Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #311977 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Synopsis
Recounts General McClellan's attempt to capture Richmond by advancing up the Virginia peninsula from Yorktown, and how the campaign failed when Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee expelled the Union forces from the peninsula.

Customer Reviews

McClellan Blenches and the Legend of R. E. Lee is Born
In the anxious days following Federal defeats at First Manassas, Big Bethel and Ball's Bluff, Lincoln was in desperate search of military leadership to take charge of the Army of the Potomac and bring victories to the Union cause. The physical security of Washington and the nation's morale and willingness to conduct war were at risk. Lincoln turned to McClellan, the "Young Napolean". The sequence of events that followed would have qualified as high comedy, except for the pall of death, suffering and human misery which fell over each blundering engagement of the great armies of North and South. As Sears so clearly and carefully explains, nothing - from the first concept of an approach on Richmond from the East at Urbanna - went according to plan, on either side. Gross conceptual errors and uncoordinated actions were endemic to both camps. Deceptions were carried out on grand scales and orders were mis-carried on even grander ones. In the end, Lee knew his opponent too well, and even though the Seven Days was one mistaken operation after another (Stonewall himself, exhausted to the point of incompetence after his famous Valley Campaign, was the biggest failure on the Confederate side) - Lee seized the initiative and thereby saved Richmond. McClellan looked and acted and talked the part of a great general - but he was hollow at the core. The image of the beaten, intimidated McClellan hiding on the gunboat Galena during the critical battles of Glendale and Malvern Hill haunts him forever. This is Sears' best work - and the best from Sears is absolutely first rate military history. This is a confusing, complex subject matter - an understanding of the politics, personalities, tactics and strategies requires thorough research and patient, lucid thought. Sears has produced the definitive work on a difficult subject. A great read.