"Tried By War" by James M. McPherson (2008)

Abraham Lincoln is the only American president who presided over a war for his entire time in office. When he took the oath of office in 1861, however, he had almost no formal military training. His counterpart, Jefferson Davis, President of the new Confederate States of America, had not only graduated from West Point, but had actually led men in combat during the Mexican-American War and had more recently served as the Secretary of War for the United States. Lincoln had nothing to guide him in his role as Commander in Chief except every book in the Library of Congress and his own perspicacity. His greatest teacher in the ways of war would have to be war itself.

James McPherson is considered to be one of the preeminent authors on the American Civil War. You were assigned some of his books in that Civil War class you took in college a few years ago. Most of his books provide a wonderful overview of the war. They are filled with detailed maps and charts that compellingly illuminate some of the subtle truths of the conflict. This book is not like that at all. "Tried By War" does not have one map in it even though the war's progress is the framework on which the narrative is constructed. This book is not about the ebb and flow of the war's front lines, it is a story of Abraham Lincoln's personal inner development, his transformation into one of the most hands-on wartime presidents the United States has ever seen. It was a joy to read.

Lincoln was a voracious reader his entire life. Once his mind was turned on to a subject he could not rest until he had mastered that subject to his satisfaction. He showed signs of obsessive compulsive behavior (and depression... the two often go hand-in-hand). Throughout the course of the war he read up on every book on the concept of armed conflict he could find. He soon made himself an expert.

At the outset of the war, secession was the overwhelming principle in Lincoln's mind, not slavery. The South was fighting to preserve slavery, but the North began the war fighting to preserve the union of all the United States of America. Some of the states remaining in the Union (Maryland, Kentucky, etc) still maintained slavery. Only later did the barbaric practice become a more obvious strategic and political issue, one that could be used against the rebel states.

President Lincoln took great liberties with the war powers he exercised to maintain that union. Article 1 of the US Constitution allows for the suspension of habeus corpus in times of rebellion or invasion and Lincoln availed himself of this power from the outset of the war. Virginia had already left the Union and Maryland looked as if it might as well, but if both states seceded, Washington DC would be completely surrounded by rebel territories. Lincoln declared marshal law in Maryland and arrested state legislators with no evidence or explanation in order to ensure the territorial security of the capital. The problem was that Article 1 of the Constitution deals with the Legislative, not the Executive branch. Lincoln's critics claimed that he was seizing unconstitutional powers. The new president, however, believed he had been tasked with preserving the Constitution and it made no sense to allow the nation to be dissolved simply because Congress wasn't currently in session to officially grant him the power to save it. He reasoned that it would be like a surgeon allowing a patient to die so that he didn't have to loose his leg. This set the precedent that Lincoln would follow for the next four years; he would do whatever it took to win the war, and all the pearl-clutching on behalf of a besmirched Constitution could be damned.

President Lincoln took to his new military role like a duck to water, and the fractured nation reaped the benefits of his obsessive reading. He attacked the literature at his disposal and soon became as superb a strategist as any of his highest ranking officers. In fact, he proved better than most. In briefings he asked insightful questions that would have made Von Clauswitz or Sun Tsu proud. Lincoln guided his commanders' decision making process and nudged them in the direction he knew the war needed to go. He realized his only option was to take the war to the enemy and defeat their armies. The rebels only had to prevent their armies from being destroyed; they could trade cities and territory for time. The British had faced much the same situation four score and seven years before Lincoln did. But even if the president had wanted to give his generals more freedom of action, his first five or six proved to be such a rotating cast of disappointments he was forced to become his own General in Chief.

He understood the terrible truth of the matter before most of his generals did. This was not to be a war of maneuver, one where cities and forts could be besieged until they submitted. The greatest danger to the cause of the Union was the rebel armies themselves. They had to be defeated and destroyed on the fields of battle. The truth was that men were going to have to die. Lots of men. Most of Lincoln's generals at the war's outset were reluctant to embrace this truth. In stark contrast to leaders of the First World War just 50 years later, in this case the president was insisting on hard fighting while his commanders in the field preferred nuance and maneuver. After the battle of Gettysburg in 1863, General Meade had a perfect opportunity to prevent Lee's army from returning to Virginia so that it could be destroyed, and Lincoln urged Meade to do just that. Meade, however, issued an order to drive the enemy "from our soil." Lincoln's enraged response perfectly sums up his conception of the entire war. "Great God! Is that all? Will our generals never get that idea out of their heads? The whole country is our soil."

As the war progressed, the president proved to be an excellent military manager. In the Western theater, he promoted good officers to greater positions of authority and let successful generals run their war plans uncontested. But he could be firm when he saw one of his generals make a mistake and was mostly called on to do this in the theater of war closest to his home at the White House. Lincoln intervened to directly countermand General McClellan's orders during the peninsula campaign. The man with no military training withheld an entire 30,000 man Corps from his star general when McClellan stupidly ignored the president's order to leave enough men behind to defend Washington DC. McClellan was sailing his Army of the Potomac to try and outflank the Confederate forces just south of the capital. In his zeal to capture his enemies capital, he had forgotten to protect his own. When Lincoln dismissed McClellan from command a year later, it's important to remember that he did so because he could tell that McClellan was terrible at his job and the stakes were too high for incompetence to be tolerated. He only let the man remain in his position for so long because the troops and the press adored him.

You were surprised to learn how intimately Lincoln could become involved in the smallest of details of the war. The president himself personally performed a mounted reconnaissance to suggest a suitable landing site for an amphibious operation designed to capture the vital base of Norfolk, Virginia. The operation was a success which means that the president was partly responsible for the subsequent destruction of the legendary iron-side ship, the USS Merrimack (renamed the CSA Monitor.) He was instrumental as well in choosing the actual weapons that some of his men carried into battle. He overrode his Chief of Ordinance and insisted that the Union order thousands of the new seven-shot repeater carbine rifle he had personally tested out on the grounds of the White House. The Kentucky born Lincoln recognized the repeater rifle's advantage over the conventional rifle of the day, especially for mounted cavalry. Soon, Union cavalry armed with these formidable weapons became feared by the Confederate soldiers fighting them in the West.

In 1864, Lincoln was reelected to the Presidency over the former general McClellan. The president who insisted that the war had to involve dirty fighting and more decisive action had won 74% of the soldiers' vote against a candidate who had pledged to end the bloodiest war the US has ever fought. McPherson puts it succinctly on page 250, "The men who would have to do the fighting and dying had voted overwhelmingly for their Commander in Chief to help them finish the job."

But beyond tactical concerns, or even logistical management, the president saw the larger picture and realized that the war was an inherently political endeavor. Every calculation and every strategy had to reflect that idea of serving the greater political conflict between two ideologies. The Emancipation Proclamation was not just the morally right thing to do, but it was also militarily and politically brilliant. After such a decree, the Union Army had become one of righteous liberation. Wherever they went, freedom blossomed in their wake. Slaves from miles around threw down their plows and hoes to flock towards even a rumor of a nearby invading Union army. Hundreds of thousands of black men soon swelled the ranks of the Union regiments. And overseas, all of the nations mulling over whether or not to officially recognize the Confederate State of America heard of the Emancipation Proclamation and immediately abandoned any such notions.

Early in 1865, General Grant's Army of the Potomac took Richmond and the president happened to be with them when they did. Moved by his experience of the last four years of bloody war he decided to visit the city himself. Escorted and protected by only ten sailors, Abraham Lincoln walked the streets of the capital of the Confederacy. Thousands of newly freed slaves thronged the streets to see him with their own eyes. Some even knelt down as if to worship him. Ever humble, the president born in a log cabin reminded the people he had freed that they should only ever kneel before God. Not since Moses led his people out of Egypt had such a moment occurred in human history. But Moses had had on his side a vengeful God who worked miracles and called down plagues. Lincoln had only boys with guns and every book in the Library of Congress on his. This is why you love him. You don't love the warrior, nor the president. You named your son after this man because he was the humble savior of millions.

But before he could be that, he had to learn how to fight. He had to be "Tried by War."





On to the next book!




P.S. Honest Abe's understanding of military strategy and tactics did not exclty always translate to the real world of the battlefield. When he visited Fort Stevens in July 1864 to witness a skirmish with Jubal Early's cavalry troops who were threatening DC from the north, Lincoln seemed oblivious to how nice of a target his top-hat-wearing 6 ft. 4 in. frame made for Confederate snipers. He strolled along the ramparts, heedless of the danger. Catastrophe was avoided when none other than captain Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. barked at the president to, "Get down, you fool!" It is moments like this, moments where the most famous Supreme Court Justice in American history saved the most famous President in American history 40 years before being nominated to the court, it's those moments that often make reading history seem more like reading fiction. But it's also what helps you realize how interconnected everything is. It's what makes you hungry not only to learn more, but to hear more stories, and to keep reading.