Although Lincoln never read Karl von Clausewitz's famous treatise On War, his actions were a consummate expression of Clausewitz's central argument: "The political objective is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose. From first to last, that policy was the preservation of the United States as one nation, indivisible, and as a republic based on majority rule. Harry Williams: "Lincoln stands out as a great war president, probably the greatest in our history, and a great natural strategist, a better one than any of his generals."Īs president of the nation and leader of his party as well as commander in chief, Lincoln was principally responsible for shaping and defining national policy. By 1862 his grasp of strategy and operations was firm enough almost to justify the overstated but not entirely wrong conclusion of historian T. He read and absorbed works on military history and strategy he observed the successes and failures of his own and the enemy's military commanders and drew apt conclusions he made mistakes and learned from them he applied his large quotient of common sense to slice through the obfuscations and excuses of military subordinates. He was a quick study, however his experience as a largely self-taught lawyer with a keen analytical mind who had mastered Euclidean geometry for mental exercise enabled him to learn quickly on the job. When he called state militia into federal service on April 15, 1861-following the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter-Lincoln therefore faced a steep learning curve as commander in chief. "I fought, bled and came away" after "charges upon the wild onions" and "a good many bloody struggles with the Musquetoes." "Did you know I am a military hero?" he said. During Lincoln's one term in Congress, he mocked his military career in an 1848 speech. Lincoln's only military experience had come in 1832, when he was captain of a militia unit that saw no action in the Black Hawk War, which began when Sac and Fox Indians (led by the war chief Black Hawk) tried to return from Iowa to their ancestral homeland in Illinois in alleged violation of a treaty of removal they had signed. Jefferson Davis had graduated from West Point (in the lowest third of his class, to be sure), commanded a regiment that fought intrepidly at Buena Vista in the Mexican War and served as secretary of war in the Franklin Pierce administration from 1853 to 1857. When the American Civil War began, president Abraham Lincoln was far less prepared for the task of commander in chief than his Southern adversary.
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