5 Generals Who Got In Trouble With Their Chief
5. George McClellan
As an organizer and logistician, Union General George Brinton McClellan was a godsend to the Army of the Potomac, early in the American Civil War. The scholarly, well-traveled veteran of the Mexican War and former instructor at West Point was just what the Union, stunned by unexpected defeats by the Confederacy, needed to whip its forces into trim. Even though McClellan himself had been mauled by Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee in the Seven Days Battle, his assumption of command from the defeated General Pope was met with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, he was unused to supreme command. He was as overcautious in the field as he was meticulous behind the lines, time and again allowing Lee to slip away. He complained of lack of support, and consistently overestimated the enemy’s strength. President Abraham Lincoln began to lose patience with him, sending increasingly tart orders for him to get moving: “Are you not overcautious when you assume that you cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing?” “I beg to assure you that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can. But you must act.” Finally, he was relieved and replaced by General Burnside. He ran and lost against Lincoln for President in 1864, later served as governor of New Jersey, and died of heart failure in 1885
