Lame Cherry: Insights into civil war

I find myself in a new and strange position here—Presdt, Cabinet, Genl Scott & all deferring to me—by some strange operation of magic I seem to have become the power of the land. ... I almost think that were I to win some small success now I could become Dictator or anything else that might please me—but nothing of that kind would please me—therefore I won't be Dictator. Admirable self-denial!
— George B. McClellan, letter to his wife Ellen, July 26, 1861

As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.

There is no reasoning to reason out God's reasons, but in Lincoln's War of genocide against the Southern Americans, it is interesting to note how the American Napoleons appeared. It all centered on two men. The first was General of the Army Winfield Scott, who from the start stated that the South must be divided by taking the Mississippi River, while Naval blockade choked off the South.

A very young officer, but a genius in George McClellan advocated a plan of striking the South in Virginia with 80,000 men. McClellan was elevated in his plans after Scott refused them, by actually creating the state of West Virginia by winning there against the Confederates.

Scott chose due to public pressure to appoint Irvin McDowell to lead the attack on Virginia, which would center on a place called Bull Run where the Confederates had dug in a defensive position. Both armies were not trained and actually the first parts of the battle, the Union drove the Southerners from their lines. It was Jeb Stuart with his cavalry which drove off Union cannoneers, which turned the table on the Union forces as the Southern lines were ordered to advance and they won the battle.

This was Media War, as the newspapers were the ones who mocked Scott's Anaconda Plan and caused Bull Run's defeat, due to McDowell not having time to train his forces for the kind of organized campaign he envisioned in maneuvers.

After the defeat, a much humbled Lincoln and Scott, placed General McClellan as head of the Union army.

McClellan is a most interesting genius in his influences at West Point Both of the men who McClellan gleaned from were European centric in their military deployments. This would prevail on him as his career advanced to leader of the Union forces.

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.

McClellan believed that he understood the Southern mind as his friends were Southern. He was well connected and learned the art of warfare under Scott in the Mexican American War, where the feature was caution and flanking attacks.

His closest friends were aristocratic southerners including George Pickett, Dabney Maury, Cadmus Wilcox, and A. P. Hill. These associations gave McClellan what he considered to be an appreciation of the southern mind and an understanding of the political and military implications of the sectional differences in the United States that led to the Civil War. He graduated at age 19 in 1846, second in his class of 59 cadets, losing the top position to Charles Seaforth Stewart only because of inferior drawing skills

McClellan's experiences in the war would shape his military and political life. He learned that flanking movements (used by Scott at Cerro Gordo) are often better than frontal assaults, and the value of siege operations (Veracruz)

McClellan was the protege of then Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis. Both Democrats and one would become President of the Confederate States and the other the leader of the Union forces.

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

It was this connection, which would lead McClellan to his greatest influence, and that would be the Crimean War, the same war that America is engaged with against Russia now in 1855 AD in the year of our Lord.

The key to Crimea was the Russian naval base of Sevastopol. Under the allied armies of Turk, British and French, they initiated a massive siege war of the base for a year. McClellan would return home with this successful operation, write it up in military manuals, even design the cavalry saddle as the Union army would soon become a reflection of George McClellan.

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 as part of the Delafield Commission, led by Richard Delafield. 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 an 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. Like other observers, though, McClellan did not appreciate the importance of the emergence of rifled muskets in the Crimean War, and the fundamental changes in warfare tactics it would require

This is what was interesting about this leader of the Army. He was well connected. His closest friends were in the South. His influences were seige warfare, and yet in West Virginia he attacked and drove the Southerns from the region. His plan to invade Virginia, was also a bold thrust. This would all change after Bull Run, not out of fear, but it appears out of a belief of self importance. McClellan saw himself as the leader of America, not Lincoln. In that, he was a military genius, and less than 10 years before, the most celebrated victory in the world was Sebastapol, in the minds of those who counted in the Europeans for they ruled the caste of the world.

It was in this, that General McClellan when he was promoted to leader of America, meant to create his own Sebastopol victory as his crowning glory, in not destroying his Southern friends, but in a victory to rival European powers, he would highlight the incompetency of the Republican administration and leadership, and be transformed from the American Napoleon he was, to the George Washington in being father of America.

On May 14, he was commissioned a major general in the regular army. At age 34, he outranked everyone in the Army except Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, the general-in-chief. McClellan's rapid promotion was partly due to his acquaintance with Salmon P. Chase, Treasury Secretary and former Ohio governor and senator.
As McClellan scrambled to process the thousands of men who were volunteering for service and to set up training camps, he also applied his mind to grand strategy. He wrote a letter to Gen. Scott on April 27, four days after assuming command in Ohio, that presented the first proposal for a strategy for the war. It contained two alternatives, each envisioning a prominent role for himself as commander. The first would use 80,000 men to invade Virginia through the Kanawha Valley toward Richmond. The second would use the same force to drive south instead, crossing the Ohio River into Kentucky and Tennessee. Scott rejected both plans as logistically unfeasible. Although he complimented McClellan and expressed his "great confidence in your intelligence, zeal, science, and energy", he replied by letter that the 80,000 men would be better used on a river-based expedition to control the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy, accompanied by a strong Union blockade of Southern ports. This plan, which would require considerable patience of the Northern public, was derided in newspapers as the Anaconda Plan, but eventually proved to be the outline of the successful prosecution of the war. Relations between the two generals became increasingly strained over the summer and fall

It would be at Yorktown, the sight that George Washington defeated the British, that McClellan, again with French princes in tow, taking notes of his operations, where George McClellan was now teaching the Europeans, where the siege of Sebastopol took place. The Union forces in early April mud, arrived on the field and could have turned the Confederate flank and drove them away. That is not the siege McClellan desired on the world stage, as he stepped to Richmond.

What took place instead was building his army, and in turn the Confederates reinforced with General Joseph Johnston and there disgruntled Union Soldiers sat as the South and sickness killed them in trench warfare.

Johnstone sensing that McClellan had the forces needed to crush him, withdrew on night and burned Yorktown. Union observers watched the infantry march away and the cavalry on another road. The great siege never happened.

What did take place was the Peninsula Campaign in which General Robert E. Lee appeared on the scene. Lee was not so much a genius, but a better field general than most of the generals he met. He simply could react better under stress of combat. McClellan was neutralized in the campaign. At this Lincoln replaced him, there were more failures in the Union leadership which did not have the heart of the fight as they were for States Rights too.

McClellan would return one last time as General Lee invaded the north in Maryland. McClellan never did combine his forces with reserves to crush Lee, but he did force Lee to withdraw for a tactical victory. McClellan did not follow up this retreat as the caution he learned in the Mexican War and at Sebatopol prevailed.

What followed were two absolutely beautiful butchers for the Union Army, trained in the Western campaign in Hiram Grant and William Sherman. Both of these generals would never make the mistakes of Napoleon on burning up his armies with frontal attacks and being reduced by the British at Waterloo with inferior conscripts. They would use their armies as a grinding machine of homicide which consumed itself and all the Southern things in front of it. Grant would consume Lee and Sherman would consume Atlanta.

In civil war, it was General Thomas Jackson who advocated killing every northerner as he understood what needed to be done. Slaughter the North or the South would face genocide. Grant and Sherman carried out Lincoln's genocide of the Southern homosapien.

In the coming civil war, if it happens in America, the antagonists who seize victory, will be the assembled force which annihilates to genocide the other.

This is the historical insight which prevails time and again.