The fate of the Union had been placed in the hands of a little man with a big opinion of himself, General George B. McClellan. Well credentialed, from a wealthy family, McClellan had graduated near the top of his class at West Point, proved himself a brilliant logistician in the Mexican War and run a railroad in the private sector—all before his fortieth birthday. But he never mastered the military discipline of keeping his nonmilitary thoughts to himself. He despised abolitionists. “Help me dodge the nigger—we want nothing to do with him,” he wrote one high-ranking political friend. “I am
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