Washington, DC
October 1863
His desk seemed to fill half the room. It was solid, substantial, and functional. Not unlike the man, he mused. He sat in a deep, plush leather chair before it, bolt upright, back straight, feet flat on the ground. General George McClellan had been staring at his desk for the better part of an hour, deep in thought. Light streamed in through the windows, and a low fire burned in the fireplace, both adding their warmth to the wood and leather furnishings and insulating him from the chilly autumn morning.
McClellan raised his eyes and looked around. The room told a story of his professional life up to that point. It was the room of a man of substance and accomplishment. The size, the look, the smell, the decor, all lent a heavy air of achievement, quality, and prosperity. McClellan took quick stock of the various objects, each reminding him of how far he’d come and how much he’d already accomplished at just thirty-six. The sword he’d worn as a young officer in Mexico. Another, far fancier, inlaid with gold and delicately carved, which had been a gift from British officers in the Crimea. On the table were the books on cavalry tactics and use of the bayonet, both of which he’d authored before he was thirty. Slung over the back of a chair was the polished saddle which bore his name. The walls featured maps of bold military expeditions to the Red River and to Washington Territory, and paintings of magnificent steam engines from his time as a railroad executive. This inventory, undertaken a dozen times a day, took mere seconds and filled him with pride, but always ended with that feeling of emptiness, of unfinished business. The room contained few reminders of his greatest achievements, leading the Union Army to grand but poorly appreciated victories in western Virginia, on the Virginia Peninsula, before Richmond, and at Antietam. Unfinished business.
McClellan had always known it was his destiny to save the Union and crush the rebellion. That destiny had been thwarted, delayed, interrupted twice by the incompetent buffoon in the President’s House. He became angry at the thought. Fired twice by Abraham Lincoln, both times on the verge of launching grand offensives that would have led to sweeping and decisive victories in the field. He knew it. His soldiers knew it. The public knew it. Only Lincoln couldn’t see it. He could feel the heat rise in his face and his neck, and he began to perspire.
His brief tour of his study complete, the general’s eyes returned to his desk. Side by side lay two telegrams. He had read each a dozen times already, and he read them again. One had originated just a couple of blocks away, at the Executive Mansion, and was signed A. Lincoln. He could have sent a handwritten note, by God, or delivered the message himself. That would have been the proper and manly thing to do. The other telegram, from New York, was signed by Governor Horatio Seymour, one of the country’s most prominent Democratic Party politicians.
Each telegram, read separately, might offer McClellan the opportunity to fulfill his destiny. Together, they complicated his life, and perhaps the fate of the country, beyond measure.
Lincoln’s telegram offered McClellan, again, the position at the head of all Union armies. At least that was the general’s assumption. McClellan was respectfully requested to attend the president at 9:00 a.m. the following day on a matter of the greatest import for the nation. It couldn’t mean anything else.
He studied the message with Talmudic attention, but Lincoln gave nothing away, offered no hint of apology for his previous treatment of McClellan. Fair enough. There will be time and opportunity to take care of that, and revenge and vindication will be all the sweeter for the wait, McClellan mused.
While the first telegram offered the prospect of setting history to rights, and tacitly recognized what the general and others already knew—that only McClellan could save the Union on the battlefield—the second telegram was a surprise. Seymour offered nothing less than the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in the upcoming election of 1864, still a year in the future.
For the tenth time in the space of an hour, McClellan weighed the opportunities. Returning to the field and destroying the Rebel armies would assure his rightful place in history, at the very top of the heap. Washington. McClellan. Or perhaps McClellan. Washington.
But the Democrats were offering an even greater opportunity. The chance to crush Lincoln at the polls. They didn’t specifically state that he could simultaneously be commander in chief and general of the armies. But why not? Napoleon had led the nation and the French Army. Couldn’t McClellan, the Young Napoleon, do the same?
There was a light tap on the door and Nelly peeked in. Smiling, elegant, straight to the point. A soldier’s wife.
“Are you coming down, George? Dinner’s been ready this half hour. Perhaps you can do me the courtesy of joining me at the table and explaining why couriers have been coming and going all day and why you have that look in your eye.”
And a sharp tongue, he thought, but smiling to himself. Nothing gets past her.
“I’ll be right down. I need to draft a short message. Five minutes.”
The door closed gently, and he heard the stairs creak as Nelly returned to the dining room. She was accustomed to waiting, and he was accustomed to making her wait.
An hour earlier it had seemed an impossible choice. But now it was clear. There was only one thing to be done. McClellan dipped his pen in the well and put it to paper. Mr. President, he began.