Lincoln as Commander in Chief

[Bill Richter]

Lincoln's main contribution early in the war was to get his generals moving against the enemy. He red all tghose books on strategy and tactics to understand how armies moved and fought, but outside a lot of bad moves against Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah in 1862, Lincoln brought Henry Halleck in from the West to be his general in chief. Halleck however was too much of a bureaucrat and theorist to be an imaginative general and lost his footing during the Second Manassas Campaign. But Lincoln kept Halleck on as a sort of Chief of Staff--he knew the language of both politicians and generals and could translate orders to the generals and tell Lincoln what they were doing. From there on out, Lincoln searched for a true commanding general, and his policy of replacement of army commanders who failed to perform is well-known. To get a notion of how gut-wrenching a process this could be read Bruce Catton's Mr Lincoln's army, the thesis that the Army of the Potomac, McClellan's bodyguard, as Lincoln called it, became the President's army. Also still good is T Harry Williams, Mr Lincoln's Generals. Most of the real candidates to top command came out of the West, where they were far enough from Washington to be somewhat isolated from DC politics. In the end, the Grant-Sherman-Thomas team took over in late 1863. Grant moved East to be general in Chief. He had what Lincoln wanted--drive. Sherman and Thomas commanded in the West (Thomas winning the only decisive large battle Of the Civil War at Nashville) while Meade of Gettysburg fame continued to command the Army of the Potomac to the end, although Grant rode along with him to prod Meade and get away from DC politics--Grant was not hesitant to have telegraph "problems" to keep the politicians away. Lincoln so trusted Grant that he no longer had to function actively as C in C as before.