What Sort of President Would George McClellan Be?

Suppose McClellan won the 1864 election. What sort of President do you think he would be?

Following this scenario in which i would say that Sherman didn't take Atlanta in time, i would wager that peace with the CSA would be a platform that McClellan would have no choice but to purse since he relied to heavily on the Democratic Peace Faction.

And with that said it also depends quite heavily on which party holds Congress i would think that even if Lincoln was defeated for reelection that it wouldn't devastate Republican chances at capturing both houses of congress to bad leaving the GOP in control.

But that is just a theory but i do not put great stock into the Democratic Party's ability to win such a massive election victory due to their fractured nature and being primarily identified as Pro Southern.

In which i will follow the scenario that the GOP does win the Congress and in such a scenario then McClellan will not be a very effective president.

Dealing with the end of a very long and bloody war, trying to cope with the heavy economic down turn, the blow to national pride, handling the peace platform with the CSA which would be a very watched affair and will practically destroy his presidency before it even begins if he agrees to the lost of more territory in the form of one of the border states.

And after that comes with dealing with the new nation to the south, while dealing with a multitude of problems at the home front, and having to confront them with a Congress that will not be in to good a mood to work with what McClellan would push to deal with any of them.

And since i do not have much stock in McClellan ability to handle any of this i would imagine that in the Mid term elections the Democratic Party would lose even more seats which would condemn McClellan the President to the likes of James buchanan a vary low rated and ineffective president.
 
McClellan would be like Andrew Johnson, except more arrogant and incompetent. He might actually get impeached and removed from office.
 
McClellan would be like Andrew Johnson, except more arrogant and incompetent. He might actually get impeached and removed from office.

Actually forgot about the possibility of Impeachment, since i could honestly see that happening with a Republican controlled Congress.
 
I'll repeat (with a few minor changes) an old soc.history.what-if post of mine on this subject:

***

See William W. Freehling's discussion of this in his *The South vs. The South* (Oxford UP 2001), pp. 184-8:

"Supposedly, if Confederates had defeated William Tecumseh Sherman on the
fall 1864 Atlanta battlefields, or if rebels had at least stalled Sherman
at the gates of Atlanta until after the presidential election, the
Democrats' George McClellan might have defeated Abraham Lincoln. Then a
President McClellan would supposedly have carried out the favorite
strategy of his party's peace wing: a thirty-day armistice, to he used to
persuade Confederates to reenter the Union. Even if the rebels had
remained unpersuaded, climaxes the speculation, the war would have been
over. Once the war-weary North had shut down the war machine, a President
McClellan allegedly could not have restarted the monster.

"The endgame part of this fantasy has least credibility. As Carthage and
Sparta and Napoleon demonstrated, belligerents restart wars all the time
and with a vengeance, after a temporary truce and a failed negotiation
demonstrate that combatants' differences remain nonnegotiable. As Lord
Palmerston commented, a Civil War 'armistice without some agreement' on
'separation' of the Union 'would only be like [the] breathing Time allowed
to Boxers between Rounds of a Fight to enable them to get a fresh wind.'

"While a moment of breathing time would not have precluded Federals' fresh
start in a war against disunion, some Peace Democrats believed that a
Democratic Party victory in 1864 could generate a negotiated reunion, with
or without a temporary truce and an English referee. In August 1864 at the
Democratic Party's national convention, a compromise between Peace and War
Democrats seemed to offer that prospect. The more numerous War Democrats,
wishing to wage the war for Union more successfully, won the party's
presidential nomination for their favorite, General George McClellan. The
less numerous Peace Democrats, wishing to see if a temporary armistice
might bring a negotiated reunion, wrote their idea into the party's
platform. The document declared that 'after four years of failure to
restore the Union by the experiment of war,... immediate efforts [must] be
made for a cessation of hostilities,' so that 'at the earliest practicable
moment, peace may be restored *on the basis of the Federal Union*"
['emphasis mine', writes Freehling]. Not even most Peace Democrats, in
other words, were willing to grant the Confederacy permanent existence.

"The ink had scarcely dried on the Democrats' proposal to negotiate a
peaceable reunion before the platform became irrelevant. Three days after
the Democratic convention, Confederates surrendered Atlanta, ensuring
Lincoln's reelection. But would the convention's compromise have led a
McClellan administration to accept disunion, despite the insistence on
"Federal Union" in the platform, if Atlanta had held out and if McClellan
had won the presidency?

"Not if the new president, a convinced War Democrat, could help it.
McClellan, true to his favorite part of the Peace Democrats' platform,
always insisted that a Federal Union must be the basis of peace. In his
letter accepting the Democratic Party nomination, the general wrote like
the good soldier: 'I could not look in the face of my gallant comrades,
who have survived so many bloody battles, and tell them that their labors
and the sacrifice of many of our slain and wounded brethren had been in
vain, that we had abandoned that Union for which we have so often periled
our lives.'

"While McClellan never waffled on abandoning the Union, he wavered
momentarily, slightly, on whether he could tolerate a temporary armistice,
as a means to negotiate reunion. On August 10, three weeks before Sherman
strode into Atlanta, McClellan cursed that some Democrats want me to
'write a letter suggesting an armistice!!!! If these fools will ruin the
country, I won't help them!' Yet while drafting his letter accepting the
presidential nomination, McClellan briefly toyed with the fools' panacea.
He might accept a temporary armistice, early drafts hint, if Confederates
wished to talk about restoring the Union. McClellan's final draft,
however, rubbed out all ifs, all armistices, all negotiations. He would
fight until rebels surrendered disunion.

"The slight waffle offered no way for Confederates to win permanent
independence. McClellan played with and swiftly rejected no more than a
temporary armistice, conditional on Confederates' negotiations toward
reunion. Rebels rejected precisely that basis of negotiations. 'We are
fighting for Independence,' Jefferson Davis insisted in mid-1864, "and
that, or extinction, we *will* have!'

"Davis's extermination of Peace Democrats' 1864 hopes demonstrates that
war weariness, by itself, seldom ends wars. Some politically viable basis
for terminating the combat must exist or combatants will trudge on
wearily, until one annihilates the other. Acceptance of disunion remained
political suicide for northern mainstream politicians in 1864. Politics
aside, few Peace Democrats considered surrender tenable. Acceptance of
reunion remained equally untenable inside the Confederate high command in
1864, as Davis's intransigence showed. Lord Palmerston had it right (even
if he picked the wrong winner): Fisticuffs would have to continue until
the Union accepted disunion or until the Confederacy tolerated reunion,
"With candidate McClellan adamant about securing reunion, time was the
enemy of any Democratic Party surrender of Union, just as Lord John
Russell had possessed too little time to secure British mediation. Robert
E. Lee's heroics had bought three years for some intervention from outside
white Confederates' ranks to turn around the Civil War. That was not
enough time. Lee would have had to buy at least two more years, until the
congressional election of 1866, or possibly four more years, until the
presidential election of 1868, for Peace Democrats even to campaign for
peace with disunion, much less to win an election on that (in 1864)
politically suicidal basis.

"Confederates probably could not have hung on until a President McClellan
could be inaugurated, much less until his successor could be elected. In
August 1864, Abraham Lincoln privately pledged a harder war between the
presidential election and the March 4 inauguration day. if a Democrat was
elected president. Lincoln feared not a surrender (he knew that McClellan
would fight for Union) but a military disaster (he feared that the
Democrat would resurrect soft war tactics). While McClellan favors
'crushing out the rebellion,' Lincoln conceded, 'the rebel army cannot be
destroyed with democratic [party] strategy. Under some Democrats' plan 'to
conciliate the South,' the '200,000 able bodied' and emancipated black
troops now used 'to hold territory' will be 'returned to slavery.' If we
were to 'abandon all the posts now possessed by black men...we would be
compelled to abandon the war in 3 weeks.'

"The president had evidently forgotten that George McClellan had promised
(August 9, 1862) that slaves received into the military service of the
United States 'in any capacity' would receive 'permanent military
protection against any compulsory return to a condition of servitude.'
True, President McClellan could honor that pledge and still dismiss all
blacks from military service. But a former general, if he had become
commander in chief, would not likely have ripped apart his army on March
4, 1865, not with victory almost in hand. Nor would the instant dismissal
of over 100,000 Union soldiers have likely mattered much that late in the
Civil War, not with Lee's army a shadow of its once mighty self. On the
ques­tion of whether the Confederacy could secure permanent disunion, the
Union's election of 1864 can only be called, to borrow the historian
William C. Davis's splendid phrase, the 'turning point that wasn't.'"

Freehling does acknowledge that "On another vital Civil War question, the
election of 1864 remained a possible turning point. Although a President
McClellan would not have surrendered the Union or reenslaved black
soldiers, he probably would have welcomed rebel states back into the Union
without requiring them to ratify the emancipating Thirteenth
Amendment...McClellan would probably also have been open to negotiate a
restored Union, with slavery's survival guaranteed. In March 1865,
despite their previous protestations that reunion was nonnegotiable,
Confederate leaders just might have settled for an enslaved Union, with
their war (and thus slavery) almost lost and with McClellan Democrats less
antisouthern than Lincon Republicans. Yet while a President McClellan
might have rescued slavery in the Union, he joined Lord Palmerston as a
noncandidate for rescuing an independent Confederacy."


A few points about Freehling's analysis:

(1) It rests in part on the argument that the War Democrats dominated the
Democratic Party in 1864 (Freehling cites Joel H. Silbey's *A Respectable
Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era* for this.) Thus, to
the asertion that McClellan could not have ruled without his party's peace
wing, Freehling replies: how could he have ruled without the Democrats'
majority war wing *and* the Republicans--two groups which Freehling claims
were, combined, ninety percent of the northern electorate? Even if that
figure is a bit high, the essential point seems valid to me.

(2) Freehling acknowledges (p. 229) that "A few historians claim that
Peace Democrats would have sacrificed the Union for peace. With very few
exceptions, the Peace Democrats' speeches and papers seem to me to scream
exactly the opposite: that peace would best gain the reunion goal which
must be the basis of a negotiated end of the war." Here I am less certain
that Freehling is right; the Peace Democrats might have paying lip service
to reunion because they knew that outright advocacy of accepting permanent
disunion was unpopular. But of course this very fact shows how
politically hopeless it would have been for McClellan to accept disunion
even if he wanted to. (Freehling also disagrees with James McPherson's
assertion that the Democratic platform "made peace the first priority and
Union a distant second." Freehling writes, "I agree with wartime
Democrats that the resolution's words do not sustain that reading.")

(3) To quote an old post of mine, "Fortunately for McClellan, Jefferson
Davis would not be hypocritical enough to pretend to negotiate on this
basis [reunion]. And even if he wanted to, the political resistance in
the Confederacy would be too fierce. Davis cannot say to the
Confederate public 'we'll *talk* about reunion but it's just a ploy'
without the Northern public hearing what he says." And as for Davis
actually telling both northerners and southerers that he is willing to
consider reunion, I think that even in March 1865 and even with McClellan
as president, Freehling's "just possible" overstates the chances of this
happening.

(4) See
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/soc.history.what-if/5HkZR3G0vRQ/oiuaOEC2F8U
for Lincoln's plan to "save the Union" if McClellan won--the point is that
even if Sherman did not take Atlanta, the North could be so near a final
triumph by the time McClellan took office that it would be crazy for him to
snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

(5) I doubt that McClellan would be willing to re-enslave anyone (even
non-soldiers) *already* set free under the Emancipation Proclamation,
though he might offer a guarantee of no further emancipations and of
compensation for those already made, in return for peace and reunion.

***

A later post of mine in that thread:


I know that it has been argued that McClellan's election would cause mass
desertions. I really have to doubt this, given McClellan's emphatic
public statements (and private statments to officers of the Army, who will
presumably communicate them if necessary to their troops) that no peace
was possible without reunion. I suppose there is a danger that some
soldiers would take the Republican propaganda about a victory for
McClellan meaning surrender to the Confederacy literally, and decide after
Election Day that they might as well go home, but I think that in most
cases they would be willing to give McClellan a chance, especially if both
Lincoln and McClellan warned soldiers to stay at their posts until reunion
was achieved. (Incidentally, if some Union soldiers go home because they
think the war is already lost, might not some Confederate ones go home
because they think the war is already won?...)

It is sometimes argued that McClellan would revoke the Emancipation
Proclamation and agree to the re-enslavement of those (including those now
fighting in the Union Army!) freed under it, and that this would lead all
black soldiers to desert, and many white ones who by 1864 had come to
regard emancipation as an essential condition of victory. IMO it is very
unlikely that McClellan will do this. As Freehling has written (*The
South vs. the South*, p. 188) about Lincoln's fears on this matter, "The
president had evidently forgotten that George McClellan had promised
(August 9, 1862) that slaves received into the military service of the
United States 'in any capacity' would receive 'permanent military
protection against any compulsory return to a condition of servitude.'"

The most that McClellan would do IMO would be to offer the South--*if* it
agreed to reunion--to revoke the Emancipation Proclamation with respect to
any *future* emancipations and to compensate slaveowners for those
emancipations that had already occurred. (Lincoln himself doubted that
the Proclamation, expressly designed as a war measure, could be
constitutionally used for future emancipations once the war was over.
That is one reason he thought the Thirteenth Amendment so important. [1])

In fact, McClellan's position on slavery has sometimes been misunderstood.
As Stephen W. Sears writes in "Little Mac and the Historians" (in his
*Controversies and Commanders: Dispatches from the Army of the Potomac*)
http://books.google.com/books?id=MC5m-4jK_TwC&pg=PA22

"[In the Harrison's Landing letter, McClellan's] concern...about 'forcible
abolition' was stated clearly--turning a war for Union into a war for
abolition would demoralize and 'rapidly disintegrate' the army, for he did
not believe his men would willingly go to battle for that objective. This
was hardly a reactionary belief, and at the time a great many Northerners
agreed with him. As to slavery itself, McClellan went on, military
necessity certainly allowed for manumission 'within a particular state'--
so long as there was compensation...

"As to the Emancipation Proclamation, what he feared most as its
consequence was the outbreak of bloody slave uprisings. 'I cannot make up
my mind to fight for such an accursed doctrine as that of a servile
insurrection--it is too infamous,' he told Ellen. He could not imagine
any greater violation of the rules of civilized warfare. Yet his basic
underlying view was not changed. General Jacob Cox, an admitted
antislavery Republican, conversed with McClellan at this time and
concluded that the general believed 'the war ought to end in abolition of
slavery; but he feared the effects of haste, and thought the steps toward
the end should be conservatively careful and not brusquely radical.'

"By the time of the election of 1864, the Emancipation Proclamation had
been in effect twenty-two months. Servile insurrection had not marched
across the South. The army had not disintegrated or revolted. Black
troops--great numbers of them straight from slavery--had poured into the
Union ranks. None of McClellan's worst fears, indeed none of the worst
fears of a great many Northerners, had materialized. Therefore, to
imagine that George McClellan, inaugurated as president, with the war
continuing, would in those circumstances have revoked the Proclamation and
ordered 100,000 black troops disarmed and sent back into slavery is to
totally misread the man. To predict *any* return or restoration of
slavery under a McClellan administration is equally unimaginable.

"Both during the campaign and afterward, General McClellan left not a
shred of doubt that if elected he would press the war to a conclusion--
military conclusion--with all possible speed. He did not (as has been
thought) hesitate a moment in rejecting the peace plank inflicted on him
by the platform committee of the Chicago convention; the delay in his
acceptance letter was to try to find a way to paper over the party split
that his stand revealed. He had only contempt for those in the peace
wing, calling them 'adherents of Jeff Davis this side of the line.'
During the campaign he made sure officers in the army understood his
commitment to seeing the war through to victory. [As I suggested above,
presumably in the event of a McClellan victory those officers will
communicate this determination to their men, in order to discourage
desertions--DT] One of his former aides recorded a conversation two weeks
before the election 'in which the general stated that should he be
elected, he expected to be very unpopular the first year, as he should use
every power possible to close the war at once, should enforce the draft
strictly, [indeed, if it is true that McClellan's election will cause a
wave of desertions, then to stem them McClellan may have to be a bit less
tender than Old Abe about shooting deserters--DT] and listen to no
remonstrance until the rebellion was effectually quashed.'

"Following his presidential defeat, and with the war over, General
McClellan cast a look backward. 'Of course I can't tell what the secesh
expected to be the result of my election,' he told one of his former
campaign managers, 'but if they expected to gain their independence from
me, they would have been woefully mistaken.' ..."

[1] The other reason of course is that the Proclamation had not freed
slaves in the "loyal" slave states.
 
McClellan would be like Andrew Johnson, except more arrogant and incompetent. He might actually get impeached and removed from office.
I actually don't agree. Arrogant? Absolutely. But McClellan wasn't nearly as incompetent as he's generally perceived to be these days. The Peninsular Campaign was overall a sound idea, and he correctly guessed that Stonewall Jackson's antics in the Shenandoah Valley were a distraction. Lincoln and many of his officials wildly overestimated the threat to the capital. He was also very competent in training soldiers and under his command and was generally praised for his organizational skills.

McClellan's problem as a general was his timidity and fastidiousness. He could plan a major operation, but he needed somebody with a bit more of gambler's mentality to pull it off. In some ways, he was better suited to be a President than a field general.

This isn't to say that he would've been a good President. The Radical Republicans would have made it their mission to annihilate him... particularly since he and his cadre of loyal officers during the war talked rather openly about him setting himself up as dictator. There would be many who would see President McClellan as the first step towards Emperor McClellan in the fashion of the Bonaparte family. His personality might have made it very difficult for him to effectively rally the needed support against his opponents. At that particular moment in history, the Presidency required a crafty politician rather than a grand planner.
 
I actually don't agree. Arrogant? Absolutely. But McClellan wasn't nearly as incompetent as he's generally perceived to be these days. The Peninsular Campaign was overall a sound idea, and he correctly guessed that Stonewall Jackson's antics in the Shenandoah Valley were a distraction. Lincoln and many of his officials wildly overestimated the threat to the capital. He was also very competent in training soldiers and under his command and was generally praised for his organizational skills.

A sound idea? Maybe. But terribly executed. And it might be worth noting that Lincoln manuevered troops in response to Stonewall Jackson to defeat him, not merely to stuff Washington's defenses.

McClellan's problem as a general was his timidity and fastidiousness. He could plan a major operation, but he needed somebody with a bit more of gambler's mentality to pull it off. In some ways, he was better suited to be a President than a field general.

This isn't to say that he would've been a good President. The Radical Republicans would have made it their mission to annihilate him... particularly since he and his cadre of loyal officers during the war talked rather openly about him setting himself up as dictator. There would be many who would see President McClellan as the first step towards Emperor McClellan in the fashion of the Bonaparte family. His personality might have made it very difficult for him to effectively rally the needed support against his opponents. At that particular moment in history, the Presidency required a crafty politician rather than a grand planner.

And a grand planner who is incapable of putting his plans into action because there's always some reason that he needs more supplies is not really going to be a good commander in chief.
 
A sound idea? Maybe. But terribly executed.
Yes. As I said, he was too timid. If he had pushed hard soon after landing, he would've captured Richmond weeks before the Confederates had a chance to amass a proper army to repel him.

And it might be worth noting that Lincoln manuevered troops in response to Stonewall Jackson to defeat him, not merely to stuff Washington's defenses.
True enough. Doesn't mean the Valley Campaign was anything but a sideshow though. It kept 35,000 reinforcements away from the main event on the Peninsula, which was the whole point.

And a grand planner who is incapable of putting his plans into action because there's always some reason that he needs more supplies is not really going to be a good commander in chief.
That's largely dependent on how much McClellan would micro-manage the operation. If he trusts his generals enough to execute the overall strategy, he'll do fine. Also, I wasn't necessarily just talking about military operations. He was certainly more than capable of overseeing civil building projects and pushing smart development policies in the post-war period.

I'm not saying McClellan would necessarily be a good President, but I am saying that painting him as some kind of general bungler because he wasn't a good field commander isn't really fair either.
 
Yes. As I said, he was too timid. If he had pushed hard soon after landing, he would've captured Richmond weeks before the Confederates had a chance to amass a proper army to repel him.

True enough. Doesn't mean the Valley Campaign was anything but a sideshow though. It kept 35,000 reinforcements away from the main event on the Peninsula, which was the whole point.

And given McClellan's performance there, having 35,000 more men would have done even less than they did in the Valley.

That's largely dependent on how much McClellan would micro-manage the operation. If he trusts his generals enough to execute the overall strategy, he'll do fine. Also, I wasn't necessarily just talking about military operations. He was certainly more than capable of overseeing civil building projects and pushing smart development policies in the post-war period.

I'm not saying McClellan would necessarily be a good President, but I am saying that painting him as some kind of general bungler because he wasn't a good field commander isn't really fair either.
The problem is that the qualities that made him a bad field commander aren't going to help him as a president.

McClellan wasn't an idiot, but I think he's going to clash with the Radicals in a way that makes Johnson look like a suck up. That's going to ensure nothing productive happens as far as his presidency.
 
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