Customer Reviews

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

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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.