Person1826 – 1885

George B. McClellan

Also called: George McClellan

Union general who built the Army of the Potomac but was overcautious; he checked Lee at Antietam and lost the 1864 election to Lincoln as the Democratic candidate

Second in his class at West Point, he was a railway executive when the war brought him back to the army. After First Bull Run he forged the Army of the Potomac into a well-drilled force that loved him, but he overestimated enemy numbers and put off attacking, to Lincoln’s exasperation. His Peninsula Campaign of 1862 came close to Richmond before falling back, and after stopping Lee at Antietam without pursuing him he was dismissed in November. He lost to Lincoln as the Democratic candidate in 1864, and later served as governor of New Jersey.

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1862Battle of Antietamcommander
McClellan’s Union army stopped Lee’s invasion of the North at Sharpsburg, Maryland; with some 23,000 casualties it was the bloodiest single day in American history.

People who appear alongside

Robert E. Lee1807 – 1870
Confederate general who led the Army of Northern Virginia to many victories, lost at Gettysburg and surrendered at Appomattox in 1865
Stonewall Jackson1824 – 1863
Confederate general who earned the name “Stonewall” at First Bull Run and was mortally wounded by his own men at Chancellorsville
Abraham Lincoln1809 – 1865
16th US president (1861–1865) who preserved the Union in the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation; assassinated just after the war ended

Themes this person appears in

The American Civil War1850 – 1865
From the Compromise of 1850 to Lincoln’s assassination — a nation divided over slavery fought four years of civil war, preserving the Union and ending slavery