George McClellan

George McClellan in Southern Victory
George McClellan (1826-1885) was commander of the Union Army of the Potomac in 1862. Before the War of Secession began he had had some success as a military officer and a railroad executive. He was also able to take credit for the success of an early campaign in West Virginia, in which forces under his command defeated those of Robert E. Lee. However, the real hero of that campaign was William Rosecrans.

McClellan was placed in command of the Union's largest army in the winter of 1861-62 (with the recently commissioned George Armstrong Custer as an aide) and organized it into an effective fighting force. That was the last time he did anything useful for the Union's cause.

In April 1862 he landed his army on the Virginia Peninsula and advanced on Richmond--a plan which Daniel MacArthur attempted to emulate eighty years later. Though the tactic was sound at the time (it was not in 1942), McClellan's entire campaign was characterized by a timidity verging on cowardice, and he failed to take Richmond.

McClellan saw much of his army transferred to John Pope's Army of Virginia in the summer of 1862. Pope led an invasion of the Confederacy of his own, but was defeated at Manassas Junction by Lee. McClellan's forces were restored to his chain of command. He and Pope would have a lasting enmity between them for the rest of their lives.

In September 1862, McClellan was charged with defending Maryland and Pennsylvania against an invasion by Robert E. Lee. Due partly to the failure of Union intelligence to find the major columns of Lee's army and partly to McClellan's incompetence as a field commander, Lee was able to steal a march on McClellan and threaten Philadelphia. In desperation, McClellan was forced to offer battle at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, a less than ideal position to defend (as McClellan had been warned by Ambrose Burnside). The Army of the Potomac was destroyed, and Lee took Philadelphia unchallenged, forcing President Abraham Lincoln to accept Britain's offer to mediate a peace agreement including recognition of the Confederate States.

McClellan commanded the largest army in the history of the world to that point, and should have easily defeated the badly outnumbered Confederates. However, though President Abraham Lincoln was made to bear most of the blame for the Union's defeat, it was the serious shortcomings of McClellan's military leadership which snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. In ensuing generations of US soldiers, McClellan came to be considered among the worst generals in the nation's history. In fact, the most common criticism of Lincoln is that he did not sack McClellan and replace him with a more competent general.

George McClellan in The Guns of the South
George McClellan was one of several Union generals whose likenesses were used on cardboard cutouts as targets when the Rivington Men demonstrated the AK-47 to Robert E. Lee and his staff.

McClellan's house in Washington City was captured by the Army of Northern Virginia in 1864.

During the U.S. Presidential elections of 1864, he sought the Democratic Party nomination. When he failed to receive the nomination, he ran as an independent but was soundly defeated by Horatio Seymour. McClellan carried only the states of Delaware and New Jersey.