Gingerly picking up Sears again

In Introduction of George B. McClellan, The Young Napoleon, Stephen W. Sears writes, ". . . He believed himself to be God's chosen instrument for saving the Union. When he lost the courage to fight, as he did in every battle, he believed he was preserving his army to fight the next time on another better day."

"Further down he writes, "Few of those who commented on General McClellan, in his day and afterward, have been neutral toward him, and as a consequence their interpretations of his actions, even their recital of the facts of his life, have varied widely. . . McClellan was said, for example, despite all his faults to have been the best commander the Army of the Potomac ever had, yet on the evidence he was inarguably the worst. . ."

"The historian James Ford Rhodes once wrote that 'no man can go unscathed if his acts are interpreted by his innermost thoughts.' However true that may be, history can be grateful that in George McClellan's case it is these innermost thoughts so well expressed in the full record of his letters and other writings, that finally reveal the measure of the man. If that measure is not how he himself believed history would judge him, it is representative of yet one more of his delusions."

Comment: In reading fiction one learns to "suspend disbelief." In reading history however, one hopes that one doesn't have to, but that doesn't always work. Let's begin with "He believed himself to be God's chosen instrument for the saving of the Union." Sears doesn't qualify or amplify this statement to explain that McClellan was at this time a member of the Presbyterian Church which at that time bore no resemblance to the present day PCUSA. It was like one of the more conservative denominations -- the OPC or PCA for example, that is, subscribing to Calvinism. Any such Presbyterian is going to believe that God is in control of his life and some of the letters I've read quotes from sound very like things I've heard modern day Presbyterians say, e.g., "I just graduated from college and have no job, but I've been praying about it and believe God has my life in his hands. He will guide me to the job he wants me to have."

In McClellan's case in a letter to his wife (quoted by one of the historians I've read recently) he notes says that God has put the fate of the nation in his hands and claims that he personally doesn't have the power to do this job but he can with God's help and prays for that help. He prays also not to be vainglorious.' I haven't known any Presbyterians who have reached such a high office, but if one did, and I heard what his prayers were, I would expect them to be something like this.

And then Sears writes, "When he lost the courage to fight, as he did in every battle, he believed he was preserving his army to fight the next time on another and better day." Sears doesn't say he is entering into his own [Sears'] interpretation. He is stating this as fact. He doesn't say McClellan "seemed to lose his courage on occasion." He says "he lost the courage to fight . . . in every battle."

In reading Ethan Rafuse McClellan's War, I was a bit annoyed over the space he allotted to McClellan's family's politics, his own political beliefs and contacts, and the extent to which he was a very highly developed political person. Perhaps he developed McClellan's politics to such a great extent in order to deal with Sears "inarguable" statements about McClellan "losing his courage in every battle."

When one has a body of facts, it is quite legitimate to say (A) here are the facts I have under consideration. (B) Here are some possible interpretations, and (C) Here is the interpretation I find most persuasive. In the study of theology, this is what I am most use to. No modern theologian worth his salt would prepare a commentary on any book of the Bible without dwelling upon alternate interpretations. Perhaps this is to some extent due to the sort of "Scholastic" training provided at the better medieval universities that has influenced and continues to influence theological studies. The medieval student was not permitted to erect a "strawman" argument. He would never graduate if he did that. He must first erect the best possible argument for the position he would ultimately argue against. After he had done that to the satisfaction of his instructors, he would then defeat that argument. Sears it seems to me from his introduction would never have been able to graduate from one of those universities.

Sears has no footnotes in his introduction, but he does for the rest of his text; so he could theoretically present the alternate interpretations later on. My exposure to another of his books, To the Gates of Richmond, causes me to doubt that will happen, but being very much impressed by the ideals of Scholasticism, I shall strive to be open to that possibility. But for now, when Sears says McClellan "lost the courage to fight . . . in every battle," he doesn't seem open to Rafuse interpretation of these battles McClellan fought.

In another discussion, that of the causes of the Civil War, the prominent or at least most vehement view was that it was about slavery. The causes of the Civil War remains a complicated subject. It is only safe to say (perhaps) that for some people it was about slavery, for others it was about saving the Union. And there were other reasons individuals fought. For McClellan it was never about slavery. He was from a region in Philadelphia, and from a class that thought the abolitionists dangerous extremists. For McClellan, and initially for Lincoln, it was all about saving, and later restoring the Union.

The Abolitionists demonized Southerners, but that was not possible for McClellan. General Joe Johnston, whom he fought against, was one of his best friends, and remained so after the war. He went to West Point and liked many of the officers that ended up on the Confederate side. For him (and my sources here are Harsh, Rowland and Rafuse) he had no desire to "destroy" the enemy. For him, the war needed to end in such a way that the combatants could move past the conflict and work together to repair the Union. He didn't lose his courage, for McClellan this wasn't a dispassionate battle that had only foes, it was a fight between brothers that needed to make up after the fighting was done.

The argument from the evidence of McClellan's personal history is more supportive, it seems to me, of the "interpretation" that McClellan was fighting in such a way as to enhance as much as possible the ultimate aim of reconciliation.

Sears then writes, ""Few of those who commented on General McClellan, in his day and afterward, have been neutral toward him, and as a consequence their interpretations of his actions, even their recital of the facts of his life, have varied widely. . . McClellan was said, for example, despite all his faults to have been the best commander the Army of the Potomac ever had, yet on the evidence he was inarguably the worst. . ." Sears begins well. There are indeed interpretations of McClellan's actions, but that doesn't mean for him that any interpretation other than his own might possibly be true: "McClellan was said . . . despite all his faults to have been the best commander the Army of the Potomac ever had, yet on the evidence he was inarguably the worst." I take Sears to mean that he has examined the evidence and there is no possibility that his interpretation is wrong: McClellan was the worst commander the Army of the Potomac ever had. No other argument is supported by the evidence.

Sears goes on to write, "The historian James Ford Rhodes once wrote that 'no man can go unscathed if his acts are interpreted by his innermost thoughts.' However true that may be, history can be grateful that in George McClellan's case it is these innermost thoughts so well expressed in the full record of his letters and other writings, that finally reveal the measure of the man."

Sears tells us he intends to use only primary sources as his evidence but in the previous paragraph he quotes Rhodes whom Harsh in his "On the McClellan-Go-Around" tells us was "one of the first professional Unionist Historians." Harsh in this article discusses the evidence available. There were people interpreting McClellan's "cautiousness" in different ways. Most of the troops who fought under him appreciated what they interpreted as his prudence, but once historians began to take him up they adopted, apparently without exception, the Unionist scenario, which Harsh defines: "the Civil War was a national tragedy and [they] regret its length and cost, they assume that the war might have ended sooner and are usually impatient with its slow course and quick to criticize delays in its prosecution. Understandably, Abraham Lincoln towers above all others, for the story is told virtually from his own viewpoint. His greatest problem was to find a general who would win the war for him. He suffered through a sorry lot of candidates until at last he found Grant; whereupon the doom of the Confederacy was sealed. Kenneth Williams' five volumes, in which Lincoln Finds a General, is simply the most extended statement of [the Unionist] interpretation."

Harsh's article, which appears in three different places I am aware of is still (though written in 1970) considered instructive in regard to the direction of Unionist studies. Since the Unionist scenario is in its advocates point of view the "inarguable" one, one must apply a very negative interpretation to McClellan's decidedly non-Unionist-scenario actions. John Codman Ropes was one of the earliest Unionist interpreters. He wrote in 1887, "McClellan is seen to live very much in a world of his own making."

"Seven years later [1894] James B. Fry wrote that "the General had been the victim of a messianic complex. McClellan labored under the delusion that it was his 'mission' to save the nation . . . and that 'hallucination' blinded 'him to the obligations and influences which governed him at other times.''

Harsh writes that if one constructs this Unionist story starting with its end, namely with Lincoln at last finding a General who would doggedly fight until victory was achieved, then any earlier General who didn't fight as Grant did was by definition deficient. [Harsh doesn't say this but the "Unionist Scenario" sounds quite a bit like the "Lost Cause" in reverse. Lee was very like Grant except he ultimately lost. Longstreet (another friend, if memory serves me of McClellan) was very like McClellan in wanting to maneuver and keep casualties on both sides down.]

[The earliest version of what became Harsh's "On the McClellan-Go-Around" is the first chapter of Joseph Harsh's doctoral dissertation. It an be found at http://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstrea...DF?sequence=1]

Unless there is something out there of a comparable nature, Ethan Refuse has written the most comprehensive treatment of McClellan that does not assume the Unionist Scenario.