Lincoln as Commander in Chief

Lance has been doing some good work regarding Josh Shenk’s recent Atlantic Monthly article on Abraham Lincoln’s mental health. Coincidentally, I just finished Geoffrey Perret’s Lincoln’s War, which isn’t quite as problematic as McPherson suggests, although it does have some significant factual errors.

One of the themes I touch on in any class dealing with security issues is the relationship between civilian and military authority. People normally come to this issue with a series of preconceptions. Correct or no, most who have a passing familiarity with the Vietnam War supposedly know that Johnson interfered deeply in military affairs and forced the military to fight with “one hand tied behind its back”. They also tend to be aware that the military resented the Clinton administration mightily, and, possibly, that the military also resents Don Rumsfeld. Beyond that, students don’t have much of a conception of the proper role of civilian and military authorities, and they don’t really know what great civilian leadership looks like in a wartime situation (the past five years haven’t helped matters). To remedy this last, I point to Abraham Lincoln as the exemplar of civilian authority in a democracy at war. He provides a useful contrast to the neocons favorite civilian war leader, Winston Churchill, and to George W. Bush.

Given that the operating assumption on civil-military relations today seems to be that civilians should refrain from interfering in military matters, it is remarkable that Lincoln is not more often invoked as a counter-example. Lincoln’s military experience was minimal. He served as both an elected officer and an enlisted man in the Black Hawk War, but saw little action. Lincoln had no military education at a time in which military affairs were increasingly becoming the arena of lifelong professionals. In spite of this, Lincoln had no compunctions about interfering in the military decisions of his generals. He allowed his generals a certain latitude, but demanded results. When results were not forthcoming, generals were dismissed. Lincoln wasn’t afraid of military men, and demonstrated a keen sense of which officers were qualified and which were not. He stayed with the qualified McClellan despite several setbacks, while dismissing or demoting Burnside, Meade, Hooker, and others after single defeats. Most importantly, he was able to identify the best military mind of the generation, U.S. Grant, and elevate him to command at the earliest politically feasible opportunity. Lincoln’s ability to discern military talent puts him well ahead of Winston Churchill, who in neither World War demonstrated much capacity for discriminating between good and bad commanders. At the same time, Lincoln left his military professionals with enough operational and tactical latitude that they could employ their expertise the fullest. The Bush administration (although perhaps not Bush himself) hasn’t been afraid to assert civilian control, but it’s unclear that Rumsfeld and company have the ability to differentiate good military advice and bad. If their reaction to military objections to the Iraq operation is any indication, they don’t really seem to understand that asserting one’s will over the military is less important than getting the military to do the right thing.

Lincoln’s willingness to dismiss commanders wouldn’t have been helpful without a strong strategic sense. Although Perret disagrees, I think that Lincoln rightfully dismissed suggestions that the main Union focus should be against the Mississippi River, and not against Richmond and the Army of Northern Virginia. The Union dominated the Mississipi and the rest of the West in any case, and it’s unclear what good additional focus on that area could have done. Lincoln identified three centers of gravity for the Confederacy. The first was the Army of Northern Virginia. It’s destruction would cripple the Confederacy and leave the border states open to Union occupation. Lincoln understood that McClellan could create the instrument necessary for this job (the Army of the Potomac), and eventually put the Army of the Potomac in the hands of someone who would do the job (Grant). His focus, during the Peninsular Campaign, the Antietam Campaign, and the Gettysburg Campaign was the destruction of Lee’s army, and he relieved McClellan and Meade because neither, despite having the advantage, were capable of pulling that off. Lincoln also understood the symbolic importance of Richmond and the geographic importance of the Mississippi. Lincoln’s strategic sense compares very favorably with that of Churchill, who in both World Wars authorized expensive and pointless operations in secondary theaters. It is perhaps in this area that the Bush administration has failed most disastrously. I doubt that even Churchill would have been deluded enough to believe that attacking Iraq would win the War on Terror. Civilian leaders in war need to have an idea of the enemy center of gravity, the point that is critical to destroying enemy resistance. The Bush administration has proven singularly obtuse on this point, and in fact has managed to strengthen enemy resistance while exhausting American strength.

Lincoln also excelled in ability to provide a conflict with moral and political purpose. He understood better than any other in his party that emancipation, declared too early, would be disastrous for the Union. He successfully restrained his most enthusiatic political supporters from carrying their efforts too far, too soon. Perhaps most important, he supplied the Gettysburg Address and the second inaugural address, which gave rhetorical purpose to the war. In this Lincoln wasn’t really all that much better than Churchill, but was certainly his equal and probably had a more difficult job (convincing people to resist the Nazis is somewhat less difficult that convincing them to kill their countrymen). Oddly, this is the area that the Bush administration has worked hardest upon, turning its formidable PR apparatus toward the goal of winning the war domestically. I wouldn’t exactly say that the Bush effort has been a disaster, because they’ve managed to keep a portion of the population convinced that a disastrous war undertaken for an absurd purpose is actually a good idea, but they haven’t exactly made us forget about Lincoln or Churchill. Part of the problem is that Bush doesn’t seem to understand that rhetoric must be accompanied by action. Lincoln knew that he needed Antietam for the Emancipation Proclamation, and understood that the Battle of Gettysburg supplied an appropriate occasion for the kind of language used in the Address. Churchill’s legendary “Fight in the Hills” speech was delivered on the occasion of an historic defeat for the British people, one that crystallized for them what was at stake in the struggle against Hitler. Bush, as we have seen today, attempts to deliver lofty rhetoric when his polls numbers slip and his cronies come under investigation. The impact, of course, is minimal. It doesn’t help that Bush has difficulty delivering rhetoric of note; while some of his post-9/11 speeches were quite good, his inability to speak the English language in an understandable manner detracts from the message.

As an aside, I don’t think there’s anything odd about the attachment the neocons have to Reagan, Churchill, and George W. Bush. Although “one of these is not like the others” certainly applies to the trio, they have some broad similarities, in particular a fondness for rhetoric before competence. Without going too deeply into World War II history, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the West is deeply, deeply fortunate that Churchill led the junior partner in the war rather than the senior. As I’ve suggested, while Churchill rhetoric was impressive and consequential, his strategic sense and his ability to evaluate his own commanders is in grave question. For the neocons (and I think they owe much of this to their Straussian heritage) playing a good game is less important than talking a good game. Thus, FDR and George Marshall are forgotten in the Churchill hagiography. The inability of Reagan to actually execute the domestic or foreign policy he talked about is lost in the glory of Morning in America. Dubya seems to be straining the neocons a bit; with their ideas finally in the ascendance, they have discovered that practical competence actually does count for something.

The neocons don’t talk about Lincoln all that much, and I think that the Shenk book gives us some clues as to why. Lincoln is a somber figure, even for a martyr. He was preoccupied with the grave injustices that Americans had committed, with the blood libel that was owed for slavery. He wasn’t an optimist, and couldn’t give a sunny account of the future. He hoped that the future would be better than the past, and worked to make it so, but he understood that this called for radical change. This is a far cry from the sunny visions that Reagan or Bush promote, in which the fundamental justice of America’s cause is to be trumpted to all that will hear, critics be damned. Lincoln didn’t want America to feel good; he wanted America to come to grips with its sins.

That’s not the neoconservative way.