election, were angered by Union defeats in battle after
battle and desired an end of the war. However, a series
of battlefield victories, culminating in General William
Tecumseh sherman’s march into Georgia, swung the
country back to Lincoln, and on election day McClellan
was defeated by more than 400,000 votes out of some
4 million cast, receiving only 21 electoral votes to Lin-
coln’s 212. After the election, he formally resigned from
the army and went abroad, staying overseas until 1868.
Upon his return to the United States, McClellan
was named as engineer in charge of the construction of
the Stevens floating battery, an innovative warship of the
future that was scrapped in 1869 due to lack of funds.
In 1870, he was named as chief engineer of the De-
partment of Docks for the City of New York, where he
served for two years, afterward serving as the president
of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad. In 1877,
as a Democrat, he was elected governor of New Jersey,
serving a single three-year term (1878–81) and retiring
at the end of this service. He died of heart failure in
Orange, New Jersey, on 29 October 1885. George Mc-
Clellan is known to historians as a man who had great
potential, but whose refusal to take chances or sieze op-
portunities on the battlefield led to his failure.
References: Michie, Peter Smith, General McClellan
(New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1901); Macartney,
Clarence Edward Noble, Little Mac: The Life of General
George B. McClellan (Philadelphia: Dorrance and Com-
pany, 1940); Parkinson, Roger, “McClellan, George Brin-
ton,” in The Encyclopedia of Modern War (New York: Stein
& Day, 1977), 103; Barnard, John Gross, The Peninsular
Campaign and its Antecedents, as Developed by the Report of
Maj.-Gen. Geo. B. McClellan, and other Published Docu-
ments (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1864); Ketchum,
Hiram, General McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign: Review
of the Report of the Committee on the Conduct of the War
Relative to the Peninsula Campaign (New York, 1864).
Mehmet II (Mehmed II, Kayser-i Rum) (1432–
1481) Ottoman sultan
The son of Sultan Murad II and a slave girl, Mehmet
(also Mehmed) was born in the city of Adrianople (now
Edirne) on 30 March 1432. When he was 12, his father
abdicated in his favor, but Mehmet was inexperienced,
and after only two years Murad took back control until
his death, when his son was 19. Although the Ottoman
Empire had long since expanded into southeastern Eu-
rope, the vast city of Byzantium, the last bastion of the
Eastern Roman Empire, was still unconquered. Nick-
named “Fatih” (the conqueror) by his people, Mehmet
made his first objective the capture of Byzantium (for-
merly called Constantinople and now modern Istanbul)
in the name of his empire. The city, which lay on the
narrow strait that connected Europe to Asia and had
been a citadel for the 2,000-year-old Roman Empire, at
last seemed ripe for the picking.
Mehmet marched on Byzantium with upward of
250,000 men. As he moved his army into position on
the Bosporus, the Byzantine emperor, Constantine Pal-
aeologus, ordered the gates of the city closed on 21 June- Constantine at best had approximately 7,000–
8,000 men defending the city, and Mehmet ordered a
massive bombardment. The siege itself began on 6 April
1453 and lasted just a few weeks, until 29 May. A work
from 1607, called The Turkes Secretorie, features a series
of letters between Mehmet and other leaders concerning
his battles to take over southern Europe. Regarding the
battle for Byzantium, the introduction states:
The first and fearefullest feate of warre which
he did, was the winning of Bizantium the most
renowned and Famous Citie of Constantine the
Great, which is acknowledged of all, to have beene
the glory and beauty of all Christendome. There
is no man living... that is able to fit with words,
and due compassion to expresse so greevous
and so great calamities. For then the great and
mighty Empire of Greece that was wont to be
the wall and bulwark of the Romane Empire, in
lesse than two moneths siege was dissolved, and
utterly subverted. The Emperour Constantinus
Paleologus, a Prince endued [endowed] with all
commendable parts of piety, and vertue, seeing
his estate was desperate, and thinking to escape
with his people at a backe gate, was miserably
smothered and killed in the throng: at what time,
the bloody and cruell tyrant [Mehmet] caused
Proclamation to be made, that no person of what
age, sex, or condition soener should be saved or
pitied in that common massacre.Once he had taken Byzantium, Mehmet renamed
the city Istanbul and turned it into the capital of the Ot-
toman Empire; by the start of the 16th century, it had
become the largest city in Europe. He turned the large
church inside the city into a mosque—the largest inmehmet ii