56 e lusive v ictories
bodies of troops and their heavy equipment slow at best. In the latter
instance, Lincoln and Stanton fell prey to a technological illusion—the
notion that the speed of the telegraph allowed distant observers to exer-
cise real-time command over units on the battlefi eld. Th e fragmentary
information available via wire communication was an insuffi cient basis
upon which to base tactical decisions and simply left offi cers in the fi eld
and their political superiors frustrated with each other.
Sometimes what Lincoln asked of his generals verged on the reckless.
After the Army of the Potomac under General George Meade won its
famous victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in early July 1863, the
Army of Northern Virginia under Lee retreated, seeking to re-cross the
Potomac. To Lincoln, it appeared that Meade had a golden opportunity
to pin Lee’s force against the river and annihilate it. Such a triumph,
coupled with the surrender of Vicksburg to Grant, might have brought
the war to a close. Th e president urged Meade to strike. But in reality
his army had been hurt almost as badly at Gettysburg as its adversary.
And Lee was prepared for such an attack, on ground suited for defense,
so the result almost certainly would have been a crushing setback for
Meade’s troops that would have undone their recent triumph. Lincoln
knew full well that weapons technology in the Civil War era favored the
defensive side. Th e president also forgot on this occasion—as he did
every time a Confederate forced raided the North—that armies had
shown themselves too resilient to be destroyed in a single battle of
annihilation. ^
As we weigh Lincoln’s mistakes, though, two considerations must be
entered in his favor. First, he learned the limits of what he could do to
infl uence the outcome of campaigns, so his intervention was episodic
rather than constant. Second, in a war, the outcome depends on the
decisions made by political principals on both sides. Th e Civil War
involved two opposing leaders operating under broadly similar political
arrangements with comparable powers as commander in chief.
Whatever errors Lincoln made as a military leader, they pale in com-
parison to those of Jeff erson Davis. On the surface, Davis seemed to
have all the attributes one might want in a wartime commander in
chief: a professional military education, a record of distinguished
combat leadership as a regimental commander in the war against
Mexico, and an effective stint as secretary of war during the Pierce