Lee, Grant and Sherman: A Study in Leadership in the 1864-65 Campaign [Paperback]

Alfred H. Burne (Author), Douglas Southall Freeman (Introduction), Albert E. Castel (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 2000 | Series: Modern War Studies

Had Lee enjoyed the manpower or matériel advantages of Grant, would the South have triumphed? Had Hood possessed strength superior to Sherman's, would he still have lost their encounters in Georgia? Popular sentiment has long bowed to the military leadership of the Civil War's victorious generals--a view that has been disputed by modern scholarship. Many might be startled to learn that a British army officer also called these opinions into question long ago.

Out of print for more than fifty years, Lee, Grant and Sherman is an unrecognized classic of Civil War history that presaged current scholarship by decades. Alfred H. Burne assesses the military leadership of Grant, Lee, Sherman, Hood, Johnston, Early, and Sheridan from mid-1864 to Appomattox, contradicting prevailing perceptions of the generals and even proposing that Grant's military capabilities were inferior to Lee's.

Burne sought to challenge the orthodox views of other historians--J. F. C. Fuller on Grant and Basil Liddell Hart on Sherman--but his assessments were so unorthodox that even with the endorsement of preeminent Civil War historian Douglas Southall Freeman, his book received scant attention in its day. He sees Sherman as more concerned with the geographical objective of capturing Atlanta than the military goal of smashing the Confederate army, lacking Grant's understanding that the principal object of war is to conquer and destroy the enemy's armed forces. Yet he asserts that "Grant in his heart of hearts feared Lee" and also suggests that Jubal Early's Valley campaign might have been the most brilliant of the whole war.

In his analysis of the Georgia campaign, Burne views Sherman as a general who avoided risk and was too obsessed with raiding to wage an all-out offensive battle. Refusing to dismiss Hood as incompetent, as many historians have done, Burne points to his brilliance in military planning and claims that most of his defeats were merely the result of inadequate resources.

Burne's book was ahead of its time, anticipating later shifts in historical evaluations of Civil War leadership. Now available in a corrected edition, with Freeman's original introduction and a new foreword and endnotes by Albert Castel, it is a rich source of insight for scholars--and for anyone willing to reconsider traditional views of these generals.

This book is part of the Modern War Studies series.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"Burne's book glows with a prophetic light. . . . His unorothodox judgments . . . anticipated a major shift, starting in the 1960s, in historical evaluations of military leadership during the Civil War. . . . [These views have] gained so many converts and promise to gain so many more that [they] might well be on the way to becoming the new orthodoxy."--from the Foreword by Albert Castel

About the Author

Alfred H. Burne (1886-1959) was the author of eight books, including The Art of War on Land, and military editor of Chambers's Encyclopedia.

Albert Castel is author of Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864, winner of the Lincoln Prize, and Tom Taylor's Civil War.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Kansas (October 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0700610731
• ISBN-13: 978-0700610730
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,687,470 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Thought-provoking, August 27, 2005

By 

Scott A. Freeman (Boise, ID) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lee, Grant and Sherman: A Study in Leadership in the 1864-65 Campaign (Hardcover)

This book was originally published in the 1940's. In the newer Preface, Castel heralds it as ahead of its time in its treatment of the leaders. The Confederate generals, even Hood are treated with greater respect than they had traditionally been and Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan come under serious criticism. If there was a wave of books in the past few decades which expressed similar views, I must have missed them.

The objective parts of this book are quite good. Battles and campaigns are described in understandable detail and accompanied by very useful maps, which, although sometimes mere sketches, more than adequately show major troop movements relative to the surrounding towns and transporation features.

My major criticism of this work is that it arrives at evaluations of the Union generals in terms of their immediate situations without viewing them in a broader perspective. The War had been going on in the East for nearly 3 years with no Union victory in sight. In this repect, I agree with the author than the generalship of Lee ( although he was never as effective after losing Stonewall Jackson ) was vastly superior to that of the generals who went up against him. However, this is not surprising since the United Sates Army had no comprehensive strategy until the accession of Grant as General-in-Chief. Grant's masterful grand strategy made ultimate victory possible even when smaller-scale events went against him. As one author wrote, whether Grant won or lost a battle on the way to his goal it was all the same to him.

Grant's strategy was not only militarily brilliant, but also politically sound. True, the Confederate armies were more valid objectives than places, but the Northern public considered Richmond and Atlanta highly important. Let's remember that the fall of Atlanta and the conquest of the Shenandoah Valley were responsible for Lincoln's reelection. The strategy of occupation was discarded. So was the strategy of annihilation, which the author favors. As so many bloody battles had demonstrated, it was virtually impossible to utterly destroy the enemy; he could always regroup for later action. Thus, Grant turned to the strategy of exhaustion, in which the army on the offense destroys its opponent's means of support - communications, transportation, food sources, industry, economy, and morale. This was accomplished through the wide envelopment and converging columns that characterize the final campaign. Grant's ( Meades's ) army held on to Lee, preventing most maneuvering and use of interior lines to transfer troops. While Lee was pinned down in Virginia, Sherman was able to seize politically-important objectives while greatly restricting the area from which Lee could draw supplies, wrecking much of the Southern economy, and severely damaging the morale of soldiers and undermining support for the war on the home front. The War ended with Sherman, with arguably the finest army in the world, a mere 125 miles from Lee's rear. This was the ultimate in the "hammer and anvil" metaphor the author so often uses.

Confederate side shows, like Early's raid and Hood's escape into Tennessee, had no effect on the outcome of the War. With better luck, the fear that Early spread through the North might have been prolonged, but not fatal. And Hood had no chance against George Thomas, perhaps the best battlefield commander in the Union Army, while the former had inferior numbers and grave supply problems. Had Hood slipped by Nashville, his invasion would have vaporized worse than Bragg's had done. Sherman's decision to break loose of his vulnerable supply lines and turn his back on Hood ( leaving him to Thomas and Schofield ) was one of the most daring and successful coups in military history.

I would recommend this book for its thought-provoking revisions of mainstream thought, but the reader should maintain the broader perspective that the author misses.