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Mistakes That Helped Shape U.S. into What it Is Today

Khalid Elhassan October 16, 2019 34 min

17. The General Who Snatched Defeat From the Jaws of Victory by Mistaking His Enemy’s Strength

Union General George B. McClellan was a great organizer, but he was no fighter and was excessively cautious. In March of 1862, McClellan outflanked the Confederate main army in Northern Virginia by landing 121,000 men on the Virginia Peninsula to the south, between the James and York rivers. The goal was to march up the Peninsula and capture Richmond before the Confederates had time to rush in reinforcements to protect their capital.

Things went smoothly at first, as McClellan successfully disembarked with no difficulty, and began marching to Richmond. The only opposition standing between his forces and Richmond were 12,000 Confederates at Yorktown, commanded by John B. Magruder. Outnumbered 10 to 1 by Union forces, Magruder realized that he stood no chance in a fight. So to buy time until reinforcements arrived, he set out to trick McClellan into slowing down by exaggerating Confederate strength. McClellan swallowed Magruder’s con, hook, line, and sinker.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.