It seems rather obvious that McClellan’s generalship lengthened the war considerably. Has there ever been any scholarly postulation as to how much longer the war lasted as a result of his bumbling? I would guess that a military tactitian would be able to quantify this, but I haven’t been able to find any such speculation. What would the possible implications of a shorter war have been? Had the war ended in, say, two years, would the slaves have been emancipated? This is just idle contemplation on my part, so educated opinions are more than welcome…I have no military history chops, but if you do, feel free to comment, or if you know of a book that might answer this line of inquiry for me, I would appreciate the heads up. Thanks as always…
GoddessOdd
McClellan was in charge of the union forces during the Peninsula Campaign in the spring of 1862 and during the Antietam campaign in September 1862. In both cases, the Union forces had major advantages which any reasonably competent commander could have used to destroy the main Confederate forces. And in both cases, McClellan squandered those opportunities.
And yet, Robert E. Lee later said that McClellan was the toughest general he fought against. McClellan was much too conservative because he believed ridiculously exaggerated information about the forces against him – but that did make him harder to defeat. And seeing how Hooker and Burnside did, it probably wouldn’t have been any easier for him to wipe out Lee.
But even if he had routed Lee and captured Richmond, the war would have continued. The government would have relocated (probably in Montgomery, Alabama), and kept fighting. Things would have changed a bit, but it’s hard to argue the war was extended because of McClellan.
As a man with considerable skills and an ego to match, but who blew every chance to win decisively when he had it in his grasp, McClellan must surely rank as one of the biggest failures of the Civil War. It’s impossible to say for sure, but I don’t think it’s too great a leap of the imagination to posit that the war might’ve ended at least a year or two earlier, savings tens of thousands of lives, had McClellan had the decisiveness and grit of a Grant, Sheridan, Sherman, Thomas or Hancock.
Lincoln is reputed to have said, “If Gen. McClellan is not going to use the Army of the Potomac, I should like to borrow it for awhile.”
It’s all hypothetical at this point but I think that destroying the Army of North Virginia and capturing Virginia (along with Missouri, Memphis, and New Orleans) in the summer of 1862 might have caused a general southern collapse. The CSA was a lot younger then: a series of defeats like that in its first year might have demoralized southerners.
I did read somewhere that, had McClellan seized the opportunities presented to him, rather than hesitating, the war might have been shortened by something like 18 months and 2 years. For example, just before Antietam, in Sept. 1862, when the three cigars were found wrapped in a copy of of Lee’s battle plans, that a more capable and courageous General might have turned the tide of the war at that point. Others disagree.
I was just considering what might have happened had the war ended before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, or even before Sherman’s March to the Sea…would the South be different today if the war ended before so much was destroyed?
That’s something we’ve discussed quite a bit in my Civil War roundtable. In a sense, the war had to reach a certain duration and a certain point of devastation before the Northern public would accept the Emancipation Proclamation as setting forth a valid war goal. Even by late 1862, though, there was considerable grumbling about it; the nation was by no means in an abolitionist fever. If the war had been over in six months or even a year, things might have pretty much returned to the status quo antebellum, with slavery still in place, a defiant Southern aristocracy bloodied but even more unbowed than they were in 1865, and a bigger, longer war just pushed a few decades down the road.
That was my thought…suppose the war had ended in early 1862. The Emancipation Proclamation was never signed, the south remained largely intact, I would imagine that slavery would have continued for some time, Lincoln, rather than assassination, might have met his end as when his aorta ruptured, a result of Marfan’s Syndrome…an entirely different course of history.
Good evening, everyone. I am DiFool’s friend, and a Civil War buff and former reenactor. Throughout the course of this thread, there is one prominent factor that has been overlooked, in my opinion. The factor that I believe to have been overlooked is a gentleman named Pinkerton.
McClellan was a very competent general by the standards of his time. His record at West Point was only slightly less stellar than that of General Lee. When McClellan was given control of the Army of the Potomac in late 1861, it was a demoralized rabble, having suffered defeats at First Manassas and, later, at Ball’s Bluff in October 1861.
Throughout the course of the fall of 1861 and spring of 1862, Little Mac trained this body of troops and made them the professional army inherited by subsequent commanders. He gave them a sense of pride and elan that would have rivaled the Stonewall Brigade. I will not go into specifics of his administrative accomplishments, but suffice it to say he turned a rabble into the most professional army in the world at the time.
As as a strategist and tactician, McClellan received the same military education as Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, and J.E.B. Stuart. They all read from Mahan’s Tactics Manual. In that regard, McClellan and Lee were equals. However, each commander received their intelligence from different sources. Lee received his intelligence from scouts and Stuart’s cavalry. McClellan received his intelligence reports primarily from Pinkerton’s secret service agents, who routinely inflated their reports. McClellan believed Pinkerton’s reports as if they were gospel. This naivete caused McClellan to worry excessively about supposedly superior forces.
The Peninsula and Antietam campaigns as conceived by McClellan were very sound ideas, but the execution fell short once the Confederate Army entered the fight. It is at this point that the Young Napoleon’s flaws began to show. Little Mac was more worried about not losing than he was with winning a battle. He was not a gambler when it came to tactical flexibility. General Lee was more apt to take risks with the army, because he had more to lose in this war.
The Antietam campaign was more of the same in September. Once McClellan had a copy of Lee’s orders of march, he had a chance to incredibly weaken the Army of Northern Virginia, but McClellan was unwilling to gamble different pieces of the army in a pitched battle. Again, he was more concerned with not losing than winning. Hence, he was very conservative in his approach. Generals Pope, Burnside, and Hooker were a bit more eager to engage and we know the ends of their campaigns.
As for the duration of the war, that is an unknown factor. The abolition of slavery was never a primary war goal during the first 18 months of the conflict. Lincoln was only concerned with restoration of the Union. Great Britain and France were considering recognition and an alliance with the South during the spring and summer of 1862. It is at this point Lincoln decided the abolition of slavery should be included as a war goal. The sticking point was how to achieve the goal without the border states seceding into the Confederacy, but Lincoln needed a military victory, which he got at Sharpsburg in September 1862.
The only way the Union forces could abbreviate the duration of the war was to reduce the Confederacy’s capacity to support their armies in the field, and to reduce the Southern military forces. I doubt there will be a definitive answer to the orginal question of how long it would have lasted, but Generals, Grant, Meade, Lee, and Sherman contributed to the abridgement of the conflict.
[Me: I’m not sure if letting a friend post under my account is questionable-I just read the bylaws and saw nothing on such, but I seem to remember a past discussion where it was frowned on. I told my friend that he could register here for free now, and he said he might.]
I am very glad you let your friend post, it was a very thoughtful and interesting response. I had not considered the role faulty intelligence might have played…food for thought, but McClellan’s eagerness to believe is rather tellling.
If only Shelby Foote were here…I’d buy him a bourbon and branch and see what he had to say on the matter.
[Moderator comment]
We prefer that posts not be made by proxy. Given that registration is free, and that it seems your friend can contribute considerably to the discussion, I would encourage him to register and join in directly.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
As supplied by Pinkerton. Pinkerton’s information (seems a misnomer to call it “intelligence”) reinforced McClellan’s natural caution and slowed his advance up the Peninsula to a crawl. McClellan was always demanding reinforcements from Lincoln and complaining that he couldn’t win with the already-massive army he had. No wonder, after two chances, the President eventually lost patience with him.
I am currently reading James McPherson’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom. Interestingly, McPherson believes Pinkerton’s men did well at counter-espionage, catching spies, but less well at estimating numbers of troops, often deriving figures for “total troops in theater” and then erroneously assigning them all to the army facing McClellan.
While agreeing with the general consensus that McClellan squandered opportunities and was too willing to believe Pinkerton’s inflated numbers, McPherson speculates that McClellan’s charmed life was part of his problem – he’d never failed or endured hardship, humiliation, or even struggle. He seemed more reluctant than other generals to commit himself, like he was afraid of ruining something that was going too well. McPherson contrasts this with Lee’s learning from his early struggles in western Virginia. and Grant and Sherman both overcoming bad reputations and personal failures, and subsequently being willing to put everything on the line without hesitation.
This is my own speculation, not McPherson’s…but I wonder how much of McClellan’s uncertainty and overestimation of the threat was due to his poor cavalry support?
Lee’s brilliant analysis of the battlefields and aggressive moves were always prefaced by great cavalry scouting…except once, when Stuart failed him at Gettysburg. Then Lee’s approach to battle was greatly hampered – although he remained aggressive, he was haunted by not knowing what lay on the flanks, and refused to consider Longstreet’s suggestions either to move around the foe or to maneuver against the flank. Instead he went head-on, uphill, against an enemy center behind a stone wall – so much like Burnsides at Fredericksburg that the stories say the Union lines chanted “Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg” as Pickett’s men approached.
So “Lee without cavalry” fought much like the worst of the Union bunglers (sorry, Ambrose, I know you were a stand-up personality). I wonder if that explains much of McClellan’s warmaking, since he never had good cavalry support?
Let’s say that McClellan rose above his limitations and fought well during the Peninsula Campaign in June 1862. He kept his army moving, overran the relatively small forces in front of him, captured Richmond, and cut off the Army of North Virginia and defeated that. The Confederate government, demoralized by this major defeat on top of the other defeats they suffered in 1862, falls apart. The Union forces mop up the remainder of the disorganized rebels by 1863.
So no Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln would be more interested in convincing the southerners to give up peacefully rather than worrying about European intervention. There would still be a political battle about how much the secessionists should be punished but this time Lincoln would be in the middle of it.
My guess is that Lincoln’s defeat in 1864 would be almost certain. And his most likely successor would have been McClellan - his reputation would have been enhanced by an early victory and he would have been a much stronger candidate than he was historically.
I was with you right up to this paragraph. I think Lincoln, having defeated the Confederacy in jig time, would be a shoo-in for reelection. His popularity surged in 1864 after the fall of Atlanta; imagine if he’d won the entire war in just a few years! McClellan might have run and won in 1868 as a war hero, but I suspect a second term would be Lincoln’s for the asking.
My opinion is that wartime unity helped Lincoln. The aftermath of war would have returned us to politics as usual (it certainly did in real history). Lincoln avoided this because he was killed in 1865 - he didn’t have to pick sides in the arguments over Reconstruction.
If the war had ended early there would have been a year or two of political battles and those would have been fresher in memory than the war. Plus it’s almost certain that Lincoln would have been the subject of partisan attacks during that period. His opponents would blame him for causing the war rather than credit him for winning it.
So in 1864, you would have a battered Lincoln running against a McClellan who would have been staying out of political infighting. His reputation would be untarnished (who says anything bad about a war hero?). The Democratic party line would have been that Lincoln caused the war and McClellan won it. And now we should let the man who won the war win the peace.
Well… maybe. I see what you mean now. But Lincoln was a masterful politician, and McClellan wasn’t. I think Lincoln would’ve outmanuevered him at every turn, and an incumbent president who wins or is seen as winning a war (Lincoln IRL, McKinley, FDR, Bush the Lesser; with the noteworthy exception of Bush the Elder) is usually reelected.
Would the voters in the Southern states be allowed to vote in the 1864 elections? If so, is it likely they would have favoured any Republican/Northern candidate?
I doubt it, and I really, really doubt it.