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My last topic got me to thinking about Mcclellan. Could he be held responsable for dragging out the war? At Antietam he had Special orders 191, he knew what Lee was going to do and yet the best he could do was a draw? He had his entire army against a portion of Lee's. Mac didnt even use the 5th and 6th corps.
Mac was not exactly the brilliant general his contemporaries painted him to be. He was an excellent adminsitrator and trainer but not much of a tactician or strategist. He was too risk averse. I bet he was horrible at poker.
A competent general would have ended the war right there IMHO
Agreed. I think Even an average General like Hooker could have. Lee was handed to the federals on a silver plate.
McClellan became too attached to his Grand Army of the Potomac. He wouldn't commit enough troops at one time to overwhelm Lee when he had the chance….a lesson Grant would not make later on (though he made different mistakes). McClellan is to be credited for building the finest army the world had seen up to that time, but it was Grant who really knew how to use it. 😉
I'm going to Hijack my own thread if no one minds. What kind of president would Mccellan have made? I believe his legacy would have been that he ended the war between the states and the union would have stayed disolved because he made peace with the south by giving in to their demands for independence.
McClellan would have probably been the same kind of president MacArthur would have been. Both men were seemingly cut from the same cloth. They were both vain and convinced of their own infallibility. MacArthur lost the Phillkipines and McClellan failed to press his advantage outside Richmond in the Peninsula. The country is probably better off that neither got elected.
