To the Gates of Richmond Quotes

“Henry Halleck was a pedant and a military bureaucrat, but he was not an easy man to fool,”
― Stephen W. Sears, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign

“Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory took a different view. “The Great McClelland the young Napoleon,” Mallory told his wife, “now like a whipped cur lies on the banks of the James River crouched under his Gun Boats.”
― Stephen W. Sears, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign

“Malvern Hill was clearly a battle General Lee did not intend to be fought the way it was fought, and it demonstrated once again his lack of effective control over his lieutenants”
― Stephen W. Sears, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign

“the essential fault lay with the Confederacy’s failure to have produced a single good map of the approaches to its own capital.”
― Stephen W. Sears, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign

“While he correctly judged General McClellan to be defensive-minded, it did not occur to him that General McClellan would give up so easily: that after a single battle—which the Federals won—he would decide to abandon his campaign, cut his losses, and run for safety.”
― Stephen W. Sears, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign

“Certainly that thought did not enter into McClellan’s calculations. He continued thinking only in terms of how much he might salvage from defeat.”
― Stephen W. Sears, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign

“G. W. Smith had failed Robert E. Lee’s test for command in battle, and from that verdict there was no appeal.”
― Stephen W. Sears, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign

“Joe Johnston was not a general noted for his attention to detail, and Seven Pines would demonstrate how careless he could be.”
― Stephen W. Sears, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign

“George McClellan’s conviction that he was forever outnumbered was the one constant of his military character.”
― Stephen W. Sears, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign

“I prefer Lee to Johnston,” he explained. To his mind, General Lee was “too cautious & weak under grave responsibility . . . wanting in moral firmness when pressed by heavy responsibility & is likely to be timid & irresolute in action.”
― Stephen W. Sears, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign