Lincoln Bones Up On Military Strategy

28th of 45 excerpts from Lincoln by David Herbert Donald:

Toward the end of January 1862 military affairs took a turn for the better. When Lincoln finally got rid of [Secretary of War Simon] Cameron, he moved quickly to replace him with Edwin M. Stanton. The appointment was a surprising one. In view of Lincoln's well-known unwillingness to cherish grudges, it was not important that Stanton was the lawyer who had snubbed him in the McCormick reaper case, but Stanton's lifelong record as a Democrat might have counted against him. . . .

Stanton photo, above left) was not amiable or altogether stables, but Lincoln found him indispensable. A short, stock figure, fifty-seven years old, the new Secretary of War was highly intelligent and fiercely honest. In the War Department he worked standing behind a long, high desk, which he moved into a room open to the public, where he excoriated shoddy contractors and blasted military officers angling for promotion. His extraordinary energy reminded Lincoln of an old Methodist preacher whose parishioners wanted to put bricks in his pockets to hold him down. "We may be obliged to serve Stanton the same way, "Lincoln told Congressman [Henry L.] Dawes, "but I guess we'll just let him jump a while first."

The President and his new War Secretary developed an excellent working relationship, which eventually became a warm friendship. . . . With Stanton in control of the War Department, the President could turn his attention back to the armies. His conferences with [General-in-Command George B.] McClellan had disappointed him, and the general, whose health was now fully restored, was still reluctant to divulge his plans for an advance. On January 27, Lincoln forced the issue by publishing the "President's General War Order No. 1." It ordered all the land and naval forces of the United States to undertake a general advance on February 22 and threatened to hold all commanders to strict accountability for carrying out the order.

The order, which vented Lincoln's deep sense of frustration with the military, reflected his recent hasty reading of books on strategy. Since McClellan (photo, above right) seemed to have no plan for operations against the Confederates, the President announced his own; as he told [Senator Orville Hickman] Browning, it was to "threaten all their positions at the same time with superior force, and if they weakened one to strengthen another seize ad hold the one weakened." Both Lincoln's strategy and his ordered ignored such variables as the weather, readiness, roads, communications, and logistics -- not to mention the location and strength of the Confederate armies -- buyt he did not intend to announce a specific plan of battle. He wanted to give a jolt to the military, a warning that they must act.

I that sense it worked. February 22 passed without a general advanced, but before that date Union armies in the West began to win victories.