title: To the mountaintop and back again : the rise and fall of General George B. McClellan.
abstract: This thesis is an examination of the factors that impacted the rise and fall of the military career of General George McClellan during the initial stages of the Civil War. It works almost exclusively with primary sources to gain a better understanding of General McClellan through his personal and professional correspondence. The thesis begins with a historiography of the scholars that have examined McClellan from the early days after the Civil War to those of the twenty-first century. The histor