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“General McClellan Entering the Town of Frederick, Maryland”

No caption.

This
cover illustration of Harper's Weekly honors the military
leadership of General George B. McClellan, commander of the Army of the
Potomac, who rides triumphantly into Frederick, Maryland, following the
Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, Maryland, on September 17, 1862
(a week before this post-dated issue was published). The battle
was one of the major turning points of the Civil War because it repelled
a Confederate invasion of a Union state, where General Robert E. Lee had
hoped to win a major victory, and it gave President Abraham Lincoln a
suitable military pretext for issuing the preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation.
George B. McClellan (1826-1885)
was born in Philadelphia, the son of a surgeon and medical professor.
Young McClellan attended Philadelphia prep schools, and then
studied at the University of Pennsylvania from 1840 until 1842 when he
accepted an appointment to West Point. Graduating second in his class in 1846, he served in the
Mexican-American War (1846-1848) as an engineer constructing roads and
bridges. He won three
commendations for distinguished service and was raised to the rank of
captain. At the war’s
conclusion, he returned to West Point to teach military engineering.
While there, he translated and adapted a book of French regulations on
bayonet exercises, which was adopted by the army in 1852.
McClellan left West Point in
1851 for a series of engineering assignments in Delaware, Arkansas,
Texas, and the Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Northwest.
In 1855, he joined a board of officers for a year abroad studying
military systems in Europe and the Crimean War Theater, for which he
wrote highly regarded reports. Based on his observations, he made
several suggestions for improving the American armed forces, including a
new kind of saddle. In 1857,
he retired from the army to work in the railroad industry.
He was chief engineer, then vice president, of the Illinois
Central Railroad before accepting the presidency of the Ohio and
Mississippi Railroad in 1860.
When the Civil War began,
McClellan was named major general in charge of the Ohio volunteers and
state militia, but within a month was appointed major general in the
federal army and put in charge of the Department of Ohio.
His victory at Rich Mountain, West Virginia (July 11, 1861), just
ten days before the Union defeat at Bull Run, brought him to the
attention of the military’s top echelon.
As a result, he was given command of the Division of the Potomac,
centered around Washington, D. C. Finding
the troops in disarray, he reorganized, trained, and disciplined them,
who affectionately nicknamed him the “Young Napoleon.”
He was a reluctant fighter, though, who continually overestimated
enemy troop strength and hesitated to put his troops into action.
On August 15, 1861, McClellan
assumed command of the Army of the Potomac, the major Union force in the
Eastern Theater, and in November 1861, replaced General Winfield Scott,
who retired, as general-in-chief. The
appointment prompted McClellan to delay military action further as he
pondered the larger military situation he had inherited.
Lincoln's exasperation with his top general's slowness to battle,
as well as disputes over strategy, led the president to relieve
McClellan of the post of general-in-chief on March 11, 1862, although
leaving him in charge of the Army of the Potomac.
After
Confederate troops pushed Union forces away from the Confederate capital
of Richmond in the Seven Days Campaign (June 24-July 1, 1862) and
defeated the Union at the Second Battle of Bull Run (August 28-30,
1862), General Robert E. Lee invaded the Union state of Maryland.
Lee hoped that his presence would inspire Confederate sympathizers in
the state, and that a major victory would strengthen the Union peace
movement and undermine Union morale. As Lee moved into western
part of the state, McClellan had the good fortune to be given a mislaid copy
of Lee's plans, which indicated that Confederate troops were currently
scattered. However, instead of seizing the initiative, McClellan
waited, allowing some of the Confederates time to reassemble at Antietam Creek
near the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland.
The Battle of
Antietam on September 6-7, 1862, was the bloodiest of the entire war.
McClellan with 87,000 men repeatedly assaulted Lee, whose 50,000 men were reinforced by Confederate
troops under Stonewall Jackson. At one point in the battle,
when some Union troops found themselves trapped, 2,000 men were killed
in a matter of minutes. In
all, nearly 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing--13,000 Union soldiers and 10,000
Confederates.
The casualties at Antietam numbered four times the total suffered
by American soldiers on the beaches of Normandy during World War II, and
more than twice as many Americans lost their lives in one day of the
battle as died in combat during the War of 1812, the Mexican-American
War, and the Spanish-American War combined.
While
Antietam was a tactical draw, it was a strategic loss for the
Confederacy because they had to forsake, for the time, their invasion of
the North. President
Lincoln was not pleased with McClellan's performance after
Antietam. The Union commander ignored the president's orders to overtake Lee's retreating troops
swiftly and strike a deathblow against
the Confederacy. Finally fed up with the excuses and procrastination,
Lincoln relieved McClellan of his command on November 5, 1862. "I
hate to see McClellan go," Robert E. Lee wrote to his wife.
McClellan never saw field duty again, but in 1864, the
Democratic Party nominated him for president. The
party platform reflected the dominant force of the Peace
Democrats ("Copperheads") at the national convention.
It criticized Lincoln’s administration of the war effort, the
suppression of civil liberties, and called for an immediate cessation of
fighting and a negotiated settlement.
McClellan repudiated the “peace plank,” promising, instead,
to prosecute the war more effectively than Lincoln. The president
defeated McClellan by a large margin in the Electoral College.
Retiring
from the army on election day, McClellan spent the next three years
traveling in Europe. He returned to head the construction of a newly designed
warship, but the project was scrapped in 1869.
He served as chief engineer of the New York City Docks
(1870-1872), then as governor of New Jersey (1878-1881).
McClellan died of a heart ailment in 1885.
Robert C. Kennedy
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