Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief - Books

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Product Description
Unabridged CDs 9 CDs, 11 hours

James McPherson, a bestselling historian of the Civil War, illuminates how Lincoln worked withand often againsthis senior commanders to defeat the Confederacy and create the role of commander in chief as we know it.

Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...

3 out of 5 stars

McPherson's Neglect November 19, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

Professor McPherson has written an elegant book about Lincoln as the strategist of the Civil War. He is wonderfully terse, reasonable, convincing, and clear in his opinions, only occasionally leaving out important events. (Grant's crossing the James River to attack Petersburg seems not to be mentioned for example, nor is the surrender of Joe Johnston to Sherman.) What this book is not about, however, is its subtitle "Abraham Lincoln, Commander in Chief".

The most important task of a commander is his choice of subordinates. The civil war is no exception in the South or the North. The choices of Lee, Johnston, Bragg, and Hood had decisive effects in the South. The choices of McClellan, Pope, Hooker, Burnside, Sherman, and Grant were just as important in the North.

McPherson's book has essentially no discussion of why Lincoln chose whom he did, why he did not interview junior officers who almost certainly would have done much better than their seniors (e.g., Reynolds or Hancock) as Sheridan did, despite their age. The central question is how can a man like Lincoln so revered for his way with people have not even tried to evaluate the talented younger general officers in the North?

3 out of 5 stars

McPherson is great but this is just a warmed over work November 17, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful

James McPherson is a great historian and writer and with out a doubt has written the greatest single volume history of the Civil War in "The Battle Cry of Freedom." Sadly this is not McPherson's best work and could probably be best described as a highlights of Battle Cry of Freedom. It doesn't really offer any new insights and aside from focusing on Lincoln's involvement in the war effort. The rest is well worn and well covered ground.

If you like James McPherson read this book for your own enjoyment. But be warned it's not among his best work and looks like he did this one for the advance.

2 out of 5 stars

Conventional History Oblivious to Constitutional Facts November 16, 2008
1 out of 12 found this review helpful

I will not buy this book, nor should any citizen that actually wants to understand the truth of our history after 1860 when states' rights were unconstitutionally destroyed by force. They are emergent again, praise God.

Lincoln did not have the right to conscript forces or to wage war on those States that exercised their continuing right of secession. A "Civil War" is a war between two parties for the whole. The war was an illegal war by the North against the undiminished right of every state in the United STATES of America to secede, and that is why Dick Cheney loves Lincoln so much. Lincoln is the president that suspended habeas corpus, unleashed immoral capitalism on the south at a time when slavery was already on its way out (the South itself ended importation of slaves upon withdrawing), and needlessly slaughtered an entire generation of fighting men of honor on both sides, one side fighting for its honor, the other because they were incited and lied to for financial gain by the few.

The author is a distinguished historian, but he offers up conventional history that fails to actually inform the public. President-elect Obama would do well to read the books on secession I list below (or my reviews), in as much as he will be facing multiple crises of both nullification and secession in the near term at the same time that certain States sponsor referendums that demand that their Senators and Representatives refer all votes to public ballot in the home state--thus do we break the backs of the two criminal parties that have betrayed the public trust.

I made the same mistake as this author in my own (high school) advanced placement study of the causes of the "Civil War" which should more properly be called the War Against Secession. Below I offer up ten books, each of which has a summative review of mine offered in the public interest.

NEWS FLASH for Barack Obama: we are NOT "one nation" or even "one people. We are 50 sovereign states that signed a compact to create a federal corporation to administer services of common concern, and that enterprise is now corrupt to the core (dysfunctional and overstretech executive, Congress in violation of Article 1 and corrupt, judiciary clueless about our Constitutional legal roots and states rights) and run amok. I desire to keep the USA together and restore the Constitution as well as the effective representational balance of power among the three branches of the federal corporation, but no one, including "the one," can do that without three Deputy Vice Presidents (my own preferences in parenthesis):

DVP for Education, Intelligence, and Research (Colin Powell)
DVP for National Security (Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Sam Nunn)
DVP for Commonwealth (Hillary Clinton, Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney)

and four reforms implemented immediately:

1) Electoral Reform
2) Governance Reform
3) Intelligence Reform
4) National Security Reform

For details see Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography). As with all books I sponsor, it is also available free online.

It is time for every American to stop digesting and regurgitating pabulum, and begin thinking independently. CNN turned out to be hot air and low theater. They bluster and pretend, and not once did they challenge either candidate to produce a balanced budget, name a cabinet in advance, or address any of the ten threats or twelve polices with any coherence. All of our institutions are broken. Lincoln is an example of what NOT to do. I support the right of secession as a means of demanding truth and reconciliation. Our federal government is out of control. Leadership of genocide and slaughter and regional looting is not something we should be proud of, nor is it something to emulate today.

Books on secession relevant today:
Constitutional History of Secession
Is Secession Treason?
Secession: How Vermont and All the Other States Can Save Themselves from the Empire
One Nation, Indivisible? A Study of Secession and the Constitution

Books on History Lost and Fogged:
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
Fog Facts : Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books)

Books on Current Government and Two-Party Spoils System Corruption:
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders

4 out of 5 stars

Tried by War November 16, 2008
A very good book, not as good as the Battle Cry of Freedom, but still very readable.

3 out of 5 stars

Disappointingly Superficial and Unoriginal November 13, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

I admire McPherson's wonderful "Battle Cry of Freedom" and looked forward to this book as well as its emphasis on Lincoln's role as commander in chief. While the topic is not as "neglected" as claimed by McPherson, given that every study of Lincoln inevitably spends a good deal of time on the topic, it is a good subject for a full length work. But in the end, McPherson adds very little to the Lincoln literature. While well written, and while constituting a good introduction to the subject, the book is superficial.

McPherson had two basic choices in approach. He could have focused on the details of specific military decisions and relationships with generals and drawn broader conclusions therefrom. Or he could tell the narrative and fit it into his broader interpretations and analysis of the basic controversies fought over this subject. McPherson chooses the latter, but he short-changes the reader on the interpretation and analysis.

His best contribution is the notion that Lincoln grasped the advantage the Union had in "concentration in time" -- the ability to overwhelm the South by attacking on mulitple fronts at once. This trumped the South's advantage in "concentration is space." That is, Lee had the advantage of familiarity of terrain and interior lines of supply and communication. He seemed able to concentrate more men at focused points. In McPherson's estimation, Lincoln's generals (except for Grant) did not sufficiently appreciate this lesson and Lincoln was a better strategist than his generals.

McPherson is also effective in characterizing Lincoln as better grasping Clausewitz's principle that war was "politics by other means" and the need to appreciate war not as set piece battles but as a struggle to suppress the political movement in the South. He draws the familiar conclusions, which do seem supported: (1) McClellan was a poor commander who did not see the larger strategic issues; (2) the objective was Lee's army not Richmond; (3) Halleck was a huge disappointment; (4) Lincoln had to fire a lot of generals who deserved to be fired; and (5) Grant was a magnificent general who was appreciated and nurtured by Lincoln.

In the end, though, much of this was already argued, in some ways far more effectively and in more detail, by T. Harry Williams 50 years ago in "Lincoln and His Generals" -- which I highly recommend. Also, McPherson does not grapple with some of the most interesting controversies. Why is it that Lincoln had to fire so many generals -- why were they so bad? McPherson has some superficial stuff about the generals being disproportionately Democratic. And what did Lincoln do to define the role of Commander in Chief? McPherson's thesis is that Lincoln was the first to define the role in modern terms. But how and why? McPherson is so busy giving his narrative he loses sight of the primary reason for his book.

Some of the answers can be found in David Donald's brilliant essay in his book "Lincoln Reconsidered." This was, like Williams book, written 50 years ago, which proves that in Lincoln literature old books are not necessarily inferior books. Donald argues that the Generals were trained in Jomini's texts that were based on the Napoleonic experience. Jomini's tactical and strategic wisdom became obsolete with the technology that existed by 1861. Artillery and trenching favored defensive war; railroads sometimes allowed exterior lines of movement to be faster; repeating rifles could give the North the advantage in concentration in space; the objective was not the enemy's capitol, but the enemy's industrial/agricultural capacity and the enemy's army supplied by same. Lincoln and Grant were quicker to appreciate this than McClellan and his ilk.

This failure to move with the times explains why Lincoln had so many bad generals. And I suppose that Jefferson Davis had so many good ones because the Jomini training they all had tended to fit well with what the South had to do to win the war. But another reason for all the bad generals is that we did not yet have the experience of a nation fighting a major modern-style war. It's only because of what happened during the war that modern generals (except for MacArthur) appreciate the need to defer to civilian authority and the need to have the civilians direct the all important, overall political strategy.

If you can find Donald's and Williams' books, I highly recommend them. McPherson's book was a big disappointment.

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