By way of compromise, I’ve added Brian Burton’s Extraordinary Circumstances to the cart. Thanks. Maybe I can be dissuaded from my feeling that George McClellan was the Joe Johnston of the North!

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You’re very welcome. The Peninsula and Petersburg happen to be the two campaigns I’ve probably studied the most lately, and The Peninsula Campaign is probably my favorite. The Beatie series is definitely not for everyone. I think there will probably end up being something like 12 volumes if the current pace keeps up. I’d highly recommend Brian K. Burton ‘s (I think?) book on the Seven Days. It goes into quite a bit of tactical detail but isn’t always so hyper-critical of McClellan like Sears is.

Cool. I figured my emails had just been flagged as spam or something. I’ll go take a look at your comment now.

Brett

Thanks so much for your response. My Peninsula Campaign knowledge is limited to Stephen Sears and the like. I’m always happy to encounter a good revisionist history, but I’m still going to have to think about 700+ pages covering such a brief period!

I’m not dissing you. My original email is so deluged with junk that I shudder to visit it. I’ll send you another via your contact us link.

I agree that McClellan simply was not forthcoming enough with his government and it cost him in the end. Jackson’s meddling in the Valley was just the icing on the cake.

At this point in the campaign (late March-early May 1862), McClellan was certainly not outnumbered, and Beatie does not claim that to the best of my knowledge in the book. However, I do agree with Dimitri (and Stephen Newton, see his Joseph E. Johnston and the Defense of Richmond for details) that McClellan was outnumbered by the Seven Days once Jackson’s Valley Army joined Lee.

That’s an excellent, and I believe valid, point. In this volume, Beatie doesn’t really go into the underlying assumptions for the end of the campaign because he has only covered the first portion of it. I’m hoping to see much more of that in Volume 4.

Volume 3 strikes me mainly as a discussion of the issues faced by McClellan first in getting the campaign started, and then (more importantly) during his advance up the Peninsula culminating in the rear guard action at Williamsburg. This volume went into far more tactical detail than the first two. I’m wondering if this is going to continue for the Seven Days. If so, this is going to be a MASSIVE series of books…

BTW, I’ve been trying to contact you by email. Did you get any of those at your AOL address?

Brett

I suppose my instinct is to defend Lincoln, but if a military expert wants to achieve a certain configuration of forces, and he knows his Commander in Chief is a military neophyte who is worried about defending the seat of government, doesn’t common sense suggest that the expert takes the risk if he fails to communicate adequately with his C-in-C?

Sorry to bombard you with questions — I hope you understand it’s a complement — but I wonder about a couple of of other points.

Does the book shed any light on the numbers issue? Dimitri contends (if I understand him correctly – not always easy) that McClellan was outnumbered (or was equally numbered?) on the Peninsula. Any insights?

It’s struck me as a weakness of McClellan that he seemed to believe that he could win the war by capturing a place — as opposed to Grant, who believed that the way to win was by destroying the enemy’s armies. Does the book discuss the assumptions underlying McClellan’s campaign and analyze their validity?

Hope I’m not driving you nuts!

You’re welcome! I should have rread the book and written this review a long time ago. My “to read” pile is growing exponentially, unfortunately.

It is all Beatie’s premise other than my paragraph discussing Beatie’s tendency to give Little Mac the benefit of the doubt. I need to be more explicit in my reviews as to what is my viewpoint and what is the authors. It’s something I can and will work on in future reviews.

I tend to agree with you. McClellan just simply didn’t share his plans enough with Lincoln at a time when it was crucial that he did so, forcing Lincoln to act with the information he did receive, both from McClellan and from other sources.

At the same time, I do believe Lincoln overreacted, a) in keeping the sheer number of troops he kept from McClellan and b) in not appointing one commander to command a combined force to deal with Jackson.

In the end, I still think McClellan was a sub par battlefield commander, no matter which way Beatie (or anyone else) slices it.

Brett

Thanks for the review. Certainly food for thought.

Accepting your (and/or the book’s) major premise, I still wonder how many of these problems McClellan brought on himself. For example, did Lincoln perhaps reasonably interfere because McClellan never took the time or effort to explain why or how the capital would be safe even if McDowell’s entire force were brought down? My impression has been that McClellan was always his own worst enemy in this respect.

No problem! I was happy to write it. I have enjoyed the series so far and look forward to future volumes.

Brett

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