George Brinton McClellan,when at the age of thirty-four he was raised suddenly to a dizzying height of fame and power,was generally looked upon as a prodigy.Though he was not that,he had a real claim to distinction.Had destiny been considerate,permitting him to rise gradually and to mature as he rose,he might have earned a stable reputation high among those who are not quite great.He had done well at West Point,and as a very young officer in the Mexican War;he had represented his country as a military observer with the allies in the Crimea;he was a good engineer,and a capable man of business.His winning personality,until he went wrong in the terrible days of 1862,inspired "a remarkable affection and regard in every one from the President to the humblest orderly that waited at his door."[1]He was at home among books;he could write to his wife that Prince Napoleon "speaks English very much as the Frenchmen do in the old English comedies";[2]he was able to converse in "French,Spanish,Italian,German,in two Indian dialects and he knew a little Russian and Turkish."Men like Wade and Chandler probably thought of him as a "highbrow,"and doubtless he irritated them by invariably addressing the President as "Your Excellency."He had the impulses as well as the traditions of an elder day.But he had three insidious defects.At the back of his mind there was a vein of theatricality,hitherto unrevealed,that might,under sufficient stimulus,transform him into a poseur.Though physically brave,he had in his heart,unsuspected by himself or others,the dread of responsibility.He was void of humor.
These damaging qualities,brought out and exaggerated by too swift a rise to apparent greatness,eventually worked his ruin.
As an organizer he was unquestionably efficient.His great achievement which secures him a creditable place in American history was the conversion in the autumn of 1861of a defeated rabble and a multitude of raw militia into a splendid fighting machine.The very excellence of this achievement was part of his undoing.It was so near to magical that it imposed on himself,gave him a false estimate of himself,hid from him his own limitation.It imposed also on his enemies.Crude,fierce men like the Vindictive leaders of Congress,seeing this miracle take place so astoundingly soon,leaped at once to the conclusion that he could,if he would,follow it by another miracle.Having forged the thunderbolt,why could he not,if he chose,instantly smite and destroy?All these hasty inexperienced zealots labored that winter under the delusion that one great battle might end the war.When McClellan,instead of rushing to the front,entered his second phase--the one which he did not understand himself,which his enemies never understood--when he entered upon his long course of procrastination,the Jacobins,startled,dumfounded,casting about for reasons,could find in their unanalytical vision,but one.When Jove did not strike,it must be because Jove did not wish to strike.McClellan was delaying for a purpose.Almost instantaneous was the whisper,followed quickly by the outcry among the Jacobins,"Treachery!We are betrayed.He is in league with the enemy."Their distrust was not allayed by the manner in which he conducted himself.His views of life and of the office of commanding general were not those of frontier America.He believed in pomp,in display,in an ordered routine.The fine weather of the autumn of 1861was utilized at Washington for frequent reviews.The flutter of flags,the glint of marching bayonets,the perfectly ordered rhythm of marching feet,the blare of trumpets,the silvery notes of the bugles,the stormily rolling drums,all these filled with martial splendor the golden autumn air when the woods were falling brown.And everywhere,it seemed,look where one might,a sumptuously uniformed Commanding General,and a numerous and sumptuous staff,were galloping past,mounted on beautiful horses.
Plain,blunt men like the Jacobins,caring nothing for this ritual of command,sneered.They exchanged stories of the elaborate dinners he was said to give daily,the several courses,the abundance of wine,the numerous guests;and after these dinners,he and his gorgeous staff,"clattering up and down the public streets"merely to show themselves off.All this sneering was wildly exaggerated.The mania of exaggeration,the mania of suspicion,saturated the mental air breathed by every politician at Washington,that desperate winter,except the great and lonely President and the cynical Secretary of State.
McClellan made no concessions to the temper of the hour.With Lincoln,his relations at first were cordial.Always he was punctiliously respectful to "His Excellency."It is plain that at first Lincoln liked him and that his liking was worn away slowly.It is equally plain that Lincoln did not know how to deal with him.The tendency to pose was so far from anything in Lincoln's make-up that it remained for him,whether in McClellan or another,unintelligible.That humility which was so conspicuous in this first period of his rule,led him to assume with his General a modest,even an appealing tone.The younger man began to ring false by failing to appreciate it.
