“If he had a million men he would swear the enemy has two millions, and then he would sit down in the mud and yell for three.”
by ViorlanRifles
“If he had a million men he would swear the enemy has two millions, and then he would sit down in the mud and yell for three.”
by ViorlanRifles
12 Comments
Isn’t this guy the one that after being deposed for not doing absolutely nothing got the balls to face Lincoln in the elections and blame him because the war didn’t conclude yet?
If General McClellan does not want to use the Army, I would like to borrow it for a time. – Abe Lincoln, 1862.
He was so close to win!
For all the problems of McClellan that he had and we can particularly see with hindsight, this sort of thing *did* make him popular with his men.
Rather than the likes of Lee and Jackson who were eager to spend thousands of men for glory, if you were under McClellan you weren’t getting into the fight unless it was a winnable one with a good chance of you coming out on the other side.
Of course that also meant you often didn’t fight, but hey: not getting shot at is cool.
There’s a reason the Prussian general staff saw McClellan as an idiot and thought this was the main reason the American Civil War lasted so long.
“Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves.” —General Grant chewing out his subordinates at the Battle of the Wilderness
Tbf the confederates proved several times that numbers alone dont win battles.
Should he have been more aggressive? Definitely. But gambling everything one one descisive do-or-die offensive (which is what many people basically asked him to do) is a bad strategy and one that when employed by the rebels materially contributed to them losing the war
“Probably no soldier who did so little fighting has ever had his qualities as a commander so minutely, and we may add, so fiercely discussed.”— the then, NY Evening Post
“You know know what, old buddy, old pal?
[Beat]
You’re fired.”
He was probably a southern cause sympathizer who didn’t agree with the war but was stuck as the general of the union army. That’s why he dragged his feet and hindered Lincoln’s agenda
He is basically clinging on the “logistics wins war” so hard that he forgot that in order to win a war you also need to do some battling.
Holy FUCK. That is the type of early-Gilded Age burn that gets you sent to a sanitarium.