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chapter฀seven The Peninsula Lee and McClellan Leave Their Legacies ฀฀ The Confederate victory at First Manassas had chastened, even humiliated , Union pretensions to military prowess, but the northern war effort only girded itself for further and much more impressive efforts. Confederate activity in contrast stagnated during the following winter, leading to a series of catastrophes during the early campaigns of 1862. The fledgling nation saw most of Tennessee fall into Federal hands, a Confederate counterstrike in the western theater shattered at Shiloh in April, and New Orleans fall later that month. In Virginia, George B. McClellan, the first commander of what was now known as the Army of the Potomac, stood at the gates of Richmond by the summer of 1862. After the Seven Days, a series of battles between June 25 and July 1, Lee’s own newly christened Army of Northern Virginia relieved Richmond from imminent investment and collapse. McClellan’s strategic repulse gave rise to and anticipated many of the war’s most important general characteristics in the eastern theater: a dysfunctional Federal military and civilian high command marked by mutual distrust and infighting; the overwhelming prominence of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at the very core of Confederate nationhood; and the establishment of an aggressive culture of command among Lee’s officers and men that would bring its more cautious Federal counterpart to grief more times than not throughout the remainder of the war. Lee successfully expelled McClellan from his near stranglehold on Richmond despite the latter’s reliance on earthworks and the larger number of rifled infantry arms among McClellan’s troops. Although, on a tactical level, the Peninsula campaign foreshadowed many of the elements that mark the Overland campaign’s supposed similarity to the western front of World War I, Lee acquired decisive strategic results. He launched assault after assault on entrenchments—most resulting in grievous losses 135  the฀peninsula for the Confederates. Yet, by the end of the campaign, Lee had clearly gained the upper hand. Grant did the same during the Overland campaign with far less telling results, although from a military perspective he did manage to force Lee into a slow demise by siege. These different outcomes had less to do with battlefield technology than with the decided superiority in combat leadership and morale that the Army of Northern Virginia had acquired and maintained over its opponent in the intervening two years. That military superiority originated for the most part in the character of two men: Robert E. Lee and George B. McClellan. The decisions of generals have profound consequences on the battlefield, such that, in the words of one Federal officer, “the personal character of a general officer in moments of difficulty has a powerful influence upon the result.”1 Lee won the strategic and psychological victory during the Seven Days that began the process by which the Army of Northern Virginia would acquire its famed élan and offensive spirit. That victory resulted in large part from McClellan’s cautious temperament, which put him at a severe disadvantage to the aggressive Lee. For all the numerous organizational problems that bedeviled the Confederate armies, along with its substantial losses, McClellan’s withdrawal to the James made it possible for Lee to begin the process of stamping the Army of Northern Virginia with his distinctive command style and temperament. This fortuitous development for the Confederacy overrode the strength of McClellan’s position and the grievous causalities he inflicted on Lee’s troops while fighting on the defensive and utilizing entrenchments. The overall weakness of army organization among both Federals and Confederates in all theaters between First Bull Run and the Seven Days allowed Lee and McClellan to preside over the crucial formative moments of their armies’ respective martial cultures. Every army struggled to find its organizational footing during this period, which made its early commanders all the more important. By 1864 Lee’s army could still maintain its advantages in leadership and competence despite grievous attrition among its original core of commanders, while even Grant’s personal presence could not totally overcome the Army of the Potomac’s ingrained culture of caution. In the western theater, however, Federal troops benefited from generals far superior to their Confederate counterparts. AngloAmerican antimilitarism had created a situation where the Union and Confederacy had to build field armies out of whole cloth, and old army men—with all their individual virtues and vices—wove that uniform [3.15.229.164] Project MUSE (2024-04-26...

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