James McPherson, a bestselling historian of the Civil War, illuminates how Lincoln worked with—and often against— his senior commanders to defeat the Confederacy and create the role of commander in chief as we know it.
Though Abraham Lincoln arrived at the White House with no previous military experience (apart from a couple of months spent soldiering in 1832), he quickly established himself as the greatest commander in chief in American history. James McPherson illuminates this often misunderstood and profoundly influential aspect of Lincoln’s legacy. In essence, Lincoln invented the idea of commander in chief, as neither the Constitution nor existing legislation specified how the president ought to declare war or dictate strategy. In fact, by assuming the powers we associate with the role of commander in chief, Lincoln often overstepped the narrow band of rights granted the president. Good thing too, because his strategic insight and will to fight changed the course of the war and saved the Union.
For most of the conflict, he constantly had to goad his reluctant generals toward battle, and he oversaw strategy and planning for major engagements with the enemy. Lincoln was a self-taught military strategist (as he was a self-taught lawyer), which makes his adroit conduct of the war seem almost miraculous. To be sure, the Union’s campaigns often went awry, sometimes horribly so, but McPherson makes clear how the missteps arose from the all-too-common moments when Lincoln could neither threaten nor cajole his commanders to follow his orders.
Because Lincoln’s war took place within our borders, the relationship between the front lines and the home front was especially close—and volatile. Here again, Lincoln faced enormous challenges in exemplary fashion. He was a masterly molder of public opinion, for instance, defining the war aims initially as preserving the Union and only later as ending slavery— when he sensed the public was at last ready to bear such a lofty burden.
As we approach the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth in 2009, this book will be that rarest gift—a genuinely novel, even timely, view of the most-written-about figure in our history. Tried by War offers a revelatory portrait of leadership during the greatest crisis our nation has ever endured. How Lincoln overcame feckless generals, fickle public opinion, and his own paralyzing fears is a story at once suspenseful and inspiring.
Tried By War
Preface
Introduction
1. The Quest for a Strategy, 1861
2. The Bottom Is Out of the Tub
3. You Must Act
4. A Question of Legs
5. Destroy the Rebel Army, If Possible
6. The Promise Must Now Be Kept
7. Lee's Army, and Not Richmond, Is Your True Objective Point
8. The Heaviest Blow Yet Dealt to the Rebellion
9. If It Takes Three Years More
10. No Peace Without Victory
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
“From our generation’s finest Civil War historian comes yet another masterpiece—a beautifully written and stunningly original account of how Lincoln’s unparalleled array of leadership skills, strategic insights, and exceptional sensitivity to popular sentiment combined to make him our greatest commander in chief. This is a thoroughly terrific work.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team Of Rivals
“For bracing good judgment, probing research, and beauty and clarity of prose, the Civil War has never had a historian more important than James McPherson. Tried by War shows us Lincoln imagining, planning, and prosecuting a war of profound proportions with a stunning degree of grace under pressure. This is Lincoln the fast learner as military strategist, manager of people, and tribune of public opinion. All discussions of presidential war powers must contend with Lincoln, and now with McPherson's superb rendering of him.”—David W. Blight, author of Race and Reunion
“McPherson provides a definitive exploration of a long-unexplored aspect of the Civil War: Lincoln’s astute and precedent-shattering management of the army as the nation’s first modern commander-in-chief. Ever lucid, the author is not only in command of his material, but like his subject, its commander-in-chief. This is McPherson at his best, which in the Civil War field, is the best there is.”—Harold Holzer, Co-chairman, U. S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission
“Lincoln’s presidency was completely encircled by the Civil War, but his groundbreaking role as commander-in-chief has been allowed to slip from view. McPherson fills this gap with a surprising, wide angle story of Lincoln teaching himself military theory and tutoring recalcitrant commanders. Lincoln won the respect of generals, and this fascinating book will win the admiration of both scholar and general reader.”—Ronald C. White, Jr., author of Lincoln's Greatest Speech and A. Lincoln
“McPherson brilliantly portrays Lincoln’s evolution as a leader, creating war powers for himself and other presidents who would follow. No one has explained better than McPherson how, in Carl Sandburg’s words, Lincoln presided, ‘over the wild, massive and turbulent forces let loose in civil war.’”—Frank J. Williams, Founding Chair, The Lincoln Forum
“This is vintage McPherson. Smart, shrewdly analytical, insightful, and elegantly written, Tried By War is sure to become the standard treatment of Abraham Lincoln as commander-in-chief.”—Joseph Glatthaar, author of Forgotten Allies
“Few historians write as well as McPherson, and none evoke the sound of battle with greater clarity. . . . McPherson draws on almost fifty years of research to present a cogent and concise narrative of how Lincoln, working against enormous odds, saved the United States of America.”
—Jean Edward Smith, The New York Times Book Review
“ It is hard to do justice in a short review to how convincingly and compellingly McPherson narrates Lincoln’s simultaneous mastery of the political, strategic and moral challenge of his historical moment.”
—Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times
“ Masterful. . . . Destined to become a classic.”
—Jay Winik, The Boston Globe
“The definitive portrait of Lincoln as war leader.”
—The Washington Post
