McClellan

January 12, 2024

Leland and Everett,

I started the day thinking I would write on another topic. Events of the day intervened with other plans. This morning I wept while listening to a recitation of the first verse of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword

His truth is marching on

Julia Ward Howe; The Battle Hymn of the Republic

I’m not precisely sure why the verse moved me, and I doubt words can fully capture what I experienced, but that is the topic I want to explore today. 

[I find myself stuck with what to say next. My programming tells me to build up my story from first principles or as close to first principles as I can achieve. But so much has happened over these last few months that I cannot possible capture all of it in preamble to this letter. This overwhelm partly explains my paucity of letters of late: once I fell behind, I didn’t know how to catch up. My sense is that this overwhelm is meant to teach me to cut through the deductive style of writing and speak more clearly, more authentically, and more with my own voice. So allow me to make a first, perhaps feeble and fumbling, attempt at that today (my old coach uses the metaphor of a toddler learning to walk: the first attempts are clumsy, but necessary in order to eventually achieve the natural gait we know in adults or even older children).]

God’s truth marches on. Whether we support or resist, God’s truth proceeds. We only decide whether we move in harmony with that truth or stand in resistance. Standing in resistance cannot stop the destruction of the grapes of wrath, but only affect how we experience the destruction. The fateful lightning of God’s terrible swift sword is loosed with a certain inevitability, even if that inevitability is also somehow surprising or even shocking. I don’t know how we recognize God’s will as both surprising and inevitable, but we do. When we are in harmony (or at least surrender) to God’s will, we recognize the inevitability of the destruction, even if we need to mourn and grieve the loss. Those who resist, however, experience the fateful lightning as terrible pain. 

One idea that resonated deeply with me today: all participants in the Civil War originally hoped for swift resolution. Both the North and South hoped for a quick war, and neither side started the war willing to accept the inevitable truth that slavery needed to end, no matter the cost. Only gradually, reluctantly, did the North come to grips with the truth that slavery needed to end, and that the cost of ending it would be unimaginable sacrifice. Somehow, even today, one can feel the weight of that decision, the reluctant embrace of the inevitable and necessary, the acceptance that comes with grieving, and the resolution that comes with knowing one’s path. 

As a quick aside: I am not convinced war is ever inevitable. I am not convinced war is ever necessary or good. Yet I sense once the American Civil War commenced and led Americans into previously unimaginable destruction and loss, the North came to a reluctant understanding of their calling and path out. 

I find myself pondering, regularly, how far into the darkness we must descend today before our path, our calling, is revealed to us. It’s not clear to me what we are being called to do; then again, it was not clear to most Americans in 1860 that they were being called to end slavery. The call to end slavery seems obvious in retrospect; indeed, future generations will look back and wonder why it took us so long to understand and accept the task assigned to our generation. Only after the descent into the darkness and chaos of war did Americans recognize the call. How far into the darkness must we descend today before we recognize and accept God’s call? 

My sense is that the Civil War was not inevitable, but that the ending of slavery in America was. God’s will, God’s truth, wouldn’t allow for the continuation of slavery in the United States. Americans in both the North and South resisted the inevitability of God’s will, and that resistance is what led to the unimaginable destruction of the Civil War. In “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, and in other correspondence, I sense reluctant acceptance on the part of the North to become the tools of God, accepting the task laid out for them. My dualistic mind struggles to embrace what my soul more intuitively understands: war is never necessary nor inherently God’s will, and yet the Northerners embraced God’s will in the ending of slavery, and willingly paid the cost required to achieve God’s will. My logical brain cannot reconcile both of those ideas, and yet I believe both of them to be true. 

How does McClellan fit in all of this? My hope is that this letter will help me discover the connection, if one exists. Remember, we write to clarify what we think. 

Lincoln put McClellan in charge of the main Union forces months into the war. McClellan thoroughly enjoyed the status that his position entailed, and seemed adept at maximizing his status and the trappings. For all his faults, McClellan could build and prepare an army. But McClellan could not bring himself to accept that his task was to deliver success on the battlefield, preferably quickly, by pressing the advantages he, his army, and his Northern side possessed. 

McClellan found all manner of excuses not to use his army. His army wasn’t ready. He needed more men and more provisions. McClellan serially overestimated the size and strength of his opponent. McClellan hoped to amass overwhelming strength in order to deliver a swift, decisive, relatively painless victory. McClellan refused to see the truth that painless victory was impossible, and so refused to engage in paths that could deliver relatively more swift victory through rapid engagement, learning, and adjustment. McClellan refused to engage, or engaged with maximal reluctance and delay, and his reluctance and delay denied him (and the North) immeasurable opportunities to learn, to grow, and accelerate the winning the war. McClellan extended the war needlessly, causing unnecessary death and destruction on both sides. 

In short, McClellan was consumed by his ego. McClellan’s ego led him to overestimate his importance, overestimate his enemies, and experience a paralyzing inability to act due to a crippling fear of failure (and the loss of status failure would entail).

I see McClellan all around me today. Our leaders, our elites, our society at large appear to enjoy the trappings that come with leadership and status. But our elites cannot bring themselves to engage the challenges we face, out of fear and ego. In the process, our leaders waste precious time, preventing us from learning and growing and discovering the paths available to us.

Of course McClellan, or at least the McClellan of my telling, is really me. I am the one comfortable with the trappings of my position. I am the one who is unwilling to see the task ahead of me. I am the one paralyzed and unwilling to act, overestimating the barriers in front of me, and in the process of refusing to act I deny myself the opportunities to learn and grow. McClellan is ego, my ego. And I loath McClellan, and see McClellan in the world around me, precisely because I do not want to see McClellan, or ego, in me. 

Hardest of all is accepting that I can no more cut McClellan out of American history than can I cut the ego out of me. My ego is mine, it is part of me. I might resist, I might loath, I might avoid, but my ego exists as an apparently permanent part of me. 

The question I find myself asking is not “how do I live without my ego?” but rather “can I learn to accept, embrace, and even love my ego?”. Typing the prior sentence was difficult in a way that suggests I have found the right struggle, at least for today. 

How much must I, must we, must you delay in accepting, embracing, and loving our whole selves? How much longer do we insist on overestimating the barriers preventing us from taking action (engaging the Southern army) while simultaneously underestimating the true significance of the task ahead of us (ending slavery). I do not yet recognize the modern parallels to engaging the Southern army and ending slavery, e.g. what is the task God puts before me and us? Like McClellan, I am too dominated by ego and resistance. I, we, you have the opportunity to learn from McClellan, to see when and how our egos dominate us, and to learn to integrate our egos into our complete selves, accept God’s will, and accept our paths with God. The sooner we let go of our resistance, the more darkness and destruction we can avoid. But make no mistake: God’s truth marches on.

I love you,

Dad