Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 26, 2019 12:07:32 GMT -8
Everything I’ve read or heard about McClelland is that he had a disdain for Lincoln as well as a disdain for military action. But Foote (he might have been quoting someone else) credits McClelland for putting the Army of the Potomac into shape — an army that eventually would be used better by others.
Regarding Lincoln, it seems he was disdained by a great many of the elites. We would now say that McClelland had “Lincoln Derangement Syndrome.” And that is certainly true. Even so, McClelland had something else going on there. I doubt that he was bought and paid for by the South. But if Jefferson Davis was able to pull something like that off, that’s exactly what it might have looked like. Repeatedly, McClelland gave aid and comfort to the enemy by his inaction.
Granted, it could be said that a sane man would not want to throw his men in the meat-grinder of the battles of the era. But I don’t recall reading anything about McClelland that said that that was the reason for his inaction.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 26, 2019 12:15:36 GMT -8
Isn’t that like saying “It’s not that I don’t like Brussels sprouts, it’s just that I don’t like eating them.”
Yes, slavery was a fact of life. And to go against it in the South would have made one a complete outcast, economically, socially, and politically — not to mention militarily.
If moral issues were easy, most of them would have been resolved already. This is not news.
Robert E. Lee had a chance to side with the angels. Instead he caved to Southern peer pressure. I’m one of those who don’t see him as a particularly honorable fellow. Engaging in treason, unless one has a very good reason other than groupthink, is not an honorable pursuit.
Oh, certainly I understand how difficult it would be for just a middle-manager at Walmart to go against the social groupthink of the day. One can sympathize with the conundrum people are often put in as they either have to go along to get along or be a social outcast (or just plain get fired from their job for voicing opposition to a guy pretending to be a woman, for instance).
No one said moral issues were easy. But heroes are not generally made by go-along-to-get-alongism. Robert E. Lee might have truly been an exemplary figure if he would have taken the post that Lincoln offered as the head of the army and made pleas to his fellow Virginians to put down their kool-aid and understand that slavery was on the wrong side of history and on the way out one way or another, so you might as well not do things the hard way.
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Post by timothylane on Oct 26, 2019 12:36:24 GMT -8
Lee opposed secession, but he also couldn't bring himself to fight against his native state (and thus his kin). He didn't like the idea of a republic held together by force of arms. When the crisis came, he said he had no wish to raise his sword again except in defense of his native state.
James Longstreet later mentioned that when he asked many old Union officers if they would have gone with their states if it had seceded, admitted that they would have. In that respect, you might especially appreciate Southerners who chose the North, such as George Thomas (his decision cut him off permanently from his family), Jesse Reno, Winfield Scott (though it has been noted that many of his plans seemed to make sure that his native Virginia wouldn't be a big battlefield), Philip St. George Cooke (though his son John R. Cooke, and son-in-law J. E. B. Stuart chose otherwise), and John Gibbon.
As for his opponent, McClellan, LDS certainly describes him. After the retreat to Harrison's Landing in 1862, he outright claimed the Lincoln and Stanton had done their best to destroy his army. (Apparently someone made sure that part didn't get sent, but McClellan didn't know that and probably believed that their failure to react proved their guilt.)
It should be noted that McClellan was an able commander in many ways. He was a decent administrator (although probably not as good as Hooker in 1863) and trainer, and came up with some brilliant plans (one of my numerous books was on combined operations during the war). But he was ineffectual in many ways, and above all disliked heavy casualties. He was pleased to take the Yorktown defenses by "pure military skill" (i.e., Johnston retreated when he estimated -- rightly -- that McClellan had his siege guns ready to open up on them). He also had fantastically high estimates of enemy strength from Pinkerton, though it should be said that he probably wanted to believe that anyway.
He also created the army's command structure. Even Meade was a McClellan man. (So, for that matter, was Custer, who got his start as one of McClellan's aides.) When John Gibbon saw Pope and McDowell leaving after they were relieved following Second Bull Run, he called on his troops to cheer McClellan's return, which they readily did. One Union cavalry commander (John Hatch) referred to his new commander very negatively: "I don't care for John Pope one pinch of owl dung." Of course, Pope probably deserved it.
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Post by kungfuzu on Oct 26, 2019 14:39:32 GMT -8
After the war, when asked something along the lines of "which Northern commander did he think was the best?" Lee said McClellan. I don't know why this was the case, but it might be because McClellan did much of his fighting through maneuver and was very careful of his casualties.
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Post by timothylane on Oct 26, 2019 15:03:36 GMT -8
Then, too, it took the Army of the Potomac another 2 years through several commanders to get back to where McClellan had been in the summer of 1862.
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Post by kungfuzu on Oct 26, 2019 15:13:33 GMT -8
Regarding Lincoln, it seems he was disdained by a great many of the elites. We would now say that McClellan had “Lincoln Derangement Syndrome.” And that is certainly true.
Funny you should say that. I don't want to compare him to Lincoln in any other way, but yesterday I was thinking that the only other president who has suffered the same type of attacks which have been thrown at Trump is Lincoln. I wonder if such things are the inevitable result of a country deeply fractured or is it just a case of the political elites going insane because an outsider won the presidency and is threatening their interests?
Even so, McClellan had something else going on there. I doubt that he was bought and paid for by the South. But if Jefferson Davis was able to pull something like that off, that’s exactly what it might have looked like. Repeatedly, McClellan gave aid and comfort to the enemy by his inaction.
The same has been said about General Howe in the Revolutionary war. Historians have searched for evidence of Howe's treason for a couple of centuries now, to no avail.
I seriously doubt McClellan was a traitor. I suspect it was much more the case of a general trying to avoid a slaughter on both sides, hoping that the South might come its senses in order to avoid the cost it later paid. I have little doubt that the majority of Northerners started out with much more sympathy for their Southern brethren than they did for the slaves. Have a look at the New York riots during the summer of 1863. But for those who lost family and friends in the war, hate began to develop in place of sympathy.
The North did not got to war to end slavery. It went to war to preserve the Union. Only a few rabid abolitionists thought otherwise. It is clear that Lincoln finally decided to publish the Emancipation Proclamation only after more than a year of bloody fighting had taken place and when it became all too clear that the South was not going to willingly return to the fold. Furthermore, given the costs in blood and treasure that the North had already suffered, it would have been political suicide to leave the institution of slavery unchanged in the South.
The South went to war for the reason most groups go to war; wealth and power. The value of slaves held in the South was enormous. But most people in the South at the time did not own slaves or if they did, only one and could have survived the loss had slavery been banned. But the large landed interests, which held millions of slaves, could not have survived and would not stand by watching their future wealth and political power diminish as the country grew. The fools did not have the imagination or vision to foresee how technology could change agriculture and the Southern economy. But that is not surprising as entrenched monied interests rarely give up their power readily or see very far into the future. Again, we have a analogous situation today with the Chamber of Commerce pushing for open borders with no regard as to what future effects this will likely have on our nation.
To be blunt, it was economics based on slavery, not racism, which caused the South to secede. But it was the implacable intent to preserve the Union which started the war.
I have often wondered what it was that made the Union so sacred in the minds of Lincoln and others. I suspect, it was to a very large degree those "mystic chords of memory" to which he referred in one of his addresses to Congress. And what are such "mystic chords of memory" based on? Common language, common culture, common ethnicity, and common history just to name a few things. I wonder what Abe would think about today's United States? Was our "commonality" preserved?
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Post by kungfuzu on Oct 26, 2019 15:37:15 GMT -8
Sam Houston was a very interesting figure. He was at times a drunk, skulker, hero and martyr. No other person played as large a roll in the early history of Texas, but by the time of the Civil War he was truly out of his time and place. He took a heroic stand against secession, trying to get Texans to vote for a renewed Republic of Texas and not to join the CSA. He was thrown out of office for his troubles. Sadly, or perhaps not, he died before it ended and did not see how correct he had been in his predictions.
Think how different things would have been had Texas become a free-standing nation once more.
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Post by timothylane on Oct 26, 2019 15:40:29 GMT -8
Whatever value the Union as a whole has, it's simply unimaginable that the war could be fought, with all that lost blood and treasure, and slavery not ended. Sooner or later it had to end, and it's likely that could never happen without a civil war. (It required a constitutional amendment, which required 2/3 of each house of Congress and 3/4 of the states. Could we ever have gotten that?) Having to do it again . . .
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Post by kungfuzu on Oct 26, 2019 15:45:53 GMT -8
For those who say that the Civil War was fought to end slavery, I would ask them to have look at some of the early Union recruitment posters. They talk about preserving the Union and attack the Southerns as traitors. Not much about freeing the slaves in them.
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Post by timothylane on Oct 26, 2019 15:50:24 GMT -8
Sam Houston died July 26, 1863. By then, he could have heard about Gettysburg and Vicksburg, so he probably knew that whatever chance they had was gone.
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Post by kungfuzu on Oct 26, 2019 15:53:04 GMT -8
That is exactly what the Southern monied interests were afraid of. They foresaw a time when only non-slave states would be admitted to the Union. And this would eventually lead to the "North/Non-Slave States" having the numbers to pass an amendment abolishing slavery.
They may have been right or they may have been wrong in this view, but they tried to pre-empt this eventuality by seceding.
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Post by artraveler on Oct 26, 2019 16:51:06 GMT -8
I wonder if such things are the inevitable result of a country deeply fractured or is it just a case of the political elites going insane because an outsider won the presidency and is threatening their interests? I think is is both. In 1865 it was perhaps a 60/40 split between the two. Today I think we can reverse that to 40/60. We have had 150 years of progressive politics and the political elites have so much more invested in maintaining their power. |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 27, 2019 8:03:17 GMT -8
None of that comes through in the Burns Civil War series. McClellan is simply cast as a man caught not so much in indecision but a prolonged desire for inaction.
At one point in the Burns Civil War series after one of the early battles (Bull Run?), Foote noted that it was the equivalent of the carnage at Waterloo. But that there were another 20 or so of those to come.
If McClellan didn’t want to add to the carnage, fine. I can understand that. But I’ve not yet heard a source that said that was his motivation. It seemed more likely that he was a great organizer but, combined with his hatred of Lincoln, didn’t want to muss up his fine display of troops.
On the other end of the spectrum are the truly reckless assaults committed by all three of the big commanders: Lee, Grant, and Sherman. It said in the series that at least Sherman never tried that again.
Aside from Sheridan, Grant, and Sherman, offhand the Union commanders don’t seem nearly as competent as the Confederates. And as for swagger, mystique, and elegance, the South had that in spades.
They also had ugliness and brutality (Andersonville) far beyond the Union. In the 8th (next to last) episode of the Burns series, they describe the surrender at Appomattox. Grant and his soldiers showed a class that I doubt would have existed if the fortunes were reversed. Incredibly, and immediately, Grant considered his enemy to be his fellow Americans to be treated as such. I seriously doubt such feelings would have been returned.
The Burns civil wars series itself is strong in the first five episodes or so. But then it begins to get drug down by its own ponderous technique and loses a strong sense of narrative in places. Shelby Foote (and the narration by David McCullough) make that series. The music and the fine assortment of photographs are great as well. They have a black Barbara Fields in there as a historian. I’m not prejudiced in that way. But she definitely seems like a token black thrown in there. She adds little.
Some of the quotes by others from the time are amazing. I need to go back and write a few of them down. I love that Jason Robards does the voice of Grant. I despise the voice of Sam Waterston as Lincoln. I couldn’t tell you if George Black is the way Robert E Lee sounded but he’s got a wonderful set of pipes. Arthur Miller voicing Sherman is also superb. The voice certainly fits the picture of the man.
Horton Foote voices Jefferson Davis. I wonder if that is any relation. There’s way too much Mary Chestnut in this, but I guess you have to go with the sources you have. Morgan Freeman is okay as Frederick Douglass but something seems a little off about it. I would expect Douglass to sound more fiery.
Walt Whitman has an interesting and prolonged history with the war. I might have to find some of his poetry and try reading it.
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 27, 2019 8:26:46 GMT -8
Hindsight certainly shows how bad of a decision secession was. The problem, in my view, is that the South was too hot-headed. They had plenty of bluster but this is a case where wiser heads never had a chance of prevailing. There were a few (Houston) but such men were shown little but hostility.
Their big mistake was firing on Fort Sumter. Imagine a Confederacy that did not attack but was passive and waited (if it ever came) for the North to attack. Then they might have at least had some credence for being the victim.
The South (and their apologists) have long claimed victim status. But it’s unbecoming. One can chant “state’s rights” all you want. But rights also come with responsibilities. When you divorce the two, you get the kind of destructive “these are my rights” behavior you see today when “rights” are taken to an extreme.
I’m reminded of that Seinfeld episode where Newman is at home on a work day. George visits his apartment and asks him why he’s not out delivering the mail. And Newman says because it’s raining. George then quotes back to him the Post Office creed: “Neither rain nor sleet…it’s the first one!”
In the Declaration of Independence it says “All men are created equal.” And I thought to myself “It’s the first one.” This is one of America’s first, if not primary, founding principles. The South had a responsibility to deliver the mail. Instead, they played the victim and started a war.
I think the South was a poisonous region. And in their conduct they showed how awful of an ideology it was. Grant treated Lee with respect in the surrender but noted it was probably the worst cause that anyone had every fought for. I think he got that right.
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Post by timothylane on Oct 27, 2019 8:43:00 GMT -8
Just because Burns doesn't mention McClellan's aversion to casualties doesn't mean it wasn't true. There are historical disputes about every general important enough for that. Partly it's because they're all human, and thus very complex figures. Southerners hated Sherman for his destructiveness -- but he offered more lenient peace terms to Joe Johnston (and John C. Breckinridge, then the Confederate Secretary of War) than Grant did to Robert E. Lee. (They weren't approved, and the final terms were the same as Grant's.) That's why Johnston died after standing hatless in the cold rain at Sherman's funeral.
McClellan may have been more complex than most. He was certainly better at creating a great army and preparing a campaign than he was at actually campaigning. Even the West Virginia victories that catapulted him into command of what became the Army of the Potomac (aka McClellan's bodyguard, as a joke by Lincoln on a late 1862 visit to the army had it), though credits to his planning, were carried out by subordinates (Brigadier Generals Morris and Rosecrans) without any active involvement on his part. (Jacob D. Cox later pointed out that McClellan showed the same flaws at Rich Mountain that he later would in his other battles.)
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Post by timothylane on Oct 27, 2019 8:59:58 GMT -8
Actually, the South Carolinians had already fired on the Union, in the early January Star of the West incident, but the damage was minimal and it didn't quite lead to war. (At the time, they were the only state who had seceded, though they would very soon be joined by Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama. Think about that if you want to contemplate hot tempers.) Of course, James Buchanan just wanted to hand the status quo off to Lincoln and be out of there. It is interesting to imagine what would have happened without Fort Sumter. Perhaps the CSA would have pulled it off -- but without Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee.
It's important to remember that, despite the war, many of the top commanders were long-time friends. This is one reason why Lee was often so civil to the Unionists. For example, James Longstreet and Ulysses Grant were good friends. (Grant was also a good friend of Simon B. Buckner, which didn't keep him from offering the latter nothing better than "unconditional surrender" at Fort Donelson. Buckner, incidentally, later was the 1896 presidential candidate of the Gold Democrats. His running mate was John M. Palmer, previously a Union Major General who opposed Buckner many times in battle. Buckner's grandson and namesake commanded US forces in the Aleutians, and later at Okinawa, during World War II.)
Sheridan was probably an exception to this. He hated Southerners because of a West Point dispute with a Virginia cadet, William R. Terrill. As it happens, Terrill became a Union general during the war, and was killed at Perryville not far from where Sheridan was at the time.
Your reference to delivering the mail is fortuitous (or extremely clever). Abolitionist mail wasn't delivered in the antebellum South. One of their worries with Lincoln was that he might insist on the Post Office reversing that dubious decision.
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Post by kungfuzu on Oct 27, 2019 11:32:33 GMT -8
McClellan was very popular with his soldiers because he took care of them. He made sure their daily needs were properly addressed and did not throw them into unplanned battles. I find this fact telling, as there is no doubt he loved publicity and glory, but he was not willing to needlessly sacrifice his men for his own self-promotion. His troops affectionately called him, “Little Mac.”
Here are a couple of quotes from Freeman’s abridged biography of Robert E. Lee.
“It was soon known that McClellan had replaced Pope in general command, and that was not pleasant news, for Lee regarded McClellan as the ablest of the Federal commanders.”
Upon McClellan being replaced by Burnside:
“Longstreet was glad of the change, because he thought McClellan was developing as a general and , if left in command, would have given the Army of Northern Virginia no further breathing spell.”
On Wikipedia one may read the following:
Robert E. Lee, on being asked (by his cousin, and recorded by his son) who was the ablest general on the Union side during the late war, replied emphatically: "McClellan, by all odds!"[94]
While McClellan's reputation has suffered over time, especially over the later half of the 20th century, there is a small but intense cadre of American Civil War historians who believe that the general has been poorly served in at least four regards. First, McClellan proponents say that because the general was a conservative Democrat with great personal charisma, radical Republicans fearing his political potential deliberately undermined his field operations.[95] Second, that as the radical Republicans were the true winners coming out of the American Civil War, they were able to write its history, placing their principal political rival of the time, McClellan, in the worst possible light.[96] Third, that historians eager to jump on the bandwagon of Lincoln as America's greatest political icon worked to outdo one another in shifting blame for early military failures from Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to McClellan.[97] And fourth, that Lincoln and Stanton deliberately undermined McClellan because of his conciliatory stance towards the South, which might have resulted in a less destructive end to the war had Richmond fallen as a result of the Peninsula Campaign.[98] Proponents of this school claim that McClellan is criticized more for his admittedly abrasive personality than for his actual field performance.[99]
At the beginning of the Civil War, both sides approached battle more along the tradition of war by position. This old method of war was based on the idea that by maneuvering one's forces intelligently, a superior general could bring his forces in to such an advantageous position that the opponent would know he could not win a battle and move on or surrender. This type of war is one of the reasons that, until the 19th century, the number of casualties in a battle were relatively small.
Given the advance in technology, this method of battle was already outdated at the beginning of the Civil War, but it took some time for both sides to figure this out.
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Post by kungfuzu on Oct 27, 2019 11:49:26 GMT -8
I believe Sheridan is the most over-rated general of the Civil War. He needed vastly superior numbers and ordinance to win. Had he not been a pet of Grant, who knows where he would have ended. He was a tyrant in his actions as military governor after the war and during the Indian campaigns.
To him can be attributed the saying, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."
He also said something like, "If I owned Texas and hell, I'd rent Texas and live in hell." One can only hope he achieved his wish.
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Post by kungfuzu on Oct 27, 2019 11:52:40 GMT -8
I believe there is little doubt that this was true. Too many of those in charge had, literally, a cavalier attitude which was easily insulted. Such people should not run governments.
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Post by timothylane on Oct 27, 2019 12:26:57 GMT -8
A great put-down of Sheridan was by Glenn Tucker in his book on Chickamauga: "Little Phil was rarely at his best when the odds were even." He was in fact a good defensive fighter (as he showed at Stone's River), and a charismatic leader, but it's a fact that he had (and evidently needed) heavy odds in his favor in all of his battles in the Shenandoah, as well as earlier at Yellow Tavern. (By contrast, at Haw's Shop and Trevilian Station, when the odds were closer, he failed to win.)
Of course, people can learn. James H. Wilson was an engineering officer under Grant, and later had some sort of cavalry staff position when he was given a cavalry division under Sheridan in 1864. His performance was generally bad, but he was eventually promoted to command the Army of the Cumberland's cavalry corps at Nashville. There he did well, playing a key role in winning the Battle of Nashville and its pursuit.
As the Army of the Potomac cavalry commander, he showed little talent for traditional cavalry roles, preferring a role more like mounted infantry as befit the commander of an infantry division. This enabled Richard Anderson's I Corps to get positioned at Spotsylvania just ahead of Gouverneur Warren's V Corps (which had a shorter route but was delayed by Confederate cavalry).
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