OF PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN EVOLVED VIII.-PRESIDENT'S WAR ORDERS. PENINSULAR PLAN ADOPTED.-ASSISTANCE OF THE NAVY IX.-MANASSAS EVACUATED.-DEFENSE OF WASHINGTON X.-EMBARKATION FOR FORT MONROE.-OPENING OF PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN.-SIEGE OF YORKTOWN.- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS. FACING Portrait of General McClellan, engraved on Girsch from a photograph by Brady . steel by Frontispiece CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY.-WEST POINT.-MEXICAN WAR. GEORGE BRINTON MCCLELLAN, the subject of this memoir, was born December 3, 1826, in Philadelphia, Pa. He was the third child and second son of the eminent physician, George McClellan, and of Elizabeth Brinton, his wife. His mother, a daughter of John Brinton, whose family had its origin in the south of England, was a woman of gentle refinement and unselfish disposition. Owing to her husband's peculiarly active professional life the training of the children fell almost entirely upon her, and for this loving task she was admirably adapted. Gentle in her ministrations, clear in judgment and wise in discretion, she filled home with happiness, and guided the youthful lives of her children by that wonderful intuition of a loving mother which is beyond expression or analysis. To such noble women, the loving and self-sacrificing mothers, the country owes an infinite debt of gratitude, and to them, therefore, is our first homage due. In tracing back the lines of the father's ancestry we are brought to the beginning of the thirteenth century. The Maclellans were anciently sheriffs of Galloway and barons of Bombie, one of whom accompanied Sir William Wallace into France after the latter was defeated at Falkirk in 1298. In the turbulent times of James II of Scotland, Sir Patrick Maclellan was carried off by William, the eighth earl of Douglas, to |