[Little Ray]

Neah.
McClellan just had the wrong job.
It today’s terms, he should have been in charge of training and doctrine. Grant fought a heck of a war with the army that McClellan built.
But McClellan just wasn’t capable of fighting such a war, with ANY army...

[GonzoGOP]

Grant fought a heck of a war with the army that McClellan built.

Grant was smart enough to realize that he couldn't defeat Robert E. Lee at his own game. So he simply refused to play the game of maneuver and decisive battle and instead fought an attrition war that the South could not sustain. Nobody in the Union would have accepted the kind of casualties that involved until the other alternatives had been tried. Grant was able to wage that kind of war only because it was obvious from the battles of 1862-1663 that against Robert E. Lee nothing else was going to work.

It must be remembered that in the Peninsula Campaign McClellan wasn't facing Lee, he was facing Joseph E. Johnston a commander very similar to McClellan in terms of temperament and tactics. McClellan's slow conservative tactics worked well against the unimaginative Johnston. It is likely that had Johnston not been wounded at Fair Oaks and replaced by Lee the South would have lost the war in 1862. One of the great "what if" moments of history.