George B. McClellan Papers Now Available Digitally

Say what you will about George McClellan– a great organizer, though timid in combat; beloved by his soldiers though a bane to Lincoln’s cabinet. Or maybe you’re an avid McClellan devotee, who defends the Young Napoleon to any passerby you come into contact with.

No matter what camp you fall into, the Library of Congress has recently digitized and made available online McClellan’s papers. They are to, to state the obvious, a goldmine of material.

Up to this point, the McClellan collection, with material dating from 1783-1898, had only been available onsite at the Library of Congress. With a total of 33,000 items spanning 41 feet of archival space, the collection is daunting to say the least. Now though, those papers are easy to scan through, and broken down by date, making material even easier to find.

So, researchers, have at it.

A description of the collection can be found here. 

A finding aid can be found here. 



12 Responses to George B. McClellan Papers Now Available Digitally

  1. I’d had no idea his papers were now available and have already spent an unreasonable amount of time looking thru them. Thanks for the heads up, Ryan!

    1. Thanks, John. I hope no matter what side of the debate people fall on regarding McClellan, they’ll be able to use these assets for their research.

    1. Try reading Emory Upton’s papers. You’ll decide that McClellan’s were done on a word processor.

Please leave a comment and join the discussion!