All Civil Wars are fierce, but in their own way clean and pure, for Civil Wars are not fought over land nor money nor trade routes but VALUES. Consequently Civil Wars are Biblical, Shakespearean and Homeric in nature,by nature.
And fascinating.
The American Civil War is one of the most fascinating wars ever fought, trivia alone makes it fascinating. The first bit of trivia which intrigues one is that the Union Calvary Reserve in the Seven Days Campaign was commanded by Brig. Gen. Philip Cooke, who was Jeb Stuart's father- in- law. Stuart was the legendary Confederate Cavalry commander.
Confederate General Jeb Stuart, had been so incensed that his father- in- law stayed with the Union, he renamed his and his wife, Flora's months'-old son, Philip St. George Cooke Stuart, after himself, James Ewell Brown Stuart Jr. People took Civil War very seriously in those days. Jeb was mortally wounded in 1864.
The Yankee father in law died in 1895, at the age of 84; Miss Flora, after Jeb's death, donned mourning garb and wore it for the remaining fifty-nine years of her life, dying in 1923. Mourning becomes Miss Flora.
GEORGE B. McCLELLAN
George B. McClellanIn its history, the United States has usually maintained a peace time Army of around 12,000 soldiers, just enough to mistreat Native Americans. Because of those frugal interludes between wars, the American Army, in times of war, has had to rebuild and rebuild. During the time frame in which America enjoyed the Mandate from Heaven, it was freakishly lucky in its Generals who did the organizing and rebuilding; so lucky it seems there had to be a fix put in by Heaven(hence the Mandate From Heaven), in having them there at the right place and the right time. Washington did it during the Revolutionary War, Winfield Scott during the Mexican War, Black Jack Pershing during World War I, George C. Marshall during World War II. Perhaps the best of these organizing/rebuilding Generals was George B. McClellan.
McClellan invented, developed and licensed THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC; he was the Steve Jobs/Henry Ford of American Generals. He built an Army which withstood defeat after defeat, a mad general who wanted to overthrow the Republic and install a military dictatorship, a loss of seven oceans of blood at Antietam and Gettysburg, and the butchery that was the Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant, yet it still prevailed. That was McClellan's doing.
He was a brilliant Organizer, Shelby Foote, the Historian Laureate of the Civil War(along with James McPherson) held McClellan's organizing ability in the highest regard.Truly McClellan could organize a stampeding herd of feral cats.
He also was quite good strategically. He concocted a Plan to defeat the Confederacy in 1862, by using American naval power. He would land the Army of The Potomac on a Peninsula, bordered by two Rivers, the York and the James, and then march up that Peninsula, seizing the capital of the Confederacy, ending the war...... " an amphibious turning movement against the Confederate States Army in Northern Virginia, intended to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond."
It was strategic brilliance, ranking in the Civil War along side Sherman's MARCH TO THE SEA.
McClellan's Plan of Battle seems to have been to bulldoze the Confederates( McClellan had over 120,000 men to the Confederates, 63,000), to outweigh them into submission.
And it worked.
McClellan plowed forward against General Joseph E. Johnston's Confederates until his troops could hear the Church bells of Richmond, and see the Church steeples. The war was basically won, right then and there in 1862, no need for Gettysburg, or Cold Harbor, or the Wilderness, or Fredericksburg,or Antietam(the bloodiest single day in American history) or Chancellorsville. It was all there to be won.
Then something happened. Something as profound to the course of the war as Stonewall Jackson's Death, or Chamberlain's Swinging Gate at Gettysburg.
When seen, in the context of the whole war, this incident leads one to believe that Heaven intervened. That Heaven was not satisfied with a short ballet of a war, but demanded a slaughter....or as Lincoln put it- "Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,".
General Joseph E. Johnston,the Confederate Commander was a very competent, decent, somewhat predictable Commander, who cared about the lives of his men.
The American Civil War is an ILIAD, because Heaven demanded so much blood to pay for America's sins. At a place called Seven Pines, there was a Battle, not the biggest nor the bloodiest battle, just a battle. Joseph E. Johnston was wounded. He was replaced as Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia by Robert E. Lee.
Robert E. Lee was arguably the greatest Commander ever produced by American Arms. (this Blogger believes Scott and William Tecumseh Sherman were better because Scott and Sherman tried like hell to win the war with as many of his troops still alive as possible....Lee never cared about that, the loss of his troops, all he wanted was the win).
Lee was phenomenal; his victory at Chancellorsville is an American Cannae.
He was the most Christian gentleman ever to wear the American uniform; he was so Christian none of his daughters ever married; they all died spinsters because they could never find husbands equal in goodness to their father.
If Lee had had Jackson at Gettysburg, he would have won the war right then and there. Jackson would not have stopped so close to the undefended Baltimore Turnpike, regardless of how tired his troops were. Jackson would have known; your troops can rest after victory.
What has been missing about Lee in the hagiography which has grown up about him in Southern myth is his soul. Lee had the soul of a Mexican lightweight from the slums of Tijuana. He liked to fight, to brawl, to see blood. And he liked to punch up. The key to Lee is that he is a Mexican fighter in a white Southern boy's body.
McClellan was a really fine general, but he was a boxer rather than a fighter. It seems that McClellan did not like bloodshed, he abhorred bloodshed.
Lee has no such qualms.
And McClellan knew that; McClellan always seems to have been paralyzed by Lee's ferocity. McClellan and Lee brings to mind the battlefield relationship of Pompey The Great and Julius Caesar. Pompey The Great was deemed by his peers to be a great general, they labelled him Great, even put up a statue of him in the Roman Senate, gave him THREE triumphs. But Pompey knew Caesar well(Caesar was his father-in-law), and when he fought Caesar at the Battle of Pharsalus, he was paralyzed by Caesar's ferocity. So too was McClellan by Lee, McClellan is America's Pompey The Great.
Something about Lee off put, unhinged and rattled McClellan; McClellan knew he was as smart as Lee, and as brave, and as charismatic as Lee. But McClellan also knew he was not as blood thirsty nor kill crazy as the Christian Gentleman, Robert E. Lee. Lee to McClellan's psyche was a Highlands Clan Chieftain, or a Viking War Lord, or Julius Caesar. McClellan knew Lee was in it for the blood lust. That rattled McCelllan's engineering, orderly, civilized soul.
Until Jackson's death, the Army Of Northern Virginia was led by the greatest team of Christian killers since Cromwell and Ireton, the Christian Gentleman Robert E. Lee, and his sidekick, Stonewall Jackson, "the blue eyed Presbyterian killer."
One can not but wish that he could be an observer at their Confederate Bible Study classes; outside of the Fugitive Birth and Bloody Death of Christ, did they EVER discuss the teachings of the New Testament?
Lee did what Mexican fighters are known for-he attacked, and attacked, and attacked. The Seven Days.
"The Seven Days Battles was a series of major battles over the seven days from June 25 to July 1, 1862, near Richmond, Virginia during the American Civil War. Confederate General Robert E. Lee drove the invading Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, away from Richmond and into a retreat down the Virginia Peninsula.
In the SEVEN DAYS, these major battles were fought.
-Oak Grove
-Beaver Dam Creek
-Gaines Mill
-Garnett's Goldin's Farm
-Savage Station
-White Oak Swamp
-Glendale
Malvern Hill
Lee kept pounding and pounding, and pounding, driving McClellan back from Richmond, back across the ring, battered and beaten.
On July 1st, Lee cornered the Army of the Potomac at Malvern Hill.
Lee launched an all out assault to finish the Army of the Potomac right then.
But Lee ran into FritzJohn Porter.
Porter was a fine General and McClellan's great friend. He was more of a fighter than McClellan, but equally concerned about sparing his men needless loss. A very competent General, an Omar Bradley of the Civil War, not much dash but a winner.
Very reliable.
In a perfect world he would eventually have assumed command of the Army of The Potomac over such quacks and incompetents as Hooker and Burnside, over the blood thirsty butcher, Grant.
Alas, Porter had the same flaw as McClellan and that other great under-utilized General of the War, Winfield Scott Hancock, Lincoln did not trust nor like them.
Why?
One of the most endearing things about Abe Lincoln, the thing that keeps him from being St. Abe, was that he was a political HACK, of the first order.
He went with Burnside over Hancock because Burnside was a Republican and Hancock was a Democrat. Lincoln, who had bought the Republican Party out of the Whig Wilderness to power, did not want Democrats to gain glory from the Civil War. All Glory to Republicans like Grant.
There was a lot of Agamemnon in Abe Lincoln.
On July 1st, Lee cornered the Army of the Potomac at Malvern Hill.
Lee launched an all out assault to finish the Army of the Potomac right then.
But Lee ran into FritzJohn Porter.
Porter was a fine General and McClellan's great friend. He was more of a fighter than McClellan, but equally concerned about sparing his men needless loss. A very competent General, an Omar Bradley of the Civil War, not much dash but a winner.
Very reliable.
In a perfect world he would eventually have assumed command of the Army of The Potomac over such quacks and incompetents as Hooker and Burnside, over the blood thirsty butcher, Grant.
Alas, Porter had the same flaw as McClellan and that other great under-utilized General of the War, Winfield Scott Hancock, Lincoln did not trust nor like them.
Why?
One of the most endearing things about Abe Lincoln, the thing that keeps him from being St. Abe, was that he was a political HACK, of the first order.
He went with Burnside over Hancock because Burnside was a Republican and Hancock was a Democrat. Lincoln, who had bought the Republican Party out of the Whig Wilderness to power, did not want Democrats to gain glory from the Civil War. All Glory to Republicans like Grant.
There was a lot of Agamemnon in Abe Lincoln.
FitzJohn Porter
The Democrat FitzJohn Porter broke Lee's back at Malvern Hill.
"Lee launched futile frontal assaults and suffered heavy casualties in the face of strong infantry and artillery defenses. The Confederates suffered more than 5,300 casualties without gaining an inch of ground."
George B. McClellan withdrew to entrench at Harrison's Landing on the James River, where his army was protected by gunboats, ending the Peninsula Campaign.
The Seven Days ended with McClellan's army having suffered almost 16,000 casualties during the retreat. Lee's army, which had been on the offensive during the Seven Days, lost over 20,000."
Porter had saved the Union, much like Chamberlain would later do at Little Round Top, but Porter was a Democrat.
And because he was a successful Democrat in Lincoln's Army, he was purged from the Army of the Potomac: "On November 25, 1862, Porter was arrested and court-martialed for his actions at Second Bull Run. By this time, McClellan had been relieved by President Abraham Lincoln and could not provide political cover for his friend. Porter's association with McClellan were significant reasons for his conviction at court-martial. Porter was found guilty on January 10, 1863, of disobedience and misconduct, and he was dismissed from the Army on January 21, 1863."
He spent most of the remainder of his life fighting against the perceived injustice of his court-martial.
In 1878, a special commission under General John M. Schofield exonerated Porter .... Eight years later, President Chester A. Arthur commuted Porter's sentence and a special act of the U.S. Congress restored Porter's commission as an infantry colonel in the U.S. Army, backdated to May 14, 1861, but without any back pay due. Two days later, August 7, 1886, Porter, seeing vindication, voluntarily retired from the Army.
Porter was appointed as the New York City Commissioner of Public Works, the New York City Police Commissioner, and the New York City Fire Commissioner."
Porter is buried in my hometown of Brooklyn, New York. Greenwood Cemetery,Section 54, Lot 5685/89 .
The American Civil War is the AMERICAN ILIAD.
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