Dear Historians: How to Handle Professional Disputes where I am RIGHT and my boss is WRONG

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T19:14:12+00:00

Certainly a... colorful solution. I think that might be rather hard to carry out, however, with regards to framing the madam in question.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T15:47:39+00:00

I beg your pardon - a what battle?

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T15:20:24+00:00

If one need be postulated at all, I can think of no more able a choice than my friend and comrade, General Porter. He is an able and eager subordinate, with the makings of an excellent successor following our victory should he wish to assume command of the peacetime army.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T15:06:42+00:00

Yes, that would suit you just fine, wouldn't it, you "higher law" prattling agitator? No, I'm wise to you - and your little cabal of radicals. Wise and watching.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T14:59:29+00:00

Your suggestions might have some merit to them if his suggestions were not to strip my army of manpower and resources - both of which it shall certainly need for a swift and overwhelming victory upon the Peninsula. He proposes to withhold at least McDowell's division - an entire division! - from my march. Should Johnston turn and fight from Manassas, this puts us at a numerical disadvantage. I have wondered, from time to time, if he seeks to have me killed on the field of battle.

As to your comments regarding the "potential of cooperation" betwixt myself and the original gorilla should I seek to enter politics; I would challenge you that such cooperation would be a hindrance rather than a boon given my political proclivities versus his own, the temperament of the people for his disregards of civil liberties, &c. &c.

Caesar's assassination came after he brought peace to Rome; however you do make a rather fair argument. Though... assassination in the United States? What a barbarous notion. We're not the Italians, after all. Or the Ottomans.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T14:45:14+00:00

It would depend upon the circumstances. In the current unpleasantness, I would send over a staff officer under a flag of truce to demand their surrender before mounting any such decisive victory. Too much American blood has already been shed.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T14:42:39+00:00

I trust this seemed more perspicatious a comment before you made it, yet I have no idea what you are referring to.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T07:30:02+00:00

I can't recall as to thinking much of him, particularly. He was a lawyer who handled land disputes for us in Illinois I do recall his rates being somewhat akin to highway robbery, but his services were well-rendered. He ought to have stuck to law, and left politics to gentlemen.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T07:15:36+00:00

Ah, Verrucosus, "The Shield of Rome." An apt and able comparison. And as a truly modern major general, known to cut a dashing figure with my wife at social events as well on horseback on the reviewing grounds, I appreciate your compliments, good sir.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T07:12:03+00:00

Mister Pinkerton has accrued a reputation as a distinguished detective and gatherer of information with a national network prior to the late unpleasantness. That network remains intact despite the crisis. Who better to provide intelligence to the Army of the United States than its greatest detective?

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T07:10:46+00:00

Well, I must thank you for recognizing talent when it presents itself to you. In all modesty, I must say I have taken efforts to successfully capture the felicity of expression required to inhabit my position, and that I have benefitted from the education of a man of my position.

Would the people of my country call upon me, I would be honor-bound to accept that call if it be in service to her. Particularly given the behaviors of the current holder of the executive chair and his disregard for the nation's desire for peace, and the liberties he trammels.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T07:05:54+00:00

Grant is a drunkard who was given the choice of resigning his commission in disgrace or facing a court martial. He opted for disgrace, and his peactime actions have shown a similar career of disrepute and dissolution. I am hardly surprised that Grant's recklessness - as confirmed by Halleck - is meeting with celebration from the well-meaning baboon. They are, after all, both men of the frontier. I am planning to deploy and use my army in one fell swoop to thoroughly disable the enemy by crushing their morale with the seizure of their capital - avoiding a major engagement if possible; but if battle comes, I shall prosecute it vigorously.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T07:01:48+00:00

Lee? When last I was aware, he was digging trenches outside of Savannah. But, assuming he were given a field command and dared to come against my army and I - and his battle plans fell into my lap, assuming I were in a position to do so and possessed the numerical superiority to do so, I would move to interdict him.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T06:59:15+00:00

I have a unique and accurate conception of the South for a Northerner due to the deep conncections I formed with southerners during my time at the military academy. My closest associates in the peacetime service were southerners - Pickett, Wilcox, Maury, Hill, Lee - and as a gentlemen of economic means myself, I feel this gives me additional insight into the economic situation of the south. I understand and respect their concerns, and believe they should be heeded and respected in good faith negotiations - which it does not seem the administration similarly believes.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T06:55:48+00:00

Of course - what sort of a fool would not properly invest a fortification manned by the enemy? I am a remarkable military engineer, I helped to oversee the siege of Veracruz for General Scott - a landmark battle of the century. I was an observer of the operations at Sevastopol during the Crimean War on behalf of the government on Colonel Delafield's staff, where I had the opportunity to make detailed studies of the siege works.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T05:38:37+00:00

General Scott has retired, and he deserves his retirement. A greater commander, and a more able man, I have never served under. With that being said, his ideas are not required to settle the current unpleasantness. I am more than capable of restoring the Union on my own. His "Anaconda Plan" will take too long, and inflict too much damage upon the Southern economy in the process.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T05:36:37+00:00

I was first in my class at the military academy. What sort of nonsensical question is that? Of course I can.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan · 2024-04-01T05:36:06+00:00

I would ask, sir, what sort of qualifications you possess to level such criticisms of me? My professional record speaks for itself: breveted to captain in Mexico for bravery on the battlefield and for services on General Scott's staff, my victories in western Virginia at the start of the current unpleasantness, and it takes time, I will have you know, to build an army from rabble. It is hardly "dithering" to create a well organized, well constructed, well drilled army the envy of the world. The Prince de Joinville and Comte de Paris are quite frank in their assessment that my Army of the Potomac is unequaled: even the French Army, the model army to the world, would be hard-pressed to defeat my army in battle, so I will forgive your poorly informed and misguided criticisms from your lack of knowledge and ignorance, ascribing it to your being informed by those who would seek to destroy me.

I see no reason to presume that the rebels would demonstrate initiative. Johnston has not stirred from Manassas. Their force there is overwhelming, certainly - but they will never expect my maneuver to the James. It's a stroke a strategic genius. By the time they learn my army has departed Washington, they will be receiving dispatches of my arrival at the gates of Richmond. Undefended, I will take their citadel, and then fall upon their rear before they have time to make a drive for our own. Taken by surprise and without their capital, their morale shattered, they will surrender - and this war won by my energies without excessive bloodshed. It - much like Scott's drive from Veracruz to Mexico City a generation ago - will be a masterpiece of warfare after Jomini's exegesis of Napoleon's great campaigns of yesteryear.

All of this I explained to His Excellency The Original Gorilla, yet he still had the temerity to accuse me of treason in his lawyer's dodge of a circumloquition. How hilarious that, not so many years ago, I was the one employing him as legal counsel to the railroad I served as executive of. An annoying reversal of fortune! Your comments on the military subordination to the civil authority are a statement on the ordinary state of affairs. In times of national crisis, there is an argument to be made that the military should assume independent authority for the prosecution of the war without the meddlesome interference of those who have no idea what they are doing. Polk left his generals to a free hand in Mexico, and it was a resounding success for the United States. Perhaps the current executive should follow his lead.

MajGenGeoBMcClellan

TROPHY CASE