Civil War Monitor

Voices From the Past: "An Inferior Force"

Union soldiers retrieve the body of a comrade killed at Ball's Bluff from the Potomac River.

“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.