@georgeob1,
georgeob1 wrote:. . . a strange unwillingness to engage in battle . . .
By the way, that's an excellent way to put it. Recently, historians have begun to analyze McClellan as having that specific failure. He had built up an extremely well-organized, well-equipped, well-trained and well-commanded army--and then grew reluctant to risk it in battle. That is almost verbatim how one historian (whose work i read long enough ago to have forgotten who it was) described it.
Fitz John Porter was the object of Lee's attacks at the beginning of the Seven Days. I won't go into the stupidity which preceded or accompanied that operation. Porter conducted a fighting retreat, and punished Lee's army severely in the process, inflicting thousands of deaths and many thousands of wounds over a period of three days, during which his troops never broke formation, and any retreat the Southern hagiographers are pleased to call routs were in fact cases of his troops falling back on prepared defenses which had already been manned.
Porter could not have accomplished that if his subordinate commanders were not properly trained in their duties, and certainly never could have accomplished that unless his rank and file were highly-trained, highly-motivated and completely confident in their leadership.
McClellan had built a magnificent fighting machine--but neither he nor any other commander of that army used it effectively until George Meade took over.
