nds another era of our history, and we come to a
consideration of the soldiers made famous by the greatest war of the
nineteenth century--the civil conflict which threatened, for a time, to
disrupt the Union. It was a war waged on both sides with desperate
courage and tenacity, and it developed a number of commanders not,
perhaps, of the very first rank, but standing high in the second.

The first real success of the war was won by George B. McClellan. A
graduate of West Point, veteran of the war with Mexico, and military
observer of the war in the Crimea, he had resigned from the army in 1857
to engage in the railroad business, with headquarters at Cincinnati. At
the opening of the war, he was commissioned major-general, and put in
command of the Department of Ohio. His first work was to clear western
Virginia of Confederates, which he did in a series of successful
skirmishes, lasting but a few weeks. He lost only eight men, while the
Confederates lost sixteen hundred, besides over a thousand taken
prisoners. The achievement was of the first importance, since it saved
for the Union the western section of Virginia which, a year later, was
admitted as a separate state. It is worth remembering that in this
campaign, McClellan's opponent was no less a personage than Robert E.
Lee.

The success was the greater as contrasted with the disaster at Bull Run,
and in August, 1861, McClellan was placed in command of the Army of the
Potomac, gathered about Washington and still discouraged and
disorganized from that defeat and rout. His military training had been
of the most thorough description, especially upon the technical side,
and no better man could have been found for the task of whipping that
great army into shape. He soon proved his fitness for the work, and four
months later, he had under him a trained and disciplined force, the
equal of any that ever trod American soil. He forged the instrument
which, in the end, a stronger man than he was to use. Let that always
be remembered to his credit.

He had become a sort of popular hero, idolized by his soldiers, for he
possessed in greater degree than any other commander at the North that
personal magnetism which wins men. But it was soon evident that he
lacked those qualities of aggressiveness, energy, and initiative
essential to a great commander; that he was unduly cautious. He seems to
have habitually over-estimated the strength of the enemy and
under-estimated his own. W