On this day in 1961 POTUS Abraham Lincoln replaced the aging General Winfield Scott with young General George B. McClellan aka The Young Napoleon aka Little Mac. McClellan would be a great disappointment. He was great at training the Army of the Potomac for battle but was a very cautious general. He always claimed he was outnumbered by his opponent for example. He was always looking for some reason to avoid fighting. The soldiers loved McClellan. Lincoln would fire McClellan and then bring him back again briefly before firing him for the second and final time. McClellan was also extremely arrogant which doesn’t help his standing in history.
slicethelife 
He also had a spotty reputation with the various Indian tribes.
Wasn’t another problem for McClellan his so-called intel department? The name Alan Pinkerton seems to stick in my memory. Didn’t his ‘detective agency’ constantly over-estimate the number of Confederate troops facing McClellan? One result of this was that general’s constant reluctance to attack Lee – plus a constant whinging to Lincoln that he needed more men.
The run-up to Antietam in 1862 is a classic example of this. With the missing copy of Lee’s orders in his hand, McClellan had the chance to defeat the widely spread out Army of Northern Virginia piece by piece. Instead, he waited eighteen hours and missed an opportunity that could have ended the war early.
Yes he was getting faulty info..but I don’t think it would have mattered.. he wasn’t a figthing general…
Definitely… Loved parades though apparently. I often thought that if you put say Grant at one end of the spectrum, McClellan would be at the other.
Grant called McClellan one of the great mysteries of the war..