General George McClellan

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His Wikipedia entry

I haven't seen him turn up on lists of suspected aspies, but I really think he was one.

His strengths involved bringing a high degree of organization to the Army and devising elaborate battle strategy. Many of his logistical and organizational changes remained in place throughout the war. Unfortunately, he was subject to an extreme degree of "paralysis by analysis", grossly overestimated the forces against him and was, to say the least, an overly cautious commander.

The incident where he went straight to bed one evening without talking to Lincoln, who had traveled to meet him, is also very telling.

After the war, he ended up working on engineering projects before becoming president of a railroad and Governor of New Jersey.

And not many people can say they have a type of saddle named after them

Indeed, he was slow to react. As Lincoln once said of him, "He has the slows."

From his biography he does seem to have a black and white vision of the war, even as a commander in the field. Although this is quite common, many people fighting the war do seem to have a more nuanced view of affairs. mcclellan seems to divide people in awful secessionists and awesome unionists. Thats it.

You know, long before I ever heard of Asperger's, I found myself identifying with McClellan too much for my own comfort. Like him, I'd overanalyze things to death and try my damndest not to actually do anything that's not absolutely guaranteed to succeed. The tragic irony for him (and even more so for hundreds of thousands of his countrymen) is that a more aggressive strategy before the Confederacy had time to build up their forces had a high likelihood of ending the war years earlier with him remembered as the war's biggest hero. While I've thankfully never had anywhere near that much at stake, I certainly repeated his mistakes more times than I care to remember.

When Lee was asked who was the ablest Federal commander he faced, he picked McClellan.