Thread by @pptsapper

Aw shit son. I almost forgot but @USArmyCMH reminded me. It's the anniversary of the start of the Peninsula Campaign

Whaaaaaat you tellin me you never heard about that time that George B McClellan defeated hisself?

There have been own goals in history but this one is EPIC

Look, lets be real here. After first bull run, shit was NOT toight in the US Army

When George B shows up, he brings the noise AND the funk. Well, at least to admin and logistics and stuff. He makes this dope ass army called the Army of the Potomac because hey, we LOVE RIVERS

Naw, straight up, we in the Army love rivers. We name all our battles after them. And campaigns. Bull Run? Issa creek. Aisne-Marne? TWO rivers. That one got some planner wicked excited in his army issued underpants area, you know it.

Anyhoo... Digressing

Now, Mac has this army and it's HUGE. We are talking 121,000 men. Over 220 cannons. More mules than you can literally every even imagine because who can imagine more than ten in one place? Try it, it's impossible.

Largest army ever assembled in the US to that point

Now, you'd be looking at this army, and it's a pretty sweet army you might say

Lincoln, he tbought so and was like "Mac, uh, you gonna do anything with it?" and Mac was like

His plan is to sneakily create a bridge built of canal boats at Harper's Ferry and suddenly descend on the rebels all majestic like, making them freak the fuck out and run away

And hey, operationally it coulda worked

IF the canal boats had been the right size for the lock...

Guys, I mentioned it before in the last #drunjhistory times, but Mac was an engineer. We're not overly fond of this. Because engineers are notorious for being ridiculous about every. Single. Fucking. Detail. Makes infantry officers wanna kill us. True story.

Not Mac tho

The canal boats were to pass through the lift lock and thence onto the river for the mothatruckin bridge

But no one BOTHERED to do a recon of whether the boats were too large for the lock

Which they werrrrreeeee

And so Lincoln had to ask him if he'd ever heard of a ruler

Now it's March & there's this bigass army and McClellan is doing tons of writing of letters to explain how nothing is his fault, it's all literally anyone but his own fault AND FINDS THE TIME to tell Halleck that he should arrest Grant for not telegraphing in a timely manner ffs

As Mac is scrambling, the rebs do him a favor and leave their base across the Potomac. So Mac goes for a nice little ride to inspect their "formidable" works

Yeah they were some trenches with wooden logs painted black in them, everyone knew it and laughed at him so got all mad

Mac now decides, on March 12, to suddenly change his base to Yorktown, on the Virginia Peninsula

Lemme put this into perspective here

That meant moving an army of 120k men, with all those wagons and artillery pieces and animals

In a week

And the Navy is like

Dude wtaf

So they impress every boat, skiff, scow, steamer, rotting hulk, and anything that floats. 389 vessels. Biggest amphibious operation in like, ever, to that point. March 17 this whole operation kicks off

And amazingly, it somehow works

With nary a marine involved

Huh

Ok so they land on the peninsula and it's cool and all and Mac orders the army to advance on Yorktown.

BUT HERE'S THE FUCKIN THING

I can't impress this enough

Mac thinks he's outnumbered

By a lot

By like, 1.5 to 1

In reality...there's like 13000 dudes in Yorktown

So, just how did our damn little Napoleon come to these auspicious conclusions? He used Alan Pinkerton's private detective agency (I shit you to the negative) which didn't really believe in recon or HUMINT but went off of RUMINT and whatever the fuck Alan was thinking about

Because government contracts paaaaaaaaaay

So Mac is gonna inch his way towards Yorktown, even as the Rebel troops inside it LITERALLY MARCH IN FUCKIN CIRCLES DOING COSTUME CHANGES TO MAKE HIM THINK THERE'S MORE OF THEM THAN THERE ARE

I cannot even

Can you even?

I hope not

Oh btw, to make all our Navy friends happy, as Mac is moving the Army he also has time to tell the Navy how to fight there war with the newest threat, the ironclad Virginia, by WRAPPING A GIANT CABLE AROUND HER TO FOUL HER RUDDER

I'm not even kidding

Mac was the WORST reply guy

It's April 4 by the time he orders an advance to Yorktown. If there's one thing about Mac, it's that he loves a siege. He loves sieges soooooo much

He loves them so much that he does them when they aren't even needed

Like meetings that could've been emails

Now, I don't wanna spoil anything for May, when we gotta do this again, buuuuuttttt yeahhhh it's literally gonna be May by the time Mac sets up a serious siege line with allllll the artillery pieces that he can possibly find

Aaaaand welcome to history, cause we gonna do the very first "to be continued" because it's a whole damn campaign on a place called the peninsula which almost sounds dirty so you know we gotta draaaaaaaaw it out

Wash your hands, ya filthy animals