"I'm feeling fine, I just can't go any further.
Everything is fine where we are, let's not do anything rash.
Would anyone care for some beans while we sit here quietly in the mud?
Fools rush in where smart people fear to tread."

--Someone other than George B. McClellan

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1826. George McClellan graduated second in his class at West Point in 1846. After serving in the Mexican War, he went abroad to study European military tactics and organization and was an observer during the Crimean War. He developed as reputation as a scholar of military organization and gained the nickname "the Young Napoleon" due to his European influences.

After making another name for himself with the development of the "McClellan Saddle" for use by the United States cavalry, he resigned his military commission to take a high ranking position with the Illinois Central Railroad.

The outbreak of the American Civil War brought McClellan back into the military fold. He was appointed major general and given command of the Department of the Ohio. There he managed a successful campaign in western Virginia before being summoned to Washington to take command of the main Union Army in the east. In November of 1861, he replaced Winfield Scott as general-in-chief of the Army with pressure to move against Richmond and end the war.

McClellan's campaign began in April of 1862 and was the largest campaign of the war. For three months McClellan and the Army of the Potomac inched its way closer to Richmond. Beginning on June 25th, Robert E. Lee's smaller Army of Northern Virginia engaged McClellan in the Seven Days' Battles, ending in McClellan's retreat. Following the retreat, McClellan was too slow in sending reinforcements to General John Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run, resulting in another Lee victory.

After the Confederate Army invaded Maryland in September of 1862, McClellan was again turned to for leadership. Outnumbering Lee's forces 90,000 to 19,000 and having gained a blueprint of Lee's battle plan, McClellan inexplicably delayed a day before moving. The delay allowed Lee to obtain reinforcements and knowledge that his battle plans had become known by the enemy. The resulting Battle of Antietam was the bloodiest single day of fighting in the war and McClellan came out of it with only a draw, despite his vastly superior force. Soon after, Abraham Lincoln ordered McClellan relieved of his command.

Lincoln accused McClellan of being affected by "the slows," i.e. being too afraid of losing to risk winning. McClellan was said by many to be deluded into always thinking he was outnumbered, regardless of what his intelligence told him. He was also said to have believed Lincoln and the government were conspiring to see him defeated and that the only way to overcome their plot was to move cautiously and rely only on his own intuition.

In 1864, a strange chain of events set McClellan up as the Democratic candidate for president. While Lincoln was forming a Union Party consisting of Republicans and "War Democrats," McClellan's opposition to Lincoln pushed him into the political arena in opposition to his former commander-in-chief. While he supported the war and considered himself a War Democrat, his support came from those Democrats who believed in "peace at any price" and McClellan was defeated in one of the most lopsided elections in American history.

In the years after the war, McClellan made out rather well as a engineering consultant. His only public service after the war was as governor of New Jersey from 1878 - 1881. He traveled widely and died more or less comfortably in his sleep in 1885.

George B. McClellan was gifted with almost every advantage one could possess as a leader: he was wealthy, educated, intelligent, and powerful. In spite of these benefits, however, his career was marred by several personality traits which contributed to his failure as a general and a leader. Webster's Dictionary defines a leader as a person with the ability to guide others. Effective leaders must possess several characteristics, among the most important of which is a realistic, yet hopeful vision. They must inspire those who follow them, command their confidence, be well organized, and have the ability to delegate. Most of all, a wise leader must not lead for personal gain, but for the benefit of those being led, and be willing to accept responsibility, not only for success, but also for failure.

The role into which a leader is thrust can also have an impact on his or her performance. Whereas one might be an effective business leader, as McClellan was, one might not be a successful political or military leader.

George B. McClellan had brilliant organizational and administrative abilities. He was able to organize the Army of the Potomac, the largest fighting force in the Union Army. As result of prolonged battles with Native Americans, the Union Army was scattered and redundant. McClellan consolidated these forces into a disciplined and well trained unit which otherwise would have been divided and routed by the forces of the Confederacy.

His interactions with the troops not only inspired them, but boosted their morale. He frequently went among his men and personally congratulated them on their victories. This attention made him immensely popular, and as a result he was affectionately known to his men as "Little Mac."

Despite his men's admiration, he had several personality traits that prevented him from being an effective general. As essayist T. Harry Williams writes, " He failed because of the kind of man he was, and the man made the kind of general he was." (Williams, 42)

Due to his West Point education, he viewed war much as a game of chess where one did not make a move until all pieces were arranged accordingly. He harbored the notion that the war could be won by maneuvering alone, and arrogantly refused to consider other points of view. In keeping with this arrogance, McClellan was extremely egotistical and harbored the belief that he had been chosen by God to save the Union.

He felt it necessary to acquire an invincible army in order to take Richmond and crush the Confederacy with a single blow, and refused to fight until he had such an army. In order to assemble this army, he would need overwhelming public support. However, the public was unwilling to support him until he had won a decisive victory, McClellan was unable to realize the political aspect of war, namely that at times battles must be fought merely to gain public backing. His hesitancy to engage in battle led to public opposition and satire. President Lincoln termed this the "slows," a paralyzing fear of engaging in combat that prevented him from seizing opportunities that might have brought the war to a quick close.

McClellan's lack of insight into this, and his paranoia led him to believe that Lincoln and other politicians were conspiring to prevent him from assembling his glorious army in an attempt to ruin him. He failed to see that he should act in some way, and blamed them for his failure.

His leadership abilities were further hampered by his pessimistic outlook and a notion that he was always inferior to his enemy. For example, he harbored the notion that the Confederates could move entire armies from one theater of the conflict to another at will, that they did not suffer from want of provisions, and that columns of their men could be relocated instantly.

When presented with estimates of enemy troop strengths, he consistently expected the worst. A contemporary critic once wrote that if McClellan was furnished with an army of a million men, he would claim to be facing a force of two million and refuse to act until he commanded three million.

However, criticism for this should not rest solely on denouncing McClellan as a weak leader, as he was often a victim of poor intelligence gathering by Pinkerton's Detective Agency. This intelligence failure, coupled with his personality, led McClellan on more than one occasion to believe that he was hopelessly outnumbered, and thus he fought accordingly.

As a believer in fatalism, McClellan consistently shifted responsibility for failure away from himself. He recognized his inability as a general and had faith that God would "give him wisdom that he did not possess." As he was a tool of God, he felt that he could not be blamed for military failures. By avoiding this ulitimate responsibility, he was unable to learn from his mistakes and in turn failed to become an effective leader. As Williams says in his essay:

McClellan was a real general, but he never grasped reality. McClellan was a truthful soldier, but he could not see things in their true light. McClellan was an attractive but deluded man with considerable military knowledge and little knowledge of his country, who sat a horse well and wanted life to be as he thought it should be. (Williams, 42)

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_{Works Cited}

Bailey, Thomas A. and David M. Kennedy and Lizabeth Cohen. The American Pageant: A History of the Republic. Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1998.

Davis, Kenneth C. Don't Know Much About the Civil War. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1996.

Sears, Stephen W. George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon. New York: Ticknor & Fields. 1988.

Williams, Harry T. McClellan, Sherman, and Grant. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. 1962.

Dictionary.com.