For a concise discussion of the Prussian General Staff as developed by
Helmuth von Moltke, see General Rupert Smith, Th e Utility of Force:
Th e Art of War in the Modern World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007),
95–100.
McPherson, Tried by War , 23.
McPherson, Tried by War , 42–43.
McPherson, Tried by War , 171–72.
Although dated and marred by a defi nite anti-Republican bias,
Hesseltine’s work treats these issues in depth. See William B. Hesseltine,
Lincoln and the War Governors (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948, 1955),
chaps. 11–12.
Cohen, Supreme Command.
Andrew J. Polsky, “‘Mr. Lincoln’s Army’ Revisited: Partisanship,
Institutional Position, and Union Army Command, 1861–1865,” Studies in
American Political Development 16 (2) (Fall 2002): 176–207.
McPherson, Tried by War , 41–44. See similarly McPherson, Abraham
Lincoln and the Second American Revolution , 70–71.
Richard Bruce Winders, Mr. Polk’s Army (College Station: Texas A and M
University Press, 1997), 36, 64–65.
Th omas J. Goss, Th e War within the Union High Command: Politics and
Generalship during the Civil War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
2003).
John Y. Simon, “Grant, Lincoln, and Unconditional Surrender,” in
Lincoln’s Generals , ed. Gabor S. Boritt (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995), 171.
Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964, 1996), 234–35.
See Polsky, “‘Mr. Lincoln’s Army’ Revisited,” 189–91. Historians have long
attributed partisanship to Union offi cers based on very loose standards of
evidence, resulting in higher estimates of partisanship.
On McClellan’s political ambitions, see Stephen W. Sears, George
B. McClellan: Th e Young Napoleon (1988; reprint ed., New York: Da Capo
Press, 1999), chaps. 5–6.
McPherson, Tried by War , 114–15, 137. Buell’s biographer asserts that
he held strong Democratic beliefs and had owned slaves until the very
beginning of the war. Stephen D. Engle, Don Carlos Buell: Most Promising
of All (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
Polsky, “‘Mr. Lincoln’s Army’ Revisited,” 193–94.
McPherson, Tried by War , 268–69.
McPherson, Tried by War , 2–3, 69–71; Herman Hattaway and Archer
Jones, “Lincoln as a Military Strategist,” Civil War History 26 (1980):
293–303 ; Hattaway, “Lincoln’s Presidential Example in Dealing with the
Military,” 18–20.
