The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860-1865 - Hardcover

Stephen W. Sears is the author of The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign, and Chancellorsville. He lives in Connecticut.

The author of Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam and a biography of McClellan here presents previously unpublished military dispatches and personal letters that show this "Young Napoleon" in a wide variety of wartime roles: army commander, military executive, strategist, tactician, political partisan and presidential can didate. McClellan's gross over-estimates of Confederate strength and his conviction that the administration in Washington failed to support him are two of the familiar themes brought into clearer focus. Of special note are McClellan's uninhibited letters to his wife, Mary Ellen, in which the general's contempt for President Lincoln, his policies and his advisers is on vivid display. After Lincoln replaced him as commander of the Army of the Potomac (following the missed opportunity to win a decisive victory at Antietam), McClellan was nominated by the Democratic party in the 1864 presidential election. The pertinent letters reveal, among other things, that McClellan devoted most of his campaign efforts to a futile attempt to win the army vote.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.