Partners in Command: The Relationships Between Leaders in the Civil War

Explores the productive friendships of such contrasting personalities as Grant and Sherman and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, bringing to life the struggle between McClellan and Lincoln and Jefferson Davis and Joseph E. Johnston.

Glatthaar follows his seminal Forged in Battle with this provocative study of high-level command structures in the Civil War. By 1861, warfare was too complex to be directed by a single individual in the style of Napoleon; political and military leaders needed to learn how to collaborate. Glatthaar's six case studies show that the process depended heavily on professional attitudes, especially the leaders' ability to understand one another's strengths and weaknesses. It was often a difficult task when dealing with statesmen and generals: witness the lack of cooperation between Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan, and on the Confederate side between Jefferson Davis and Joseph E. Johnston. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson for the Confederacy; Ulysses Grant, William Sherman and Admiral David Porter for the Union illustrate effective combinations, but they were all military men. Glatthaar calls the Lincoln-Grant team "the Ultimate Success" in a process still in the trial-and-error stage--and which, more than a century later, he notes, still involves large amounts of serendipity.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An engaging, insightful review of Civil War strategy as seen through the interactions of the conflict's top commanders. Using battlefield dispatches and biographical sketches, as well as a storyteller's instinct for dramatic moments, Glatthaar (History/University of Houston) probes the command dynamics in the Union and Confederacy, pairing Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson; Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan; Jefferson Davis and Joe Johnston; Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, and others in order to demonstrate that a meeting of minds at the top was essential to successful campaigns. At the beginning of the conflict, Lee was able to rout all Northern forces from Virginian soil largely because he had in Jackson a daring, independent battle commander, while both Lincoln and Davis suffered severe losses when their faith in, respectively, McClellan and Johnston proved ill- founded. Grant and Sherman proved as felicitous a combination as Lee and Jackson, battering their way through the Confederacy from the west along the Mississippi, then working in tandem to carve it up into smaller pieces in an effort to crush the rebellion once and for all. In the end, such superior teamwork--tapping individual temperaments to best advantage--carried the day, with the joining of Lincoln's political savvy and Grant's battlefield tenacity proving an unbeatable blend of talent and expertise. Colorful and compelling, with a rich mixture of psychological and logistical details: a skillful distillation of familiar faces and events through a fresh approach that should be of interest to tacticians as well as to those who view history as a patchwork of personalities. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

No serious analysis of the Civil War would be complete without an in-depth look at the personalities that formed its outcome. This work is written as a series of minibiographies; each chapter explores the relationships behind the most successful generals and leaders of the war. Lee and Jackson, Lincoln and McClellan, and Grant and Sherman are typical of the character studies. Not all relationships were favorable, as with Lincoln and McClellan or Davis and Johnston, but through an understanding of these personality conflicts, the overall strategy of the war is brought into context. Glatthaar ( Forged in Battle , LJ 10/1/89) writes with understanding and depth while giving insight into the individuals. He also stresses that it was their professionalism and call to duty that "lay at the interactive bedrock of these successful military partnerships." Highly recommended for most libraries.
- Barbara Zaborowski, Cambria Cty. Lib., Johnstown, Pa.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.