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FREQUENTLY ASSERTED CLAIMS ABOUT GEO. B. McCLELLAN

TOPIC: THE LOST ORDERS

CLAIM: McClellan failed to promptly issue march/combat orders capitalizing on the discovery of Lee's Special Order 191 during the Antietam campaign.

CITATIONS:
"Every writer agrees that Little Mac erred egregiously when he failed to order an immediate march toward the west on the afternoon of September 13. [...] Instead, McClellan squandered the afternoon and evening of the 13th, sending orders after dark for a two-pronged advance the next morning..."
A. Wilson Greene, "I Fought the Battle Splendidly," Antietam: Essays on the 1862 Maryland Campaign, Gary Gallagher, ed.

"A full 18 hours would pass before the first Yankee soldiers marched in response to the discovery of 'all the plans of the rebels.' "
Stephen Sears, A Landscape Turned Red

"Instead of setting his troops in motion immediately, McClellan made careful plans and did not order the men forward until daybreak on September 14, 18 hours after he had learned Lee's dispositions. As things turned out, this delay enabled Lee to concentrate and save his army."
James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom

RESPONSE:

Special Order 191 was discovered between 10:00 and 11:00 a.m. on September 13. In roughly the next hour it travelled through five levels of command to reach McClellan. Before noon he had analyzed it sufficiently to conclude it was genuine and useful and he cabled Lincoln about it at 12:00 o'clock. From that point on, any orders McClellan issued to his troops would have been informed by McClellan's knowledge of Lee's orders.

(1) The first documented "order" McClellan issued after verifying Special Order 191, was contained in his noontime cable to Lincoln: "All forces of Pennsylvania should be placed to cooperate at Chambersburg."

(2) Silas Colgrove was the colonel of the 27th Indiana Volunteers when men in Co. F found S.O. 191. "Within an hour after finding the dispatch, General McClellan's whole army was on the move," he wrote.

(3) "About noon of the 13th, I was ordered to march with my division to Middletown," said MG Jacob Cox, (3) referring to the town between the Catoctin and South mountains on the way to Boonsboro (the designated meeting point of enemy columns in SO 191). Cox said that Rodman's division had been ordered there too but had gone the wrong way. "McClellan himself met me as my column moved out of town [Frederick], and told me of the misunderstanding in Rodman's orders, adding, that if I met him on the march I should take his division along with me." McClellan thus not only issued fresh orders to Cox at noon, but amended earlier orders.

(4) Fresh instructions to the cavalry and to IX Corps were issued at 2:00 p.m. This was just two hours after McClellan validated S.O. 191.

(5) McClellan gave new directives to the previously moved VIth Corps "before 3:00 p.m." on the 13th, three hours after validating S.O. 191.

(6) A third IXth Corps move was started at 6:00 p.m. and finished after midnight.

The orders and movements above are especially listed because they address the central axis of McClellan's march (to Middleton and to Boonsboro -- the concentration points specified in Lee's order). For details of more McClellan-directed movements on the 13th, see John Michael Priest's Before Antietam and John W. Schildt's Roads to Antietam.

SUMMARY:
After finding Lee's order, McClellan promptly issued orders directing his forces westward, toward Lee's ordered concentration points. It is wrong to claim that he waited until nightfall to issue such orders or that no such movements occurred until the next morning.

Dimitri Rotov