McClellan a good General or a Fool?

67thTigers, I know you obviously disagree with us about McClellan himself, but what's your opinion of Pinkerton?
 
Usertron2020

YOU ARE NOT OFFENDING ME!!!!!

Instead i seem to be upsetting you - kindof. Don't worry about it. I am just having fun in this thread. My opinions arent obviously well developed enough given my youth, but certainly, i am enjoying the little debate i am having with you.

You mean no offense, neither do i.
 

Free Lancer

Banned
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Pinkerton

Although he may have given McClellan inflated numbers, Pinkerton did at least stop an assassination of Lincoln early in the war.

i Know he was a Good some times Great Intelligence Officer, he Developed Several Investigative Techniques that are still used today, and as you said he stopped an Assassination on Lincoln,
also at the Time of his Death he was Working on a System that would centralize all Criminal Identification Records which now is a Database now Maintained by the FBI:D:cool:
 
Would anyone rate McClellan as the Union's version of Joseph E Johnston???

Well if it were the case that the two were similar it would not be surprising. McClellan was Johnston's closest friend throughout the 1850's and Johnston had taken McClellan under his wing as a protege. McClellan took some of his ideals from Johnston just as Johnston had taken many of his ideals from Winfield Scott and, to a lesser estent, William Worth. It was part of the reason that McClellan rated Johnston so highly - because he knew him intimately and admired him.

Had Johnston remained with the Union and come to command an Army he would have called upon McClellan to be his second-in-command, and if Johnston had remained with the Union but decided not to fight McClellan would have moved heaven and earth to convince him to join the Union cause (and I did once think of writing a timeline about this), had McClellan joined the Confederacy Johnston would similarly have tried to get him as either a second-in-command or an appointment to a high position of power.
 
He was a good organizer. His skills as a combat general can be measured by the Battles of South Mountain and Antietam where with full knowledge that the Army of Northern Virginia was scattered into no less than five parts he failed to defeat one single part of it with overwhelming numbers, and at Antietam twice broke the Confederate lines while refusing to commit 40,000 troops that would have ensured there would be no Army of Northern Virginia retreating southward.
 
As Harsh points out, there is a major difference between those writing specifically about McClellan (or was until Stephen Sears wrote his tomes) and those writing general histories of the war. The former, whilst admitting his faults generally found him capable whilst the latter had to fit him into their vision of the war. Since he was the foil to the now eulogised Lincoln, he had to be the fall guy for Lincoln's mistakes. It is the latter group that have dominated the debate since Bruce Catton put forward the idea.

I tend to agree with those that were actually there and witnessed the events. McClellan was a good but cautious general (IMHO like a more impolitic Wellington), and probably the best general the Army of the Potomac ever had. Those far removed from the events tell a different story however....

He would have been a great general in any society other than a democracy with civilian control of the military. A man who refuses to see his commander-in-chief or reveal anything of his ideas such that the Commander-in-chief would not sack him is not exactly one who understands democratic war in the way that say, Eisenhower did. Or Montgomery for that matter.

McClellan was a bumbler who saw the Confederates as overwhelming him in numbers when that was not the case. He spent an entire month with 90,000 troops besieging 17,000 to which Joe Johnston said "Only McClellan would have failed to attack." Like Braxton Bragg he also had a weakness that when he planned something, he *planned* something and his plans never took into account the reality of Murphy's Law.

... and so we see the bias.

Since Lincoln is "America's greatest President" [sic] then he must have done no wrong. Ergo the problems must have been due to those who opposed him, like McClellan. McClellan is reduced to a foil for Lincoln, which was a useful narrative technique when introduced.

Of course, Lincoln was, at the time, considered the worst President in US history (see Tagg's "The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln"). The period of him assuming direct command of the armies can only be considered disasterous (see, for example, Stoker's "The Grand Design" for discussions of high level strategy and war aims)

Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy was equally unpopular. The difference was Lincoln accepted McClellan's snubs if he'd ever actually used the Army of the Potomac, instead of treating it as a 168,000-strong bodyguard. Davis never forgave Johnston or Beauregard any of their snubs and disagreements, which led to the Confederate fuck-ups in the Western theater that a good general like Grant was more than willing to exploit, same as Lee's victories were less his virtues than due to exploiting his enemies' failings.

Which it must be said is part of war as it is, not as people want him to be.

It must also be noted that Lincoln assumed direct command with Stanton around the time of the Valley Campaign and their strategy *was* what was necessary to bag Jackson. They just entrusted it to political generals who weren't capable of counting to 21 without dropping their drawers.

This is a rather leading statement/ question.

You make the implication that obviously McClellan was incompetent at Antietam, and everyone knows it. Ergo is anyone crazy enough to suggest otherwise?

The answer is of course, lots of people have written of his competent conduct of the battle, but most are long dead since they were generally witnesses to the battle themselves.

Recently (well 12 years ago now!) we've of course had the definitive study of the Maryland Campaign in Harsh's "Taken at the Flood", which concluded much what all the witnesses concluded; McClellan made the right decisions given what was known.

As Mannie Gentile has pointed out, the current notion of Antietam as "badly fought" comes from a series of biased, rather vitriolic books which do not give a balanced view.

Did he now? He was against, along with his Commander-in-chief, the idea of the "harsh remorseless revolutionary war" but with Lee backed into a position that if he had ever followed the practice of Grant, Sherman, Jackson, Longstreet, and both Johnstons of leading from the front he might have actually noticed that he could have used his army to pin Lee's along the Potomac while sending Burnside's corps around behind the position.

Lee's career would have ended that day, and the Union would have had a war with more victories than defeats. Instead McClellan made very poor use of his troops and as always was well behind the line to the point that his subordinates directed multiple actions instead of a singular one.

His gravest defects were never using his numbers effectively (hell, Joe Hooker had a better idea of how to use the Army of the Potomac than he did. He was equally good at executing it, however :D) and being well away from the actual combat lest he see war as it was.
 
Well if it were the case that the two were similar it would not be surprising. McClellan was Johnston's closest friend throughout the 1850's and Johnston had taken McClellan under his wing as a protege. McClellan took some of his ideals from Johnston just as Johnston had taken many of his ideals from Winfield Scott and, to a lesser estent, William Worth. It was part of the reason that McClellan rated Johnston so highly - because he knew him intimately and admired him.

Had Johnston remained with the Union and come to command an Army he would have called upon McClellan to be his second-in-command, and if Johnston had remained with the Union but decided not to fight McClellan would have moved heaven and earth to convince him to join the Union cause (and I did once think of writing a timeline about this), had McClellan joined the Confederacy Johnston would similarly have tried to get him as either a second-in-command or an appointment to a high position of power.

Actually I think that's an insult to Joe Johnston. He'd managed to fight an effective maneuver campaign that weakened Sherman's numerical superiority and it was the usual "want to be caliph instead of the caliph" phenomenon that handicapped him as well as every other commander of the Army of Tennessee that meant like all his predecessors his plans are better suited for alternate history than actual history.

I mean Johnston was still holding Sherman out of Atlanta by August, where in two months Grant bottled up Lee in Petersburg for the rest of the war......:D
 
Actually I think that's an insult to Joe Johnston. He'd managed to fight an effective maneuver campaign that weakened Sherman's numerical superiority and it was the usual "want to be caliph instead of the caliph" phenomenon that handicapped him as well as every other commander of the Army of Tennessee that meant like all his predecessors his plans are better suited for alternate history than actual history.

I mean Johnston was still holding Sherman out of Atlanta by August, where in two months Grant bottled up Lee in Petersburg for the rest of the war......:D

Even so it would still be the case that as McClellan's close friend and mentor Joseph E. Johnston was a powerful influence on McClellan's thoughts and ideals as a military man - not the only influence but a powerful one - so if there are similarities to be seen between the two of them then it would not be by some random coincidence.
 
Even so it would still be the case that as McClellan's close friend and mentor Joseph E. Johnston was a powerful influence on McClellan's thoughts and ideals as a military man - not the only influence but a powerful one - so if there are similarities to be seen between the two of them then it would not be by some random coincidence.

Or it might be that for different reasons both were inexperienced and trying to orchestrate both military and political strategy without the experience that would have let them do so more effectively than they did. One got a second chance early on from the POTUS, the other was a bitter enemy of the Confederate President from during the war and certainly after it.
 
Or it might be that for different reasons both were inexperienced and trying to orchestrate both military and political strategy without the experience that would have let them do so more effectively than they did. One got a second chance early on from the POTUS, the other was a bitter enemy of the Confederate President from during the war and certainly after it.

ouch, that is a good point I hadn't considered before. Nicely put
 
ouch, that is a good point I hadn't considered before. Nicely put

And this raise at least one question about McClellan as both good general and fool: he never really did develop any substantial experience in combat.....partially because he moved to it at a glacial pace and avoided field command, which was very problematic before humble things like the radio.

This is a question for all: which was the worse relationship?

Johnston & Davis?

or

Beauregard & Davis?:confused:

IMHO Johnston and Davis because Johnston at least had great *ideas.* I'm not sure how much they'dve improved the Confederacy's not-so-great strategic situation but keeping Johnston out of a significant position was one of Davis's bigger mistakes. Even when inexperienced in field command in 1864 he managed one of the greatest maneuver campaigns of the war and virtually alone among the Confederate generals did that without taking higher casualties than his Union counterpart by proportion in the process.

It would be interesting to wonder what would happen if Joe Johnston had retained field command. He certainly was hardly likely to do *worse* than Bobby Lee did.
 
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