National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

A New Man in Charge: George B. McClellan (Part 1)

Part 1: Fooled by the Guns at Munson’s Hill

The Union army first came to occupy Munson’s Hill, Fairfax County, Virginia, on September 28, 1861.

Entering the fall of 1861, the Union army’s setback at Manassas provided the impetus for a change in leadership. One of the key figures to emerge from this shake-up was George B. McClellan, a career soldier who—like so many of his contemporaries, both northern and southern—was trained at the United States Military Academy.

As the armies jostled for position in northern Virginia after Manassas, McClellan began building and training his large number of recruits, many of whom had never experienced life away from home. McClellan inspired these young men and turned them into a significant army. By the time he paraded his troops before President Abraham Lincoln on November 20, 1861, his force was 70,000 strong. It was and still is the largest military parade on American soil.

McClellan is something of a paradoxical figure in U.S. military history. While he was clearly talented and charismatic, he was also reluctant to fight. He listened to his chief spy, Allan Pinkerton, to a fault. Pinkerton’s information was sometimes incorrect, and McClellan, in response to the information, often hesitated or failed to act aggressively enough for Lincoln.

One of McClellan’s poorest episodes took place in late September 1861, just outside of Washington, D.C. The incident at Munson’s Hill was so bleak that McClellan falsely accounts for it in his memoir, McClellan’s Own Story. McClellan wrote, “Towards Manassas the very important advanced points of Upton’s and Munson’s Hills were held by strong works, with some small batteries near by.”

Later, after the Confederate forces removed to another position, McClellan described the Union takeover of these locations, stating, “The maneuvering in advance by our flanks alarmed the enemy, whose center at Munson’s and Upton’s was much advanced. As soon as our pickets informed me that he had fallen back I rushed forward and seized those very important points.”

The facts of the matter, however, eluded McClellan in his autobiography, probably out of shame. Military historian Jon Latimer succinctly describes the entire episode in his tome on military legerdemain, A History of Bluff in Wartime:

At this time the Union intelligence service was run by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, founded by the ex-Glaswegian Allan Pinkerton, which later became renowned throughout the West. As a military intelligence bureau, however, it was hopelessly inadequate and provided wildly exaggerated reports of rebel strength in the area immediately south of Washington. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, Pinkerton reported Confederate forces at totaling 270,000 men, with 150,000 within striking distance of Washington. [McClellan] refused to move until he had 270,000 men of his own. . . .Then, in September rebel pickets were driven surprisingly easily from a position they had occupied within a few miles of Washington, revealing that the guns McClellan’s spies had assured him were trained on the capital were nothing more than stripped logs, painted black with wagon wheels tacked onto the side: one scornful reporter christened them “Quaker Guns.”

In the two months and one week since the Battle of Manassas, the Union army had been kept in place, at least in this little field in northern Virginia, by so many harmless sections of tree trunks and archaic wagon parts. Sadly, McClellan would fall victim to this “Quaker Gun” strategy more than once, as it was an easily deployed measure for a Confederate army that had significantly less artillery than its opponent.

Such encounters with make-believe weapons and inflated interpretations of the enemy’s numbers would take a toll on McClellan’s reputation during the war, and give McClellan's detractors ammunition to use against him.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits

Next week—Part II: Young Napoleon Builds an Army

 

George Brinton McClellan / Julian Scott / Oil on canvas, 1888 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the Smithsonian American Art Museum; bequest of Georgiana L. McClellan, 1953

Pop Quiz Trivia Event: Immigrants and Revolutionaries, Wednesday, September 28

Be it by plane, train, ship, or automobile, notable Americans have crossed our borders to either settle within the United States or adventure out into far-away lands.

For instance, did you know that magician Harry Houdini was originally from Budapest, Hungary, before his family settled in Wisconsin? How about that the great stage actor Ira Aldridge (right) moved to England after not being able to find work in the United States?  

On Wednesday, September 28, the National Portrait Gallery will be hosting our collections-inspired trivia game, Pop Quiz, in the Kogod Courtyard. This month’s Pop Quiz theme, “Immigrants and Revolutionaries,” is centered on our collection of portraits featuring  distinguished American immigrants and emigrants. Come spend the evening with magicians, Pulitzer Prize–winning authors, prominent politicians, Hollywood stars, and many more important migrant Americans chosen from our collection.

Want some advice on how to master your knowledge of American immigrants and emigrants and ensure you make your own journey home with a prize?

Head to the gallery early and explore the collection! Many of the Pop Quiz questions are based off the label content right next to the portraits currently on view.

Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to learn more about notable Americans that make up our nation's   “melting pot.” Trivia begins at 5:30 pm. No  passport or visa necessary!

Here is a sneak peek at the  10-point bonus question for this month’s Pop Quiz trivia:

After moving to Paris at the age of twenty-nine, Gertrude Stein (above) became famous for influencing the work of many artists, including Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Stein also experimented with prose and poetry. In her 1913 poem “Sacred Emily,” she wrote:

____ is a ____ is a ____ is a ____

What common romantically poetic word was Stein experimenting with?

Pop Quiz trivia occurs once a month in the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard in the National Portrait Gallery. Get ready for Halloween at the next Pop Quiz, American Haute Couture, which features iconic fashions and costumes in the NPG collection, on Wednesday, October 26, at 5:30 p.m. 

 —Caitlyn Young, Public Programs Intern, National Portrait Gallery

 

Gertrude Stein / Jo Davidson/ Terra-cotta, 1922/ National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Ira Aldridge / Henry Briggs/ Oil on canvas, 1830/ National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

Staff Profile: Rosemary Fallon, Paper Conservator

 

Q: Where are you from and where did you attend college?

A: I was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, and exposed to art at a young age at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Gallery. I graduated from the University of Maryland with a BA in art history and minor in studio art, and an MS from Columbia University.

Q: How did you prepare for a career in conservation?

A: When I was at the Smithsonian in the late 1970s working as an assistant book buyer for the museum shops, I heard a paper conservator speak at an informal lunchtime talk about her job at the Conservation Analytical Lab (now known as the Museum Conservation Institute). Although I knew about conservation, it was then that I decided to investigate the graduate programs and their prerequisites.

I started taking chemistry classes at night and was fortunate to get a job in the conservation lab at the NPG as the mat-cutter. That position gave me the opportunity to work closely with the paper conservator then on staff.

After a year or so, I was accepted to Columbia University’s conservation program, where I received a MS in conservation, specializing in paper and book conservation. I was lucky enough to get hired back at NPG after graduate school!

Q: Do you have a favorite object in the NPG collection?

A: As you can imagine it is difficult to name a favorite object in the collection because I have so many favorites, but I am repeatedly drawn to the “noir” works of Marius de Zayas. The densely drawn, charcoal caricature drawings in our collection are intriguing to me not only for of their imagery but also for their dense, black drawing media. De Zayas’s drawing of Paul Haviland (below) is one of my favorites. The dramatic figure, with his back to the viewer, looks like a magician ready to conjure up an image out of the dark shadows from his camera in hand.

As a conservator, one of my duties is to identify the media used in artworks. Upon first observation the Haviland appears to be either charcoal or black pastel but a closer look under magnification reveals tiny particles with a sparkle that appear to be more gray-black, indicating charcoal. It also reveals an underdrawing of graphite pencil with its telltale sheen in an angled light.

Sometimes artists can use more than one black medium in their drawings, and it can be challenging distinguishing one from another especially in dark, dense drawings where the artist used multiple media. Comparing the media to known samples can be helpful for identification purposes.

Q: Do you have a favorite moment or story you would like to share?

A: My favorite moments at NPG—or representing NPG—are the occasions that have involved collaborations with others at the Smithsonian or with outside scholars, such as research associated with the Duchamp symposium during Anne Goodyear’s “Marcel Duchamp” exhibition; the challenges of grappling with the long-term preservation of the NPG’s new media (digital art) in the NPG’s Digital Arts Group; participating in the African American Museum of History and Culture’s “Save Our African American Treasures Programs” at cities in the U.S. as a conservation program reviewer for works on paper; co-teaching the workshop on the recovery and conservation of works on paper after the earthquake at the Cultural Recovery Center in Haiti . . . you get the idea!

 

Paul Burty Haviland / Marius de Zayas / Charcoal over graphite on paper, c. 1910 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harry H. Lunn, Jr.

 

Portrait of September 11, 2001

In fact, it is a piece of mangled steel.  In the figurative world, it is so much more.

One of the seminal essays of material culture discourse is Stephen Greenblatt’s “Wonder and Resonance.”  In that essay, Greenblatt states, “By resonance I mean the power of the displayed object to reach out beyond its formal boundaries to a larger world, to evoke in the viewer the complex, dynamic cultural forces from which it has emerged and for which it may be taken by the viewer to stand.”

It is difficult—if not impossible—to look at the piece of wreckage from the World Trade Center site without visualizing the horrors of September 11, 2001. The object is not just a relic of that moment in history, but it also narrates the tragedy of that day and beyond, in the same way that a whole story might be told by a sign or a symbol in a work of art. The WTC steel resonates with the attacks, our memories of those buildings falling, the loss of life, and the sorrow, anguish, and confusion that dwelt within everyone that day.

- Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

This object is on view in our exhibition "Twentieth-Century Americans" on the third floor. It was transferred from The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and is now part of the National Portrait Gallery's collections.

Ford Pardons Nixon: September 8, 1974

On this day, thirty-seven years ago, President Gerald R. Ford granted a pardon to former president Richard Nixon with this proclamation.

By the President of the United States of America a Proclamation

Richard Nixon became the thirty-seventh President of the United States on January 20, 1969 and was reelected in 1972 for a second term by the electors of forty-nine of the fifty states. His term in office continued until his resignation on August 9, 1974.

Pursuant to resolutions of the House of Representatives, its Committee on the Judiciary conducted an inquiry and investigation on the impeachment of the President extending over more than eight months. The hearings of the Committee and its deliberations, which received wide national publicity over television, radio, and in printed media, resulted in votes adverse to Richard Nixon on recommended Articles of Impeachment.

As a result of certain acts or omissions occurring before his resignation from the Office of President, Richard Nixon has become liable to possible indictment and trial for offenses against the United States. Whether or not he shall be so prosecuted depends on findings of the appropriate grand jury and on the discretion of the authorized prosecutor. Should an indictment ensue, the accused shall then be entitled to a fair trial by an impartial jury, as guaranteed to every individual by the Constitution.

It is believed that a trial of Richard Nixon, if it became necessary, could not fairly begin until a year or more has elapsed. In the meantime, the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States. The prospects of such trial will cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.

Now, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9,1974.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-ninth.

GERALD R. FORD

 

Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. / Everett Raymond Kinstler / Oil on canvas, 1987 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, © 1987 Everett Raymond Kinstler

Richard Milhous Nixon / Boris Chaliapin / Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper faced illustration board, undated / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mrs. Boris Chaliapin

Cited:
Ford Library: President Gerald R. Ford's Proclamation 4311, Granting a Pardon to Richard Nixon

Taking the Constitution to Task: Pauline Morton Smith Sabin Davis

1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

— The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Ratified January 16, 1919

                                                      ******

“Once during prohibition,” W. C. Fields stated, “I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.” For the thousands like Fields who bemoaned prohibition, proactively operated illegal stills, and drank gin from bathtubs, there were many enforcers, but individuals willing to fight against the new law were few. Pauline Morton Smith Sabin (later Davis) was one of those individuals willing to wage war against prohibition.

Prohibition, ironically, landed in America just as the nation should have been celebrating—at the end of the Great War—and left America as the nation was in the throes of a horrible depression, hardly a time to celebrate with a drink. Pauline Sabin’s fight against prohibition began in the late 1920s, although it was cloaked in support of Herbert Hoover’s 1928 presidential candidacy. Historian Daniel Okrent, in Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, describes the tricky posturing at work in Sabin’s politics:

Pauline Sabin had been among those wet and wealthy Republicans who had stayed loyal to Hoover during the 1928 race. Many of them either had not yet placed Prohibition ahead of other issues at play in the campaign or had chosen to believe that a man as worldly and as educated as Hoover couldn’t possibly be a genuine dry. In June 1928 Sabin had announced her leap to the wet side in a magazine article headlined “I Change My Mind on Prohibition.” Sabin explained the reasoning behind her switch, and went on to criticize dry women blinded by their devotion to this one cause.

Her reasoning and hopes, Okrent goes on to explain, were “shredded” when Hoover demanded compliance to the law. On March 4, 1929, Hoover stated in his inaugural address:

I have been selected by you to execute and enforce the laws of the country. I propose to do so to the extent of my own abilities, but the measure of success that the Government shall attain will depend upon the moral support which you, as citizens, extend. No greater national service can be given by men and women of good will—who, I know, are not unmindful of the responsibilities of citizenship—than that they should, by their example, assist in stamping out crime and outlawry by refusing participation in and condemning all transactions with illegal liquor.

Pauline Sabin’s argument was very simple: alcohol and its consumption was the problem of the consumer or the would-be consumer, and not the government. In a New York Times interview with Samuel Johnson Woolf, she argued, “When prohibition was first enacted, I was in favor of it. . . . I had two sons and felt that for their benefit, at least I should approve it.”

However, Sabin was not a proponent of government interference or big government—she was the president of the Women’s National Republican Club— and she amended her position later, noting, “I began to see that whether my boys drank or not was my responsibility and not the government’s.”

Sabin’s efforts toward prohibition reform were widely recognized. When prohibition was repealed in 1933, Pauline Sabin rechanneled her advocacy in many directions, among them the American Red Cross and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

—Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery, Catalog of American Portraits

Pauline Morton Smith Sabin Davis by Philip Alexius de Laszlo [from 1926] is on view in the exhibition “Capital Portraits” through Monday, September 5, 2011 at the National Portrait Gallery.

 

Pauline Morton Sabin / Philip Alexius de László / Oil on canvas, 1928 / Sheila Smith Cochran / Photograph by Alex Jamison Photography

 

Cited:
Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (New York: Scribner’s, 2010).

S. J. Woolf, “A Woman Crusader for the Wet Cause,” New York Times, May 8, 1932.

Herbert Hoover, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1929