. He outgeneralled every commander sent against him except McClellan and Meade.

So you're claiming McClellan outgeneralled Lee at Seven Days?

And that Lee outgeneralled Grant in the Overland and Appomattox Campaigns?

Interesting alternate timeline you're writing there. :rolleyes:
 
Wilderness? He turned Grant, although not decisively.(1)

Gettysburg? He attacked en echelon, which is a variant of a turning movement against a flank secure position.(2)

The Overland Campaign? Lee continually outgeneralled Grant to the point Grant conceded defeat and settled down for a siege.(3)

Anyone with sense enough to look at a map knows Malvern Hill is not a tenable position. If he'd have stood on Malvern Hill Longstreet would have enveloped him and the Army of the Potomac would have been destroyed.(4)

OOC:

(1) Grant's only concern in the Wilderness was passing through it. Grand maneuvers in the Wilderness involving turning of flanks (that could be exploited) were impossible. The very same natural barriers that prevented Grant and Meade from exploiting their artillery advantage barred Lee from keeping Grant from advancing. With 40,000 less men, there was only so much Lee could do to Grant. And Grant very well knew that. Lee's problem was he didn't.

(2)Gettysburg was a three day battle. The First Day was not under the control of Meade or Lee.

You are describing the Second Day only. And there was fighting in other sectors besides Hood's and McLaws'. Lee's plans for attack that day made no allowance for his ignorance of the ground on the flanks, and that every move his troops made on his right flank (First Corps) would be seen by the enemy. He seemed to be counting on sheer inertia by Meade. The en echelon attack was unworkable from the start, even if Sickles hadn't moved III Corps forward.

The Third Day was precisely the type of frontal assault for which Lee is so well known. Right down the enemy's center gunline that led to the massacre that was Pickett's Charge.

(3)The Overland Campaign? The Wilderness I have already addressed. Spotsylvania? The only reason that happened was because a mediocre general, Anderson, had the day of his life and just managed to beat the AotP to the site of the battle. The Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse was a bloodbath for both sides, with most of the tactical results in the ANV's favor, save for the overrunning of the Stonewall Brigade.

As he had going from the Wilderness, Grant moved to the southeast of Spotsylvania to North Anna, which gave Lee an opportunity for success, if only the second-string of generals he had left were capable of executing his plans. The abortive results there led to Grant again maneuvering to the southeast to Cold Harbor. If you want to rip Grant for Cold Harbor, well, I'm with you there. So, for that matter, is Grant himself.:eek:

But the disaster at Cold Harbor led to Grant's decision to have the army disengage and head for the James River, and Petersburg, all the while successfully deceiving Lee into believing he was going to make a direct try for Richmond by closing in on the city from the northeast. Superior numbers let you do these things.:) Using the small force under Butler in Bermuda Hundred to screen his movements, in a magnificent feat of speed, logistics, and engineering, he got his army across a 1200 foot pontoon bridge and raced for Petersburg.

Petersburg was defended by Beauregard, who was blasting Lee with cables telling him that a huge army was closing in on Richmond's lifeline and he only had a few thousand troops to stop them. Only by having the greatest days of his life as a commander (and Baldy Smith and Hancock having their worst) allowed the city to be saved, if under a narrowed defense line that made Meade's life easier during the siege to come. It took Lee SIX days to realize that Grant had outgeneraled him, and seven before the very first of his units started to reach Petersburg. Of course, by this time, his troops wouldn't have far to go.

(4)"The Army of the Potomac (or name whatever other Union Army applicable to discussion) would have been destroyed."-67th Tigers.
That statement is pretty much to be seen in every thread on the ACW in AH.com (except ASB) where you put in a post.

"The Army of Northern Virginia would have been destroyed."-?
I have no recollection of you ever posting that. I'm not saying you haven't. But assuming the ANV is under Lee's command for any length of time, and he's not facing George B. McClellan:rolleyes: HAVE YOU EVER WRITTEN THAT?

Destroying an well-organized, well-supplied, well-trained, veteran army in the ACW, in the field, NEVER HAPPENED! The Battle of Nashville resulted in the destruction of a badly bled out, starving, half-frozen, and immobilized force (snow four feet deep, covered in ice, in Tennessee!:eek:).

You speak so blithely, again and again, about destroying whole armies in battles of maneuver in a time when the advantages of defense were four times what they were in the Napoleonic Wars. Smoothbore muskets and smoothbore guns vs. the effects of rifles and rifled cannon. In the ACW two armies would bash each other until one side had had enough and retreated. The other side would be too bloodied to pursue. At least effectively. And things only got worse with the introduction of machine guns. Not to be altered again until armor arrived.

67th Tigers. You certainly know your numbers. I won't argue that for a second. Nor your archival depth of researchable resources. But you really don't seem to understand the larger effects of firepower on armies, as a whole, as the subject relates to the ACW.
 
OOC: Has anybody noticed that even in a thread that's singing McClellan's praises 67th Tigers is STILL PISSED OFF!?:(:p:mad::rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
President McClellan

I'm just glad that McClellan was able to handle Reconstruction as well as he did the war. Who knows how things might have gone if the Radicals had everything their own way? I could imagine terrible backlashs in later years.
 
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