Typo
Banned
Antietam was a tactical draw, but strategical union victory if that's what you are talking aboutHow accurate is this? Is this just revisionist history, or is it really the truth?
Antietam was a tactical draw, but strategical union victory if that's what you are talking aboutHow accurate is this? Is this just revisionist history, or is it really the truth?
McClellan failed when it came to field command.
By the time he was correctly relieved of command he had convinced the AoP that Lee would always be ready for them.
He certainly did not defy Lincoln to face Lee at Antietam.
His handling of his forces has been called into serious question, including the Seven Days Battle(at Glendale and Malvern Hill) as well as Antietam, where despite every advantage a commander could desire, including full knowledge of Lee's operational plan and the detailed breakdown of Lee's army into several smaller forces, he failed to destroy Lee, failed to pursue Lee, and couldn't even manage to overwhelm one of Lee's units before they had pulled together, although he did keep a reserve off the battlefield which would have won day, in his continuing delusion that Lee outnumbered him.
The ultimate verdict and damnation for McClellan is that his own AoP voted for Lincoln in 1864 over him and by a margin of nearly three to one.
What if George Thomas, the Union's unsung hero had been given the Army of the west or the AoP?
The idea that McClellan was overwhelmed by greater numbers is way off. McClellan had a 5-3 advantage going into Seven Pines. Johnston was able to fight on equal terms solely because part of the AoP was on s. side of the Chickahominy. Despite the battle being a tactical draw, McClellan brought his offensive to a half with the usual excuse that he needed reinforcements.
The failure of McClellan to engage all of his forces (most of his army missed all of the Seven Day's battles except for Malvern Hill) was also a problem at Antietam. There, McClellan failed to properly coordinate his attacks, allowing Lee to switch forces from one threatened area to another. Incidentally, he also failed to exercise command control over the Union forces at Fraser's Farm and Malvern Hill. You can engage in whatever semantics you want to see that Lee was defeated but that fact is that he held off a force that almost double his own. Further, his refusal to commit his reserve was inexcusable. Although the VI Corps had just arrived, Porter's V Corps was fresh. Further, the VI Corps could hardly have been more disorganized and tired than the Confederate troops who had been fighting for hours.
Finally, you can hardly call the "lost orders" a minimal advantage because they were five-days old. If McClellan had acted promptly after South Mountain, he could've forestalled Lee's concentration at Antietam. Likewise, the 1 1/2-day delay between him receiving the orders and ordering his army forward also helped Lee.
Which army? And Thomas did eventually get command of the Army of the Cumberland after Chickamauga.
Or maybe you mean command of the entire western theater?
Is 67th Tigers from some ATL where McClellan was as good at winning battles as he was at organizing logistics?
I think it's more likely that he would get command of the west before he could get command of the eastern theater. Thomas's tactics were ahead of his time, and I think that he had a right balance of tactical and strategic thinking that he could have done well.
Probably the easiest way is to have Sherman die at Shiloh instead of being wounded. Thomas takes command when Grant goes east.
Is 67th Tigers from some ATL where McClellan was as good at winning battles as he was at organizing logistics?
Based on the numbers he quotes, that's the most reasonable answer. He's been known to subtract every man that was ever sick for even a single day from McClellan's forces using the records for the month after the battle while simultaneously conjuring up 100,000 militia (which would be every last man in Virginia between the ages of 14 and 49) who show just to fight McClellan, but mysteriously vanish when McDowell, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, and Grant invade.![]()
Then there was the time he tried to use Hattaway and Jones calculations that Lee suffered average casualties while winning more than an average amount of battles to try to prove Lee was a commander of average skill.![]()
All that being said, Hagerman (who does seem to favor McClellan) says the AotP did suffer an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth after Antietam, though he does not give his source. OTOH, Hagerman also says that by the start of October, the AotP has assembled of 3200 supply wagons and over 10 times that many animals. In spite of this, McClellan did not move.