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For those who don’t have a perfect recall of 19th century photographs of figures from a single period of US history, the people depicted are:
President Abraham Lincoln (THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR), Ulysses S. Grant (leader of the Union armies in the mid-late war, and an early champion of equal rights and anti-segregation legislation), William Tecumseh Sherman (scourge of the South and sub’s patron saint)
Frederick Douglass (Legendary writer, orator, and antislavery activist), George McClellan (leader of the Union’s armies in the Eastern Theatre whose overcaution and paranoia led directly to several defeats, and who was pro-slavery), Harriet Tubman (Antislavery partisan who smuggled slaves out of the South into free lands, and a Union spy/scout)
Robert Gould Shaw (white officer who led the first Black unit of the Civil War, martyred heroically beside his men during an ordered assault against Confederate fortifications), George Meade (leader of the Union armies after McClellan, helping salvage the Eastern theatre and averting total disaster), George Henry Thomas (general whose stout defense in Chickamauga helped avert disaster for the armies of the Union)
Bottom left is clearly Ferris Bueler.
McClellan trained that army. For all the fuckery after he at least was able to bring the union up to snuff so a proper commander of men could use it.
Always remember that ken burns documentary reading of Lincoln’s letters. Something like “if I gave him 2 million men he would write me saying the enemy has 3 and he needed 4.”
Us civil war is fascinating.
It’s funny, because there are actually a number of similarities between McClellan and Sherman. Both were logistics-oriented men of impeccable intelligence and military education who were hard to get along with, with a tendency to overestimate their enemies and plan against themselves.
The fundamental differences, however, were enough to make one into a leader of legend, and another to a leader of infamy. Sherman had the boldness, aggression, and most of all, humility necessary to overcome his flaws as a leader; McClellan let his flaws define him and guide his actions, and then sought to blame everyone save himself for the results.
