Product Description

To the Gates of Richmond charts the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, General George McClellan's grand scheme to march up the Virginia Peninsula and take the Confederate capital. For three months McClellan battled his way toward Richmond, but then Robert E. Lee took command of the Confederate forces. In seven days, Lee drove the cautious McClellan out, thereby changing the course of the war. Intelligent and well researched, To the Gates of Richmond vividly recounts one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #393310 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Sears complements his 1988 biography of George McClellan with this definitive analysis of the general's principal campaign. McClellan's grand plan was to land an army at Yorktown, move up the Virginia peninsula toward Richmond, and fight a decisive battle somewhere near the Confederate capital, thereby ending the Civil War while it was still a rebellion instead of a revolution. The strategy failed in part because of McClellan's persistent exaggerations of Confederate strength, but also because under his command the Federals fought piecemeal. The Confederates were only marginally more successful at concentrating their forces, but Sears credits their leaders, especially Lee, as better able to learn from experience. Confederate victory on the Peninsula meant the Civil War would continue. The campaign's heavy casualties indicated the kind of war it would be. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This companion to Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam ( LJ 5/15/83) continues the author's narrative of the fortunes of the Army of the Potomac and its leader, General George B. McClellan. Sears's compelling Civil War chronicles rival those of the late Bruce Catton, and this work resonates with authority derived from a thorough knowledge of McClellan and his adversaries and immediacy achieved by extensive use of eyewitness accounts gleaned from the reminiscences of combatants on both sides. Lucid maps, accurate tables of command, and a comprehensive bibliography all contribute to the book's usefulness. Those reading it may also want to consult Richard Wheeler's Sword over Richmond ( LJ 4/1/86) for other eyewitness accounts and William C. Davis's The Guns of '62 ( LJ 2/15/82) for a superb photographic record of the campaign. Recommended for most libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/92.
-Lawrence E. Ellis, Broward Community Coll. Lib., Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
In George B. McClellan (1988) and his work editing the papers of the Union general, Sears established himself as the critical but indispensable authority on flawed ``Little Mac.'' Now, in a stirring prequel to Landscape Turned Red (1983), his superb account of the Battle of Antietam, the author reaffirms his mastery of historical narrative. In March 1862, the egotistical but timorous McClellan was prodded by Lincoln into finally launching the first major offensive by the Army of the Potomac. Instead of marching directly overland from Washington, McClellan used Federal sea power to advance on Richmond by way of the peninsula between the York and James Rivers. The ``Grand Campaign,'' however, soon belied its creator's Napoleonic pretensions by becoming a three-and-a-half-month nightmare of feints and pitched battles, ultimately engaging up to a combined quarter-million men on both sides and leaving one of every four men dead, wounded, or missing. Using hundreds of eyewitness accounts, Sears demonstrates how the most creative use of military technology (ironclad warships, 200-pounder rifled cannon, battlefield telegraph, and aerial reconnaissance) existed side by side with the most appalling mismanagement (Stonewall Jackson's uncharacteristic lethargy; McClellan's mistaken belief that the numerically inferior rebels possessed a two-to-one manpower advantage; out-of-sync attacks by both Confederate and Union generals). Above all, though, Sears casts the campaign as a clash of wits and wills between McClellan--whom he accuses of losing ``the courage to command''--and Robert E. Lee--who, upon succeeding the wounded Joseph E. Johnson as head of the Army of Northern Virginia, seized the initiative, repulsed the assault in the series of ``Seven Days'' battles, and began his long journey into legend. An authoritative, ironic, and stirring addition to Civil War annals. (Two 16-page b&w photo inserts.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Another Masterpiece
Reading the other books by Stephen W. Sears, I've come to expect great things from him. To sum it up simply, Sears does an exceelent job of giving you the overall picture and the up, close, and personal of the campaign that almost conquered Richmond. Starting from McClellan's original plan to transport the entire Union army that eventually only had to settle for three corps, Little Mac had a perfect oppurtunity to push up the peninsula and capture Richmond. An unnecessary siege at Yorktown prevents this and Sears, justifiably, grows more critical of Sears with each lost oppurtunity. When Lee becomes commander of the Confederate army after the Battle of Seven Pines, things change. My personal favorite part of the book is the coverage of the Seven Days Battles. As usaul, Sears constantly accuses McClellan of cowardence and abandoning his army in its tim of need(This IS true, however). Sears seems to favor Lee in the final part of the book, but shows how inexperiance causes Lee to make several mistakes. As for the battles, they are where Sears shines. You can feel the tnsion and the soldiers thoughts. Following the Seven Days, Mac suffers on more blow form Sears. Sears shows how he could have reversed the campaign after the Seven Days, but his cowardence stopped him. Sears also does a good job of having hthis book lead up to "Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Atietam." All in all, if you want to read about the peninsula campaign, this is the book.

How and why the Union failed to win the Civil War in 1862
This 1992 book is a narrative of the Peninsular Campaign of 1862 which brought a large and splendidly equipped Federal army to the outskirts of the Confederate capital and should, by all reasonable expectation, have ended the American Civil War with victory for the North. In its 468 pages of text, appendices on Federal and Confederate orders of battle, sketch maps, contemporary artists' impressions, notes and index, "To the Gates of Richmond" attempts to explain how and why that didn't happen.

At this book's date of publication, author Stephen W. Sears had published volumes on the Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg to my unreconstructed Confederate ancestors), a biography of Major General George Brinton McClellan (aka The Young Napoleon, aka Little Mac) and a tome of McClellan's Civil War papers. Since the Peninsular Campaign and Antietam are McClellan's two great crises in command, it may be assumed that Sears' mind was firmly fixed on--even obsessed by Little Mac.

In point of fact, Sears seems utterly to despise McClellan. Here are a few examples:

On April 20, 1862, McClellan wrote to Washington. "He had heard, he told President Lincoln, that [Confederate field commander] Joe Johnston was now under the command of Robert E. Lee, and that greatly encouraged him. `I prefer Lee to Johnston,' he explained. To his mind, General Lee was `too cautious & weak under grave responsibility . . . wanting in moral firmness when pressed by heavy responsibility & is likely to be timid and irresolute in action. (He added the opinion, a few days later, that `Lee will never venture upon a bold movement on a large scale.') McClellan did not elaborate on how he had arrived at this singular appraisal; mercifully for him, it was never made public during his lifetime." [Page 57, hardback edition]

The text of the book demonstrates that Sears regards "this singular appraisal" as being dead on--provided that one exchange the name "McClellan" for "Lee."

On June 30, 1862, the Young Napoleon was in the midst of being hammered by Robert E. Lee, now the VERY resolute field commander of Confederate forces in Northern Virginia, in a series of battles that have come to be known collectively as the "Seven Days." The Federals had pulled back from Richmond to a place called Glendale. "By any reckoning, here was the moment for the Young Napoleon to fulfill the pledge he had made to his army after [the Battle of] Seven Pines: `I ask of you now one last crowning effort . . . Soldiers! I will be with you in this battle, and share its dangers with you' . . . . General McClellan, however, would not be sharing any dangers in this battle. Instead he was five miles away . . . without telegraphic communications and too distant to command the army. . . . At four o'clock that afternoon, distancing himself even further from the responsibilities of command, General McClellan boarded the gunboat Galena. . . . That evening the general would dine at Commander John Rogers table aboard the Galena, where . . . the linen was white and there was `a good dinner with some good wine'. . . .

"The truth of the matter is that George McClellan had lost the courage to command. With each day of the Seven Days his demoralization had increased, and each day his courage to command decreased accordingly. By Day Six the demoralization was complete; exercising command in battle was now quite beyond him, and to avoid it he deliberately fled the battlefield. . . . Brigadier General Andrew A. Humphreys wrote his wife, `never did I see a man more cut down than Genl. McClellan was . . . . He was unable to do anything or say anything.'" [Pages 280-281]

Well, maybe. This harsh judgment based on twenty-twenty hindsight does not actually founder but it is certainly heavily buffeted by the facts that McClellan remained in command to fight another day at the greater battle of Antietam and that he continued to be admired (even loved) by both the generals and the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac. The very same kind of demoralization attributed to Little Mac can be seen not long after in General John Popes' utterly inept handling of his army at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Pope was summarily tossed into the Union Army's trash heap to fight Indians while the real soldiers battled to preserve the nation. During the Seven Days, the greater part of the actual fighting was borne by the corps commanded by McClellan's friend, General Fitz John Porter. Porter was unlucky enough to be at Second Bull Run, too. He was court-martialed and cashiered from the army on charges far less damning than those made by Sears against McClellan.

McClellan was a highly competent military man who lacked a true warrior's heart. He was not alone in this. George Gordon Meade, one of his successors in command of the Army of the Potomac, fought at Gettysburg for three bloody days and was not defeated. He thought that good enough reward for his three days' work--much to the fury of Lincoln who wanted victory, not the mere avoidance of defeat.

And finally, there is the fact that when Grant assumed supreme command, he went out of his way to offer a high command to McClellan. Whatever his failings in other spheres, Grant was a Great Captain and he knew the true worth of soldiers. Little Mac should have been the Chief of the General Staff--if only such a thing had existed in the 1860s. Or he might have been great as leader of a Training Command, if such a thing had then existed. McClellan would even have been an excellent field general, just as Meade turned out to be, provided a Grant or a Sherman or a Sheridan stood close behind to give him backbone.

The harsh treatment of Little Mac aside, this is an excellent narrative of the massive failure of the Peninsular Campaign. I know of no better untangling of the knotted goings-on of the Seven Days. (D. S. Freeman, alas, views it strictly from the Southern perspective.)

Four stars.

Sears is a great historian
I first came to the writing of Stephen Sears when I read Chancellorsville, which was a truly absorbing history of the period leading up to and including that battle. Since then I have read Landscape Turned Red and Gettysburg, and now To The Gates of Richmond. They all stand up as some of the best history written about the war, and while they have some letters and personal sentiment, they are not full of the folksy yarns that Shelby Foote resorts to. I would recommend all of Sears books for anyone looking for a solid understanding of the nature of the war, written in a clear and concise voice, rich with opinions but not sentimentality.