>The weeks following Seven Pines went by. The high June sun beat down on the sweltering swamps around Richmond, many men fell ill, and the putrid odor of hundreds of unburied bodies at the Seven Pines battlefield lingered in the air. Robert E. Lee was scraping together reinforcements, every last available man was being sent to bolster his army and when everyone was there he would have a maximum of 80,000 men on the field. For a good deal of the month his numbers were well below that and the Confederate trenches were not nearly as sophisticated as they would be two years later.>The Army of the Potomac meanwhile was well-dug in and had significant advantages in manpower and equipment, yet McClellan continued to procrastinate. Every day he promised to move out as soon as everything was ready or so-and-so division arrived, but nothing ever happened. It was clear that he could not bring himself to launch an attack.
>Not helping matters was the intelligence info provided by Allan Pinkerton, probably one of the most inept intelligence outfits in the history of the US military, which affirmed that Lee had between 130,000 and 150,000 men in front of Richmond. This lapse in data was inexcusable--up in Washington, Postmaster General Montgomery Meigs was carefully scanning Richmond newspapers for announcements of Confederate brigades and regiments arriving, and from this he came up with a quite accurate assessment of Lee's manpower. The Pinkerton figures, absurd as they were, were believed by McClellan because he wanted to believe them, and as the saying goes, the carcass rots from the head down. The exaggerated reports of Lee's strength were taken as gospel by army headquarters and pretty soon the entire army was believing them.
McCuck was a cuck.
Perhaps worst for McClellan's posterity, he made a declaration on the news of Lee's elevation to command that is perhaps one of the great examples of psychological projection in all of human history:"I prefer Lee to Johnston. The former is too weak and cautious under grave responsibility - personally brave and energetic to a fault, he yet is wanting in moral firmness when pressed by heavy responsibility and is likely to be timid and irresolute in action."
>>18114121in the context of that time it seemed accurate, Lee was not then an especially respected general. he had lost a campaign in West Virginia the previous summer to McClellan, no less and had since then not held a field command and was serving as Davis's military advisor until assuming command of ANV. the Confederate troops also did not warm to him at first, he was derided as "Granny Lee" for his directives to dig trenches.
>McClellan was not going to have an opportunity to strike much longer. Lee had no intention of sitting waiting to be devoured and like Albert Sidney Johnson at Shiloh vowed to crush his enemy before they crushed him. He knew McClellan's right flank was isolated and exposed, and so in the third week of June he sent Jeb Stuart to scan around that flank and find out exactly what was there. The dashing young general rode his cavalry completely around the Army of the Potomac, getting the information he wanted while eluding a bungled chase by Yankee horsemen.>It should be noited that the Confederate cavalry were organized as brigades while the Army of the Potomac's cavalry was ineffectively set up as one regiment assigned to each infantry brigade and so couldn't possibly get together enough numbers to take on Stuart. Meanwhile, Lee was planning to throw the bulk of his army entirely upon the isolated Union right north of the Chickahominy, a single army corps led by McClellan's favorite Fitz-John Porter. Most of the Army of the Potomac, nearly 70,000 men, lay south of the river to face 20,000 Confederates under John Magruder. These men were the only thing blocking the road into Richmond and all would be lost if McClellan ever found this out. But Lee was a gambler and willing to believe McClellan would do nothing.
>>18113691if he was alive today he would have eventually transitioned
>>18114121This seems to have been a running theme with him. On some level he must've been aware he was chickenshit, claiming to be outnumbered all the time may have been an excuse. Still a smart guy and the most beloved Northern general of the war though.
>>18114910They were all pretty woke, but the only Union leaders I'd ascribe that dishonor to would be Adm. Porter and *especially* Gen. Butler.
>>18113639
>>18113691he was a south sympatizer but knew the south couldn't win in the long run. so he just stalled as much as possible.
The antebellum army officer corps in general were mostly Democrats and they tended to admire the South and found its society preferable to the North's. Some of them just couldn't reconcile their beliefs with the Lincoln Administration's and fell by the wayside.
