The American Civil War

Ethan S. Rafuse

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351147781
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

The largest and most destructive military conflict between the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War, the American Civil War has inspired some of the best and most intriguing scholarship in the field of United States history. This volume offers some of the most important work on the war to appear in the past few decades and offers compelling information and insights into subjects ranging from the organization of armies, historiography, the use of intelligence and the challenges faced by civil and military leaders in the course of America's bloodiest war.

Part I
The Commanders in Chief

[1]
Lincoln as Military Strategist

Herman Hattaway
Archer Jones

THE THESIS OF THIS PAPER is that Abraham Lincoln was a conventional mid-nineteenth-century military strategist who fully shared the ideas of Henry W. Halleck, George B. McClellan, and his other West Point-trained generals. These generals, like von Moltke in Prussia, analyzed operations in terms of lines of operations, believed in the superiority of the defensive over the offensive, and saw in turning movements the only way to overcome the power of the rifle-strengthened defensive. Lincoln derived his ideas primarily from his generals and from military realities as exhibited in the course of the war. It is not material to the thesis whether or not the generals derived their ideas from Jomini and whether or not Jomini was an exponent of Napoleonic or eighteenth-century Austrian strategy. It is significant that Lincoln's ideas were realistic and workable.

The president was early indoctrinated by McClellan with the concept of the power of the defense when, in January, 1862, the General-in-Chief explained that the "history of every former war" had "conclusively shown the great advantages which are possessed by an army acting on the defensive and occupying strong positions." McClellan had found at the beginning of the war that "but few civilians in our country, and indeed not all military men of rank, had a just appreciation of that fact." If "veteran troops frequently falter and are repulsed with loss," then "new levies . . . cannot be expected to advance without cover" against the "murderous fire" of intrenched defenders. He would solve this problem by turning the enemy, for "the effect of this movement" to the enemy's rear "will be to reverse the advantages of position. They will have to seek us in our own works, as we sought them at Manassas." The strength of the defense meant that offensive battles against an enemy with his back to his communications implied a victory which "produces no final results, & may require years of warfare & expenditure to follow up."¹

With the aid of McClellan and other generals, Lincoln early became fully at home with his generals' military conceptions. To the question as to why "the North with her great armies" so often faced the South in battle "with inferiority of numbers," the President explained "that the enemy hold the interior, and we the exterior lines." Along with understanding lines of operations he fully grasped the logistics of field armies and the significance of intrenchments and had learned to attach great importance to the turning movement or to any chance "to get in the enemies' rear" or to "intercept the enemies' retreat."²

The military sophistication which the President had acquired in less than a year and a half extended to a clear understanding of the significance of battles and appreciation of the limited degree to which the Confederates had defeated McClellan at the Seven Days Battles. Grasping that "the moral effect was the worst" aspect of those battles, he thought it probable that, "in men and material, the enemy suffered more than we in that series of conflicts; while it is certain that he is less able to bear it." Lincoln wrote that he saw the psychological "importance to us, for its bearing upon Europe, that we should achieve military successes; and the same is true for us at home as well as abroad." Yet, comparing western triumphs at Ft. Donelson, Shiloh, and Corinth with the popular fixation on the East, Lincoln felt that "it seems unreasonable that a series of successes extending through half-a-year, and clearing more than a hundred thousand square miles of country, should help us so little, while a half-defeat" at the Seven Days Battles "should hurt us so much" in morale.³

Often criticized for an exaggerated fear for the safety of Washington, Lincoln had realized that "Jackson's game" in the Valley Campaign had been to "keep three or four times as many of our troops away from Richmond as his own force amounts to." During the Seven Days Battles, Lincoln again showed his firm grasp of the significance of lines of operations when he wrote McClellan that "we protected Washington and the enemy concentrated on you; had we stripped Washington, he would have been upon us before the troops sent could have got to you. ... It is the nature of the case."⁴

Lincoln thus grasped that battles were unlikely to be decisive and that the means of victory lay in occupying the enemy's territory and breaking his lines of communications. To do this it was necessary to overcome the enemy's advantage of interior lines. Early he explained that his "general idea of the war" was that "we have the greater numbers, and the enemy has the greater facility of concentrating forces upon the points of collision; that we must fail unless we can find some way of making our advantage an overmatch for his; and that this can be done by menacing him with superior forces at different points, at the same time; so that we can safely attack one, or both, if he makes no change, and if he weakens one to strengthen the other, forebear to attack the strengthened one, but seize, and hold the weakened one, gaining so much." To illustrate the simultaneous advance, which would be a controlling idea in Union strategy, Lincoln cited the campaign of First Bull Run when the Confederates used their interior lines to move troops from Winchester to Manassas. "Suppose," Lincoln wrote, when the Confederates at 'Winchester ran away to re-enforce Manassas, we had foreborne to attack Manassas, but had seized and held Winchester."⁵ This was the concept upon which Lincoln based the policy of simultaneous advances, abortively begun with his 1862 order for all armies to advance on Washington's birthday. There followed three simultaneous Union advances: Halleck and McClellan in the spring of 1862, Grant, Rosecrans, and Burnside in the fall, and Grant and Hooker in the spring of 1863.

President Lincoln's attention was still riveted upon operations in Virginia when Lee crossed the Potomac in what Halleck, Lincoln's new General-in-Chief, termed a raid. Rather than being alarmed by any possible threat which Lee's raid might pose, Lincoln perceived it as an opportunity to circumvent the power of the defense and have a battle where the enemy's rear was not toward his communications. The optimistic Lincoln not only did not see Philadelphia as "in any danger," but he even explained lines of operations to the anxious governor of Pennsylvania. If half of McClellan's army moved to Harrisburg, "the enemy will turn upon," wrote Lincoln, "and beat the remaining half, and then reach Harrisburg before the part going there, and beat it too."⁶

More significant for Lincoln than the absence of any real threat from the raiders, was that the situation presented a golden opportunity for the concentrated forces under McClellan. In their flank position northwest of Washington, McClellan's men precluded an enemy advance northward, because Lee "dares not leave them in his rear." Perceiving Lee to be in a potentially serious predicament, Lincoln urged McClellan not to "let him get off without being hurt" and to "destroy the rebel army if possible." His belief in a chance for hurting the enemy rested on his hope that Lee would raid farther north and McClellan could get in his rear.⁷

After the disappointing Battle of Antietam Lincoln again showed his understanding of the strategy of maneuvering an army to turn the enemy from his position. Writing McClellan, the President quoted Jomini when he reminded the general of "one of the standard maxims of war, ... 'to operate upon the enemy's communications as much as possible without exposing your own."' McClellan, Lincoln said, acted "as if this applies against you, but cannot apply in your favor."

Before explaining the vulnerability of Lee's position, Lincoln pointed out that McClellan should not "dread his going into Pennsylvania. " If he did, he would give up his communications and the Army of the Potomac would "have nothing to do but follow and ruin him." Lee, on the other hand, could easily be turned because the Union army was "nearer Richmond by the route you can, and he must take." The President asked McClellan, "why can you not reach there before him" when Lee's route would be the "arc of a circle" and McClellan's the chord? Logistics would be no problem on this march for "the facility of supplying from the side away from the enemy is remarkable—as it were, by the different spokes extending from the hub towards the rim."

Then Lincoln explained what had come to be and would remain his fundamental analysis of the problem posed in Virginia by the tactical power of the defense. It was best to fight the enemy far from Richmond, because, "if we cannot beat him when he bears the wastage of coming to us, we never can when we bear the wastage of going to him." Because of the wastage for Lee of long lines of communication, "in coming to us, he tenders us an advantage which we should not waive." Reminding McClellan of his own point about the importance of not trying to tackle the enemy in intrenchments, the President emphasized that not only was beating the enemy "easier near to us than far away," but "if we cannot beat the enemy where he now is, we never can, he being within the entrenchments of Richmond."

Thus did Lincoln analyze the problem posed by the well-demonstrated primacy of the defensive. Unless there were to be a stalemate, with the Union army sitting in futility before the intrenchments of Richmond, something must be accomplished at a distance from those intrenchments. Lincoln did not subscribe to the thesis that Richmond, like Sebastopol, would fall if besieged. Nor did he have any high expectations of what might be accomplished away from intrenchments. But he hoped that his army would fight if a "favorable opportunity" presented itself.⁸

As Lincoln was evolving a doctrine for dealing with the stalemate in Virginia, he was also maturing a strategy for the operations of all of the armies. By late fall, in collaboration with General-in-Chief Halleck, Lincoln had assigned first priority to opening the Mississipi River and second to cutting the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad. "To take and hold the Railroad at, or East of Cleveland in East Tennessee, I think fully as important as taking and holding Richmond," Lincoln wrote. The strategic importance of that railroad had impressed Lincoln early and this conviction intensified because of the belief that Beauregard had reinforced Lee for the Seven Days Battles.⁹

In the new Union priorities, the indecisive Virginia theatre ranked third, ahead only of Missouri and Arkansas. In the fall of 1862 Lincoln and Halleck limited their expectations in Virginia to the hope that Burnside's army could advance and "occupy the rebel army south of the Rappahannock. The objective, explained Halleck, was to enable the Army of the Potomac to detach sufficient forces "to place the opening of the Mississippi beyond a doubt." Burnside's failure to push Lee's army far enough "from the vicinity of Washington and the upper Potomac" meant that Lincoln and Halleck could spare no troops from Virginia for the Mississippi campaign.¹⁰ Even so, two divisions under Burnside were sent to strengthen Kentucky in March, 1863.

Thus Lincoln and Halleek stressed the West and accepted a stalemate in Virginia. Yet the strategy for the West differed from that in the East. It aimed at territorial and logistical objectives, seeking to control the Mississippi, eventually to dominate Arkansas, and occupy East Tennessee as well as to cut the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad in the West. Pursuing the opposite policy in the East, the President avoided seeking to capture or besiege the rebel capital. Instead he wished to aim at Lee's army, albeit with the feeble blows befitting a tertiary objective. Why was Lincoln apparently so inconsistent in his objective for the Army of the Potomac? The principal reason was the tremendous difficulty of taking Richmond. The keys to this problem were in the power of the intrenched defense and the obstacle presented by Richmond's elaborate communication system of three trunk line railroads and a canal.

Even before the defeat at Fredericksburg and the essential failure of the fall campaign, Lincoln had come fully to realize the ascendancy of the defense and the relative indecisiveness of military operations. In late November he explained: "I certainly have been dissatisfied with the slowness of Buell and McClellan; but before I relieved them I had great fears I should not find successors to them, who would do better; and I am sorry to add, that I have seen little since to relieve those fears." Pointing out that this situation really inhered in the constraints of logistics and the strength of the defensive, he indicated: "I do not clearly see the prospect of any more rapid movements. I fear we shall at last find out that the difficulty is in our case rather than in particular generals."¹¹

None of the many plans to take the Confederate capital presented a really plausible means of interdicting Richmond's communications. The consequences of such a failure were particularly evident to Halleck, an en...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• PART I THE COMMANDERS IN CHIEF
• PART II THE SOLDIERS
• PART III TOTAL WAR
• PART IV ORGANIZATION AND INTELLIGENCE
• PART V COMMANDERS
• PART VI NAVAL AFFAIRS
• PART VII GUERRILLA WAR
• PART VIII HISTORIOGRAPHY
• Name Index