Voices From the Past: “An Inferior Force”


“Well, so far we seem to have applied a new maxim of war, always to meet the enemy with an inferior force at the point of attack.”

—General George B. McClellan, as overheard in a comment to headquarters staff, in the wake of the Union debacle at Ball’s Bluff.

Source: Wilder Dwight, Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight (Boston, 1891), 122.

Photo Credit: Library of Congress.

Leave a Reply

An Interview with Barton Myers

Our conversation with Dr. Barton Myers, an Assistant Professor of history at Washington and Lee University and the author of “Rebels Against the Confederacy: North Carolina’s Unionists.” In this interview,…