Few events in U.S. history are as romanticized as the Civil War. Many of its figures seem to be cast from marble, immune from the “picklocks of biographers,” as the poet Stephen Vincent Benet famously said of Robert E. Lee. Perhaps none have been more mythologized than Abraham Lincoln. But as Nigel Hamilton shows in his brilliant new book, The War of the Presidents: Lincoln vs. Davis, the 16th president wasn’t cast from stone.
Lincoln is rightly hailed as one of our nation’s greatest presidents, the man who saw the country through its “fiery trial,” as he put it. He is, almost inarguably, the greatest wordsmith to have ever occupied the Oval Office. Lincoln put the nation’s tragedy, a tragedy that he came to believe was nothing short of divine retribution for slavery, into prose so hauntingly beautiful that it remains the gold standard in presidential rhetoric. He was capable of political dexterity and cunning but also great empathy, traits that made him well suited for the task at hand. Lincoln’s is the only presidency completely defined by war.
At its onset, many contemporary observers expected that war to be a short-lived affair. The rebellion, it was thought, would quickly be put down. Few expected it to last for four years, level entire cities and countryside, and take more than 600,000 lives. What began as an effort to end the secession of South Carolina and states in the Deep South ended with the destruction of slavery and the emancipation of millions. It was, Lincoln famously said, a “new birth of freedom,” nothing less than a second American Revolution. The entire country was remade and its future as a global power was set. Yet victory was not foreordained. As Lincoln admitted, “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”
Lincoln’s ability to learn on the job, to be flexible, and to move in accordance with popular opinion are well known. They’re part of why Lincoln remains one of our most well-regarded presidents, both by scholars and the wider American public. But these are also judgments, right though they ultimately are, that occurred after the war’s bloody conclusion and Lincoln’s martyrdom. In truth, Lincoln’s early years as commander in chief were rocky, replete with mistakes, indecisiveness, and, if anything, too much tolerance for failure and disloyalty. As Hamilton highlights in his study of the two leaders, Lincoln was a born politician and a lawyer by training. By contrast, his Southern counterpart, Jefferson Davis, was a born soldier. And for the first two years of the Civil War, these core differences would prove decisive.
Both men came from similar backgrounds, born within a year of each other in the frontier of Kentucky. Both had served in Congress in the 1840s. And both had known tremendous hardship. For Lincoln, it was an abusive father and the childhood loss of his mother and, later, his first love. Davis had lost his first bride, Sarah Knox Taylor, shortly after marriage. Both had children who died in infancy. Both were prone to melancholy. And in 1861, on the eve of their respective inaugurations, both had a dark foreboding of what lay ahead. Lincoln told his old law partner, William Herndon, that he didn’t think he’d come back alive. For his part, Davis spoke of his appointment as the provisional president of the Confederate States of America “as a man might speak of a sentence of death.”
But here the similarities end.
Davis was a “trained and experienced warrior,” Hamilton observes. Davis was a West Point grad, a U.S. Army officer and combat veteran who had served with distinction during the U.S.-Mexico War. Moreover, he was well acquainted with the administrative side of warfare, having been secretary of war during the Pierce administration in the mid-1850s. Consequently, he was familiar with many of the U.S. military officers who would later serve under him, as well as those, such as George McClellan, who would fight for the Union. Davis knew the importance of logistics, and he knew the burdens of command. Davis was a man who could be stern, unapproachable even, but decisive.
Lincoln was none of these things. A self-taught lawyer, Lincoln spent most of his life seeking one political office or another, his military experience limited to briefly taking up arms as a volunteer in a militia in the Black Hawk War where, he joked, he spent most of his time fighting mosquitoes. Lincoln lacked executive experience. While Davis had run the War Department, Lincoln had run a small law practice. Davis was commanding and, as commander in chief of the CSA, had confidence in his abilities. Lincoln was vacillating, often reluctant to make decisions until he was forced to do so. And it is this aspect of Lincoln that Hamilton rightly highlights.
It is an undeniable fact that the Union’s war effort was, for the initial phase of the conflict, a complete and utter failure. The first two years were characterized by Confederate victories or, at best, battles that were stalemates. This occurred despite the Union having vastly more men and material. Indeed, on paper the Union possessed an overwhelming advantage. At the war’s beginning, Davis recognized this, opting for a strategy of defense, hoping to lure the “Yankee invaders” into the South, where climate and topography would slowly grind away the Union’s numbers. Yet the man who Lincoln put in charge, George McClellan, did not.
It is commonly accepted wisdom that McClellan, a young and vainglorious engineer, largely built the Union Army only to decline to use it. Time and again, McClellan failed to attack or let victory slip from his grasp. Yet conventional Civil War historiography, while finding fault with McClellan, often gives Lincoln a pass. It is true that Lincoln lacked military experience and, accordingly, was overly deferential to those in uniform. And it is equally true that Lincoln was a commander in chief in an era where generals were often appointed for reasons of political necessity. But ultimately it was Lincoln himself who elevated McClellan, as well as a succession of other timid or incompetent generals. And it was Lincoln who kept McClellan on long after he should have been dismissed, prolonging the war and costing thousands of lives. Hamilton is refreshingly unsparing in his assessment: Lincoln’s indecisiveness, his deference to McClellan, and his desire to avoid confrontation with the generals and Cabinet officials who worked for him were costly. And that blame should be laid at Lincoln’s doorstep. His record in this regard contrasts sharply with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who elevated capable commanders, such as George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower, at war’s onset.
Lincoln was also painfully slow to address slavery, which more than a moral sin also fueled the Confederate war effort. Here, too, conventional historiography, dating back to books by Lincoln’s own secretaries, has argued that Lincoln did so out of concern that he’d lose key border states such as Kentucky and Maryland. Hamilton, however, argues that this is overblown; such states were unlikely to secede, as Robert E. Lee himself would demonstrate when he went north in a failed bid to “liberate” Maryland.
None of this, it must be said, detracts from Lincoln’s achievements as president. That Lincoln was fallible and capable of great error doesn’t lessen his greatness. Men, even great men, are not built from marble but from flesh and blood. Indeed, while Davis initially enjoyed greater success as commander in chief, he too would find himself “moved by events,” making decisions that would ultimately backfire.
Hamilton’s frank assessment is buoyed by keen use of diaries and other primary sources, as well as colorful prose. Books on the Civil War are a dime a dozen, but this is one of the most well-written and thoughtful works to appear in years. It is a story of a country at war with itself and of the two men who found themselves at its center. Men who shaped events, yes, but who also found themselves at their mercy. As Lincoln came to believe at war’s end: “The Almighty has His own purposes.”
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Sean Durns is a Washington D.C.-based foreign affairs analyst.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
