67th Tigers
Banned
Catton's Army of the Potomac trilogy is outstanding work too
Being completely overtaken by Beattie though, just wish he'd write faster.
You really rate McClellan highly? That is pretty rare I have to say. From what I read McClellan was a decent strategist, and a superb organizer of troops. However, he seemed to have what was called then a 'case of slows', was too predictable (according to Lee), took council in his fears way to often, and missed his big chances.
He was at the gates of Richmond, and if he had kept his nerve, accepted his casualties, and ignored what should have been clearly bad intelligence (as he thought he was outnumbered, when clearly a more objective look would have seen that was impossible) he would have forced the Johny Rebs to either bleed to death in a desperate effort to force him back, fall back into entrenchments and eventually lose to superior Union firepower and numbers or retreat and lose the most important industrial city in the South.
a. The "200,000" was one figure in McClellan's estimates, but is not the one McClellan believed. He fought about 120,000 (and had overestimated by 5-10,000). Halleck OTOH used the 200,000 figure to project a false picture of Lee's strength in Washington, with the aim of denying McClellan the 20,000 men he was asking for.
b. McClellan actually was outnumbered. It we simply go with "Present" then Lee has about a 10% advantage. If we go with "Effectives" it changes massively to a 2:1 advantage with Lee (after Jackson's arrival)
c. Lee thought McClellan was the hardest Union general to fight. Lee's prime modus operandi was to exploit the mistakes of his opponents. McClellan was too methodical to make such mistakes, and so Lee couldn't win cheap victories against him like he later did against Pope, Burnside and Hooker.
At Malvern Hill he pounded the hell out of Lee, who kept launching ill advised attacks throughout the day into the biggest concentration of artillery the Union was able to get on the battlefield until Gettysburg and Picketts Charge, and if McClellan had attacked, he might very well have restored the situation. However, he ordered an evacuation and ended the campaign.
No, McClellan was in the middle of being enveloped. Ha he done anything else but pull back to Harrison's Landing his army would have been destroyed.
This didn't end the campaign, but it stalemated for several weeks. When the order came to withdraw McClellan was actually on the offensive. He'd recaptured Malvern Hill and had captured the southern bank of the James and was just starting to move on Richmond again.
At Sharpsburg / Antitem he had 87,000 men vs Lee's 25,000 but launched a series of unsupported attacks that failed in the end. The next day he let Lee retreat even though he had reserves available and failed to pursue. Which is why Lincoln was looking for an excuse to fire him when McClellan sent in one resignation too many.
Actually, McClellan had about 45,000 on the field (rising to 57,000), including 15,000 new levies who'd never even loaded before. Lee had 40,000 on the field.
Grant repeated his strategy to an extent, but more importantly, Grant realized that Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia was the center of gravity for the Southern cause. Defeat Lee, destroy the Army of Northern Virginia, and the cause is lost. Which turned out to be the case. Grant kept after Lee the entire 18 months of the last campaign in the East and the only really serious mistakes were at Cold Harbor (an ill advised frontal assault) and The Crater (replacing a trained Black division ready to carry out the mission for a battle weary White one).
Grant's campaigns in the West showed a remarkable ability to win a manuever campaign in very difficult conditions. Just as important, Grant did not take council in his fears and kept his nerve in a brutal slugfest with an opponent many in his own army openly held in awe.
Grant is nowhere near as brutal as some make out. He was as maneuvrist as McClellan (as shown by some of his campaigns out west), and like McClellan was quite happy to resort to sieges (he conducted longer sieges with a greater superiority of forces than McClellan ever did).
In the East, his main contribution though is shielding Meade. He also had the same attacks levelled at him in Washington as every other AoP commander, but Grant was able to fend off the wolves.