Download 84 ARMY March 2009

Harper’s Weekly
84
ARMY ■ March 2009
By Col. Cole C. Kingseed
U.S. Army retired
istory is replete with examples
of chief executives making important adjustments before determining the best military team to lead the
nation’s armed forces in time of war. In
recent months, historians have remarked on the political sagacity of President Barack Obama borrowing a page from one of his most illustrious predecessors in forming a “team of rivals” as he begins
his presidency. As did Abraham Lincoln before
him, President Obama has included a number of
prominent political adversaries in his administration as he assumes the nation’s highest-elected office in the midst of a major war. On the occasion of
the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth, the current
Commander in Chief might profit by reflecting on
the challenges encountered by our 16th President
during the Civil War, before he settled on Ulysses
S. Grant to serve as the “general in chief” of the
Union armies.
March 2009 ■ ARMY
85
National Archives
President Lincoln meets with his generals
on Antietam battlefield, October 1862.
of the Mexican-American War, devised the Anaconda Plan to slowly
strangle the Confederacy. Maritime
strategies by their nature are longterm strategies, and, with enemy
armies on the outskirts of the federal
capital, Lincoln required a far quicker
solution. Following the failure of
Union forces at First Manassas/Bull
Run in July 1861, Lincoln summoned
McClellan, fresh from his victories in
western Virginia, and entrusted him
with command of the newly formed
Army of the Potomac. A few months
later, McClellan was appointed general in chief of all Union armies. Despite constant urging from Lincoln,
McClellan simply would not fight.
ot surprisingly, Lincoln articLincoln finally relieved McClellan of
ulated his intent to crush the
command in November 1862 because
armies of the newly formed
Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan
of the general’s inactivity following
Confederate States of America. In rethe Battle of Antietam.
peated messages to his army commanAmong the series of commanders of the Army of the Poders, Lincoln stressed that the destruction of armies, not the
capture of cities, was the surest path to winning the war. tomac who followed McClellan, including Major Generals
Finding the right commanders who shared this vision was Ambrose Burnside, Joseph Hooker and George Meade,
Lincoln repeatedly reiterated his desire to seek a decisive
a more formidable challenge.
The generals best positioned to implement Lincoln’s engagement over Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern
goals during the first year of the conflict were Command- Virginia. In each case, the military commanders failed to
ing General of the U.S. Army Bvt. Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott interpret Lincoln’s command intent. Burnside initially
and his immediate successor, Maj. Gen. George B. McClel- moved quickly but squandered an opportunity to attack
lan. Scott, the aged veteran of the War of 1812 and the hero Lee before Lee was able to concentrate his entire force at
Fredericksburg, Va. Then Burnside horribly mishandled
COL. COLE C. KINGSEED, USA Ret., Ph.D., a former profes- the Army in a series of ill-fated attacks against Lee’s army,
sor of history at the U.S. Military Academy, is a writer and which was entrenched in an impregnable position.
Lincoln thought he had found a solution in Hooker,
consultant.
N
86
ARMY ■ March 2009
Mathew Brady
In his assessment of the Lincoln
presidency, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief, James M.
McPherson states that “Abraham Lincoln was the only President in American history whose entire administration was bounded by war.” From the
day he took the inaugural oath until
his assassination four years later, Lincoln’s predominant task was to win the
Civil War. Accordingly, he established
policy objectives, articulated war aims
and searched for a team of commanders, whose principal chore was to develop a military strategy to implement
Lincoln’s political objectives.
Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker
Maj. Gen. George Meade
As Lincoln searched for the right commander in the
Eastern Theater, the most successful Union strategy was
being implemented in the Mississippi River Valley and
along accompanying tributaries. There, a series of commanders, most notably Ulysses S. Grant and William T.
Sherman, emerged. Grant was clearly the rising star, having destroyed two Confederate armies with his capture of
Fort Donelson, Tenn., in February 1862 and Vicksburg,
Miss., in July 1863. Though he had not met Grant, Lincoln
became his staunchest ally because Grant demonstrated
the tenacity that Lincoln sought. Even when Grant’s tactical conduct of the 1862 battle at Shiloh, Tenn., was called
into question because the North endured excessive casualties, Lincoln stated, “I can’t spare this
man. He fights!” Later Lincoln would
identify what Grant possessed and so
many of his commanders lacked:
“They [politicians and many military
commanders] have no idea that the
war is to be carried on and put
through by hard, tough fighting—that
it will hurt somebody.”
Vicksburg convinced Lincoln that
Grant was the type of general he
needed to win the war. A week following Vicksburg’s capitulation, Lincoln
wrote Grant to express his “grateful
acknowledgement for the almost inestimable service you have done the
country.” He candidly informed Grant
that as President, he thought that
Grant had made a serious error in his
approach to Vicksburg. Lincoln continued,
“I now wish to make the perMaj. Gen. William T. Sherman
M
88
ARMY ■ March 2009
Mathew Brady
whom he appointed commanding general of the Army of
the Potomac despite his personal reservations over
Hooker’s claim that the country needed a dictator. Lincoln
wrote to Hooker: “It was not for this, but in spite of it, that
I have given you the command. … What I now ask of you
is military success. … I shall assist you, as far as I can. …
Go forward, and give us victories.” Hooker failed badly at
Chancellorsville, Va., in May 1863, and with Lee’s army invading Pennsylvania in June, Lincoln reminded Hooker
again that Lee’s army, not Richmond, was the true objective. Hooker thought otherwise, and his impulsive resignation was accepted by Lincoln.
eade followed in the commander’s role and won a
tactical victory at Gettysburg, but he failed to follow up his
success. When Lee escaped to Virginia,
Lincoln prepared a message to Meade:
“My dear General, I do not believe
you appreciate the magnitude of the
misfortune involved in Lee’s escape.
He was within your easy grasp, and to
have closed upon him would … have
ended the war. … Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it.” After careful reflection, Lincoln filed the message, relieved that at least a tactical
victory was better than nothing. Yet in
Lincoln’s mind, Meade had failed the
test of command and was not the general who would prosecute the war in
the manner that Lincoln intended.
Mathew Brady
Mathew Brady
Mathew Brady
Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside
Mathew Brady
After Major Generals Burnside,
Hooker and Meade
failed their Commander in Chief’s
mission, in 1864
Lincoln selected
Ulysses S. Grant to
pursue and defeat
Lee's Army of
Northern Virginia.
sonal acknowledgment that you were right and I was
wrong.” Lincoln had found his man.
Before he could summon Grant to Washington, D.C., the
Confederates won a victory at Chickamauga in northwest
Georgia in September 1863, and the Union Army of the
Cumberland fled to the city of Chattanooga, where they
were immediately besieged. Lincoln had had enough. Reorganizing several military departments into the Military
Division of the Mississippi, he placed Grant in command
and authorized him to take whatever measures were necessary to remedy the situation. Grant relieved several commanders, rushed in reinforcements and within a month
routed the Confederate Army of Tennessee.
The bill restoring the grade of lieutenant general of the
Army, a rank previously held only by George Washington
(and Winfield Scott as a brevet appointment), had been
passed by Congress and became law in February 1864.
Grant’s nomination was sent to the Senate on March 1 and
confirmed the next day. President Lincoln summoned
Grant to Washington, D.C., to receive his commission. On
March 8, Grant arrived in the nation’s capital to take command of all the Union armies. His entrance into Washington “was consistent with his image as an unpretentious
man of action,” according to author Doris Kearns Goodwin in Team of Rivals.
Upon arrival at Washington’s historic Willard Hotel at
90
ARMY ■ March 2009
dusk, accompanied only by his son
Fred, Grant was not recognized by the
desk clerk. He was initially told that
nothing was available except a small
room on the top floor, but once the
clerk looked at the signature in the
register—U.S. Grant and son, Galena,
Illinois—the general’s accommodations were switched. After a private
dinner, Grant prepared his son for bed
and strolled over to the White House
to meet the Commander in Chief for
the first time.
Grant arrived at the White House,
where a large crowd had gathered for
the President’s weekly reception.
Grant walked along modestly with
the rest of the crowd toward the President. Meeting Grant for the first time,
Lincoln remarked, “Why, here is Gen.
Grant! Well, this is a great pleasure.”
After a brief exchange, Lincoln turned
Grant over to Secretary of State William H. Seward to negotiate the crowd.
As Goodwin describes it, the President
was “delighted by the crowd’s embrace of Grant, [and] he willingly
ceded to the unassuming general his
own customary place of honor, fully
aware that the path to victory was
wide enough, [as a young colonel
said], for the two of them to ‘walk it abreast.’”
After an hour, Grant returned to Lincoln, who was waiting with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. They discussed
the next day’s ceremony at which Grant would formally
receive his commission. Then Lincoln conferred privately
with Grant to establish the general parameters of what
would be the most successful civil-military partnership in
American history.
A
ccording to Grant’s memoirs, Lincoln stated that
he had “never professed to be a military man or
to know how campaigns should be conducted,
and never wanted to interfere in them: but that procrastination on the part of commanders, and the pressure from the
people [of] the North and Congress, which was always with
him, forced him into issuing his series of ‘Military Orders.’
… [Lincoln] did not know but they were all wrong, and did
know that some of them were. All [Lincoln] wanted or had
ever wanted was someone who would take the responsibility and act, and call on him for all the assistance needed,
pledging himself to use all the power of the government in
rendering such assistance.” Grant then assured Lincoln
“that [he] would do the best [he] could with the means at
hand, and avoid as far as possible annoying him or the War
Department.” Grant’s initial interview was over.
Grant’s account of his meeting with Lincoln doesn’t
entirely ring true, according to
McPherson. Lincoln “did want to
know what Grant was going to do,
at least in a broad strategic sense.”
In April 1864, Lincoln advised
Grant that as for the tactical “particulars of your plan, I neither
know nor seek to know.”
Grant wanted to maintain his
headquarters in the West, but according to McPherson, “Lincoln
made it clear that he wanted him to
come east ‘to see whether he cannot do something with the unfortunate Army of the Potomac.’” Two of Grant’s initial decisions were to promote Sherman to command in the West
and to retain Meade as commander of the Army of the Potomac. The latter was an uncomfortable arrangement, as
Grant would eventually establish his field headquarters in
close proximity with Meade’s headquarters.
L
incoln also confessed his frustration that in the
past, Union armies seemed intent on securing territorial objectives rather than focusing their efforts on the destruction of enemy armies. In addition, it
seemed that the various Union armies seldom operated in
concert. Lincoln had previously—and repeatedly—suggested that Buell (commander of the Union Army of the
Cumberland) and Halleck (Commanding General of the
Army), among others, devise a coordinated strategy to
“move at once upon the enemy’s whole line so as to bring
into action our great superiority in numbers.” Time and
again the generals ignored him. Grant’s coordinated strategy—to have the smaller armies serve a pin-down function, while the principal Union armies in the West and in
the East moved simultaneously against the main Confederate armies in the field—impressed Lincoln.
Following his meeting with the President, Grant immediately conducted an inspection of his principal armies
and conferred directly with his commanders, presenting
his general outline for a concentrated movement of all federal armies with the expressed purpose of destroying the
Confederate armies to their respective fronts. From late
March 1864 to the onset of the Overland Campaign in May,
Grant visited Washington, D.C., once a week to confer with
the Secretary of War and President Lincoln.
Within a month of receiving his commission as commanding general of all Union armies, Grant issued orders to
all of his commanders, outlining his general intent for the
upcoming campaign. Excerpts from his orders to Sherman
92
ARMY ■ March 2009
Library of Congress
Lt. Gen. Grant and his staff
and to Meade, his two senior commanders, indicate that
Grant fully comprehended Lincoln’s military objectives.
To Sherman, Grant wrote, “It is my design, if the enemy
keep quiet and allow me to take the initiative in the spring
campaign, to work all parts of the Army together and
somewhat towards a common center. … You, I propose to
move against Johnston’s army [Confederate Army of Tennessee], to break it up and to get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage
you can against their war resources. I do not propose to lay
down for you a plan of campaign, but simply lay down the
work it is desirable to have done and leave you free to execute it in your own way.”
A similar message went to Meade: “So far as practicable,
all the armies are to move together and towards one common center. … Sherman will move at the same time you
do, or two or three days in advance, Joseph Johnston’s
army being his objective point, and the heart of Georgia his
ultimate aim. … Lee’s army will be your objective point.
Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.”
Since Lee was the principal threat, Grant accompanied
Meade’s Army of the Potomac. In the campaign that followed, Grant and Meade endured 55,000 casualties within
six weeks, but Grant informed Lincoln that “there is to be
no turning back.” Later, Grant telegraphed his Commander in Chief: “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes
all summer.” It took all summer, all autumn and all winter,
but the outcome was never in doubt. With Lee pinned into
the defense of Richmond, it was only a matter of time before the Union would prevail.
Lincoln never lost faith in Grant and was willing to endure political fallout as casualties mounted. Upon receipt
of Grant’s August 1864 telegram stating that Grant intended to hold Lee in the trenches of Petersburg until the
latter surrendered, Lincoln wrote, “I have seen your dispatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold
In April 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at the McLean House at Appomattox, Va.
where you are. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bulldog [grip], and chew and choke, as much as possible.”
On April 2, 1865, Grant broke Lee’s line at Petersburg.
Lee abandoned Richmond and fled west. Lincoln urged
pursuit, directing Grant: “Gen. Sheridan says, ‘If the thing
is pressed, I think that Lee will surrender.’ Let the thing be
pressed.” A few days later, Lee surrendered the Army of
Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House. The war
was over.
In retrospect, the Lincoln-Grant partnership was the
most successful command team in American history. At its
foundation was a Commander in Chief who clearly articulated his political and military objectives and his command
intent. After careful screening, often by trial and error, Lincoln discovered a general who did not always agree with
the President’s policies, but one who shared Lincoln’s vision of how to end the war. By Grant’s own admission, he
had read the remarkable series of debates between Lincoln
and Douglas a few years earlier, but he had by no means
ever been a “Lincoln man” in that contest. Yet Grant had
always recognized the President’s great ability, and he
never questioned Lincoln’s constitutional role as Commander in Chief.
O
pen communication between Lincoln and Grant further cemented their relationship. Upon conferring
Grant’s commission, Lincoln informed Grant that
he had full confidence in Grant’s abilities and that he need
not know all the intricacies of Grant’s strategy. Grant acknowledged that Lincoln “was willing to trust his generals
in making and executing their plans,” but this willingness
was tempered only if those plans followed Lincoln’s intent
94
ARMY ■ March 2009
to move rapidly and to crush the opposing armies. A review of Grant’s detailed correspondence in the final year of
the war reveals a commander who kept the President fully
informed of all major decisions and troop movements.
Herein lay the reasons why Lincoln and Grant were so
successful. Their relationship was founded on a shared
strategic vision and a mutual respect for each other’s abilities and constitutional roles, not political affiliation or personal ambition. Clear communication and adherence to the
expressed goals of the President characterized Grant’s actions throughout the war. In turn, Lincoln never wavered in
his support for Grant, despite political pressure to relieve
Grant from command. Those whom Lincoln did relieve
were commanders who sought personal aggrandizement
and those who failed to develop a coherent strategy that
fulfilled the President’s intent to act decisively to destroy
the enemy armies.
In selecting his own defense team and in articulating his
command intent in the global war against terrorism, President Obama can clearly glean lessons from how Lincoln
and Grant achieved success in the most catastrophic war in
American history. It took Lincoln three years to find Grant
and to entrust the fate of the Union armies into his hands.
Given the current international crisis in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama does not have that luxury of
time, but he possesses one advantage that Lincoln did
not—he has a proven team in place. Doubtless the current
President will make adjustments, but by clearly articulating his intent and his war aims, he will have taken the initial step toward military success. By emulating President
Abraham Lincoln during this nation’s greatest crisis, he
follows a superb role model.
✭