/----/ To be fair to McClellan, his position on slavery in late May 1861 was essentially the same as that of Abraham Lincoln. Like Lincoln, he was concerned with holding the allegiance of the border states, and reassuring slaveholders there that slavery was more secure in the Union than in the Confederacy was integral to this task. Benjamin Butler had made similar assurances to Marylanders the previous month when his Massachusetts troops entered the state en route to Washington, D.C. However, by this time, Butler, like McClellan a Democrat, was beginning to see the military value of the slaves and experiencing the first intimations that protecting slaveholders, especially rebel slaveholders, was not the best way to save the Union. McClellan would never come around to that position but soon the North would be electrified by Ben Butler’s term, “contraband of war.”
George McClellan and Slavery
Provide a link proving McClelland owned slaves. BTW he was an incompetent General. Funny how you picked him.
That's your job dood. You made the claim about "slave-holding Democrats" and then proceeded to cite examples of newspaper people in New York and Connecticut, and tossed in McClelland, the only one with any political activity, born and raised in Pennsylvania. NONE of those states had slavery in Lincoln's time.
/----/ In your post #1430 you stated: "For instance, please to essplain to the class how George McClelland owned slaves, in a state where it had already been abolished before he was born." I never made that claim about McClelland. The slave owning democRATS were in the South and they started the Civil War. Lincoln was a Republican and signed the Emancipation Proclamation to free them. .
