The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2015

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11-12

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 9 Summary: “A. Lincoln, Commander in Chief”

McPherson discusses Lincoln’s role as commander in chief, which, despite Lincoln’s lack of military experience at the beginning of his presidency, is central to his place in history. McPherson is critical of the turn to social history at the expense of military history, and he asserts that the social interpretation favored from the 1960s forward cannot be fully understood without including the lens of military history.

McPherson outlines and defines the five functions that the commander in chief oversees. Lincoln’s policy—the political aims of the nation in war—was to preserve the one indivisible nation and democratic republic conceived in 1776. Lincoln’s national strategy, or the mobilization of resources to achieve war aims, was to appoint prominent political and ethnic leaders to high military ranks, and he also focused on the conciliation of border states and anti-abolitionist Northern Democrats by keeping emancipation off the table. By 1862, Lincoln’s national strategy shifted to stipulating further professional military criteria for the ranks of brigadier general or general. He also increased his focus on emancipation, and this decision activated the Northern abolitionist majority and the manpower of formerly enslaved Black people.

Concerning military strategy, or the use of armed forces, Lincoln was forced to take a more active approach than any other presidents. His first three generals in chief, as well as some of his field commanders, exhibited risk-averse behavior and failed to carry out Lincoln’s strategy of advancing on multiple Confederate fronts at once. Lincoln also played an active role in operations: the organization, logistics, and movement of armies. He saw the need for Union troops to move faster and with fewer supplies, and Grant and Sherman were key players in making Lincoln’s operations vision a reality. In terms of tactics (formations and fighting strategies in battle), Lincoln rarely played an active role. The one exception occurred when Lincoln took direct control of the drive to capture Norfolk in 1862 after McClellan had failed in the month-long siege of Yorktown.

Chapter 10 Summary: “The Commander Who Would Not Fight: McClellan and Lincoln”

McPherson discusses the failures of McClellan, opening with an 1862 letter in which McClellan described other Union commanders and officials as his enemies. In 1861, when Lincoln invited McClellan to become the commander of the Army of the Potomac, McClellan quickly went from being warmly welcomed to criticized when he undermined General in Chief Winfield Scott’s authority and when other high officials grew weary of McClellan’s military inactivity. Despite McClellan’s defects as a commander, he became the youngest general in chief in history when Scott retired. McClellan deliberately created the impression that Scott had been holding him back from advancing on Confederate troops, but as the weeks went on, McClellan continued to exhibit alarmist tendencies and refused to fight.

In the face of McClellan’s refusal to fight, Lincoln drafted a plan to take Centreville and Manassas, but McClellan rejected the proposal. Pressed by diplomatic and financial crises, and with McClellan now sick with typhoid, Lincoln solicited tactical plans from two brigadier generals. This move prompted McClellan to return and reassure Lincoln that he had a secret plan and a timetable. Lincoln’s Special Order No. 1 forced McClellan to reveal his Urbana plan, which was marked by time delays that might allow the Confederates to attack Washington. By the time McClellan presented the plan for a vote, the Confederate troops had already withdrawn from the Centreville-Manassas line to send reinforcements toward Richmond, where McClellan planned to attack. He then shifted to the Peninsula Campaign, which included leaving Washington with insufficient troops to repel an attack, and which ultimately proved unsuccessful.

Lincoln dismissed McClellan as general in chief, which was even more necessary given his suspicions about McClellan’s loyalty to the Union cause. At the same time, the Army of the Potomac remained loyal to McClellan, so Lincoln was unable to remove him from command until McClellan refused to cross the Potomac as was ordered.

Chapters 9-10 Analysis

Chapters 9 and 10 highlight The Impact of Leadership and Individual Actions on Historical Outcomes by emphasizing the character traits and leadership qualities that are first introduced in Chapter 6. McPherson demonstrates that Lincoln held himself to the same standards that he required of his military officers. By opening Chapter 9 with the comparison of Jefferson Davis’s and Lincoln’s military experience, McPherson establishes that Lincoln did not allow a disadvantage to stop him from striving toward victory or making risky decisions to achieve that victory. He also extols Lincoln’s determination to learn quickly by “read[ing] and absorb[ing] works on military history and strategy” (124) and learning from both his own mistakes and from the exploits of the opposing side. McPherson also adds:

On the day Lincoln took office, the first document placed on his desk was a letter from Major Robert Anderson at Fort Sumter, informing [him] that the garrison there must be withdrawn or resupplied at the risk of war. Lincoln chose to take that risk (124).

These demonstrations of Lincoln’s qualities as a commander contextualize his disposition toward military officers who were risk-averse and afraid of failure, and McPherson uses blatantly emotional descriptions to express Lincoln’s negative feelings toward these officers. In Chapter 9, McPherson identifies several officers who failed to live up to Lincoln’s expectations. and in Chapter 10, he examines McClellan in particular, identifying his “main defect as a military commander” as “an alarmist tendency to inflate enemy strength and intentions” (147). McPherson’s detailed explanations of military campaigns and planning strategies underscore the contrast between Lincoln and the commanders who were ill-suited to his expectations.

The contrast between Lincoln and his risk-averse field commanders, especially McClellan, also illuminates the unprecedented nature of Lincoln’s presidency and his sense of urgency regarding the Union and abolition causes and The Transformation of the American National Identity. In addition to being the “only one whose presidency was wholly bounded by war” (124), Lincoln “also took a more active, hands-on part in shaping military strategy than presidents have done in most other wars” (133), even going so far as to take “direct operational control of a drive to capture Norfolk and to push a gunboat fleet up the James River” (142-43). Whereas Chapters 7 and 8 approach the intersection between the preservation of the Union and the abolition of enslavement from a sociopolitical perspective, Chapters 9 and 10 provide further insight from a military perspective. McPherson makes his aim clear when he emphasizes that the “questions and developments social historians consider important” (125) were dependent upon “the progress of our arms” (125). It should also be noted that there is a discrepancy in how McPherson presents the relationship between Union preservation and abolition as well as Lincoln’s role in shaping that relationship. Whereas the sociopolitical perspective places the Union and abolition causes in equal standing, Chapter 9 makes “abolishing slavery as a war aim second in importance only to preserving the Union” (126). This statement implies a distinction between Lincoln the politician and person and Lincoln the commander in chief, in some ways parallelling the distinction that McPherson makes between Lincoln’s private and public personas in Chapter 8.

However, these different iterations of Lincoln are deeply intertwined. For example, in McPherson’s discussion of national strategy in Chapter 9, he draws a connection between Lincoln’s political acumen and his military command. The brigades and regiments organized across Northern states to raise the Union Army from 16,400 to 637,000 men provide evidence that Lincoln’s strategy of “commissioning prominent political and ethnic leaders [...] to mobilize their constituencies for the war effort” (129) was successful. Similarly, the transformation of emancipation from national strategy to policy and its connection to increasing Republican abolitionist sentiment connotes the relationship between Lincoln the commander in chief and Lincoln the politician. Even after dismissing McClellan as general in chief, Lincoln knew that the “Army of the Potomac remained fiercely loyal to McClellan” (157), thus necessitating McClellan’s continued command of the regiment.