52 e lusive v ictories
embarked on his “Overland Campaign” in Virginia in May 1864, the
Army of the Potomac would be in constant contact with Lee’s Army of
Northern Virginia nearly every day for eleven months, until the latter’s
surrender at Appomattox in April 1865. Th e new nature of the violence
is best refl ected in a single sobering statistic: for the fi rst month of the
campaign, Grant’s troops averaged 2,000 casualties per day.
Interestingly, in this fi nal and most brutal phase of the war, the pres-
ident became much less involved in directing military operations.
Having found commanders, especially Grant, who shared his strategic
vision and cold-blooded determination, Lincoln saw no need to manage
things as he had earlier. Such was his confi dence in Grant that he did
not even ask for the details of campaign plans. Put another way, the
Lincoln of the late-war period was much less the hands-on political
leader that Cohen praises and better resembles Huntington’s modern
archetype—the leader who establishes war goals and entrusts the mil-
itary eff ort to military professionals. It is no coincidence that the pro-
portion of non-partisan professional soldiers holding senior command
positions at the end of the war was substantially greater than at the
start. Th e professionals had shown themselves to be the most reliable
agents of their political masters.
Lincoln still made his presence felt at times. But he did so when he
concluded that political considerations must outweigh purely military
calculations. So it was in summer 1864, after Jubal Early’s small rebel
army threatened Washington and then drew back into the Shenandoah
Valley, that the president insisted Grant put an end to such threats once
and for all. Th e administration simply could not aff ord another embar-
rassment on the eve of the presidential election. Grant dispatched Phil
Sheridan, a western general who exemplifi ed the total war approach, to
lay waste the Valley, so that no Confederate army could sustain itself
there, a task Sheridan took to with evident glee.
Any depiction of Lincoln as the paradigmatic hands-on wartime
political leader is not so much wrong as misleading and incomplete.
Lincoln’s active direction of the Union war eff ort was a necessary con-
dition for victory, but not a suffi cient one. He demonstrated remarkable
strategic vision for someone as unschooled in military matters as he was
at the start of the war. And most of his generals would never have
displayed the energy, drive, and determination required to defeat a foe