Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

This book gave me insight on how difficult Abraham Lincoln's life was during this awful time. It also showed me that politics and news media hasn't changed much. It really is a great book. I even told my Facebook friends about it.

I don't know that James McPherson's Tried by War is "stunningly original" as Doris Kearns Goodwin says in her rather over-the-top jacket blurb, but it IS an incredibly good book. Written with the fluidity and conciseness that's made McPherson the best stylist of all Civil War historians, admirable in its synoptic drawing of connections between events that at first glance might seem far flung, and comprehensive in its analysis of Lincoln as war president, Tried by War is quite likely to be the single best book on the Civil War to appear this year. McPherson argues that as commander in chief, Lincoln had to keep an eye on five interrelated functions: national policy, national strategy, military strategy, operations, and tactics. Lincoln, as it turns out, became a pretty good strategist and operations man, trying to steer his generals towards a military approach--capturing armies rather than territory and simultaneous offenses on several fronts to counter the Confederate use of interior lines--that eventually, when embraced by Grant, won the war. But Lincoln was also flexible, a man who learned on the job, and so the five functions tended to be dynamic rather than static as the war progressed. Policy,strategy, and operations, for example, changed as military and political environments changed. Policy evolved from a restoration of the pre-Fort Sumter status quo to a reunified nation without slavery. Strategy eventually led to the recruiting of black troops, a move that Lincoln intially resisted. Operations evolved from loading down armies with materiel before they moved--a habit that led to sluggish troop movements--to a streamlining of materiel to make for a lighter and swifter army, thereby emphasizing Lincoln's strategic focus on concentration in time. (McPherson's discussion of time as a strategic factor is among the more interesting ones in the book.) In weaving these five functions together, McPherson does a masterful job of underscoring his central claim that Lincoln's military decisions could never be divorced from his political responsibilities and commitments (see, e.g., pp 217 ff). As such, the book goes way beyond "just" exploring Lincoln's relationship with his generals, a topic that's truly been written to death. Instead, it offers us a synoptic vision of the balls Lincoln the wartime president had to keep in the air. Highly recommended.

McPherson has written an excellent account of how Lincoln managed his generals during the Civil War. According to McPherson, Lincoln wanted generals that would attack and destroy the Confederate army and also cooperate with each other on a broad front. Also this book is an account about how Lincoln embraced the abolition of slavery as a goal to be acheived at the end of the war. McPherson states Lincoln had two strategic concepts in mind which is to attack and destroy the rebel armies and that the Union army needs to attack on a broad front. Lincoln put up with Buell and McClellan because they were the best generals available but once the former failed at Perryville and the later at Antietam to destroy the Confederate army, Lincoln relieved them both. During this time period Lincoln kept Grant in the army, despite the protests by Halleck, because he attacks the enemy army. This desire to destroy the rebel army was one of the reasons why Linclon transfered a significant portion of McClellan's army to Shields and Fremont in the valley in order to destroy Jackson's army but they failed and Lincoln relieved them. After Hooker,Burnside, and Meade were unable to defeat the rebel army, Linclon found his general in Grant, who constantly attacked Lee and defeated the Army of Virginia at Five Forks. Sheridan and Thomas also extinguished two rebel armies as well. Finally Grant fulfilled Lincoln's strategic goal by attacking on a broad front with generals Grant and Sherman attacking at the same time. This book is also about how Lincoln changed his attitude toward slavery during the war. When the war started Lincoln preserved slavery in the border states in order for them to remain in the Union. Lincoln's war goal at that time was just to keep the union in tact, but this changed in 1862 with the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln felt that freed slaves could be used against the Confederacy because they deprived it of manpower so he signed the Proclamation in 1862. Linclon soon allowed ex-slaves in to the Union army and once they were either killed or put back into slavery, Lincoln terminated future prisoner exchanges between the Union and the Confederacy. Ulitmately Lincoln would not listen to any Confederate peace offer until they gave into Union demands to abolish slavery. Overall McPherson does a supberb job at telling why Lincoln was a excellent commander in chief, but he seems to skim over Linclon's suspending habeas corpus. McPherson's thesis about civilians like Lincoln having a greater strategic sense than their military counterparts is very similiar to the one that Eliot Cohen made in his book "Supreme Command." But unlike Cohen, McPherson makes a much stronger and detailed arguement about why Lincoln was better at conducting the war than some of his generals.

Many scholars have described Abraham Lincoln's legacy, but surprisingly few have chronicled his role as Commander-in-Chief. Arguably our premier Civil War historian, James McPherson, whose Battle Cry of Freedom won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998, brilliantly remedies this neglect. "In his conception of military strategy," writes McPherson, "Lincoln was Clausewitzian. The Prussian theorist of war had written that 'the destruction of the enemy's military force is the leading principle of war,' and it "is principally effected only by means of the engagement' that is, by 'hard, tough fighting.'" Lincoln was often frustrated by his generals' lethargy, especially by George McClellan, a pompous prima donna with a messianic complex who preened himself as being "The Young Napoleon." Strutting about like a bantam rooster, McClellan boasted that he, and he alone, was destined to save the Union. True, by means of seemingly endless formation drills, he whipped the Union army into a formidable fighting force, but then stubbornly refused to budge against the enemy. Whining and complaining, inaccurately, that the Confederate forces arrayed against him were at least twice the size of his Army of the Potomac, he postponed, time and again, an offensive campaign, to which cowardly inactivity Lincoln tartly retorted, "If you don't plan to use the army, may I borrow it for a while?" Only in the last year of the war did Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, George Henry Thomas, and Philip Henry Sheridan grasp Lincoln's insight that the Union's concentration in time (simultaneous coordinated attacks) trumped the Confederate superiority in space (by using interior lines). Tried by War is a fascinating narrative not only of Lincoln's prescient military leadership but also a bird's-eye view of the major military encounters of the Civil War. McPherson has written a perceptive and persuasive volume. About the author: James M. McPherson is the George Henry Davis `86 Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University, where he taught for three decades. He is the bestselling author of numerous books on the Civil War, including Battle Cry of Freedom (which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998), For Cause and Comrades, which won the prestigious Lincoln Prize, and Crossroads of Freedom. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

James M. McPherson is, without any second thoughts, the premier author of the civil war, the battles, and the Generals that fought them. In Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief, McPherson surpasses even himself. His investigation and analysis of Lincoln's role as Commander in Chief in Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief is perhaps the only book of its type and certainly worth adding to your private library. Most Americans aren't aware that the President's activities as head of the military was largely invented by Mr. Lincoln. He made it up as he went. With almost no military training Mr. Lincoln managed to pull the United States through our darkest years with almost a natural ability. He had to deal with generals that supposedly knew more than he did and had the egos to match. Most of the leading Union generals didn't think much of the President. McPherson merely demonstrates, through one example after another, just how unique Lincoln was, and what a great strategist he was. Lincoln's ability to direct the energies of the United States after his inauguration, despite enormous self-doubts, has set a high bench mark by which all Presidents are measured. Not only did Lincoln alter the purpose of the war from one to save the Union to one to free the slaves, he managed to goad the Union generals into fighting his type of war; in the end that was a campaign of all out warfare waged even against civilians. McPherson is a consummate researcher, always a requirement for a historian. What sets him apart is his ability to tell the story; delivering facts in a way that keeps the readers' attention and conveys the magnitude of the story he's telling. In Tried by War McPherson is really at his best which is saying something considering some of his other work: Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam; The Might Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil Way; For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil Way; and my favorite Hollowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg. There are others! Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief is a book you'll definitely want to read as soon as you can.