Four days after assuming
command of the forces the state of Ohio was raising in response to President
Abraham Lincoln's April 15, 1861, call for 75,000 troops to suppress the
Southern rebellion, Major General George B. McClellan wrote a letter to
General-in-Chief Winfield Scott proposing a movement on Richmond from Ohio
via the Kanawha Valley. When the letter reached his desk, Scott forwarded
it to the president along with a note harshly criticizing McClellan's proposal
for operations. Historians have endorsed and echoed his criticisms ever
since. In the foremost study of Civil War strategy, Herman Hattaway and
Archer Jones write of "Scott dispos[ing] of the young general's plan by
pointing out that McClellan had ignored logistics, an unforgivable omission
for an experienced soldier turned railroad executive!" "In light of his
reputation as a first-rate military intellect," asserts leading McClellan
scholar Stephen W. Sears, "[the plan] was surprisingly impractical." One
of Scott's recent biographers, John S. D. Eisenhower, dismisses McClellan's
plans as "utterly unrealistic."1
To be sure, Scott and these writers had reason to react
to McClellan's plan the way they did, for there was much to criticize.
Yet in their rush to dismiss it and—in the case of the historians—join
the legions of scholars who have
Ethan S. Rafuse received his Ph.D. from the University
of Missouri-Kansas City and is assistant professor of history at the United
States Military Academy. He is the author of numerous articles, essays,
and reviews on Civil War-era topics and his current projects include a
forthcoming book on the First Manassas Campaign and the revision of his
dissertation, a study of George B. McClellan, for publication.
1. Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North
Won: A Military History of the Civil War (Urbana, Ill., 1983), 37;
Stephen W. Sears, George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (New
York, 1988), 75; John S.D. Eisenhower, Agent of Destiny: The Life and
Times of Winfield Scott (New York, 1997), 386. The other recently
published Scott biography, Timothy D. Johnson's Winfield Scott: The
Quest For Military Glory (Lawrence, Kans., 1998), does not mention
McClellan's plan at all. McClellan's most vigorous defender, Warren W.
Hassler, Jr., mentions it in passing, but does not analyze its merits
or Scott's response to it. Hassler, General George B. McClellan: Shield
ofthe Union (Baton Rouge, La., 1957), 5. The plan is completely ignored
in the most recent book published on McClellan, Thomas J. Rowland's George
B. McClellan and Civil War History: In the Shadow of Grant and Sherman
(Kent, Ohio, 1998).
George
B. McClellan's First Strategic Plan
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found flaws in McClellan's general military acumen, Scott
and the plan's twentieth-century critics have paid insufficient attention
to the particular circumstances McClellan faced when it was written. This
essay will reconsider McClellan's plan, not to argue that it was in fact
a masterpiece of strategy—that it certainly was not—but to describe
the formidable and complex administrative, operational, and political
problems the young general faced at the time. The influence of these factors
must be taken into account in any assessment of McClellan's actions in
April 1861, especially his efforts to formulate strategy.
McClellan's road to fame in the American Civil War began
in Columbus, Ohio, on April 23, 1861.2 During the week after Lincoln's
call for troops, Ohio governor William Dennison commenced a frantic search
for a professional military man to take command of his state's forces.
McClellan, who had proven himself an officer of great promise before he
left the army in 1 857 and was residing in Cincinnati when the rebellion
broke out, was high on Dennison's list of possible candidates. But rumors
that the thirty-four-year-old railroad executive was being considered
for command of troops in his native Pennsylvania led Dennison to first
pursue Major Irvin McDowell for the position. Unfortunately for Dennison,
McDowell's hands were already quite full helping General Scott manage
affairs in Washington at the time.3
2. Sears, George B. McClellan, 68-94; William Staff
Myers, A Study in Personality: General George Brinton McClellan
(New York, 1934), 157-98; and Hassler, General George B. McClellan,
3-19, all offer fine treatments of McClellan's service in Ohio, although
the best by far is in Joseph L. Harsh, "George Brinton McClellan and the
Forgotten Alternative: An Introduction to the Conservative Strategy in
the Civil War: April-August 1861" (Ph.D. diss., Rice University, 1970),
148-83.
3. On April 18, Dennison had sent a message to West Pointer
Orlando Poe, then stationed in Michigan, requesting his presence in Ohio.
Poe was not able to leave his post until the twenty-seventh and did not
arrive in Columbus until the twenty-ninth, but there is no evidence that
the governor considered anyone but McDowell or McClellan for overall command
of
George
B. McClellan's First Strategic Plan
Page 155
Upon learning that McClellan would be traveling to Harrisburg
on April 23 to discuss the matter of the Pennsylvania command with Governor
Andrew Curtin, Dennison asked him to break off his trip at Columbus and
report on the state of affairs in Cincinnati. McClellan agreed and arrived
at the state capital on the morning of the twenty-third. Jacob D. Cox,
one of three ignorant in things military but politically well-connected
men Dennison had appointed brigadier generals of militia, met McClellan
at the train station and quickly ushered the young railroad executive
to the State House. Cox attended the meeting between the governor and
McClellan that followed shortly afterward, during which the matter of
the Ohio command came up. McClellan, in Cox's words, assured Dennison
that he "fully understood the difficulties there would be before him,
and . . . had confidence that if a few weeks' time for preparation were
given he would be able to put the Ohio division into reasonable form for
taking the field." Dennison then formally offered him the command. To
the governor's delight, McClellan, who was concerned over a false report
indicating that the post for which he was being considered in Pennsylvania
was chief of engineers rather than overall command, accepted.4
troops. Poe was subsequently assigned to McClellan's staff
and became one of his most trusted advisors during his service west of
the Appalachians. Dennison to Poe, April 18, 1861, Orlando Metcalfe Poe
Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., box
4\folder 6; Poe to McClellan, April 26, 27, 1861, Department of the Ohio
telegram book, Record Group 393, part 1, entry 883, Records of the United
States Continental Commands, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter
cited as McClellan telegrams, NA); Poe to Brent, April 29, 1861, Poe Papers,
box 2\folder 3. An unfounded rumor circulated around Columbus in mid-April
that McClellan would return to service in the regular army as a topographical
engineer. Ohio State Journal, April 16, 1862.
4. Eugene H. Roseboom, The Civil War Era, 1850-1873
(Columbus, Ohio, 1944), 384; George B. McClellan, McClellan's Own Story:
The War for the Union, The Soldiers Who Fought It, The Civilians Who Directed
It, and His Relations to It and to Them, ed. William C. Prime (New
York, 1887), 40-41; McClellan to Patterson, April 18, 1861, in Stephen
W. Sears, ed., The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected
Correspondence, 1860-1865 (New York, 1989), 5; Jacob D. Cox, Military
Reminiscences of the Civil War, 2 vols. (New York, 1900), 1: 8-10.
The other general officers Dennison appointed were Newton Schleich and
Joshua Bates. The appointment of Bates, a nominal Democrat, was evidently
based on his holding a senior rank in the militia. He would serve primarily
in administrative posts. Cox, a leading Republican, would have a solid
military career, eventually rising to command of a corps. Schleich, on
the other hand, a leader in the Ohio Democracy at the beginning of the
war, would prove ill-suited to the task of leading men in battle. During
operations in western Virginia, McClellan, after complaining to his wife
that Schleich "knows nothing," would remove him from command just before
the battle of Rich Mountain. Schleich later returned to uniform as commander
of the Sixty-first Ohio Infantry. During the Second Bull Run Campaign,
he abandoned his command during a skirmish and was subsequently dismissed
from the service. Emilius 0. Randall and Daniel J. Ryan, History of
Ohio: The Rise and Progress of an American State, 6 vols. (New York,
1912), 4: 167; Cincinnati Daily Commercial, May 1, 1861; Joshua
H. Bates, "Ohio's Preparations for the War," Sketches of War History,
1861-1865: Papers Read Before the Ohio Commmandery of the Military Order
of the Loyal Legion of the United States, 1883-1886, 6 vols. (Cincinnati,
Ohio, 1888), 1: 128-29 (hereafter cited as MOLLUS [Ohio]); McClellan to
his wife, July 3, 1861, in Sears, ed., Civil War
George
B. McClellan's First Strategic Plan
Page 156
McClellan's decision was a godsend to Dennison. Although
popular excitement made it easy to find the bodies necessary to fill Ohio's
quota under Lincoln's April 15 call for three months' volunteers, their
sheer numbers overwhelmed what little military infrastructure existed
in the state. Although efforts had been made by Dennison's predecessor,
Salmon P. Chase, to improve the state's military preparedness by supporting
the formation of local volunteer companies, these were little more than
paradeground units. There was precious little infrastructure to support
them or provision for their organization into regiments in any case. And
it quickly became evident that Dennison and Adjutant General Henry B.
Carrington lacked the administrative ability, military knowledge, or political
stature to impose order and efficiency on the Buckeye State's mobilization.
To make matters worse, Dennison, afraid of dampening public enthusiasm,
decided to accept any and all who volunteered. Before long, he had enough
men to form over twice as many regiments as Washington had authorized
and far more than the state was capable of handling. By April 23, eager
recruits were all over Columbus. Some had been dumped in hastily established
Camp Harrison on the state fairgrounds—a facility so inadequate it
would be abandoned only a month later. But many remained in the city.
Directionless and clueless, they fed themselves at restaurants and quartered
in hotels at state expense. In their efforts to procure equipment, inexperienced
state officials paid contractors whatever they demanded—a problem
that ultimately led the legislature to request the removal of the quartermaster
general and commissary general.5
After receiving his appointment as major general from
Dennison, McClellan immediately went to work and by the night of April
23 had taken the measure of his new command. "The material," he reported
to General Scott at the end of his first day on the job, "is superb, but
has no organization or discipline . . . . I find myself, General, in the
position of Comdg Officer with nothing but men." He proposed establishing
his headquarters and a camp of instruction near Cincinnati, requested
"at least 10,000 stand of arms in addition to those now ordered here .
. . the corresponding accoutrements and . . . at least 5,000,000 cartridges,"
ordered a supply of camp equipment for 20,000 men, and asked that Fitz
John Porter and other professional
Papers of George B. McClellan, 44; McGroarty to
Schimmelfinnig, September 13, 1862, U.S. War Department, The War of
the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and
Confederate Armies, 70 vols. in 128 parts.
(Washington, D.C., 1880-1901), series 1, 12.2: 308-09. Hereafter cited
as OR, all references are to series 1 unless otherwise noted.
5. Roseboom, The Civil War Era, 1850-1873, 383-85;
Thomas C. Mulligan, "Ohio Goes To War: Efforts of the State of Ohio to
Raise and Equip Troops For the Civil War," (MA. thesis: Ohio State University,
1989), 15-18, 22-23; Harsh, "George Brinton McClellan and the Forgotten
Alternative," 150-51; Bates, "Ohio's Preparations for the War," MOLLUS
[Ohio], 1: 128-29; George M. Finch, "In the Beginning," ibid., 218-23.
George
B. McClellan's First Strategic Plan
Page 157
|
|
Governer
William Dennison. (SC2373, Ohio Historical Society Collections.) |
officers be assigned to his command. He also requested
confirmation as to his objectives, which he presumed to be "the protection
of Cincinnati and the line of the Ohio . . . or a movement in advance
should political events require it," while doing nothing to antagonize
the inhabitants of Virginia and Kentucky while they sorted out their respective
fates.6
If the disordered state of affairs was the most pressing
concern for the new general, his isolation from policy makers in Washington
quickly became evident as well. Communication between Washington and Columbus
was highly precarious during the first few weeks after McClellan assumed
command. Virginia's secession on April 17
and riots in Baltimore two days later cut off telegraph
communication, McClellan did not trust the mails, and by April 26 no word
had been heard from messengers Dennison had sent to Washington several
days before. Thus McClellan decided to send his April 23 report to Washington
via Aaron F. Perry, a Cincinnati lawyer and former law partner of Dennison's.7
Transportation snags caused by the Baltimore riots prevented
Perry from reaching Washington until late on April 24. He found the capital
preoccupied with its own problems and had a hard time locating anyone
interested in his message. He finally left it with a clerk at the War
Department and, after spending the next day and a half engaged in a fruitless
search for information, returned to Ohio. Upon encountering McClellan
and Dennison, Perry was "speared . . . mercilessly with questions." Perry
told them he had no information to give, other than that they were essentially
on their own. Not until a week after it was written did Washington reply
to McClellan's April 23 report. In that message, McClellan found little
more information
6. McClellan to Scott, April 23, 1861, in Sears, ed. Civil
War Papers of George B. McClellan, 7-9.
7. McClellan, McClellan's Own Story, 42-43. Perry
later recalled the document he was entrusted to carry was a "plan of campaign
for the capture of Richmond, Virginia," suggesting it was McClellan's
April 27 letter. Aaron Perry, "A Chapter in Interstate Diplomacy," MOLLUS
[Ohio], 1 : 345-55. In his diary Dennison's military secretary recorded
that Perry departed on April 26 and returned on May 4. William T. Coggeshall
Diary, entries for April 26, May 4, 1861, William T. Coggeshall Papers,
Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield, Illinois.
George
B. McClellan's First Strategic Plan
Page 158
than that Scott was "greatly pleased" at his ascension
to command in Ohio, "regrets it will not be possible to place at your
disposal the officers for whom you ask," and offered encouragement.8
By the time he received this note, McClellan had already
done a great deal toward imposing order on the situation in Ohio. The
task was truly awesome, for not only did McClellan have to create an army
from scratch, but there were a multitude of errors committed before his
appointment to correct as well. Both tasks were greatly complicated during
his first two weeks in command by economy-minded members of the state
legislature, who held up passage of a bill drafted under McClellan's supervision
to improve the state's military organization until May 8.9
The lack of trained officers and staff was perhaps the
general's greatest problem. Although the situation was alleviated somewhat
by the arrival of West Pointers William S. Rosecrans on April 26 and Orlando
M. Poe on April 29, McClellan was compelled to attend personally to nearly
every single detail of the state's mobilization. Everything from the construction
of barracks, the establishment of efficient systems of supply and training
schedules, and the coordination of troop movements to correspondence with
arsenals regarding the acquisition of heavy guns and negotiations with
contractors for lumber, coal, and clothing demanded his personal attention.10
Although he had yet to receive a response to his April
23 message, four days later McClellan sent another report to Washington
describing his activities and administrative intentions. He informed Adjutant
General Lorenzo Thomas that he expected to have twenty-four regiments
organized within two weeks and that he had established Camp Dennison near
Cincinnati, explaining that its location in the Little Miami River Valley
with convenient access to both the Queen City and Columbus would enable
him to "move the command rapidly to any point where it may be required."
He also told Thomas that his immediate goal was "to concentrate the whole
command in this camp & to thoroughly organize, discipline & drill
them. By the end of six weeks I hope they will be in condition to act
efficiently in any direction."11
Although the task of forging Ohio's armed mobs into an
army worthy of
8. Perry, "A Chapter in Interstate Diplomacy," 345-55;
Harsh, "George Brinton McClellan and the Forgotten Alternative," 159;
Townsend to McClellan, April 30, 1861, OR, 51.1: 342-43.
9. Cincinnati Daily Commercial, May 4, 8, 9, 1861.
10. Rosecrans to McClellan, April 25, 27, 28, May 2, 1861,
McClellan telegrams, NA; Clement to McClellan, April 27, 1861, ibid.;
Dennison to McClellan, April 28, 30, 1861, ibid.; Symington to McClellan,
April 25, 1861; Lippencott to McClellan, April 26, 1861, ibid.; Mordecai
to McClellan, April 25, 1861, ibid.; Wittlsey to McClellan, April 30,
1861, ibid; McClellan to Woodward, April 26, 1861, George B. McClellan
Papers, Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield, Illinois; McClellan
to Rosecrans, April 27, 1861, (two telegrams) ibid.
11. McClellan to Thomas, April 27, 1861, in Sears, ed.
Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, 14-15.
George
B. McClellan's First Strategic Plan
Page 159
the name was far from finished, on April 27 McClellan
decided to turn his active mind to the question of what he might do with
his command. That day he wrote and sent to Scott the letter laying out
his much-maligned Kanawha plan. First, he advised Scott that he believed
the immediate outbreak of hostilities along the line of the Ohio River
must be avoided to allow time for "the North West to make the requisite
preparations" and a prompt movement to relieve the pressure on Washington.
Therefore he first proposed stationing garrisons at the junction of the
Illinois Central and Ohio and Mississippi Railroads in Illinois, Cincinnati,
Cairo, and various other points to ensure their security.12
McClellan then noted that "the North West has ample resources
to furnish 80,000 men for active operations" and "proposed to cross the
Ohio" with such a force "and move up the valley of the Great Kanawha on
Richmond." Such a movement, he predicted, "could not fail to relieve Washington,
as well as secure the destruction of the Southern Army if aided by a decided
advance on the Eastern line." But, should Kentucky "assume a hostile position,"
he proposed that the 80,000 man army should instead "march straight on
Nashville, and thence act according to circumstances." Should a decisive
victory be won in the course of this latter operation, he envisioned moving
"on Montgomery, aided by a vigorous movement on the Eastern line, towards
Charleston and Augusta." "The 2nd line of operations," he advised Scott,
"could be the most decisive." He closed the letter by repeating his call
for large-scale assistance from the government. "Even to maintain the
defensive," he wrote, "we must be largely assisted. We are very badly
supplied at present . . . a vast population, eager to fight, are rendered
powerless by the want of arms—the nation thus deprived of their aid."13
On May 2 McClellan's message reached Scott, who then forwarded
it to President Lincoln with a note attached identifying what the Commanding
General saw as serious flaws in the proposed plan of operations. Scott
first noted that Ohio's quota under Lincoln's call for troops was 10,000;
yet McClellan presumed "having 30,000, and wants arms & c. for 80,000."
Such a force, Scott protested, could not be organized from among the threemonths
men before their terms of enlistment expired. The general then asserted:
"A march upon Richmond from the Ohio would probably insure
12. McClellan to Scott, April 27, 1861, ibid., 12-13.
Dennison, perhaps out of concern over the lack of attention McClellan's
first letter had received, also wrote to Lincoln on April 27 to endorse,
and urge the President to give full attention to, the plan of operations
contained in McClellan's letter of that day. Dennison to Lincoln, April
27, 1861, Robert Todd Lincoln Collection of the Abraham Lincoln Papers,
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., volume 43\reel
21.
13. McClellan to Scott,, April 27, 1861, in Sears, ed.
Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, 12-13.
George
B. McClellan's First Strategic Plan
Page 160
the revolt of Western Virginia, which if left alone will
soon be five of seven [border states] for the Union." Scott next took
McClellan to task for "eschew[ing] water transportation by the Ohio and
Mississippi in favor of long, tedious, and break down (of men, horses,
and wagons) marches." Last, but not least, he protested that McClellan's
plan envisioned: "subdu[ingl the seceded States by piece-meal instead
of enveloping them all (nearly) at once by a cordon of posts on the Mississippi
. . . and by blockading ships. For the cordon a number of men equal to
one of the general's columns would probably suffice, and the transportation
of men and all supplies by water is about a fifth of the land cost."14
That Scott had identified some serious flaws in McClellan's
scheme of operations—particularly in regard to the logistical nightmare
that an operation across the mountains entailed—is undeniable. Yet
to assess fairly McClellan's letter it must be viewed in the context of
the specific strategic problem he confronted in April 1 861 . First, it
must be noted that McClellan identified the Kanawha movement as less preferable
to an operation directly south into Tennessee. Moreover, it is also clear
that in putting forward the Kanawha plan, the general insisted that a
precondition for carrying it out rather than a move south was that when
the time for active operations finally came, the political situation in
Kentucky would be too delicate for a movement in that direction to be
prudent.15
Kentucky was critical to the Union cause. To lose the
Bluegrass State to the Confederacy would dramatically complicate the strategic
problem confronting the North. Not only would the Confederacy obtain a
river boundary and the task of restoring the Union by invading and conquering
the South become much more difficult, but southern armies would gain a
valuable base for conducting raids and invasions into the Northwest as
well. The effect of Kentucky's secession on the other border states, Lincoln
recognized, would be equally, if not more, significant. "I think to lose
Kentucky," he would write in September 1861, "is nearly the same as to
lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we cannot hold Missouri, nor, as I
think, Maryland. These all against us, and the job on our hands is too
large for us."16
Torn between economic and sentimental ties to her sister
slave states and a deep attachment to the Union, Kentucky desperately
hoped the nation could
14. Winfield Scott, May 2, 1861, endorsement of McClellan
to Scott, April 27, 1861, OR, 51.1: 339.
15. In a draft of the April 27 letter, McClellan noted
the fact that one of the merits of a movement on the Kanawha was that
it "avoids infringing on the soil of Kentucky & Tenn." George B. McClellan,
Draft of letter to Winfield Scott, April 1861, George Brinton McClellan
(Sr.) Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.,
[container] A11\reel 5.
16. Lowell H. Harrison, The Civil War in Kentucky
(Lexington, Ky., 1975), 2-3; Lincoln to Browning, September 22, 1861,
in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln,
9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953-55), 4: 532.
George
B. McClellan's First Strategic Plan
Page 161
find a peaceful solution to the sectional conflict over
slavery. In the 1860
election the state's electoral votes went to Constitutional
Union candidate John Bell rather than to native sons Lincoln and John
C. Breckinridge. When the Deep South, acting upon the state rights doctrines
contained in the 1798 Kentucky Resolutions, left the Union, Kentuckians
rallied behind the efforts of their senior senator, John J. Crittenden,
to forge a Union-saving compromise. With the failure of compromise efforts
and the fall of Fort Sumter, they found themselves in a situation they
had long dreaded and sought to put off making a choice between the North
and South. Supporting neither secession nor coercion (in response to Lincoln's
call for troops Governor Benah Magoffin replied, "Kentucky will furnish
no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern states"),
on May 16 the state legislature would pass a resolution declaring Kentucky
would take no part in the war and instead adopted a position of "strict
neutrality." Kentucky's "neutrality" became "official" when Magoffin endorsed
the resolutions four days later.17
Union policymakers could not, of course, accept this proclamation
of neutrality as legitimate without conceding the principle of state sovereignty
Lincoln had called out troops to quash. The president decided, however,
not to press the issue with the Kentuckians, hoping that a policy of moderation
and restraint would give them the encouragement they needed to figure
out their interests would be best served by siding with the Union. Fortunately,
he had a commander in Ohio who recognized the virtues of patience and
restraint.18
Scott's argument that a movement "upon Richmond from the
Ohio would probably insure the revolt of Western Virginia" is also highly
debatable.19 Like their Kentucky neighbors, the people of western Virginia
enjoyed the right to own slaves and were divided over the question of
secession. Yet this region of small farmers and mountaineers was economically
and culturally oriented toward the industrial North rather than the agricultural
South, and the number of people who actually owned slaves in the counties
west of the Shenandoah Valley was small. More widely held were long-standing
grievances against the eastern counties of the Old Dominion that dominated
Virginia politics and consistently used their power to benefit the tidewater
region at the expense of the western counties. Although by no means absent,
secessionists, as the votes of delegates from the region at the Virginia
state
17. Harrison, Civil War in Kentucky, 1-9; E. Merton
Coulter, The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky (Chapel Hill,
NC., 1926), 1-55. Magoffin to Cameron, April 15, 1861, OR, ser.
3, 1: 70.
18. Coulter, Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky,
53-54; David Herbert Donald, Lincoln, (New York, 1995), 299-300; James
M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York,
1988), 294-95.
19. Winfield Scott, May 2, 1861, endorsement McClellan
to Scott, April 27, 1861, OR, 51.1: 339.
George
B. McClellan's First Strategic Plan
Page 162
convention held on April 17 demonstrated (thirty-two of
the forty-seven delegates from what eventually became West Virginia voted
against secession), were clearly in the minority in western Virginia.20
The situation in western Virginia also differed from that
in Kentucky in that the question of secession had already for all intents
and purposes been settled. Unlike in Kentucky, where the commitment to
nonprovocation was somewhat open-ended and the balance between moderation
to assure the noncommitted and firmness to encourage active Unionists
was a much more delicate one, the actions of the Virginia convention,
the resistance of the western Virginians to secession, and the scheduling
of a popular referendum on the convention's actions for May 23, greatly
clarified the situation for Union policy makers. Some form of assertive
action would in all probability be necessary to save the western Virginia
Unionists and the timetable for such action was relatively clear. In preparation,
as he carried out the same policy of restraint toward his eastern flank
as he had for his southern, McClellan began developing an extensive network
of informants and spies to keep him informed of developments.21
The evidence is also strong that McClellan's implicit
belief that by May 1 861 failure to take action in western Virginia would
do more to harm than help the Union cause in that area was more correct
than Scott's contrary assumption. Virginia's fate had for all intents
and purposes been settled on April 17 when the state convention voted
for secession and commenced military preparations. By April 27 the question
was what to do to relieve the Unionist regions in the western counties
of the state and counter the threat posed to them and Washington by secessionists
in the east. And it was to solve these particular problems that McClellan,
with operations in Kentucky impracticable for the present, formulated
his Kanawha movement.
If McClellan's plan did not meet with the approval of
the Commanding General, it did have the salutary effect of prompting Scott
to let him in on the ends toward which strategic planning was being directed
at Army headquarters. On May 3, Scott composed his first direct message
to his young subordinate. In this letter, he laid out his "own views,
supported by certain facts of which you should be advised." First, Scott
informed McClellan that his operational thinking was not based on figuring
out how
20. Boyd B. Stutler, West Virginia in the Civil War
(Charleston, W. Va., 1963), 2-3, 6, 8; Daniel W. Crofts, Reluctant
Confederates: The Upper South in the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill,
NC., 1989), 56-60, 159-63; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 298-99.
21. Hazard to McClellan, May 3, 1861, McClellan Papers,
Al l\reel 5; Citizens of Gallipolis to McClellan, April 29, 1861, ibid.;
Sherbade to McClellan, ibid., B6\reel 46; Poe to Brent, May 1, 7, 12,
13, 1861, Poe Papers, box 2\container 3; McClellan to Townsend, May 14,
1861, OR, 51.1: 377; McClellan to Dennison, May 13, 1861, in Sears,
ed. Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, 19.
George
B. McClellan's First Strategic Plan
Page 163
to make the best use of the three-months militia, but
on having the regular army expanded by 25,000 and enlisting 60,000 volunteers
for three years. Then he proceeded to lay out his own strategy for restoring
the Union, which even before it was transmitted to McClellan had received
the label by which it has come down in history, the "Anaconda."22
Although his efforts to prevent a military contest between
the government and the South by steering Lincoln to a policy of nonconfrontation
over Forts Sumter and Pickens had failed, Scott still did not believe
military force was the proper means for restoring the Union. In Scott's
mind, a war to conquer the South would be neither short nor easy. Even
should the North emerge triumphant in such a war, Scott believed it could
do so only through a massive military effort that would entail inevitable
setbacks and inflict such horrific destruction that the worst passions
in the populace of both sections would be unleashed. "Invade the South
at any point," he warned policymakers after the call for troops, "[and]
I will guarantee that at the end of the year you will be further from
a settlement than you are now."23
Instead of a full-scale invasion of the South, Scott advised
McClellan it was his intention that the government would impose "a complete
blockade of the Atlantic and Gulf ports," combined with "a powerful movement
down the Mississippi to the ocean, with a cordon of posts at proper points
. . . to envelop the insurgent States." The movement on the Mississippi,
in which he advised McClellan "it is not improbable you may be invited
to take an important part" (orders combining Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio
into a single command, the Department of the Ohio, with McClellan as its
head, had in fact been drafted in Washington the very day Scott wrote
this letter), would take place after "four months and a half of instruction
in camps prior to (say) November 10." The objective of the Anaconda Plan
was to employ
22. Scott to McClellan, May 3, 1861, OR, 51.1:
369-70. Scott's ideas began circulating around Washington before he sent
them to McClellan. During his trip to the capital to deliver McClellan's
April 23 message, Perry heard rumors that "our public men were said to
be impatient of a plan which contemplated expenditure of so much time,
life, and money . . . . They called it humorously, Scott's Great Anaconda."
But this was all Perry learned of the state of military planning and preparations
in the capital. Peny, "A Chapter in Interstate Diplomacy," 354.
23. For good discussions of the Anaconda, see Eisenhower,
Agent of Destiny, 385-87; Johnson, Winfield Scott, 226-28; Harsh,
"George Brinton McClellan and the Forgotten Alternative," 85-94; and Mark
Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward
Southern Civilians (Cambridge, Mass., 1995),
28. Scott quote in Edward D. Townsend, Anecdotes of the Civil War in
the United States (New York, 1884), 56. In a meeting with Seward,
Chase, and Cameron, Scott, in response to a prediction that a war between
the North and South would be a short one, opined that such a conflict
would in fact last three years and result in the ultimate triumph of Union
arms. He also added that "for a long time thereafter, it will require
the exercise of the full powers of the Federal Government to restrain
the fury of the non-combatants!" Charles Winslow Elliot, Winfield Scott:
The Soldier and the Man (New York, 1937),718.
George
B. McClellan's First Strategic Plan
Page 164
economic pressure to convince Southerners of the folly
of secession, sparing the nation the tremendous destruction and the South
the challenge to honor a full-scale invasion would involve. "Cut off from
the luxuries to which the people are accustomed; and ... not having been
exasperated by attacks made on them," Scott predicted to policymakers
in Washington that in the South, "The Union spirit will assert itself;
those who are on the fence will descend on the Union side, and I will
guarantee that in one year from this time all difficulties will be settled."24
Upon receiving Scott's letter on May 7, McClellan immediately
wrote back thanking "the General under whom I first learned the art of
war" for taking him into his confidence. He then advised Scott that he
could "rest satisfied that I will leave nothing undone to assist in carrying
out your plans . . . . I fully appreciate the wisdom of your intentions
& recognize the propriety of all your military dispositions." In his
response, McClellan also addressed Scott's expression of concern (included
perhaps to cool the evident ardor of young McClellan for active operations)
that "the impatience of our patriotic and loyal Union friends . . . urg[ing]
instant and vigorous action, regardless, I fear of consequences" could
undermine the implementation of a reasoned, conciliatory policy that would
reconstruct the Union with a minimum of bloodshed. McClellan proclaimed
Scott's concern about popular passions to be "entirely correct" and assured
him he would "do all I can to reconcile public feeling here to the necessary
delay . . . and will quietly urge the necessity of preparation. "25
It has not been the purpose of this essay to demonstrate
that McClellan was the great military genius of the Civil War, or to argue
that his Kanawha plan was a masterpiece of military science that would
have brought a quick and certain victory to the Union cause had it been
implemented. This assuredly was not the case and Scott and historians
in fact identified some significant practical flaws in McClellan's first
attempt to formulate strategy. Rather, this essay's objective has been
to call attention to the complex and delicate political and operational
situation McClellan faced at the time he wrote the letter to Scott proposing
the plan, a situation that severely limited his options. In the final
analysis, it is to these, rather than to a failure of reason or underappreciation
of military realities on McClellan's part, that most of the problems with
his first strategic plan should be attributed. It may have been impractical;
the thinking behind it was not unforgivable.
24. Scott to McClellan, May 3, 1861, OR, 51.1:
369-70. Three weeks later, Scott provided McClellan with further details,
and asked for his views, on the proposed Mississippi expedition. Scott
to McClellan, May 21, 1861, ibid., 387. Scott's "guarantee" is in Townsend,
Anecdotes of the Civil War, 55-56.
25. McClellan to Scott, May 7, 1861, in Sears, ed.
Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, 16; Scott to McClellan, May
3, 1861, OR, 51.1: 370.
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