When the war began, George Brinton McClellan (1826–1885) was the brightest of the young and rising stars. A graduate of West Point, he had served in the Mexican War, specializing in artillery. This concentration only increased when he served as an unofficial observer of British and French forces in the Crimean War. The son of a prominent Philadelphia physician, married to wealth, McClellan was both prosperous and successful when the war began. Unlike Grant or Sherman, he did not “need” the war.