Lincoln and McClellan at war

Abstract

The Story Behind a Troubled Relationship The command relationship between Abraham Lincoln and George B. McClellan must rank as one of the most troubled civil-military partnerships in the Civil War, if not in all U.S. military history. The signs of their schism are among the best remembered bits of Civil War lore: McClellan repeatedly snubbing his commander-in-chief and privately referring to him with such slurs as "the original gorilla," Lincoln chiding the ever-cautious general for his chronic case of "the slows," wondering if he might "borrow" the army if McClellan was not going to use it. What began with Lincoln appointing the nation's seeming star general to command its largest, best-equipped army to date witnessed months of delay, a failed campaign on the Virginia peninsula, and a lost opportunity at Antietam, ended with Lincoln cashiering McClellan in late 1862 and McClellan unsuccessfully challenging the president's re-election in 1864. This is the tempestuous command arrangement Chester G. Hearn examines in Lincoln and McClellan at War. Hearn has authored more than a score of titles in Civil War and American military history, including Six Years of Hell: Harpers Ferry during the Civil War and When the Devil Came Down to Dixie: Ben Butler in New Orleans. In this latest work, Hearn offers a workmanlike account of the strained professional relations between Lincoln and McClellan which defined much of the Union's early war effort. After summarizing the antebellum military careers of Lincoln and McClellan, Hearn takes readers into the early months of the Civil War. After scoring minor victories in present-day West Virginia, McClellan was called to Washington in the wake of the Union disaster at Bull Run. Already being styled "the Young Napoleon" by the press, "Little Mac" set his organizational and engineering talents to work building up both the newly constituted Army of the