McClellan Takes Command

Five days after the disaster at Bull Run, 34-year-old George McClellan took command of the demoralized Union forces around Washington. He drilled 100,000 volunteers into the Army of the Potomac, and the press hailed him as the Young Napoleon. With Lincoln, he planned a war along a thousand-mile front. "I can do it all," McClellan said. But he did nothing. From Ken Burns's The Civil War.