More out of necessity than inclination, Abraham Lincoln became one of the most active commanders in chief in American history, directly influencing and managing events and generals in every field of operations during the Civil War. Never before had a president been able to communicate his desires to far-off commanders as quickly as Lincoln was able to. He could do this because of recent inventions that speeded communication, most notably the telegraph.
Lincoln’s active managerial style was most prominent in 1863. At the beginning of that year, the Union was poised on all fronts to take the offensive. In the West, Federal forces were preparing to move down the Mississippi River to capture Vicksburg, Miss., the last major port along that river not already in Union hands. When this was done, the Confederacy would be cut in two. In Tennessee, a Northern army had fought the Confederates to a draw at Stones River and was preparing to push the Southerners out of middle and eastern Tennessee. In the East, after suffering many defeats in 1862, Union forces had a new commander and were preparing to take the war deeper into Virginia.
As promising as the Union outlook was at the beginning of the year, there would be many problems and disappointments before 1863 ended. Lincoln would be forced to deal with numerous commanders who failed to understand that the main objective of the Union military machine should be defeating the Confederate armies, not merely occupying enemy territory. Lincoln often had to beg his commanders to take action, or relieve and replace a general when he failed to prosecute the war in an aggressive manner.
The stage had been set in July 1862, when Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck had replaced Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan as general in chief of the Union Army. Lincoln hoped that he had found a competent leader to aggressively prosecute the war without much direction from the White House, and at first glance Halleck appeared to be a fine choice. He was a West Point graduate with many years of experience in the Regular Army who had captured Corinth, Miss.
Events, however, soon showed that Halleck was not the aggressive general Lincoln believed him to be. After the Union defeat at the Second Battle of Manassas in August 1862, Halleck seemed to lose confidence in both himself and his generals, and adopted a style of giving suggestions and advice to his subordinates rather than direct orders. He explained his indirect approach to managing his generals’ tactics this way: ‘To order a general to give battle against his own wishes and judgement is to assume the responsibility of a probable defeat. If a general is unwilling to fight, he is not likely to gain victory.’
Lincoln came to view Halleck as ‘little more than a first rate clerk,’ and the president was forced to take a more active role in military matters than he would have liked. Although Lincoln continued to work through Halleck, he also often communicated directly with his field commanders by telegraph. Earlier in 1862, Lincoln had made a wise move by establishing governmental control of the U.S. telegraph system. Initially, telegraph operations were under the Signal Corps, but by 1863 they were placed under a separate entity known as the U.S. Military Telegraph Service. During the course of the war, Lincoln became a common sight at War Department’s telegraph office, reading and composing tele-grams that allowed him to follow and supervise Union operations in all theaters of the war.
Lincoln’s main military concerns were focused on three major areas of operation: the Mississippi River, Tennessee, and northern Virginia. Initially, each of these areas had a main field commander with whom Lincoln would have many dealings over the course of the year. In the West, the campaign to capture the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River was under the direction of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Grant had proved to be an aggressive general, winning several important victories in 1862 that helped to clear the Confederate presence from western Tennessee. Promoted to head the Department of the Tennessee when Halleck left to become general in chief, in November 1862 Grant launched a campaign to capture Vicksburg by an overland route through the state of Mississippi. Confederate cavalry raids on his supply lines forced Grant to cancel this operation and return his army to its initial starting point near Memphis, Tenn. The persistent commander then determined that his next attempt to capture Vicksburg would be via the Mississippi River itself.
In central Tennessee, Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans was in command of the Army of the Cumberland. In October 1862, he had relieved Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell as head of the army. By January 1, 1863, Rosecrans had fought a Confederate army at the Battle of Stones River, forcing the Southerners to withdraw. Rosecrans was then poised to begin a campaign to drive the Confederates from the eastern half of the state.
In northern Virginia, Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside led the Union Army of the Potomac at the start of 1863. But due to Burnside’s crushing defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, Lincoln had lost faith in his ability to lead the army, and he soon replaced him with Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker. Lincoln had his doubts about Hooker, too, mainly due to his vocal criticism of Burnside, but he had performed well as a corps commander and talked aggressively about what he intended to do in the spring campaign.
Politics played a major part in the initial stages of Grant’s advance on Vicksburg. In 1862, a politically appointed general named John A. McClernand, a Democrat, had been authorized by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to raise troops in several northwestern states as an expeditionary force for use in capturing Vicksburg. The wording of the order made it appear that McClernand would be in command of the operation. But after McClernand had raised the troops and sent them to Memphis, Grant simply took control of the soldiers for his operations down the Mississippi.
Although he disliked and distrusted McClernand, Grant wisely retained him as a corps commander, knowing that Lincoln wished to keep the Illinois Democrat in an important capacity for political reasons. McClernand was not satisfied by the arrangements, and he appealed directly to Lincoln. The president responded directly to McClernand: ‘I have too many family controversies (so to speak) already on my hands to voluntarily, or so long as I can avoid it, take up another. You are now doing well–much better than you could possibly be if engaged in open war with Gen. Halleck. Allow me to beg that for your sake, for my sake, & for the country’s sake, you give your whole attention to the better work.’
Lincoln also let Grant know when he thought a particular project was especially important. The long winter months had hampered the offensive capabilities of Grant’s army. In order to keep his men occupied and make them feel they were making some headway against the Confederates, Grant had his soldiers work on cutting a canal that would bypass the Vicksburg defenses. Although Grant had little hope of success for the effort, Lincoln felt the project was important. In a January 25 telegram, Halleck told Grant: ‘Direct your attention particularly to the canal proposed across the point. The President attaches much attention to this.’
The president’s attention was also focused on the Army of the Cumberland and General Rosecrans in central Tennessee. Following Stones River, Rosecrans had the full support of the administration and was advised by Stanton, ‘There is nothing within my power to grant yourself or your heroic command that will not be carefully given.’ But Rosecrans stalled in making any further move against the enemy. As weeks dragged by, Rosecrans continued to request more supplies from the government while making no effort to move. Lincoln’s frustration mounted.
The government tried many different tactics to get Rosecrans to advance, but to no avail. Finally, in an apparent attempt to infuse some spirit of competition between Rosecrans and Grant, Halleck sent each a telegram that offered what could fairly be interpreted as a bribe. The general in chief told them that he was authorized to award a major generalcy in the Regular Army to the first commander who could win an ‘important, decisive victory.’ Instead of choosing to consider it an incentive for good performance, or at the very least ignoring it as Grant did, Rosecrans decided to be insulted by the message. He let his superiors know that he was offended, further worsening relations between himself and Washington.
Meanwhile in the East, the Army of the Potomac was being reorganized in the early months of 1863. Lincoln was still uncertain about Hooker mainly due to his outspoken opinions about the government and Burnside. Hooker had used such terms as ‘imbecile’ and ‘played out’ in describing the president and the government. He even went so far as to say that ‘nothing [will] go right until we have a dictator, and the sooner the better.’
During the next few months, however, Hooker proved to be a good administrator of the army, reorganizing it into an efficient fighting force. By April, it was ready once again to begin offensive operations. Because of Virginia’s proximity to Washington, Lincoln maintained closer personal contact with and supervision of the general than he did with his western commanders. The president even personally reviewed Hooker’s army on April 6 and gave the general a verbal push, telling him that it was time for his army to move. The Northern public was growing weary of inaction by the Army of the Potomac.
Approximately 130,000 Union soldiers were present for duty in the upcoming Chancellorsville campaign, a large, powerful force with which Hooker could assault the Army of Northern Virginia’s approximately 60,000 soldiers. Having done all that he could to ensure success, Lincoln should have felt confident about victory. But he still had his doubts about the campaign, saying, ‘I expect the best, but I am prepared for the worst.’
The president could not visit and actively supervise the Union armies in the West, but he could send a personal representative to be his eyes and ears. When the government began to get complaints about Grant from various parties, Lincoln dispatched Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana on a fact-finding mission in April. The commander in chief’s anxiety about Grant was alleviated by Dana’s report, which echoed his later feelings that the general was ‘an uncommon fellow–the most modest, the most disinterested, and the most honest man I ever knew.’
That spring Grant attempted several different schemes to bypass the Confederate defenses at Vicksburg. While none proved successful, at least he and his command were making attempts to defeat the enemy. Their efforts did not go unnoticed in Washington, but Lincoln was concerned that Grant was dividing his army before the enemy, which might prove costly. He wanted Grant to unite with Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks’ forces moving north out of New Orleans. In a telegram to Grant dated April 2, Halleck echoed Lincoln’s concerns, warning him, ‘The division of your army into small expeditions destroys your strength, and when in the presence of the enemy, is very dangerous…what is most desired…is that your forces and those of General Banks should be brought into co-operation as early as possible.’
On April 4, Grant notified Halleck in a dispatch that he was prepared to march his army down the west bank of the Mississippi while ‘a portion of the naval fleet’ would run past the Confederate batteries by night. Then the Navy would ferry his men to the east bank of the river, where they would be on the same side as their objective–Vicksburg. In mid-April, Grant did just what he said he would do. Amazingly, only one naval vessel was lost when the Union navy ran past the guns on Vicksburg’s bluff. Grant’s gam-ble, contrary to all military logic, paid off, and by the end of the month his army was on the east bank of the river south of Vicksburg and ready to take the fight to the enemy.
Hooker was also ready to fight by the end of April. In a series of brilliant maneuvers, he managed to keep the South in the dark about his intentions and get his army across the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers without interference. Once the army began to move, Lincoln monitored its progress by telegram. On April 27, Lincoln telegraphed Hooker, ‘How does it look now?’ Ninety minutes later, the commander replied: ‘I am not sufficiently advanced to give an opinion. We are busy. Will tell you as soon as I can, and have it satisfactory.’
On May 1, the Union and Confederate forces collided in a region known as the Wilderness. Over the next three days, a tremendous battle would be fought near a crossroads known as Chancellorsville. Lincoln knew little about the battle until Hooker’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Daniel Butterfield, sent the following message: ‘Though not directed or specially authorized to do so by General Hooker, I think it not improper that I should advise you that a battle is in progress.’
Later during the battle, Butterfield informed Lincoln: ‘The battle has been most fierce and terrible. Loss heavy on both sides. General Hooker slightly, but not severely, wounded.’ Impatient with the lack of information, and perhaps a little alarmed, Lincoln wired back: ‘Where is General Hooker?’
Finally, on May 5, Butterfield sent a telegram to Lincoln (that was not received until the next day) explaining the dire situation that Hooker and the Army of the Potomac faced. Butterfield advised that the army was still south of the Rappahannock in a strong position, but that Hooker believed it was possible the enemy might have crossed the river and turned his right flank. Butterfield said Hooker believed that ‘circumstances…make it expedient…that he should retire from this position to the north bank of the Rappahannock for his defensible position.’ Momentarily in despair at the prospect of another Union defeat, Lincoln exclaimed after reading the report: ‘My God! My God! What will the country say! What will the country say!’
By May 7, Lincoln was back to trying to actively manage the army and salvage something from a bad situation. He wrote Hooker to ask if the general had another plan to rebound from this most recent Union defeat. ‘Have you already in mind a plan wholly or partially formed?’ Lincoln wondered. ‘If you have, prosecute it without interference from me. If you have not, please inform me, so that I, incompetent as I may be, can try and assist in the formation of some plan for the army.’
While Grant and Hooker were moving–with variable results–Rosecrans continued to tarry in Tennessee. By the end of May 1863, Lincoln’s patience with Rosecrans was nearly at an end. It seemed that no one in the government, including Lincoln, could get him to engage the enemy. Not only did Lincoln want Tennessee cleared of the enemy, he also wanted to ensure that the Confederates were prevented from reinforcing their army facing Grant at Vicksburg. On May 23, Lincoln telegraphed Rosecrans directly, ‘I would not push you to any rashness, but I am very anxious that you do your utmost, short of rashness, to keep [General Braxton] Bragg from getting on to help [General Joseph] Johnston against Grant.’ The Army of the Cumberland commander replied: ‘Dispatch received. I will attend to it.’
But he failed to ‘attend to it.’ On June 2, Halleck informed Rosecrans that if he did not soon move, some of his troops would be transferred to help Grant. The next day Halleck telegraphed Rosecrans that intelligence indicated that enemy troops in his front were leaving to oppose Grant. Halleck added, ‘If you cannot hurt the enemy now, he will soon hurt you.’ On June 11 the general in chief again telegraphed Rosecrans, informing him of the president’s great dissatisfaction with his inaction. Still he failed to move.
On the same day, Rosecrans responded to Halleck that he had held a council of war with his corps and division commanders, and they had a much different view of events than did Washington. They believed that it was not advisable to move until the fate of Vicksburg had been decided. Rosecrans offered a military maxim that an army should not attempt to fight two decisive battles at the same time. Halleck shot back with a maxim of his own: Councils of war do not fight.
Finally, on June 23, after much prodding by Lincoln and Halleck, Rosecrans finally began his much-awaited advance southward. During the next two weeks, through efficient movement but little actual combat, Rosecrans managed to maneuver the Confederate forces completely out of middle Tennessee. But much to Lincoln’s dismay, Rosecrans missed what should have been the real objective of the campaign, the destruction of the enemy. That failure would come back to haunt him.
In the East, Hooker had intended to launch another campaign against Lee after Chancellorsville. On May 13, Lincoln met with Hooker in Washington. There he gave the general a letter indicating that the time to hit the enemy’s extended lines of communication had passed. Lincoln now expected Hooker to do no more than keep the Confederates at bay with occasional harassing cavalry raids while he put the Army of the Potomac back in good condition.
Over the course of the next few weeks, General Robert E. Lee launched his second invasion of the North in less than a year. It was Hooker’s job to shadow the Confederates and keep his army between the enemy’s forces and Washington. Every decision had to be checked with Lincoln, for he had by then lost nearly all confidence in the Army of the Potomac’s commander. Realizing that the president had no faith in him, Hooker offered his resignation, and perhaps to his surprise, Lincoln immediately accepted it.
The president promoted Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, a corps commander in the Army of the Potomac, to command the army. Halleck informed Meade that he was ‘free to act as you may deem proper under circumstances as they arise.’ Lincoln had chosen Meade because the general hailed from the state in which a major battle was likely to be fought. Lincoln believed that Meade, a Philadelphian, would lead his army well in Pennsylvania, ‘on his own dunghill.’
The Army of the Potomac met the enemy near the town of Gettysburg, Pa., on July 1. Once the battle was joined, Lincoln kept up with the action via telegrams sent to the War Department. There he read Meade’s dispatches on the first, second and third days of the battle. The last told of the enemy’s withdrawal from the battlefield. Victory had been achieved.
Meanwhile, Grant’s campaign to capture Vicksburg was making steady progress. His main problem was that he faced two separate Confederate armies in Mississippi. One occupied Vicksburg, while the other was assembling at Jackson. Not wanting these two forces to unite, Grant moved his army between them.
Grant’s forces clashed with elements of the Confederate troops from Vicksburg at Champion’s Hill on May 16, and the Southerners then retreated into the defenses around Vicksburg. Grant quickly attempted to take the city by assault, but failed and then turned to a siege to starve out the defenders. As the weeks went by, Halleck reminded Grant that time was of the utmost importance and that the siege’should be pushed day and night.’ But Grant could do lit-tle but wait out the enemy.
Finally, on July 4, the waiting ended for Grant, Lincoln and the country. Grant sent a message up the Mississippi to be telegraphed Halleck, informing him that the ‘enemy surrendered this morning.’
The president was in the War Department when the announcement came over the wire on July 7. A humble Lincoln sent Grant a gracious letter of appreciation: ‘I do not remember that you and I have met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgement for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do what you finally did….When you got below and took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgement that you were right and I was wrong.’
Following Grant’s success, Meade came under pressure to finish off Lee’s army before it could retreat back across the Potomac River. Halleck telegraphed Meade on July 7 that he had given the Confederates a hard blow and that he should follow it up and ‘give him another before he can reach the Potomac.’ On the same day, Halleck forwarded to Meade the text of a note from Lincoln stating that Vicksburg had fallen and ‘if General Meade can complete his work…by the literal or substantial destruction of Lee’s army, the rebellion will be over.’
Lincoln became convinced that Meade would allow the enemy to escape unless he was pressured to attack. On July 8, Halleck once again urged Meade to attack the enemy’s divided forces as soon as possible–ordering forced marches if necessary. Finally, on July 12, Meade notified Washington that he would attack the next day. Lincoln was in the telegraph office when the message was received. ‘They will be ready to fight a magnificent battle when there is no enemy there to fight,’ Lincoln scoffed.
The president proved to be right. As he predicted, Lee’s army escaped across the Potomac with little additional harm done to it. Lincoln was truly devastated by Meade’s failure to destroy Lee. His feelings about the matter are most evident in a letter that he composed to Meade but never sent him: ‘I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape, he was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our recent successes have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely.’
Lincoln, however, was not ready to give up on Meade as commander of the Army of the Potomac. He had, after all, won a major, if incomplete, victory against Lee. Very few others could boast of that. Lincoln decided to ‘try him farther.’
By August, Meade’s army had shrunk to two-thirds the strength it had boasted in July. Several thousand men had been discharged when their enlistments expired. A division was sent to South Carolina for siege operations, and more than 1,500 men were sent to New York City to quell draft riots. Lee actually mounted a minor offensive against Meade, forcing the Union general to fall back from the Rappahannock River toward Washington. Meade checked this movement with a clash at Bristoe Station and eventually pushed southward again. The Federals won a victory at Rappahannock Station in November, but their weak advance ground to a halt later that month along Mine Run. Aside for minor operations against the enemy, the Army of the Potomac would do nothing more until the spring of 1864.
In Tullahoma, Tenn., during the summer of 1863, Rosecrans once again settled into a secure base and began stockpiling supplies for a vague advance sometime in the future. Lincoln wanted a quick advance by the Army of the Cumberland into the strategically important eastern part of the state. The president said that he wanted to do ‘as much for East Tennessee as I would, or could, if my own home & family were in Knoxville.’ Rosecrans again was slow in moving, and once again telegrams flew from Washington to Tennessee in an effort to get the overly deliberate general to move. Finally, on August 4, Halleck telegraphed Rosecrans, ‘Your forces must move forward without delay.’
The army finally began advancing on August 16. Over the next several weeks, Bragg’s Confederate army retreated into Georgia, abandoning the key railroad center of Chattanooga. Believing that he had the enemy in full retreat and forgetting that Bragg still had an intact army, Rosecrans continued his advance into Georgia. After he belatedly realized that his own army was overextended, Rosecrans attempted to consolidate his force in defensive positions near Chickamauga Creek, 10 miles south of Chattanooga. The Confederates struck the Union positions on September 19, and in a vicious two-day battle Rosecrans and his army were sent scurrying back to Chattanooga.
Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana was with the Union army at Chickamauga and telegraphed Lincoln details of the defeat on September 20. A rattled Rosecrans wired Washington the same day, saying that he was uncertain whether his army could hold Chattanooga. Lincoln responded immediately that he still had confidence in the general and that the government would do all it could to assist him.
By September 22, concerned that he had not heard from Rosecrans in two days, Lincoln wired him and asked the condition of his forces in Chattanooga. Rosecrans responded that he held the town with 30,000 men but that their fate was in the hands of God–hardly a response to instill confidence. Lincoln continued to try to help Rosecrans restore his faith in himself and his army. But privately, Lincoln had his doubts about Rosecrans, who he said was acting ‘confused and stunned, like a duck hit on the head.’
On September 23, the Confederate siege of Chattanooga began. The trapped Rosecrans needed help, and Lincoln attempted to find a way to send him reinforcements, debating the best way to do this with Halleck and Stanton. The secretary of war proposed to send soldiers from Meade’s army by railroad. He said that 20,000 troops could be moved in a few weeks–Halleck said such an operation would more likely take a few months.
The two-hour debate ended with Lincoln accepting Stanton’s proposal, and soon the efficiency of the Union railroad system was proven when more than 15,000 men quickly arrived in the vicinity of Chatta-nooga to augment Rosecrans’ force.
By mid-October, Lincoln had decided that a change in the command system in the West was in order. Grant was promoted to head a unified command that included most of the armies and departments from Tennessee westward. Lincoln gave Grant authority to retain or relieve Rosecrans. Grant chose the latter, replacing the lethargic general with Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. Grant then proceeded to Chattanooga to take personal command of the efforts to break the siege.
The siege of Chattanooga was broken on October 30 when a small supply line–dubbed the Cracker Line–was opened into the city. Between November 23 and 25, the Union armies under Grant at Chattanooga launched a concerted offensive to clear the Confederates from around the city that ended with Bragg’s army in full retreat southward to Georgia.
By the end of 1863 it was clear to Lincoln that in Grant he had found the aggressive commander he had been seeking since the beginning of the war. In March 1864 Lincoln promoted Grant to lieutenant general, and appointed him general in chief of the Union armies. From this point until the end of the war, the president would no longer actively manage military matters. Having Grant at the helm saved the president time and energy.
The course of events in 1863 had forced Lincoln to become an active commander in chief. It is hard to imagine generals such as Rosecrans ever moving without pressure from above. On all fronts except Grant’s, inaction might have remained the order of the day if not for the president’s vigorous involvement in the prosecution of the war. Perhaps there might not have been the Union defeats at Chancellorsville and Chickamauga, but there might not have been the Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg or Chattanooga, either.
After 1863 the Confederacy’s main armies would undertake no more major offensives, and the Southern bid for a separate, independent nation would fail. Had it not been for Lincoln’s active management of military affairs and steady prodding of his commanders, the outcome of the Civil War and the history of the United States would likely have been very different.
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