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Overview
By age 35, General George B. McClellan (18261885), designated the "Young Napoleon," was the commander of all the Northern armies. He forged the Army of the Potomac into a formidable battlefield foe, and fought the longest and largest campaign of the time as well as the single bloodiest battle in the nation's history. Yet, he also wasted two supreme opportunities to bring the Civil War to a decisive conclusion. In 1864 he challenged Abraham Lincoln as the Democratic candidate for the presidency. Neither an indictment nor an apologia, this biography draws entirely on primary sources to create a splendidly incisive portrait of this charismatic, controversial general who, for the first eighteen months of the conflict, held the fate of the union in his unsteady hands.Synopsis
A biography of the Union Civil War general.
Publishers Weekly
Controversial commander of the Northern army in the Civil War, Gen. George McClellan saw himself as God's chosen instrument for saving the Union. Self-aggrandizing, with a streak of arrogant stubbornness, he set himself above President Lincoln, whom he privately called ``the Gorilla.'' To ``the young Napoleon,'' as McClellan's troops dubbed him, abolition was an ``accursed doctrine.'' Fond of conspiracy plots, he insisted that the Lincoln administration had traitorously conspired to set him up for military defeat. Although he constantly anticipated one big, decisive battle that would crush the South, he squandered one military opportunity after another, and, if Sears ( Landscape Turned Red ) is correct, he was the worst strategist the Army of the Potomac ever had. Based on primary sourcesletters, dispatch books, diaries, newspapersthis masterly biography is an astonishing portrait of an egotistical crank who could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Sears is editor of McClellan's Selected Letters. (August)