Existing comment:
General McClellan spent much of the afternoon aboard a Navy gunboat in the James River. His ill-advised absence plagued him two years later during the 1864 presidential campaign. The leading modern critic of the general has asserted that McClellan "had lost the courage to command" by June 30. [Note: the unspecified historian is Stephen W. Sears in his book "To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign.") |