Table of Contents

* Introduction * The Making of a Soldier * On Peacetime Service * Life in a Civilian World * The Call to War * Building an Army * General of All the Armies * The Grand Campaign * On the Peninsula * The Battle for Richmond * Impasse at Harrison's Landing * General Without an Army * Opportunity of a Lifetime * The Battle of Antietam * The Last Command * The Political Arena * Campaign for the Presidency * The Old Soldier * Epilogue: A Memoir for History * Sources and Acknowledgments * Notes * Bibliography * Index

About the Author

Stephen W. Sears is the author of The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign, and Chancellorsville. He lives in Connecticut.

Reviews

Controversial commander of the Northern army in the Civil War, Gen. George McClellan saw himself as God's chosen instrument for saving the Union. ``This masterly biography is an astonishing portrait of an egotistical crank who could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,'' commended PW. Photos. (Sept.)

Sears finds serious faults with McClellan's generalship in each of the Civil War campaigns, especially in 1862 in Virginia and at Antietam, Maryland, perhaps the turning point battle of the war. He concludes that the general's personality problems, poor leadership, and failure to realistically evaluate Confederate forces should have precluded him from holding the Union's top commands. Sears's views sharply contrast with Warren Hassler's more favorable evaluations in General George B. McClellan: Shield of the Union (1957; Greenwood, 1974. reprint). Engagingly written and thoroughly researched, Sears's persuasive critique is the best and most complete biography of this controversial general. Joseph G. Dawson III, Texas A&M Univ., College Station