George B. McClellan. [Credit: Courtesy of the U.S. Signal Corps]
(born Dec. 3, 1826, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.—died Oct. 29, 1885, Orange, N.J.) U.S.
Army officer. After graduating from West Point, he served in the Mexican War and then returned to West Point to teach military engineering. In 1855–56 he undertook a mission to the Crimea to study European methods of warfare. In 1857 he resigned his commission to become chief of engineering for the Illinois Central Railroad (1857); he became president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad in 1860. At the outbreak of the American Civil War he was commissioned in the regular army and placed in command of the department of the Ohio. Appointed general in chief of the army by Abraham Lincoln in 1861, he organized the army into an efficient fighting force but refused to take the offensive in the fall of that year, prompting Lincoln to issue his General War Order (1862) calling for forward movement of all armies. McClellan cautiously conducted the Peninsular Campaign but failed to take Richmond, and he fought indecisively in the Seven Days' Battles. At the Battle of Antietam he failed to destroy Robert E. Lee's army, and Lincoln removed him from command. In 1864 he was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president against Lincoln. From 1872 to 1877 he was president of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad.
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