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At the war’s onset the regular army was small and mostly deployed in the western territories. Its commanding general was the aging Winfield Scott, first serving in the War of 1812 and admired for his leadership in the Mexican War. Scott devised a strategic approach to conducting the war – the “Anaconda” plan that called for encircling (constricting) the South at the Mississippi and the Atlantic coast. From a broad-term perspective this was, in essence, what transpired over the war years. Scott drew criticism by offering his views on the political aims he felt should underlie the North’s goals for reunification. Despite his military reputation Scott, now in his mid-60’s, no longer had the physical capacity to lead the army in the field.
After several minor engagements that did not bring satisfaction to the North, the two armies faced off in Manassas, practically at the back door of Washington. Here began a pattern of Northern failures in which the Federal forces were out maneuvered and outgeneraled by the rebel opponents. In the ensuring search for new leadership after Manassas, George McClellan emerged. McClellan had had several small-scale victories in western Virginia and was perceived to be the fresh and vigorous leader the army needed. McClellan proved to be excellent at organizing his army, now expanded to many times its prewar size, but he soon evidenced several characteristics that would hugely frustrate the North’s political leadership. He was utterly dismissive of the views of his civilian superiors and displayed an arrogance and disdain toward Lincoln and war secretary Stanton that, probably in their desperation for military success, they tolerated. Plausible suggestions for attacking Confederate forces encamped within miles of Washington were rejected outright and, instead, an elaborate and complex plan to attack the Confederate capital at Richmond was advanced by McClellan. Contained in this strategy was a notion that dominated military thinking for quite a long time – that the war could be won by capturing the capital of the Confederacy. Lincoln fairly quickly realized that it was not the “place” of the Confederacy that was important; it was the “army”; that by destroying the army of the South the rebellion would be suppressed.
McClellan’s other command deficiency appeared in the Peninsula campaign. He grossly overestimated the size of his opponent and exercised slowness and caution instead of aggressiveness. His constant complaints about the need for additional troops were a pretext for inaction. It was at the end of the campaign along the York and James Rivers that Lincoln relieved McClellan from overall command of the Federal armies, replacing him with Henry Halleck, who had achieved some success in the West directing field generals. Halleck proved as ineffective in directing McClellan as Lincoln (more on Halleck later). McClellan was directed to take forces north to aid Gen. John Pope’s efforts around Manassas. His failure to do so, combined with Pope’s ineptitude that led to the second defeat at Manassas. Robert E. Lee determined to invade Maryland and the Federals followed him, always shielding Washington from the rebel army. In central Maryland, the armies collided at Antietam. McClellan had the great fortune of coming across a lost copy of Lee’s battle plan, but did not take full advantage of his good luck principally by not engaging his forces enmasse. What followed was Lee’s withdrawal after devastating losses on both sides. This was perceived by the administration to be enough of a victory to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, but Lincoln’s hope that McClellan would pursue Lee’s army was frustrated by his inaction.
At long last Lincoln could no longer abide with McClellan’s temerity. He searched for a replacement, settling on Ambrose Burnside who protested that he had not the capacity for so great an assignment. He was correct in his self-assessment. The catastrophe of the Fredericksburg campaign and the subsequent ludicrous “mud march” in the mire away from the Rappahannock prompted Lincoln to select Joseph Hooker for overall command. “Fighting Joe” Hooker had performed well at Antietam and better that most at Fredericksburg and had a reputation for the kind of aggressiveness sought by Lincoln. In early 1863 Hooker conceived a sound plan to outflank Lee near Chancellorsville, but following a bold counter flanking maneuver by Stonewall Jackson and a near miss from cannon fire that left Hooker temporarily incapacitated, the rebels again prevailed.
Lee again forayed North and on the eve of a great engagement Lincoln switched leadership by appointing George Meade to command. At Gettysburg Meade determined to fight Lee on the defensive and through the combination of strong defensive positions and good luck was able to repel Lee. Here again, though, was the lack of pursuit of the defeated rebel army that so frustrated Lincoln. Meade probably wisely eschewed attacking Lee’s strongly fortified position at Williamsport, MD and the rebel army made its reentry into Virginia.
Throughout the fall and early winter of 1863 there were desultory Federal campaign efforts that came to nothing. In the spring of 1864 Lincoln determined to appoint Grant as general-in-chief. Grant had received praise for his fighting in the West, notably Vicksburg and Chattanooga. Halleck was demoted the chief of staff to Lincoln. Grant wisely decided to exercise command leadership from the field, retaining Meade in charge of the Army of the Potomac. This proved to be a great success as the two men had a good working relationship and, most importantly, being away from Washington buffered Grant from the intrusions of politicians. Grant had a straight-ahead approach that brought huge casualties to the army, but ultimately forced the rebels to defensive positions outside Petersburg. (It was in the late war years that the value of entrenchment in combating offensive action became the preferred method of resistance.) Petersburg was a stalemate throughout the remainder of 1864 and early 1865 until the Federals were finally able to sever rebel communications lines and outflank Lee’s lines causing his retreat and ultimate capture at Appomattox.
Sears devotes considerable space to the army’s corps and division commanders. He finds most of them wanting in leadership skill. The top command was stacked with political generals, most of whom were ineffective military leaders. (Some of these political generals retained command because of their purported political influence on pending elections, e.g. Butler, Banks and Siegel.) Two of the most promising corps leaders – Reynolds and Sedgwick – were killed. Slocum was reasonably effective; Warren was not; Burnside in a corps command role was not. Overall, the casualty rate among division and brigade leaders was quite high. Sears gives most praise to Winfield Scott Hancock and Philp Sheridan.
A fascinating element of this account is the interplay between the military commanders themselves and with the political sphere and the press. There were intense and dysfunctional jealousies among the generals. Their hubris led to undercutting of peers and superiors, often by appeals to political sponsors and directly to the press. We think today of military commanders as being politically neutral and professionally committed to following a chain of command without political intrigue, but this was decidedly not the case during the Civil War years. There were even instances of vague references to military action to depose the “incompetents” in Washington, probably not seriously contemplated but even the rumor is disquieting to consider.
A word about Halleck who, since he is a native of my hometown, I have studied. Sears’s treatment of Halleck is fair. Halleck did not live up to expectations Lincoln had for his role as commanding general. Halleck was generally reticent to overrule his field generals, but when he tried to do so was ineffective in having his direction followed. In is interesting to consider that Halleck did not succeed where Lincoln could not, i.e. in getting aggressive actions by McClellan and others. The political atmosphere in Washington was debilitating to Halleck, an atmosphere so charged and vicious that Grant’s decision to stay away from Washington was indeed wise. Halleck ended his war service as largely the administrative chief of the army and as Lincoln’s military adviser, roles that he performed quite well.
Although I was not interested so much in the movements of the battles as in Sears’s assessment of the military leaders, I found his descriptions hard to follow. The maps accompanying the battle narratives were not helpful.
This book is so one sided though that in spite of it's length, it feels like an incomplete story. Operations of other armies are rarely mentioned, and battle descriptions rarely speak in detail of the enemy army . We know how and why the Army of the Potomac came to be where they were and what their general strategy was, but not so much of the enemy.
If you're only going read one civil war book, go with Shelby Foote over this book. If you're already familiar with ebb and flow of the war and want a deep dive into one of the key armies of the war, then Sears is for you.
So it is with the task that Sears undertook. Before George Meade took over command of the Army of the Potomac in 1863, shortly before Gettysburg, the position was held by six other officers, all of whom found the much smaller, ill-equipped Army of Northern Virginia more than they could handle. One would think that with an army of a hundred thousand soldiers it would be a simple matter to march on and seize Richmond, but one would be wrong. An army is made up of several corps. Each corps is made up of several divisions which are, made up of several regiments which are, in turn made up of brigades. Each of these units needed a commander and the sad truth was that Lincoln’s army suffered from a severe lack of experienced officers. The pre-war standing army was a fraction of the size of what was needed and the majority of the qualified officers came from the southern states with their almost feudal agrarian society that left younger sons little opportunities other than the military.
Sears does an excellent job of describing how these many sub-commanders worked together, or didn’t, and how their actions contributed to or detracted from the war effort. Few had any military experience. Many were politicians with typical politician’s shortcomings. Some were vain, petty, ignorant, venial and just plain despicable. Others, though, found themselves in a challenging position and rose to the occasion.
Sears’ book was ably narrated by the incomparable George Guidall. Unfortunately, I have come to the conclusion that audio recordings are not the best medium for most nonfiction books. Often when reading a nonfiction book, I like to highlight certain passages and refer back to them in the future. This is not convenient in audio. Also, I would like to how characters names are spelled so that I can do further research on them. Finally, many nonfiction books include photographs and maps of the subjects that missing from an audio recording. I must give cudos to the great folks at Recorded Books though. When I discovered that two of the 26 discs in this book were blank, they quickly sent me replacements and they were in my mailbox within a week.
*Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review was based on an advanced reading copy obtained at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review. While this does take any ‘not worth what I paid for it’ statements out of my review, it otherwise has no impact on the content of my review.
FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements:
*5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
*4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.
*3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered great or memorable.
*2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending.
*1 Star - The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire.
Publication
Description
History. Nonfiction. HTML: From the best-selling author of Gettysburg, a multilayered group biography of the commanders who led the Army of the Potomac The high command of the Army of the Potomac was a changeable, often dysfunctional band of brothers, going through the fires of war under seven commanding generals in three years, until Grant came east in 1864. The men in charge all too frequently appeared to be fighting against the administration in Washington instead of for it, increasingly cast as political pawns facing down a vindictive congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War. President Lincoln oversaw, argued with, and finally tamed his unruly team of generals as the eastern army was stabilized by an unsung supporting cast of corps, division, and brigade generals. With characteristic style and insight, Stephen Sears brings these courageous, determined officers, who rose through the ranks and led from the front, to life..… (more)