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May 3, 1861 Friday
President Lincoln issued a call for 42,034 volunteers to serve for three years unless sooner discharged. The proclamation also called for eight regiments of infantry and one each of cavalry and artillery for the Regular Army, raising total strength of the regulars from 16,367 to 22,714. Enlistment of 18,000 seamen for not less than one year or more than three was asked as well. These calls would bring the total strength of the Army to 156,861 and the Navy to 25,000. To the south, Gov. Letcher called for volunteers to defend Virginia. Gen. Scott orders troops to seize Arlington Heights, overlooking Washington, D.C.
Orders were issued from Washington forming the Department of the Ohio, comprising Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and placing young George Brinton McClellan in charge. The general received his orders May 13.
In London Lord John Russell, British Foreign Minister, received the Confederate commissioners to Great Britain, William L. Yancey, A. Dudley Mann, and Pierre A. Rost. The British claimed this meeting was unofficial, but U.S. diplomats protested.
At home ferment was high in the border states. Both pro-Confederate and pro-Union meetings were being held in Maryland; fourteen Kentucky companies tendered their services to the Union; and pro-secessionist Gov. Claiborne Jackson of Missouri said that in calling out troops, President Lincoln threatened civil war and that the action tended toward despotism. He declared Missouri’s sympathies were identical with those of the Southern states.
Gen. Scott told Gen. McClellan that the blockade could be relied on and that there should be powerful movement down the Mississippi, clear to the mouth, with “a cordon of posts” set up. This would “envelop the insurgent states and bring them to terms with less bloodshed than by any other plan.” The concept soon became known as the “Anaconda Plan.”
George McClellan (obtained from Wikipedia)
McClellan was born in Philadelphia, the son of a prominent surgical ophthalmologist, Dr. George McClellan, the founder of Jefferson Medical College. His mother was Elizabeth Steinmetz Brinton McClellan, daughter of a leading Pennsylvania family, a woman noted for her "considerable grace and refinement". The couple produced five children: a daughter, Frederica; then three sons, John, George, and Arthur; and a second daughter, Mary. McClellan was the grandson of Revolutionary War general Samuel McClellan of Woodstock, Connecticut. He first attended the University of Pennsylvania in 1840 at age 13, resigning himself to the study of law. After two years, he changed his goal to military service. With the assistance of his father's letter to President John Tyler, young George was accepted at the United States Military Academy in 1842, the academy having waived its normal minimum age of 16.
At West Point, he was an energetic and ambitious cadet, deeply interested in the teachings of Dennis Hart Mahan and the theoretical strategic principles of Antoine-Henri Jomini. His closest friends were aristocratic Southerners such as James Stuart, Dabney Maury, Cadmus Wilcox, and A.P. Hill. These associations gave McClellan what he considered to be an appreciation of the Southern mind, an understanding of the political and military implications of the sectional differences in the United States that led to the Civil War. He graduated in 1846, second in his class of 59 cadets, losing the top position (to Charles Seaforth Stewart) only because of poor drawing skills. He was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Mexican-American War
McClellan's first assignment was with a company of engineers formed at West Point, but he quickly received orders to sail for the Mexican-American War. He arrived near the mouth of the Rio Grande in October 1846, well prepared for action with a double-barreled shotgun, two pistols, a saber, a dress sword, and a Bowie knife. He complained that he had arrived too late to take any part in the American victory at Monterrey in September. During a temporary armistice in which the forces of Gen. Zachary Taylor awaited action, McClellan was stricken with dysentery and malaria, which kept him in the hospital for nearly a month. The malaria would recur in later years—he called it his "Mexican disease." He served bravely as an engineering officer during the war, subjected to frequent enemy fire, and was appointed a brevet first lieutenant for Contreras and Churubusco and to captain for Chapultepec, He performed reconnaissance missions for Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, a close friend of McClellan's father.
McClellan's experiences during the war developed various attitudes that affected his later military and political life. He learned to appreciate the value of flanking movements over frontal assaults (used by Scott at Cerro Gordo) and the value of siege operations (Vera Cruz). He witnessed Scott's success in balancing political with military affairs, and his good relations with the civil population as he invaded, enforcing strict discipline on his soldiers to minimize damage to their property. And he developed a disdain for volunteer soldiers and officers, particularly politicians who cared nothing for discipline and training.
Peacetime service
McClellan returned to West Point to command his engineering company, which was attached to the academy for the purpose of training cadets in engineering activities. He chafed at the boredom of peacetime garrison service, although he greatly enjoyed the social life. In June 1851 he was ordered to Fort Delaware, a masonry work under construction on an island in the Delaware River, 40 miles (64 km) downriver from Philadelphia. In March 1852 he was ordered to report to Capt. Randolph B. Marcy at Fort Smith, Arkansas, to serve as second-in-command on an expedition to discover the sources of the Red River. By June the expedition reached the source of the north fork of the river and Marcy named a small tributary McClellan's Creek. Upon their return to civilization on July 28, they were astonished to find that they had been given up for dead. A sensational story had reached the press, which McClellan blamed on "a set of scoundrels, who seek to keep up agitation on the frontier in order to get employment from the Govt. in one way or other," that the expedition had been ambushed by 2,000 Comanches and killed to the last man.
In the fall of 1852, McClellan published a manual on bayonet tactics that he had translated from the original French. He also received an assignment to the Department of Texas, with orders to perform a survey of Texas rivers and harbors. In 1853 he participated in the Pacific Railroad surveys, ordered by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, to select an appropriate route for the upcoming transcontinental railroad. McClellan surveyed the northern corridor along the 47th and 49th parallels from St. Paul to the Puget Sound. During this assignment, he demonstrated a tendency for insubordination toward senior political figures. Isaac Stevens, governor of the Washington Territory, became dissatisfied with McClellan's performance in scouting passes across the Cascade Range. (McClellan selected Yakima Pass without a thorough reconnaissance and refused the governor's order to lead a party through it in winter conditions, relying on faulty intelligence about the depth of snowpack in that area. He also neglected to find three greatly superior passes in the near vicinity, which would be the ones eventually used for railroads and interstate highways.) The governor ordered McClellan to turn over his expedition logbooks, but McClellan steadfastly refused, most likely because of embarrassing personal comments that he had made throughout.
Returning to the East, McClellan began courting Ellen Mary Marcy (1836–1915), the daughter of his former commander. Ellen, or Nelly, refused McClellan's first proposal of marriage, one of nine that she received from a variety of suitors, including his West Point friend, A.P. Hill. Ellen accepted Hill's proposal in 1856, but her family did not approve and he withdrew.
In June 1854, McClellan was sent on a secret reconnaissance mission to Santo Domingo at the behest of Jefferson Davis. McClellan assessed local defensive capabilities for the secretary. (The information was not used until 1870, when President Ulysses S. Grant unsuccessfully attempted to annex the Dominican Republic.) Davis was beginning to treat McClellan almost as a protégé, and his next assignment was to assess the logistical readiness of various railroads in the United States, once again with an eye toward planning for the transcontinental railroad. In March 1855, McClellan was promoted to captain and assigned to the 1st U.S. Cavalry regiment.
Because of his political connections and his mastery of French, McClellan received the assignment to be an official observer of the European armies in the Crimean War in 1855. Traveling widely, and interacting with the highest military commands and royal families, McClellan observed the siege of Sevastopol. Upon his return to the United States in 1856 he requested assignment in Philadelphia to prepare his report, which contained a critical analysis of the siege and a lengthy description of the organization of the European armies. He also wrote a manual on cavalry tactics that was based on Russian cavalry regulations. A notable failure of the observers, including McClellan, was that they neglected to explain the importance of the emergence of rifled muskets in the Crimean War, and how that would require fundamental changes in tactics for the coming Civil War.
The Army adopted McClellan's cavalry manual and also his design for a saddle, the "McClellan Saddle", which he claimed to have seen used by Hussars in Prussia and Hungary. It became standard issue for as long as the U.S. horse cavalry existed and is currently used for ceremonies.
Civilian pursuits
McClellan resigned his commission January 16, 1857, and, capitalizing on his experience with railroad assessment, became chief engineer and vice president of the Illinois Central Railroad and also president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad in 1860. He performed well in both jobs, expanding the Illinois Central toward New Orleans and helping the Ohio and Mississippi recover from the Panic of 1857. But despite his successes and lucrative salary ($10,000 per year), he was frustrated with civilian employment and continued to study classical military strategy assiduously. During the Utah War against the Mormons, he considered rejoining the Army. He also considered service as a filibuster in support of Benito Juárez in Mexico.
Before the outbreak of Civil War, McClellan became active in politics, supporting the presidential campaign of Democrat Stephen A. Douglas in the 1860 election. He claimed to have defeated an attempt at vote fraud by Republicans by ordering the delay of a train that was carrying men to vote illegally in another county, enabling Douglas to win the county.
In October 1859 McClellan was able to resume his courtship of Ellen Marcy, and they were married in Calvary Church, New York City, on May 22, 1860.
Civil War
At the start of the Civil War, McClellan's knowledge of what was called "big war science" and his railroad experience implied he would excel at military logistics. This placed him in great demand as the Union mobilized. The governors of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, the three largest states of the Union, actively pursued him to command their states' militia. Ohio Governor William Dennison was the most persistent, so McClellan was commissioned a major general of volunteers and took command of the Ohio militia on April 23, 1861. Unlike some of his fellow Union officers who came from abolitionist families, he was opposed to federal interference with slavery. So some of his Southern colleagues approached him informally about siding with the Confederacy, but he could not accept the concept of secession.
On May 3 McClellan re-entered federal service by being named commander of the Department of the Ohio, responsible for the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and, later, western Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and Missouri. On May 14, he was commissioned a major general in the regular army. At age 34 he now outranked everyone in the Army other than Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, the general in chief. McClellan's rapid promotion was partly because of his acquaintance with Salmon P. Chase, Treasury Secretary and former Ohio governor and senator.
_________________
Gen Ned Simms
2/XVI Corps/AotT
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00
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