That’s more than cruel and unusual punishment…that’s literally life threatening.
Oh, the persecution! (I can hear her complaining already)…
This makes me happy.
Tragic and indefensible.
more on the jail
IIRC, Pinkerton mistakes convinced McClellan he was outnumbered in the 7 Days Battles.
General McClellan’s most grievous error was hugely overestimating Confederate numbers. This delusion dominated his military character. In August 1861, taking command of the Army of the Potomac, he began entirely on his own to over-count the enemy’s forces. Later he was abetted by Allan Pinkerton, his inept intelligence chief, but even Pinkerton could not keep pace with McClellan’s imagination. On the eve of Antietam, McClellan would tell Washington he faced a gigantic Rebel army “amounting to not less than 120,000 men,” outnumbering his own army “by at least twenty-five per cent.” So it was that George McClellan imagined three Rebel soldiers for every one he faced on the Antietam battlefield. Every decision he made that September 17 was dominated by his fear of counterattack by phantom Confederate battalions.
It might have been adorable incompetence. It certainly kept alive a narrative among Northern Democrats of an “honorable” loss of the Federal armies to the slaver armies.