The War within the Union High Command: Politics and Generalship During the Civil War. By Thomas J. Goss. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2003. Xx, 300 pp.)
At the beginning of the Civil War, a lack of general officers plagued the Union army. It became necessary to quickly advance officers with no military experience into important positions, among which were Benjamin Butler, Nathaniel Banks, and Franz Sigel. Traditional histories have tended to paint these political generals in a negative light while soldiers who were from the regular army received a great deal of praise for their actions. In his work, Thomas J. Goss argues against this traditional thesis, believing that political generals are given a bad rap, mainly due to the acceptance of the opinions of officers from the regular army. Prior to the Civil War, the republican nature of the nation lent itself to the belief in the citizen soldier; one who left private life in a time of national security to protect the nation and then returned to private life, quietly giving up their power. The Civil War changed this idea due to the excessive numbers of soldiers needed to fight the war. Goss seeks to examine the resulting friction between regular army officers and political generals and find out the differences between the two, their views on the war, and their relationship toward military policy.
Political generals were not often very successful in the field but were not always appointed for battlefield success. In actuality, political generals did not often command large numbers of troops, and, proportionately, did not have a greater level of losses than the regular army generals. Goss believes that few general officers held experience with the large numbers of troops in the Civil War and actually had to learn on the fly. Because of this, even the regular army officers had to start at a point similar to the political generals. In addition, political generals were not immediately cashiered in the wake of losses and sometimes were even promoted to get move them to other areas and away from some of the major fighting. However, the major difference between the two groups appeared in their interpretations of the war.
The Civil war combined military tactics with political maneuvering, and the political generals more easily envisioned the war as “a partisan political struggle” (146) instead of a simple Jominian struggle like their regular army counterparts. It was a new kind of warfare which the political generals were able to understand. Ben Butler perceived this struggle early on when he created the foundation for the Confiscation Act. Other contributions from political generals came in the form of their abilities to manage various military districts with a good deal of success. John Logan, who was a Democrat from southern Illinois, was given a commission to help keep his area, an area with dubious Unionist sentiment, in the Union and urge soldiers to join up. The same went for Benjamin Butler who pushed the men of New England to enlist. In contrast to the political generals, regular army officers depended on troops assigned to them by the government. Plus, they did not always appropriately handle their districts in a good way. For example, Ambrose Burnside arrested Clement Vallandighman for treason and attempted to shut down the Chicago Times for publishing controversial material in his Department of the Ohio. The importance of the political generals came in the form of their administration capabilities and abilities to drum up support early in the war. However, the creation of conscription law made that ability less important, and the regular army officers who were able to change their styles, such as Grant and Sherman, took control at the war’s end. Though the political generals were appointed for a purpose, the regular army officers hijacked the war’s memory and painted these officers as inept, even though some were successful.
Goss has written an intriguing work that seeks to look fairly at the political generals. However, the work is not without its faults. Goss focuses on a very small group of individuals from the two sides and does not add anything about what ordinary soldiers thought about their superiors. In addition, the work suffers from repetition at some points. Overall, Goss has produced an interesting work that can be built on.
Texas Christian University Blake Hill