When asked who was the best Federal commander the South ever faced in the War, John Mosby, the famous Gray Ghost and Confederate guerrilla (and later staunch Republican and supporter of Reconstruction), replied:
McClellan, by all odds. I think he is the only man on the Federal side who could have organized the army as it was. Grant had, of course, more successes in the field in the latter part of the war, but Grant only came in to reap the benefits of McClellan’s previous efforts. At the same time, I do not wish to disparage General Grant, for he has many abilities, but if Grant had commanded during the first years of the war, we would have gained our independence. Grant’s policy of attacking would have been a blessing to us, for we lost more by inaction than we would have lost in battle. After the first Manassas the army took a sort of ‘dry rot’, and we lost more men by camp diseases than we would have by fighting.
In my opinion, Mosby’s analysis - and we should take him at his word, being the well-placed and highly successful Confederate soldier he was - is spot on. McClellan’s actions were comparable to the strategy employed by Fabius in the Hannibalic Wars.
Fabius knew Hannibal’s armies couldn’t sustain a war in Italy indefinitely. In contrast to the impulsive Varro, Fabius preferred to avoid pitched battle and instead force Hannibal to attack fortified positions, where his natural genius at battle would be at least partially mitigated. When Fabius was deposed from command of the Roman consular armies, it was transferred to the aforementioned Varro, who sought a general engagement immediately. The result was the disaster at Cannae, which has since become a byword for total annihilation on the field. At the end of the grueling 17 year war, Fabius was vindicated by his countrymen who recognized his caution had spared the Republic.
Still, the war could not have been concluded without the elevation of the Scipio later awarded the agnomen Africanus. (Fabius’s agnomen, Cunctator, means ‘delayer’ or ‘ditherer’ - what began as an insult was later regarded as an honorific) Africanus was unafraid to seek battle with Hannibal and, in a daring expedition launched at the Carthaginian capital, managed to defeat the great Punic strategist in the Battle of Zama. Livy credits Scipio’s successes to both the war-weariness and general supply problems of Carthage, Hannibal’s own difficulties with the Carthaginian Senate, but also to the fact that Scipio was able to imitate Hannibal’s own method of warfare. Hannibal’s habitual use of feints and flanking attacks was turned against him by Scipio at Zama.
Lee bemoaned the replacement of McClellan, upon hearing of the news he said,
“We always understood each other so well. . . . I fear they may continue to make these changes till they find someone whom I don’t understand.”
Eventually the Union happened upon Grant, who Lee understood, but couldn’t beat- Grant’s strategy was a withering, persistent assault, best typified by his protracted siege of Vicksburg. There he ordered charge after charge of exposed infantry against withering Confederate fire, only stopping when he could no longer guarantee the safety of his own lines. Nevertheless, Vicksburg eventually fell to the Union host. The Confederacy had neither the men nor the money to fight a war that heavy, and subsequently lost.
The analogy is not perfect, admittedly. Lee makes a compelling Hannibal, and McClellan is an admirable Fabius, but Grant is no Scipio- rather than preferring to imitate Lee, Grant chose to utilize the strengths of the Union, which were its ample supplies of men and materiel. But a strategy like Grant’s would not have succeeded in the close-run years of 1861 and 1862. Then, the European great powers were eagerly waiting for an opportunity to recognize the fledgling Southern nation and insist on an end of hostilities. Forced to contend with Britain and France, the United States would’ve had a totally different - and possibly unwinnable - war on its hands.
But after Antietam, and the Emancipation Proclamation, the landscape changed. The European powers could ill-afford opposing a war against slavery. By changing the reason why the war was fought, Lincoln effectively boxed out the European powers from the conflict. After 1862, the North can afford to fight bloody battles and, if necessary, lose them, if only because it knows it has all its resources to fight against only one enemy.
Looking at the war from this angle, it is hard not to feel some sympathy for McClellan. He was constantly opposed by his so-called friends in the Lincoln Administration and was routinely fed faulty intelligence by Lincoln’s own Pinkerton men. Still, he managed to evade and confound Lee’s designs at almost every turn, and if he had not been withdrawn from the Peninsula in 1862, might very well have ended the war then and there. There are those who maintain that McClellan’s so-called caution was simply a way to conceal his own cowardice, but McClellan’s considerable bravery in the West at the beginning of the war and his actions at Contreras and Churubusco in the Mexican-American War easily refute this charge. Indeed, McClellan’s caution, if anything, seems to me an act of great self-control when all around him were urging an ill-advised advance. Pope’s Varro-like behavior led to a second Union defeat on the fields of Bull Run.
McClellan’s subsequent performance at Antietam was admittedly lackluster, but the draw enabled Lincoln to propose the Emancipation Proclamation, which in turn made McClellan’s presence at the head of the Army of the Potomac no longer a necessity. Lincoln replaced McClellan with Burnside, knowing that the war could now be fought on Union terms, with no one defeat being fatal. After Antietam, the odds against the South grow increasingly longer, until, after Gettysburg, there is no real hope for victory.
Source: sonofthesouth.net
