Customer Reviews

Over Lincoln's Shoulder: The Committee on the Conduct of the War (Modern War Studies)

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The author covers the Joint Committee activities in detail and makes a convincing argument about their goals and actual accomplishments. Bruce Tap gets into many primary sources to paint a complete picture. However, the book is very readable and doesn't bog down in the details. It is a very important addition to Civil War historiography and closes a gap in the activities of Congress during this period.

In this penetrating study of the Joint Congressional Committee on the conduct of the war Bruce Tap shows us the danger of giving Politicians too much control over military affairs. The Committee's radical majority almost certainly played a role in persuading Abraham Lin- coln to turn the Civil War into a war for slave liberation, but at a terrible cost.The Committee had this bizarre idea that wars are won not by military professionalism but rather by superior ideology. Consequently the Committee harassed and discredited competent Generals who happened to be Democrats. At the same time they promoted the careers of incompetent Generals who expressed Abolitionist sentiments. Considering all this it is almost a miracle that the Union won the war. This book is a cautionary tale about what can happen when a divi- ded nation goes to war. Even if you are not a Civil War buff this book is well worth reading.

Bruce Tap's, book may force the reader to rethink the benefits of the North's partisan political system. Historian Mark Neely has also questioned how partisanship benefited the war's prosecution.
The CCW was a highly partisan commission that investigated northern military failures and scandals. Tap exposes how the committee's leaders Ben Wade and Zachariah Chandler tried to purge the Union army of all conservative elements, believing that only antislavery Republicans could win the War. While the committee did help expose racial atrocities and minor corruption, the total lack of military knowledge on the CCW more often than not impeded the war's prosecution. Pressure for a general advance may have contributed to the disaster at Fredericksburg. It is telling that the committee's favorite generals seemed to have been Ben Butler, John C. Fremont, Joe Hooker, Ambrose Burnside, and John Pope. A Must read for all Civil War nuts.

I enjoyed this even handed depiction of the Lincoln era and its behind the scene workings of the Committee on the Conduct of the War.

The Radical Republicans and the control they wielded actually impacted military decision making in some instances.

Tap brings to light the attitudes, so much different than today, of politicians and their views of the still "young" institution of West Point.

Tap reveals the treatment West Point Democratic Generals received in the Radically Repubican run Federal government.

A good addition to your bookshelf.