[
Conflict of Command: George McClellan, Abraham Lincoln, and the Politics of War by George C. Rable (
Louisiana State University Press, 2023). Hardcover, 4 maps, photos, illustrations, notes, bibligraphy, index. Pages main/total:
xii,336/488. ISBN:978-0-8071-7977-2. $49.95]
As revealed through every passing year's crop of Civil War books, the troubled relationship between President Abraham Lincoln and Army of the Potomac commanding general George B. McClellan continues to be a source of never-ending controversy and vigorous finger pointing. In seeking to explain McClellan's inability to capture Richmond in 1862 and later on in that year destroy Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in Maryland, a dominant narrative quickly emerged that was subsequently adopted in the historiography with only fringe deviations ever since. Through popular and highly influential modern works authored by the likes of James McPherson and Stephen Sears to more specialized studies such as those from John Waugh [
Lincoln and McClellan: The Troubled Partnership between a President and His General (2010)] and Chester Hearn [
Lincoln and McClellan at War (2012)], the man dubbed at the time the "Young Napoleon" is largely presented as an exasperating and ineffectual foil to the president's genius. In contrast, George Rable's
Conflict of Command: George McClellan, Abraham Lincoln, and the Politics of War promises a more equitable consideration of why the Union Army's eastern fortunes in 1861-62 fell so far short of expectations. Indeed, Rable's new study, to borrow a phrase from another Civil War title, finds plenty of blame to go around in its predominant focus on damaging political influences.
Exposure to the traditional Lincoln-McClellan narrative is pervasive, but, just in case, the following should suffice as a brief summary of some relevant parts of it. In this understanding of events, Lincoln presents McClellan's army with all the men and resources needed to defeat anything the Confederates might possibly throw against it on the way to capturing Richmond. At the risk of creating powerful enemies within his own party, the president also generously shielded McClellan from political attacks by Republican radicals. Developing over time, through both careful book study and his own considerable intellect, into a competent military strategist in addition to being a political genius, Lincoln doled out sound advice that McClellan consistently refused to follow. Employing both carrot and stick, Lincoln could not get an increasingly paranoid McClellan, who constantly inflated enemy numbers as an excuse for further delay, to move aggressively forward as circumstances demanded. When he did finally advance, McClellan's maddeningly cautious, scientific approach to operations led to unsatisfactory results in Virginia and Maryland. Finally, Lincoln had enough of the general's "slows" and relieved McClellan from command on November 5, 1862.
Of course, the most obdurate McClellan supporters, then and now, would beg to differ. In their view, Lincoln and most of his cabinet quickly came to operate at cross-purposes with their man. By withholding critical reinforcements at critical moments, constantly undermining McClellan's authority and position within the army (ex. by removing him from his general in chief duties, allowing dissident officers to bypass the chain of command, appointing as corps commanders senior officers who opposed his plans, etc.), and even repeatedly questioning his loyalty, McClellan's government critics fostered crippling disunity around and within the army and left the general without the tools necessary to ensure success on the Peninsula. In the minds of the general and his supporters, McClellan also never received the accolades due him for his achievements in Maryland, where he quickly restored the fighting capabilities of the eastern army after the Second Manassas debacle and expelled Confederate forces from state after defeating them at South Mountain and Antietam. McClellan's removal soon after the victory at Antietam was only the final blow of a long partisan political persecution.
There are elements of truth in both perspectives, a powerful common thread being the role politics played in driving the Lincoln-McClellan high command alliance toward failure. Indeed, this is
Conflict of Command's primary theme. Using an admirable mix of sources, including a fairly prodigious amount of manuscript research, Rable's study, by way of combining judicious synthesis with the author's own original research, explores how partisan politics seeped into every aspect of the Lincoln-McClellan relationship as well as every other important facet of the conduct of the war in the East over the roughly year and a half period during which McClellan was the nation's towering military figure. At least at the level of seriousness each deserves, all of the issues and charges referenced above (and more) are critically addressed by Rable. Along the way, the author consistently declines to come down hard on one side of the blame game or the other. Instead, Rable exposes readers to a diverse host of key perspectives (from politicians, military officers, soldiers, common citizens, elites of society, and newspaper editors), assessing their observations through multiple angles. The strengths and weaknesses of charges and claims directed by those individuals for and against McClellan and the president are presented dispassionately. In a welcome break from the norm, Rable's narrative distinctly lacks the type of heavy-handed analytical guidance common to works discussing this topic.
In the beginning, it could be reasonably assumed that ideological and political differences between moderate Republican Lincoln and War Democrat McClellan were not wide enough to preclude a successful working relationship. However, as we all know, the partnership soured over a period of months under intense political pressure for the army to advance and McClellan's resistance toward doing so until campaign preparations met his entire approval. As one example of the range of political subjects addressed by Rable, divisive fallout from the relentlessly partisan newspaper war (bitterly fought both independently and through proxies) conducted by political factions in support of "hard war" policies versus more conservative approaches is traced in illuminating fashion. Cabinet machinations and their effects on both the Lincoln-McClellan relationship and the overall progress of the war in the East comprise another theme integral to the author's political analysis. At the center of much of the intrigue, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton is easily the most striking individual of the cabinet bunch. As a bit of shorthand regarding what to expect as the reader, it's likely being fair to all involved to say that Rable's Stanton is closer to William Marvel's Stanton than he is to Walter Stahr's Stanton. In what was often a three-way war of wills, forceful Radical Republican attempts (through individual efforts as well as through more collective means such as the infamous Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War) to shape national war policy, promote military leaders of their choice, and remove leaders that did not fit their ideology (like McClellan) are another common theme. In contrast to how well Lincoln played the political game, McClellan proved largely tone-deaf to the necessity, especially in democracies at war, of maintaining a working relationship with the political leadership. He was similarly naive in believing that army affairs could and should be left to the professionals without political input or interference. At critical intervals in the book, Rable also follows the evolution of the eastern army's standpoint on the government and commanding general's linked management of military affairs. Of course, there were no scientific polls available at the time to gauge with any quantitative precision how the soldiers felt about the feuding between the general and the administration, but Rable effectively mined the sources to at the very least come up with a good representation of the
range of convictions and opinions held by the fighting men.
In attempting to determine whose shoulders should bear the greatest burden of responsibility for the failed Peninsula Campaign and presumed incomplete victory at Antietam, many might be tempted to judge General McClellan's prodigiously documented and endlessly debated weaknesses as an army commander sufficient alone to outweigh the effects of political interference. However, Rable isn't terribly interested in attempting to apportion blame for what happened in the field as a result of military decisions. In the book, Rable does not revisit at any great depth the well-worn debates over strategic, operational, and tactical matters related to the relevant campaigns in Virginia and Maryland. Clearly, it's partly motivated by recognition that those topics (at least at the high command level) have already been exhaustively thrashed out in the literature, and perhaps one might speculate that Rable also did not feel his own views sufficiently fresh and different enough to merit adding another contributing data point to an already long list of them. Regardless, the conscious tactic effectively serves to remove a reader's temptation to fall back on old military-dominant explanations and arguments. By placing the "politics of war" front and center and pushing more nuts and bolts military matters into the background (though always keeping the latter under consideration in light of their important political consequences), Rable succeeds in forcing readers to fully confront and consider the reality that fractious political attitudes and actions impacted the eastern campaigns of 1862 in fundamental, and all too often detrimental, ways. It's very well done.
McClellan's final relief from command in November 1862 did nothing to stop the ceaseless political and press attacks on his character and war record, so much was its feared in those circles that McClellan might reappear in an important military command. Rable does a fine job of describing that relentless partisan atmosphere. Even so, as many scholars have conceded and Rable reaffirms, McClellan maintained significant popular appeal among Army of the Potomac officers and soldiers. The author seems to agree with those who argue that much of that support level was based on the widespread perception that McClellan prioritized the conservation of soldier lives much more than his rivals did. Arguably, the twin disasters at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville that followed McClellan's relief seemed to vindicate some of the claims made by the general's champions inside and outside the army. On the other hand, searching critics would cite the failure to completely root out "McClellanism" (whatever they might have defined that to mean) as being the principal factor behind the defeats endured by the nation's premier army after Little Mac's departure.
Rable's study offers insightful commentary on the presidential election of 1864, too. Especially after the sharp upturn in Union military fortunes by the time the 1864 election season rolled around, the peace platform that was already an albatross around presidential candidate McClellan's neck figured to doom the Democratic ticket beyond remedy. As Rable ably relates in the book, the Republican press and political machine (aided by their allies on the other side of the aisle) very effectively maintained in the minds of voters an assured equivalency between a McClellan victory and a dishonorable peace without reunion. Nothing McClellan did or said could alter that damning perception. In addition to decrying the fact that McClellan allowed his name and reputation to be attached to the widely despised peace platform, it also seems that many of the soldiers who still loved him could not, on a basic level, forgive him for becoming a politician himself, that detested class of corruptible citizen that many of those same Democrat soldier-voters held chiefly responsible for McClellan's own defeats and final removal.
By any estimation, the Lincoln-McClellan high command partnership that quickly turned adversarial was an abject failure. Obviously, George Rable's
Conflict of Command is not the first book to explore and appreciate the role partisan politics played in souring the relationship and harming the nation's war effort in its principal theater during the first eighteen months of the war, but a strong argument can be made that Rable's expansive approach to the topic has resulted in the best articulated and most complete treatment to date. As an explanatory force, it creates a strong political interpretation of the period worthy of standing alongside the more traditional military one. Reading between the lines, it's pretty clear that Rable joins the majority in favoring Lincoln's path over McClellan's, but one never gets the sense that he's being distinctly unfair to either man when it comes to characterizing their actions in a political context. That more open-minded approach to an area of study dominated by critically one-sided analysis is refreshing.
