"Born in Pennsylvania, McClellan was thirty-five when the war began. He had been graduated from West Point in 1846, number two in his class, a magnetic and brilliant young man; he won three brevets for gallant and meritorious conduct in the Mexican War, served as War Department observer in the Crimea in the middle fifties, and then resigned from the Army, as a captain, to go into business. In business he did well, had been successful as vice-president of the growing Illinois Central Railroad, and in the spring of 1861 was president of the Eastern Division of the Ohio & Mississippi. He found himself, in the middle of May, major general of volunteers (and, a short time afterward, major general of regulars as well) commanding the Department of the Ohio- the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, along with a part of western Pennsylvania and the dissident section of western Virginia. It was up to him to organize and then to use the troops raised in this area, and he did these things with smooth competence."
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Generals of the Union ArmyUnited States Military Academy alumniCommanding Generals and Chiefs of Staff of the United States ArmyUnited States Army peopleGovernors of New Jersey
Original Language: English
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Sources
Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury (1961), p. 404-405
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_B._McClellan
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George B. McClellan
George Brinton McClellan (December 3, 1826 – October 29, 1885), commonly known as George B. McClellan, was an American military officer and politician who served as the 24th governor of New Jersey and as Commanding General of the United States Army from November 1861 to March 1862. He was also an engineer, and was chief engineer and vice president of the Illinois Central Railroad, and later president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad in 1860.
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