Textbook
James L. Roark, et al., eds., The American Promise: A History of the United States, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), 502.
A superb administrator and organizer, McClellan was brought to Washington as a commander of the nearly named Army of the Potomac. In the months following his appointment, McClellan energetically whipped his army of dispirited veterans and fresh recruits into shaped. The troops cheered their boyish general when he rode among them, in part no doubt because of his reluctance to send them into battle. Lincoln said McClellan had a bad case of “the slows,” and indeed McClellan, for all his energy, lacked decisiveness. Lincoln wanted a general who could advance, take risks, and fight, but McClellan went into winter quarters without budging from the Potomac. “If General McClellan does not want to use the army I would like to borrow it,” Lincoln declared in frustration.