Morning Phil Dragoo.
I knew you'd come up with some Kerry slippers. :-)
Looks like McClellan could have worked for our present day media. What spin! He held most of the advantages at Antietam and still blew it. Based on his report, you'd think he just won the war.
Parallels Parallels You want some steenking parallels.
1) "The Democrats can run a War candidate on a Peace platform, or a Peace candidate on a War platform...Neither one can win." President Abraham Lincoln.
2) They, the Democrats, ended up running McClellan on the Vallandigham Peace Platform (which, in a nutshell said, the war is lost, we have to negotiate a peace settlement with the Confederacy).
3) McClellan gave a speech at West Point, the day after he was nominated, but before the convention could officially notify him that he was the peace candidate, which said the exact opposite of the platform. And then...
4) the following day Sherman took Atlanta ("Atlanta is our, and fairly won").
5) Meanwhile, Vallandigham, was plotting the Northwest Conspiracy with Tom Hines to have Copperheads in the western states revolt against the Lincoln government. Trouble was Hines couldn't find 20 Copperheads in Chicago with enough cajones to actually show up for the rebellion and went back to Canada in disgust.
6) Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, erstwhile Cornfed prexy was something of a hero from the previous war (Colonel of the 1st Mississippi Rifles) under General Zachary Taylor. He was never afraid to keep reminding his generals about it. He kept Braxton Bragg in command until the Army of Tennessee was routed at Missionary Ridge. He replaced Joe Johnston (the only General Sherman ever worried about) with John Bell Hood in the middle of the Atlanta Campaign (three of Hood's USMA clasmates from the class of '53 were general officers under Sherman) and wouldln't move the Cornfederacy's best general (DIck Taylor) east of the Mississippi River because he distrusted him politically (his daddy had been President of the US, and had been Davis's commander in Mexico.
That's all for now.