oit tou it's tough for us to hear. >> caller: i heard that george b. mcclellan was very disrespectful to abraham lincoln. he told his wife the president was an idiot and that he was no more than a well-meaning baboon. is this true? >> george mcclellan had, you know, prewar experience with abe lincoln when mcclellan was vice president of illinois central railroad and able lincoln was a lawyer working on cases for the railroad. and they actually spent time together traveling to different points along the railroad working on court cases to get rights-of-way and so forth. and he managed to get along fine with lincoln during that period and he enjoyed abe lincoln's propensity to entertain people around a fire in a little tavern or a hostel around the way with anecdotes based on his experience as a backwoods lawyer. but when lincoln was elevated to president and mcclellan became his subordinate, then the essential, social impediments if you will that mcclellan took with him from his upper middle-class background began to show. and he began to regard lincoln as an inte

nothing had happened in the orbit where george b. mcclellan and joseph e.ohnston were doing nothing so capably, living up to their birthrights. in the west, things were happening and they were all bad. ft. henry, ft. donaldson. on the upper mississippi, everything was going bad, and suddenly here was someone in virginia, a virginian who was succeeding. you have seen the compilations, they are everywhere, from the civilian diaries from the soldiers' letters about how the world had changed when jackson started to succeed. good news had been in miserly short supply and now it was everywhere, viewed with more importance than it really deserved from the somewhat secondary theater of the shenandoah valley. down here in richmond not far from us where by this point there were federal troops in profusion laying siege, not literally, but besieging the confederate national capitol, the soldiers here wrote about it from afar and started to wish they had jackson instead of their own leaders. here's a fellow in the brigade writing home at the time, middle of may, the new

. >> john mountcastle's nomination once again was george b. mcclellan. he's the fourth out of five historians who will nominate person of the year 1862 here at the library of virginia in richmond, and we will go back in just a moment to hear from emery thomas, professor of history emeritus from the university of georgia. the nominees are frederick douglass, stonewall jackson, admiral david farragut and george mcclellan. you're watching live all-day coverage on "american history tv" on c-span3. >> ladies and gentlemen, if you could return to your seats and let us get restarted. is the mike not on yet? okay, good. the mike's on? okay. ladies and gentlemen, let's get restarted. gee whiz, jack mountcastle, george mcclellan, what an interesting choice. it's my great pleasure to introduce our fifth and final nominator, emery thomas. he drove up from athens, georgia, where he's a professor of history emeritus at the university of georgia, but he's really coming home. he and his wife fran are native richmonders. as a matter of fact, emery starred on the thomas j

on facebook a look at our facebook page, james -- george b mcclellan "as much as i desize him, the army of the potomac is not what it will become in 1863." some of the thoughts of viewers on twitter and facebook. let's go back to the library and james mcpherson who just nominated admiral david farragut as his choice for person of the year 1862. james mcpherson if you look at the time magazine selection since 1927, admiral farragut would be the only admiral on that list. you talked in your speech here about the political implications of his victories in 1862. were they the main reason that france and britain hesitated on recognizing the confederacy that year? >> certainly the main reason why they delayed what looked like was going to be some kind of recognition in the spring of 1862. the capture of new orleans was the most important of a series of union victories that caused them to back off. then though of course during the summer, the confederate victories in the seven days in the second mannasses and the invasion of kentucky by braxton bragg and especially of maryland by robert e. lee