McClellan: The Reluctant Warrior 381unprotected, it simplified the problem of keeping
the army supplied in hostile country. But McClellan
now displayed the weaknesses that eventually ruined
his career. His problems were both intellectual and
psychological. Basically he approached tactical ques-
tions in the manner of a typical eighteenth-century
general. He considered war a kind of gentlemanly
contest (similar to chess with its castles and knights)
in which maneuver, guile, and position determined
victory. He saw the Civil War not as a mighty strug-
gle over fundamental beliefs but as a sort of com-
plex game that commanders played at a leisurely
pace and for limited stakes. He believed it more
important to capture Richmond than to destroy the
army protecting it. With their capital in northern
hands, surely the Southerners (outwitted and out-
maneuvered by a brilliant general) would acknowl-
edge defeat and agree to return to the Union. The
idea of crushing the South seemed to him wrong-
headed and uncivilized.
Beyond this, McClellan was temperamentally
unsuited for a position of so much responsibility.
Beneath the swagger he was profoundly insecure. He
talked like Napoleon, but he did not like to fight. He
called repeatedly for more men; when he got them,
he demanded still more. He knew how to get ready,
but he was never ready in his own mind. What was
said of another Union general would have been better
said of McClellan: He was “watching the enemy as
fast as he can.”
McClellan began the Peninsular campaign in mid-
March. Proceeding deliberately, he floated an army of
112,000 men down the Potomac. Landing near
Yorktown, he prepared to besiege the Confederates,
much as Washington had done against Cornwallis in
- But in early May the Confederate army slipped
away and McClellan pursued them nearly to
Richmond. A swift thrust might have ended the war
quickly, but McClellan delayed, despite the fact that he
had 80,000 men in striking position and large reserves.
As he pushed forward slowly, the Confederates caught
part of his force separated from the main body by the
rain-swollen Chickahominy River and attacked. The
Battle of Seven Pines was indecisive yet resulted in more
than 10,000 casualties.
At Seven Pines, General Joseph E. Johnston, the
Confederate commander, was severely wounded;
leadership of the Army of Northern Virginia then
passed to Robert E. Lee. Although a reluctant sup-
porter of secession, Lee was a superb soldier.
During the Mexican War his gallantry under fire
inspired General Scott to call him the bravest man
in the army; another officer rhapsodized over his
“daring reconnaissances pushed up to the cannon’s
mouth.” He also had displayed an almost instinc-
tive mastery oftactics. AdmiralRaphael Semmes,
who accompanied Scott’s army on the march to
Mexico City, recalled in 1851 that Lee “seemed to
receive impressions intuitively, which it cost other
men much labor to acquire.”
Lee was McClellan’s antithesis. McClellan seemed
almost deliberately to avoid understanding his foes, act-
ing as though every southern general was a genius. Lee,
a master psychologist on the battlefield, took the mea-
sure of each Union general and devised his tactics
accordingly. Where McClellan was complex, egotistical,
perhaps even unbalanced, Lee was courtly, tactful, and
entirely without McClellan’s vainglorious belief that he
was a man of destiny. Yet on the battlefield Lee’s bold-
ness skirted the edge of foolhardiness.
To relieve the pressure on Richmond, Lee sent
General “Stonewall” Jackson, soon to be his most
trusted lieutenant, on a diversionary raid in the
Shenandoah Valley, west of Richmond and Washington.
Jackson struck hard and swiftly at scattered Union
forces in the region, winning a number of battles and
capturing vast stores of equipment. Lincoln dispatched
20,000 reserves to the Shenandoah to check him—to
the dismay of McClellan, who wanted the troops to
attack Richmond from the north. But after Seven Pines,
Lee ordered Jackson back to Richmond. While Union
armies streamed toward the valley, Jackson slipped
stealthily between them. On June 25 he reached
Ashland, directly north of the Confederate capital.Robert E. Lee, shown here in Julian Vannerson's 1863 portrait,
inspired Stonewall Jackson to remark, “So great is my confidence in
General Lee that I am willing to follow him blind-folded.”