The Barnes & Noble Review
It is hard to imagine Lincoln except in black-and-white. The cover of James M. McPherson's Tried by War reproduces one of those old, familiar Matthew Brady photographs of the president among his soldiers, tall, solemn, looking as he often does toward something outside the frame. The deep blue of the soldiers' Union uniforms has been washed by time to a grainy gray. The black of Lincoln's stovepipe hat and long frock coat makes vivid contrast with the white background of a tent. He stands out like a tree against the sun.
The vague, pompous, and definitely intimidating phrase "commander in chief" apparently first appeared in the language in 1639, on the brink of the English Civil Wars, to describe the powers of the embattled and quasi-tyrannical Charles I. In the next century, King Charles not quite forgotten, it was frequently adapted as an official formula to assert the authority of royal governors over local militia, as in the colony of Virginia.
When the Framers of the Constitution wrote it into Article II, Section 2, they evidently had in mind a strong distinction between the unlimited powers of a king and the closely watched and circumscribed powers of a chief executive of a republic. The Constitution itself simply says that the president is to be the "Commander in Chief of the army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States." In Federalist 69 Alexander Hamilton stressed that the president's power would be "nominally the same with that of the King of Great-Britain, but in substance much inferior to it." This would be especially true because, unlike the British monarch, the American president would be debarred from the congressional prerogatives of "the declaring of war" and "the raising...of fleets and armies." But even the visionary and pragmatic Hamilton could not foresee what would happen to those "inferior" powers when our own Civil War came.
McPherson, Pulitzer Prize winner and emeritus professor of history at Princeton, is probably today's leading scholar of the Civil War. Among his many virtues as an historian are a beautifully lucid and readable prose style -- this has, predictably, earned him the scorn of the academy -- and a driving sense of narrative pace. He begins with the briefest of glances at legal and historical precedents but observes that in reality, in the unprecedented circumstances of a war of secession, Lincoln "would have to establish most of the powers of commander in chief for himself."
Then he lists five areas in which a commander in chief would have to function -- "policy, national strategy, military strategy, operations, and tactics" -- and for the rest of the book proceeds to flesh out these opaque abstractions, not topic by topic as a lawyer might but year by bloody year, with what amounts to a compelling and genuinely dynamic short history of Lincoln at war.
The president's "policy" as commander in chief, for example, is first and foremost the preservation of the Union, not the abolition of slavery. Compromise or failure here, Lincoln believed, would mark the end of America's great international Jeffersonian mission, the establishment of a republic governed by popular suffrage, under majority rule, by a written constitution. "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave," he wrote Horace Greeley in 1862, "I would do it, and if I could save the Union by freeing all the slaves I would do it."
But as the war grinds on, McPherson shows us, the issue of slavery intensifies. When General Benjamin Butler in May 1861 declares captured slaves to be "contrabands" of war and hires them at wages to work for the Union army, the commander in chief frowns but silently acquiesces. By the second year of battle, he is ready to join policy to national strategy and commit himself to a "hard war," one in which the rebels, civilians and soldiers alike, "should begin to feel the presence of the war." "Take their property for public use," he instructs General Grant, knowing full well that the richest form of property in the South, as McPherson reminds us, was slaves.
Policy and national strategy, of course, are carried out chiefly by military strategy and tactics. Though he offers fascinating vignettes of the hands-on Lincoln haunting the War Department and personally test-firing new guns on the White House lawn, most of McPherson's narrative is rightly devoted to his long, heartbreaking struggle to find a general -- one who will take the battle to the South, who will face down Lee, who will, at the simplest level, actually obey the president's orders.
Here the familiar, epic figures march across the pages in all their outsized Homeric brilliance. There is General George McClellan, the "little Napoleon," the great organizer, ramrod straight, one hand forever tucked in his tunic, forever insulting the president ("the gorilla," in his nightly letters to his wife) -- and reluctant to engage the enemy. Or General Henry Halleck, "Old Brains," memorably captured by McPherson in a few novelistic details: "paunchy figure, fishlike eyes, irritable personality, and off-putting mannerism of constantly scratching his elbows."
On McClellan as a personality, the charismatic but ineffectual general whom Lincoln describes as having a permanent case of "the slows," McPherson is particularly good. He observes him sympathetically, objectively: "Never having experienced failure, he feared the unknown. To move against the enemy was to risk failure." This subtly prepares us for the eventual arrival of Grant, who for a considerable part of his life has known nothing but failure and no longer fears it.
A reviewer can scarcely overpraise the clarity with which McPherson tells his story, his mastery of the sources, or the warmth and dramatic skill with which he portrays Lincoln's growth in office, toward that familiar, abiding image on the cover -- the emphatically civilian president towering over his military subordinates, just as the Framers intended. Even so, one area of Lincoln's history as commander in chief is hard to paint in black-and-white.
In September 1861, not for the last time, the president suspended habeas corpus. On his order, 27 members of the Maryland legislature were arrested and imprisoned for conspiring to force their state to secede. No grounds were given for the charge. Lincoln simply stated that "the Government is in possession of tangible and unmistakable evidence." The intelligence, General McClellan later explained, in words that have an eerie, spine-chilling resonance, "seemed at the time to be thoroughly reliable."
In another celebrated case the government arrested the leader of the Peace Democrats, Clement Vallandigham, because of a speech he made criticizing the constitutionality of the war, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the general tyranny of the administration. He was tried in a military, not a civilian court, convicted, and sent to prison.
In justification of all this -- "As commander in chief of the army and navy, in time of war...," Lincoln said, "I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy."
Few of McPherson's readers will fail to think of contemporary parallels. McPherson himself makes no direct reference to George W. Bush's military courts and the invasion of Iraq. But in an epilogue he addresses squarely the question of how far Lincoln's violations of civil rights may have tarnished his heroic legacy. And he concludes with a historian's long and eloquent perspective: "Compared with the draconian enforcement of espionage and sedition laws in World War I, the internment of more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans in the 1940s, McCarthyism in the 1950s, or the National Security State of our own time, the infringement of civil liberties from 1861 to 1865 seems mild indeed." --Max Byrd
Max Byrd is the author of Grant and Shooting the Sun.
From the Publisher
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author reveals how Lincoln won the Civil War and invented the role of commander in chief as we know it
As we celebrate the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, this study by preeminent, bestselling Civil War historian James M. McPherson provides a rare, fresh take on one of the most enigmatic figures in American history. Tried by War offers a revelatory (and timely) portrait of leadership during the greatest crisis our nation has ever endured. Suspenseful and inspiring, this is the story of how Lincoln, with almost no previous military experience before entering the White House, assumed the powers associated with the role of commander in chief, and through his strategic insight and will to fight changed the course of the war and saved the Union.
The New York Times -
Jean Edward Smith
James M. McPherson's Tried by War is a perfect primer, not just for Civil War buffs or fans of Abraham Lincoln, but for anyone who wishes to understand the evolution of the president's role as commander in chief. Few historians write as well as McPherson, and none evoke the sound of battle with greater clarity. There is scarcely anyone writing today who mines original sources more diligently. In Tried by War, McPherson draws on almost 50 years of research to present a cogent and concise narrative of how Lincoln, working against enormous odds, saved the United States of America.
The Washington Post -
Michael F. Bishop
In Tried by War, James M. McPherson agrees that Lincoln was America's finest commander-in-chief but convincingly argues that this status was achieved only after exhaustive study and heartbreaking setback…McPherson shows that Lincoln was a diligent student of military affairs and a shrewd judge of men. He immersed himself in works on strategy obtained from the Library of Congress and soon recognized the limitations of his commanders. His increasingly direct involvement in military matters and his eventual appointment of Ulysses S. Grant as general-in-chief led ultimately to victory…Tried by War supersedes Lincoln and His Generals as the definitive portrait of Lincoln as war leader
Publishers Weekly
Given the importance of Lincoln's role as commander-in-chief to the nation's very survival, says McPherson, this role has been underexamined. McPherson (Battle Cry of Freedom), the doyen of Civil War historians, offers firm evidence of Lincoln's military effectiveness in this typically well-reasoned, well-presented analysis. Lincoln exercised the right to take any necessary measures to preserve the union and majority rule, including violating longstanding civil liberties (though McPherson considers the infringements milder than those adopted by later presidents). As McPherson shows, Lincoln understood the synergy of political and military decision-making; the Emancipation Proclamation, for instance, harmonized the principles of union and freedom with a strategy of attacking the crucial Confederate resource of slave labor. Lincoln's commitment to linking policy and strategy made him the most hands-on American commander-in-chief; he oversaw strategy and offered operational advice, much of it shrewd and perceptive. Lincoln may have been an amateur of war, but McPherson successfully establishes him as America's greatest war leader. (Oct. 7)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Don Wismer
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Library Journal
Pulitzer® Prize-winning Civil War historian McPherson (Battle Cry of Freedom) concentrates here on Lincoln's performance as a largely self-taught military strategist. Obie® Award-winning actor/narrator George Guidall's performance is expressive, straightforward, persuasive, and lucid; he fades into the background so that listeners are carried along by the tale without entirely realizing his role in directing the journey. Highly recommended for history collections in public and academic libraries. [Audio clip available through us.penguingroup.com; the Penguin hc received a starred review, LJ9/1/08; February 12 marks the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth.-Ed.]
Kirkus Reviews
A leading Civil War authority assesses Lincoln's performance as head of the Union armed forces. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian McPherson (This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War, 2007, etc.) notes that Lincoln studies have examined nearly every aspect of his administration except his constitutional role as commander in chief of the armies opposing secession. The author proceeds chronologically, beginning with Lincoln's election, at which point the secession of several Southern states immediately confronted him with the decision of whether to let them go or take action to restore the Union. His first instinct was to calm passions; several speeches given before his inauguration show him reassuring his listeners that he has no intention of abolishing slavery, and that he will use force against the South only if the seceding states give him no other option. The scenario at Fort Sumter demonstrated the necessity of force, and subsequent events-especially the attack on Union troops passing through Baltimore-presented him with several other difficult choices. Finding a way to keep border states loyal was a key decision. So was finding a commander for the Union forces. Winfield Scott, the senior U.S. general, was opposed to an invasion of the South, as were several cabinet officers. Lincoln's first choice, George McClellan, proved insufficiently active and suspicious of the president's intentions. McPherson follows the course of the war, quoting from original documents, including private letters and diaries, to show the evolving strategy that led to the ultimate Union victory. The decision to abolish slavery was fundamentally strategic and political-as much as humanitarian-in itsintentions. Lincoln's determination to restore the Union became stronger as the war progressed, and Southern attempts to buy peace at some lesser price were rebuffed. McPherson's portrait of the commander in chief is brilliantly detailed, full of humanizing touches, and it provides fresh insight into his unparalleled achievement. Fluid and convincingly argued-one of the best Lincoln studies in recent years. For more information about Lincoln's relations with the Navy, see Craig L. Symonds's forthcoming Lincoln and His Admirals (2008).
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