NewMexiKen has been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s masterful Team of Rivals.
Union General George B. McClellan surely ranks among the most arrogant, self-important a**-holes in American history. His insubordination amounted to treason some thought; the way he dissed his superiors including President Lincoln was incredible. He did have a way with words though. After his own failure in the Peninsula campaign, McCleallan wrote to his wife Mary Ellen the following about Secretary of War Edwin Stanton:
So you want to know what I thought of Stanton, & what I think of him now? I think that he is the most unmitigated scoundrel I ever knew, heard or read of; I think that…had he lived in the time of the Saviour, Judas Iscariot would have remained a respected member of the fraternity of Apostles & that the magnificent treachery and rascality of E. M. Stanton would have caused Judas to have raised his arms in holy horror & unaffected wonder.