Grant and Lincoln's invitation

[STS Lincolnite]

Laurie said: "I am not able to answer the military hierarchy question as to the powers of Gen. Grant except to say that I think he was the military strategist who planned the troop movements and battles under the supervision of Lincoln and Stanton. But I think Stanton's War Department was more involved in the administration of the Union armies than in the raw execution of plans."

Kees, the question of Grant's role is potentially very complicated but I think Laurie is on the right track here.

I would recommend the book "The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War" by Donald Stoker. He uses the attached diagram to provide a foundation for his point of view. I will try to do a very brief overview here in this post.

A quote from his book: "Civil-military relations, the respective roles of the military and civilian leaders and their ability to work with each other, had a significant impact on the creation of strategy as well as its implementation." He defined each category and how various the various role players fit in.

He describes policy as the political objective or objectives sought by the government in arms (often described as war aims). He further states that "policy should inform strategy, provide the framework for its pursuit, but not dictate it". Development of policy would certainly be the role of the President and his Cabinet.

Grand strategy would be the utilization of the combined non-military resources (economic, political, diplomatic) and military resources.

He defines strategy as how military force is used in the pursuit of the political goal. Grant would certainly be involved at this level and probably operations (what military forces do in an effort to implement military strategy) is where he would have had more unfettered decision making authority. When he was in the field he would have been also involved in tactics (which govern the execution of battles fought in the course of operations).