Cecily Zander

Yeah, he was really great at imagining these bugbears that existed, and he could come up with a whole host of reasons in any given battle to not do something, to not take action.

He has 30,000 troops in reserve, so I can't attack, or my men are too fatigued that I can't follow up.

He was very good at making excuses for why he wasn't going to move forward.

We certainly see it after the Battle of Antietam.

The Battle of Antietam is sort of a microcosm of George McClellan's anxieties and also his failures as an army officer, not least because in the lead up to the battle, Robert E. Lee chooses to invade Maryland.

He decides to sort of pull his men, his Confederate army out of Virginia to give some relief to the Shenandoah Valley, to the Virginia planters, to the people of the state.

So he moves into Maryland.

McClellan is placed back in command of the Army of the Potomac.

He is supposed to follow Lee.

He does so quite slowly.

Lincoln was fond of saying he once commented of McClellan's sort of pacing decisions.

He had a case of the slows.

He was never in a hurry to get anywhere.

He kind of slowly follows Lee.

The one advantage to this is a bunch of his cavalry, which are the eyes and ears of the Civil War Army, stumble upon Lee's camp.

camp that had been recently abandoned by Lee and his high command.

They discover, rolled around the butt of a cigar, the entire plan for Lee's operation and the battle that was to follow.

So George McClellan knows exactly what Robert E. Lee is going to do.

He doesn't for once have to imagine Lee's plan.

He actually knows it.