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Assessing the Civil War’s
Most Notable Military Commanders
Grant and Lee: Victorious American
and Vanquished Virginian. Edward
H. Bonekemper III. Praeger Publishers.
437 pages; maps; charts; index; $49.95.
By Col. Cole C. Kingseed
U.S. Army retired
G
en. Ulysses S. Grant and Gen.
Robert E. Lee emerged from the
American Civil War as the North’s
and South’s premier military commanders. While each general-in-chief
has attracted his share of admirers
and detractors, few biographers have
made a comprehensive comparison of
the two leaders over the span of their
seemingly separate 1861–63 campaigns, as well as their more familiar
head-to-head contests in Virginia during 1864–65.
Subtitled Victorious American and
Vanquished Virginian, Grant and Lee reinforces Edward H. Bonekemper III’s
previous works: How Robert E. Lee Lost
the Civil War and A Victor, Not a
Butcher: Ulysses S. Grant’s Overlooked
Military Genius. In each book, Bonekemper makes a compelling case for
Grant’s tactical and strategic superiority to Lee. The Grant who emerges
from these pages is an astute military
commander who, through “dexterity
and cunning,” achieves complete success less than a year after launching
his Overland Campaign against Lee in
the spring of 1864.
Bonekemper does not disguise his
obvious admiration for Grant. As the
subtitle indicates, Grant pursued a national strategy that was consistent
with the North’s superior resources
and the country’s offensive-minded
President. From 1861–65, Grant’s “aggressiveness in three theaters was consistent with the Union need for [total]
victory,” while Lee’s “aggressiveness
in a single theater was inconsistent
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ARMY ■ April 2008
with strategic and tactical defensiveness the Confederates needed to preserve their limited manpower and
force the stalemate that was sufficient
for Southern victory.”
Grant and Lee contains a provocative, albeit highly biased, analysis of
the casualty rates that each commander suffered throughout his battles
and campaigns. Again Bonekemper is
anything but impartial, as Grant’s excessive casualties on the battlefield,
which Bonekemper claims were always “militarily tolerable,” are offset
by contrasting them with the numbers
of Confederate prisoners captured
at Fort Donelson, Tenn.; Vicksburg,
Miss.; and Appomattox Court House,
Va. In his direct confrontations with
Lee in the war’s final year, for example, Grant actually incurred a far
higher casualty rate than Lee, but
when the South’s prisoners are included following Lee’s surrender at
Appomattox, the casualty ratio appears relatively even.
Bonekemper actually bases his controversial assessment of Lee’s tactical
and strategic inferiority on the highly
debatable premise that the Union, not
the Confederacy, had the burden of
winning the war. Bonekemper contends that all the South had to do
to win independence was to pursue a
defensive strategy until the Confederacy achieved international recognition
or the North tired of the war. Such an
assertion fails to take into account
President Abraham Lincoln’s implacable desire to conduct offensive operations to force the Southern states to
renounce their self-proclaimed independence.
The only way for the South to have
won the war, posits Bonekemper, was
for Lee to pursue a strategic and a tactical defensive. To Lee, such a course
was both militarily and politically unacceptable, since the North’s superiority in resources would eventually prevail. Bonekemper contends that Lee’s
penchant for the offensive and his
“Virginia myopia” played into the
Union’s hands and resulted in the loss
of Vicksburg, “the fall of Atlanta, the
reelection of Lincoln and the loss of
the war.” Somehow, Bonekemper also
attributes the destruction of the Confederate Army of Tennessee at Franklin and Nashville to Lee since Gen.
John Bell Hood, “a protégé of Lee’s,”
needlessly sacrificed his army in a series of frontal attacks. Strange logic indeed!
Grant and Lee does make a significant contribution to our understanding of these complex commanders in
Bonekemper’s analysis of the careers
of both generals over the entire course
of the Civil War. He traces how each
sought to achieve victory by offensive
operations, but Bonekemper concludes
that Lee’s reliance on the tactical offensive was misplaced because of in-
ferior resources and that he should
have dispatched portions of his army
to the Mississippi Valley to counter
Union gains in the Western Theater of
the war rather than invading Maryland and Pennsylvania in 1862 and
1863, respectively.
In Grant and Lee’s final chapter,
Bonekemper compares his subjects in
myriad general military and military
managerial skills. Contemporary military officers and noncommissioned
officers will find this analysis particularly illuminating. Not surprisingly,
Grant holds the upper hand in virtually every field, including tactics,
strategic vision, use of staffs and other
resources, maneuverability, and clarity of orders.
Again, Lee falls short in virtually
every category. Only in moral courage
does Bonekemper assign Lee equal
marks. Given Lee’s consistent substandard ratings, one wonders how
Lee achieved any military success or
how he held the Union Army of the
Potomac at bay for three years.
T
o his credit, Bonekemper cites a
number of prominent historians to
lend credence to the various schools
surrounding the merits of Grant’s and
Lee’s generalship. Readers will find
the detailed appendices and notes well
worth the cost of the book. Two appendices specifically address conflicting
casualty rates in every major battle and
campaign fought by Grant and Lee. In
addition, superior maps throughout
the text add to the reader’s compre-
hension of the various campaigns.
In the final analysis, Bonekemper has produced a highly readable,
though flawed, assessment of the
war’s most notable military commanders. Joining an increasing number of
recent historians who believe that Lee
has been consistently “overrated by
romantic proponents of the Myth of
the Lost Cause,” Bonekemper posits
that “to Grant, along with Lincoln,
must go the credit for Union victory,
and to Lee, along with Jefferson
Davis, must go the blame for Confederate defeat.”
■
COL. COLE C. KINGSEED, USA Ret.,
Ph.D., a former professor of history at
the U.S. Military Academy, is a writer
and consultant.
Varied Fare
Airborne Forces at War: From Parachute Test Platoon to the 21st Century. Robert K. Wright Jr., Ph.D. and
John T. Greenwood, Ph.D. Naval Institute Press. 214 pages; photographs;
maps; index; $39.95.
In Airborne Forces at War, Robert K.
Wright Jr. and John T. Greenwood present a comprehensive summation of
the activities, organizations and combat operations that collectively spell
out the history of the airborne forces
of the U.S. Army. Almost every airborne unit, almost every combat action and almost every decision critical
to the evolution of Airborne organization and doctrine are identified. But
the mention of each is more in the
form of a daily morning report that
summarizes the facts of daily activities, with little explanation of why
and how.
There is only a smattering of anecdotal information in Airborne Forces at
War. There are paragraphs on personalities, the design of the Parachutist
Badge, Medal of Honor awardees and
the like; however, although the coverage of each major segment of Airborne
history reports what happened, any
detailed explanations of the plans,
purposes and actions that brought
about the result are omitted. For example, a reader interested in the record of
the 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry, will find “… the 3rd Battalion,
504th, was sent to the northern front
[at Anzio] and attached to the British
1st (Guards) Division. … they helped
stop the German offensive in difficult
hand-to-hand fighting against repeated attacks … For its gallant stand
from February 8–12, the 3rd Battalion
received a DUC [Distinguished Unit
Citation].”
In the same vein, it is reported that
Air Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory
was an outspoken skeptic of the airborne operations planned for D-Day,
but there is no detailed presentation
of his argument. Similarly, “For his intrepid leadership and heroism in the
fight for Altavilla and Hill 424, [thenCol. Reuben H.] Tucker was awarded
the first of his two wartime DSCs.”
There is no description of Col.
Tucker’s specific actions, no further
reference to Altavilla or Hill 424.
The above is not meant as criticism.
It is, instead, a forewarning to the
reader who is looking for the what,
why and how of his favorite unit’s
participation in one of our wars that
he will have to refer to the books and
papers listed in the bibliography or
other sources for the full story.
Nevertheless, this is an excellent
factual history of the Airborne, a more
complete chronology of all wars and
all theaters than I have seen previously. It will be a useful reference text
that follows the development of today’s capabilities and identifies the inquiry, imagination and experience
that energized generations of paratroopers to grow that 50-man Test Platoon of 1940 to the Airborne Corps
and the special operations forces of toApril 2008 ■ ARMY
91
day. It identifies the soldiers who
made that growth possible and others
who proved the value and success of
the concept and created the traditions,
reputation and fame of the soldiers
and organizations proud to call themselves “Airborne!”
—Gen. Frederick J. Kroesen, USA Ret.
How the South Could Have Won the
Civil War: The Fatal Errors That
Led to Confederate Defeat. Bevin
Alexander. Crown Publishers. 338
pages; maps; index; $25.95.
Was Union victory in the American
Civil War inevitable? That question
has intrigued historians for more
than a century. Most explanations for
Union victory and Confederate defeat lack what military historian
James McPherson calls the dimension
of contingency—the recognition that
at numerous critical points during
the war, things might have gone altogether differently. In How the South
Could Have Won the Civil War, Bevin
Alexander contends that the South
most definitely could have won.
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ARMY ■ April 2008
In exploring the feasibility of Confederate victory, Alexander reiterates
the argument that he first articulated
in Lost Victories: The Military Genius of
Stonewall Jackson. Alexander posits
that Confederate Lt. Gen. Thomas
(Stonewall) Jackson’s strategic insight
was vastly superior to that of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and
Gen. Robert E. Lee. According to
Alexander, Jackson figured out almost from the outset how to win the
war, but neither Davis nor Lee was
willing to follow his recommendations.
Recognizing the need to adapt to
the new kind of war in which opposing armies were only an outward
manifestation of enemy strength, Jackson proposed moving against the
North’s industries and other means of
livelihood. His strategy, in short, was
to bypass the Union armies and win
the war indirectly by attacking the
Northern people’s will to prosecute
the war. The course that Lee adopted,
however, was costly frontal attacks
aimed primarily against Union
armies, a strategy that ultimately led
to Confederate defeat.
Though intriguing, Alexander’s argument does not bear up under serious scrutiny. Contending that Davis,
Lee and Jackson, more than any others, determined the outcome of the
Civil War fails to consider the critical
role that President Abraham Lincoln
and a host of Union generals played.
Nor does Alexander provide sufficient
analysis of the Western Theater of the
war, in which the more successful
Union generals emerged and in which
serious errors by Confederate military
leaders resulted in the loss of the Mississippi Valley to Union armies.
In addition, Alexander pays insufficient attention to the less-than-successful aspects of Jackson’s generalship. Jackson’s frequent delays during
the Seven Days Battles outside Richmond, Va., for example, repeatedly
forced Lee to revise his plans and in
large measure facilitated Union Maj.
Gen. George McClellan’s escape to the
safety of the James River.
Where Alexander does succeed is
in demonstrating that there is nothing
inevitable about military victory.
Though potential victory is seldom
limited solely to an individual leader’s
contribution, Alexander’s admiration
of Stonewall Jackson notwithstanding,
Alexander offers the reader an alternative interpretation of how weaker
armies can overcome stronger opponents. It is in this respect that How the
South Could Have Won the Civil War
makes its greatest contribution.
—Col. Cole C. Kingseed, USA Ret.
The Lost Battalion of TET: Breakout
of the 2/12th Cavalry at Hue.
Charles A. Krohn. Naval Institute
Press. 171 pages; black and white photographs; maps; index; $23.95.
In addition to being an honest, fair
and balanced example of military
writing, what marks The Lost Battalion
of TET: Breakout of the 2/12th Cavalry at
Hue for importance is author Charles
A. Krohn’s uncanny ability to elucidate what went wrong during a sixweek period in January and February
1968 during the recapture of the city
of Hue, when a U.S. infantry battalion
was ordered to attack a North Vietnamese force of more than 2,000 without air or artillery support.
The former lieutenant colonel’s conclusion: Steel is always cheaper than
blood.
During one of the initial battles of
the Tet Offensive, the 2nd Battalion,
12th Cavalry (supported by Troop B,
1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment)
prevented the enemy from driving
free-world forces from the strategic
Que Son Valley, terrain essential for
control of Quang Nam Province. Although the battalion was encircled on
February 4 by elements of the 6th
North Vietnamese Army Regiment,
the U.S. battle line could not be
breached. In fact, that night U.S.
troops exfiltrated enemy positions
without being seen deep into the
North Vietnamese lines of communication. Completely surprised, the enemy was interdicted. But out of a foxhole strength of 500, 81 American
soldiers were killed in action and
more than 250 wounded, a staggering
casualty rate. In a Presidential Unit
Citation prepared by Krohn for Richard Nixon and issued on August 11,
1970, the President stated that the
troops “showed their gallant fighting
timber during many days of sustained
combat. Their outstanding bravery,
determination, esprit de corps and devotion to duty blunted the enemy offensive and brought great credit on
themselves, their unit and the U.S.
Army.”
Despite the high praise, considerable controversy continues among
military experts over battle strategy
during that tumultous combat period.
“Based upon my experiences in Vietnam,” writes Krohn, who served two
tours in Vietnam and retired from the
Army in 1984, “I was convinced that
conventional light infantry has little
chance of surviving contact with a superior force without artillery support.
This conviction was never challenged
until 2002, when I learned that the
10th Mountain Division was deploying to Afghanistan without any organic artillery.” Wanting to find out
why, contrary to Army doctrine and
his experiences, Krohn was told by his
political contacts that “the Army didn’t
see the need to take artillery, while
[his] military contacts said the political
leadership set the rules. … In short, if
soldiers were killed or wounded in
Afghanistan because there was no artillery to support them, blame would
inevitably fall on the shoulders of the
person perceived most responsible.
Air-delivered precision weapons are
useful, but they have limitations, a
function of weather, response time and
availability.”
There is nothing formal about
Krohn’s part-diary, part-documentary, always instructional 33 chapters
in which he portrays, with care and
affection, men in ferocious close-encounter street fighting. That The Lost
Battalion of TET is relentlessly accurate and impartial in its overall conclusions was recently borne out when
the book was selected as an essential
source for a 2006 analysis of the battle for Hue by the U.S. Army Center
of Military History. Published in cooperation with the Association of the
U.S. Army, this revised paperback
edition, with 16 pages of personal
photos and six new appendices, arrives in time to commemorate Tet’s
40th anniversary.
The Lost Battalion of TET will be welcomed by all readers, including urban
battle historians and armchair generals, especially when Krohn’s recounted
reactions are not only often impolitic
but also are motivated by a drive to
keep faith with his companions—alive
or killed—his profession and his conscience.
—Don DeNevi
April 2008 ■ ARMY
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