As a fighting man, McClellan ranks at or near the bottom of all Civil War generals. Time and again during the Peninsula Campaign battles, he was either distant from the battlefront or else riding back and forth and accomplishing very little. Nothing in his previous military career had suggested he would be such a dismal failure as a battlefield commander. And yet.…

As a military organizer, McClellan ranks at or near the top. No other Union general ever kept so many men constantly in a good state of order or so well supplied.