The Young Napoleon: The Life and Legacy of George B. McClellan

By: Charles River Editors

Narrated by: Kenneth Ray

"McClellan is to me one of the mysteries of the war." (Ulysses S. Grant)

Over the last 150 years, historians and Americans have endlessly debated over the Civil War, including its causes and the best and worst generals. Nowhere has there been a sharper debate than over the career and legacy of George McClellan, with a majority viewing him as the North's biggest goat and a small but vocal minority insisting that McClellan was a very good general who was made a scapegoat by the Lincoln Administration and its supporters. Many members of the "McClellan Society" continue to assert that McClellan would have ended the war in 1862 without the Administration's interference.

In 1861, McClellan was looked upon as a hero and even possibly a savior. Dubbed "The Young Napoleon", the 35 year old had been a prodigy at West Point, finishing in second place in the Academy's most famous class, the Class of 1846. After earning praise for his service in the Mexican-American War, McClellan had a short but successful career in the railroad industry and had been a foreign observer at the siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War. At the outbreak of the Civil War, there was no question that McClellan was one of the brightest and most experienced of the North's generals.

Ultimately, of course, McClellan went from hero to goat, at least in the eyes of President Lincoln, who famously wrote that McClellan "has the slows". It was a sharp critique of McClellan's cautious movements, but McClellan was also faulted for conservative battlefield leadership in the Peninsula Campaign and at Antietam. McClellan also constantly overestimated his opponent's manpower, at times thinking the Confederates had double his Army of the Potomac when the exact opposite was the case. It was after Antietam and his bickering with the War Department over why he wasn't chasing Lee's battered Army of Northern Virginia that Lincoln finally sacked him, effectively ending his Civil War career.

McClellan is best remembered for 1862, but he was also a Governor of New Jersey, Lincoln's opponent in the 1864 presidential election, and a writer seeking to reestablish his reputation before his untimely death. The Young Napoleon addresses the controversies and battles McClellan fought both on and off the field, but it also humanizes a man who was almost universally loved by the veterans of the Army of the Potomac and who wrote his most candid remarks to his wife. You will learn about The Young Napoleon like you never have before, in no time at all.

©2014 Charles River Editors (P)2017 Charles River Editors

Interesting

The Young Napoleon: The Life & Legacy of George B. McClellan

Charles River Editors

A brief yet interesting account of McClellan. There are two camps regarding the general, seemingly either hate or love. The authors did a fairly good job of being fair while telling his story.