Hey everyone, thanks for downloading episode number 133 of our

Civil War Podcasts. I'm Rich. And I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Welcome to the podcast.

Last week we hit the pause button on the peninsula campaign to talk about a couple of related

issues. If you were reading a magazine article, you might think of them as sidebars. But this

week we're going to head back to the peninsula and get back to the action. Right. So just to recap,

McClellan has transferred the army of the Potomac to the peninsula. And even though Abraham Lincoln

approved this plan, the president still had major reservations about it. Lincoln's major condition

in approving the operation was that little Mac had to leave enough troops behind to guarantee

Washington's security. McClellan thought Lincoln's fears for the Capitol were ridiculous. So he

rather creatively juggled the numbers with regard to the troops he said were available to protect

Washington. But when the president found out about this, he called McClellan on it and decided

to hold back McDowell's corps. Little Mac threw a hissy fit about this, and he would ultimately blame

all the failures of the peninsula campaign on this withholding of McDowell's troops and on the

treacherous scheming of his political enemies back in Washington. Meanwhile, however, quite aside

from the matter of McDowell's corps, Little Mac had been thrown for a loop when he started

marching up the peninsula and ran into the Confederate defenses at Yorktown and along the

Warwick River. McClellan had anticipated meeting some opposition at Yorktown, but the unexpected

enemy resistance along the Warwick River was an unforeseen complication, and it discombobulated

Little Mac. This lack of flexibility was a key flaw of McClellan's generalship. Rather than adapting,

improvising and overcoming, Little Mac instead allowed his rapid march up the peninsula toward

Richmond to be derailed by this unexpected difficulty, and he ultimately spent a month in front

of Yorktown, bringing up his big siege guns and preparing positions for them so that he could

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