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Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War
Conflict of Command: George McClellan, Abraham Lincoln, and the Politics of War
The fraught relationship between Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan is well known, so much so that many scholars rarely question the standard narrative casting the two as foils, with the Great Emancipator inevitably coming out on top over his supposedly feckless commander. In Conflict of Command , acclaimed Civil War historian George C. Rable rethinks that stance, providing a new understanding of the interaction between the president and his leading wartime general by reinterpreting the political aspects of their partnership.
Rable pays considerable attention to Lincoln’s cabinet, Congress, and newspaper editorials, revealing the role each played in shaping the dealings between the two men. While he surveys McClellan’s military campaigns as commander of the Army of the Potomac, Rable focuses on the political fallout of the fighting rather than the tactical details. This broadly conceived approach highlights the army officers and enlisted men who emerged as citizen-soldiers and political actors.
Most accounts of the Lincoln-McClellan feud solely examine one of the two individuals, and the vast majority adopt a steadfast pro-Lincoln position. Taking a more neutral view, Rable deftly shows how the relationship between the two developed in a political context and ultimately failed spectacularly, profoundly altering the course of the Civil War itself.
Rable pays considerable attention to Lincoln’s cabinet, Congress, and newspaper editorials, revealing the role each played in shaping the dealings between the two men. While he surveys McClellan’s military campaigns as commander of the Army of the Potomac, Rable focuses on the political fallout of the fighting rather than the tactical details. This broadly conceived approach highlights the army officers and enlisted men who emerged as citizen-soldiers and political actors.
Most accounts of the Lincoln-McClellan feud solely examine one of the two individuals, and the vast majority adopt a steadfast pro-Lincoln position. Taking a more neutral view, Rable deftly shows how the relationship between the two developed in a political context and ultimately failed spectacularly, profoundly altering the course of the Civil War itself.
496 pages, Hardcover
Published August 30, 2023
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About the author
George C. Rable
15 books3 followersGeorge C. Rable is the Charles Summersell Professor of Southern History at the University of Alabama.
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March 15, 2024
It's easy to write a book criticizing Union General George McClellan - it's been done on countless occasions. And from time to time, a revisionist might take the opposite view in an attempt to rehabilitate him. But is it possible to write a completely neutral account of McClellan's wartime actions, by focusing on his troubled relationship with his commander-in-chief Abraham Lincoln? Rable gives it a try here.
In one sense he succeeds, because the book does manage to remain assiduously neutral. But that's both a strength and a fault. On the one hand, Rable aims to look at both McClellan and Lincoln in the context of their times rather than through the modern eyes of those who know how things turned out. Both were criticized and controversial among contemporaries, until the ultimate Union victory that vindicated Lincoln, and the assassination that martyred him, ended up solidifying the permanent narrative of Lincoln as the hero and McClellan as the pesky, vain, ineffective thorn in his side.
So Rable backtracks to tell their story before the good guy/bad guy narrative took hold. But what might have been a revelatory new look at the relationship that challenges our assumptions, instead often comes across as an almost indifferently even-handed primer that makes no judgments, reaches no conclusions, and matter-of-factly summarizes much of what we already know.
That’s not to say it’s bad, because as a neutral, matter-of-fact summary of what is generally familiar to anyone who has read about Lincoln and McClellan, it’s pretty good. At the beginning of the war, Lincoln was no military genius, and McClellan was not an indecisive general reluctant to fight. The closest Rable comes to passing judgment on the two is to observe that Lincoln ultimately grew in his role, while McClellan largely did not.
Yet to focus only on each man’s strengths and weaknesses, their successes and mistakes, and their deteriorating relationship, would obscure the larger story. Rable describes a swirl of political backbiting, leaks to the press, and endless rumors about who was responsible for the Union’s lackluster performance during the first full year of the war, and who in the Cabinet or the Army would be fired and take the fall for it. Lincoln and McClellan grew increasingly frustrated with each other, but so too did much of the country.
Rable’s neutrality does sometimes start to stray into the realm of bothsidesism, as though both men were somehow two sides of the same flawed coin. He states that both “sought to avoid confrontations, often put off decisions, and allowed others to sow seeds of discord.” He cites Ulysses Grant as observing that “no commander was likely to succeed this early in the conflict,” while Lincoln was not exactly succeeding in feeling his way through being commander-in-chief. And he observes himself that “McClellan matched Lincoln's military naivete with a remarkable and often willful obliviousness to political realities.”
But he avoids making any judgments - or even citing others’ judgments - about who was correct and who could have done better in certain circumstances. Was McClellan really too timid? Should Lincoln really have done more to send more troops if that’s what McClellan insisted he needed to strike a decisive blow against the Confederate Army? Curiously, the book’s end notes are filled with instances of what Rable calls “persuasive arguments” made by other authors and historians, both for and against Lincoln and McClellan. Yet he largely avoids incorporating any of these arguments into his narrative, instead burying them where few will actually see them.
One place in particular where bringing some of these end note observations into his narrative would have improved it, is when he quotes McClellan’s well-known telegram blaming Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and the administration for the failure of his Peninsula Campaign. Lore has it that a War Department telegrapher censored the last two lines of the insolent message, which read in part, "I owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army." Rable quotes it in full and describes Stanton and Lincoln’s reaction to the message, implicitly rejecting the belief that they never actually saw those last two lines. Only in an end note does he explain that he agrees with historian William Marvel’s “persuasively argued” assertion in his biography of Stanton that those lines were not actually censored and Stanton and Lincoln did actually see them. I had to dig up an online copy of Marvel’s book to read his “persuasively argued” assertion myself, since Rable doesn’t elaborate on it and just accepts it as fact in his text.
I don’t know a lot about William Marvel except that he is a revisionist Civil War historian who presents a contrarian view of conventional narratives, and finds plenty of fault with Lincoln, Stanton and the like. I don’t know a lot about George Rable either, except that he cites Marvel a lot in his end notes, and Marvel is the very first person he thanks in his acknowledgments. So it gets me wondering whether Rable’s goal of being “neutral” toward McClellan and Lincoln is, in effect, a sly way to knock Lincoln down a few pegs and lift McClellan up accordingly, in order to equalize them and examine them on the same level.
Back to the book, though, where Rable wisely continues the story of the McClellan-Lincoln relationship, and doesn’t end it, after Lincoln finally dismisses him. McClellan never really goes away, continuing to hover over the war and loom over Lincoln, as the subject of countless rumors by those opposed to Lincoln's conduct of the war that he would be reinstated. Instead, McClellan ends up running for president against Lincoln, and Rable thoroughly covers the campaigning from both sides, as the divided Democrats and the seemingly reluctant candidate McClellan still somehow seem to come close to winning.
The book is about the Lincoln-McClellan relationship, so it ends after the election and Lincoln’s death. It feels like an epilogue might have been appropriate, though, to complete McClellan's story and examine how the two men’s reputations evolved and ultimately calcified, to the point that Rable thought a reexamination of their reputations and relationship was necessary. Ultimately, though, his narrative is so neutral that it feels somewhat flat. The “here are the facts, you decide” approach is informational enough, but it feels incomplete and unsatisfactory, when he could have offered some of his own reasoned judgments, or at the very least a discussion of the various judgments that others have reached. As a neutral, noncommittal, nonjudgmental, factual narrative, this is fine. But for anyone seeking deeper insights, this is a mere starting point and not the final word.
In one sense he succeeds, because the book does manage to remain assiduously neutral. But that's both a strength and a fault. On the one hand, Rable aims to look at both McClellan and Lincoln in the context of their times rather than through the modern eyes of those who know how things turned out. Both were criticized and controversial among contemporaries, until the ultimate Union victory that vindicated Lincoln, and the assassination that martyred him, ended up solidifying the permanent narrative of Lincoln as the hero and McClellan as the pesky, vain, ineffective thorn in his side.
So Rable backtracks to tell their story before the good guy/bad guy narrative took hold. But what might have been a revelatory new look at the relationship that challenges our assumptions, instead often comes across as an almost indifferently even-handed primer that makes no judgments, reaches no conclusions, and matter-of-factly summarizes much of what we already know.
That’s not to say it’s bad, because as a neutral, matter-of-fact summary of what is generally familiar to anyone who has read about Lincoln and McClellan, it’s pretty good. At the beginning of the war, Lincoln was no military genius, and McClellan was not an indecisive general reluctant to fight. The closest Rable comes to passing judgment on the two is to observe that Lincoln ultimately grew in his role, while McClellan largely did not.
Yet to focus only on each man’s strengths and weaknesses, their successes and mistakes, and their deteriorating relationship, would obscure the larger story. Rable describes a swirl of political backbiting, leaks to the press, and endless rumors about who was responsible for the Union’s lackluster performance during the first full year of the war, and who in the Cabinet or the Army would be fired and take the fall for it. Lincoln and McClellan grew increasingly frustrated with each other, but so too did much of the country.
Rable’s neutrality does sometimes start to stray into the realm of bothsidesism, as though both men were somehow two sides of the same flawed coin. He states that both “sought to avoid confrontations, often put off decisions, and allowed others to sow seeds of discord.” He cites Ulysses Grant as observing that “no commander was likely to succeed this early in the conflict,” while Lincoln was not exactly succeeding in feeling his way through being commander-in-chief. And he observes himself that “McClellan matched Lincoln's military naivete with a remarkable and often willful obliviousness to political realities.”
But he avoids making any judgments - or even citing others’ judgments - about who was correct and who could have done better in certain circumstances. Was McClellan really too timid? Should Lincoln really have done more to send more troops if that’s what McClellan insisted he needed to strike a decisive blow against the Confederate Army? Curiously, the book’s end notes are filled with instances of what Rable calls “persuasive arguments” made by other authors and historians, both for and against Lincoln and McClellan. Yet he largely avoids incorporating any of these arguments into his narrative, instead burying them where few will actually see them.
One place in particular where bringing some of these end note observations into his narrative would have improved it, is when he quotes McClellan’s well-known telegram blaming Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and the administration for the failure of his Peninsula Campaign. Lore has it that a War Department telegrapher censored the last two lines of the insolent message, which read in part, "I owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army." Rable quotes it in full and describes Stanton and Lincoln’s reaction to the message, implicitly rejecting the belief that they never actually saw those last two lines. Only in an end note does he explain that he agrees with historian William Marvel’s “persuasively argued” assertion in his biography of Stanton that those lines were not actually censored and Stanton and Lincoln did actually see them. I had to dig up an online copy of Marvel’s book to read his “persuasively argued” assertion myself, since Rable doesn’t elaborate on it and just accepts it as fact in his text.
I don’t know a lot about William Marvel except that he is a revisionist Civil War historian who presents a contrarian view of conventional narratives, and finds plenty of fault with Lincoln, Stanton and the like. I don’t know a lot about George Rable either, except that he cites Marvel a lot in his end notes, and Marvel is the very first person he thanks in his acknowledgments. So it gets me wondering whether Rable’s goal of being “neutral” toward McClellan and Lincoln is, in effect, a sly way to knock Lincoln down a few pegs and lift McClellan up accordingly, in order to equalize them and examine them on the same level.
Back to the book, though, where Rable wisely continues the story of the McClellan-Lincoln relationship, and doesn’t end it, after Lincoln finally dismisses him. McClellan never really goes away, continuing to hover over the war and loom over Lincoln, as the subject of countless rumors by those opposed to Lincoln's conduct of the war that he would be reinstated. Instead, McClellan ends up running for president against Lincoln, and Rable thoroughly covers the campaigning from both sides, as the divided Democrats and the seemingly reluctant candidate McClellan still somehow seem to come close to winning.
The book is about the Lincoln-McClellan relationship, so it ends after the election and Lincoln’s death. It feels like an epilogue might have been appropriate, though, to complete McClellan's story and examine how the two men’s reputations evolved and ultimately calcified, to the point that Rable thought a reexamination of their reputations and relationship was necessary. Ultimately, though, his narrative is so neutral that it feels somewhat flat. The “here are the facts, you decide” approach is informational enough, but it feels incomplete and unsatisfactory, when he could have offered some of his own reasoned judgments, or at the very least a discussion of the various judgments that others have reached. As a neutral, noncommittal, nonjudgmental, factual narrative, this is fine. But for anyone seeking deeper insights, this is a mere starting point and not the final word.
October 6, 2023
I expected a lot more from this book. It does provide a balanced narrative to counterbalance the Lincoln hagiographies that unfairly demonize McClellan, but it provides no new insights to anyone already familiar with the Harsh/Rafuse/Rowland/Stotelmyer rehabilitation of McClellan's reputation.
The real problem is the failure to provide any analysis. Rable is discussing probably the most contentious and critical relationship of the war (on the Unionist side, at least), but he simply refuses to say where one was correct and other wrong. Even a black and white issue, for example the order to remove McClellan's army from Harrison's Landing after the Seven Days battles: Rable never gets down to brass tacks and analyzes whether that decision was right or not. It's the same for all the other issues between the two.
As a result, the book devolves into a narrative, at some times a tedious litany of quotes from private letters and newspapers. This soldier doesn't like what McClellan did; this newspaper editorial criticized what Lincoln did; this politician supported McClellan; this civilian supported Lincoln.
Some of the 1864 election narrative will be of interest to those unfamiliar with the details. I thought the post-war narrative of McClellan was incomplete; his being elected governor of New Jersey is not even mentioned, but I suppose Lincoln was long gone by then.
The real problem is the failure to provide any analysis. Rable is discussing probably the most contentious and critical relationship of the war (on the Unionist side, at least), but he simply refuses to say where one was correct and other wrong. Even a black and white issue, for example the order to remove McClellan's army from Harrison's Landing after the Seven Days battles: Rable never gets down to brass tacks and analyzes whether that decision was right or not. It's the same for all the other issues between the two.
As a result, the book devolves into a narrative, at some times a tedious litany of quotes from private letters and newspapers. This soldier doesn't like what McClellan did; this newspaper editorial criticized what Lincoln did; this politician supported McClellan; this civilian supported Lincoln.
Some of the 1864 election narrative will be of interest to those unfamiliar with the details. I thought the post-war narrative of McClellan was incomplete; his being elected governor of New Jersey is not even mentioned, but I suppose Lincoln was long gone by then.
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