In this excellent lecture, Professor Jennifer Murray discusses the Civil War career of Major General George G. Meade.
Student of the American Civil War 2
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How to Tell What’s Real Online
Here’s our personal astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, giving a tutorial on critically evaluating internet sources.
The video’s description reads, “In a world overflowing with opinions, clips, conspiracies, and AI-generated answers, how do you know what’s actually true? Neil deGrasse Tyson breaks down his personal checklist for navigating the modern information landscape—yellow flags, red flags, and why evidence-based thinking matters more than ever. From scientific claims and podcasts to clipped videos and industry commentary, Neil shows you how to separate signal from noise and think like a scientist in the digital age. How do you tell what’s real? Neil deGrasse Tyson breaks down how to tell which sources are trustworthy and which yellow flags to look out for. In an age of so much information, how do you parse what’s real and what’s misinformation?”
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American “Heritage” vs. American History | The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
This is an excellent discussion between host Jon Stewart and his guests, Professor Allen C. Guelzo and Professor Joanne Freeman.
The episode’s description tells us, “As debates over what it means to be a “heritage American” enter mainstream political discourse, Jon is joined by University of Florida Professor Allen C. Guelzo and Yale historian Joanne Freeman, host of ‘History Matters’ podcast. Together, they examine what this loaded term actually means, explore how American identity has been defined and contested throughout the nation’s history, and discuss the central role immigrants have always played in shaping who we are. Plus, Jon talks about the ‘enemy of the people’ and presidential pardons!
0:00 – Intro
2:01 – Allen C. Guelzo & Joanne Freeman Join
9:22 – The Idea(s) of America
16:23 – Elites vs. Monarchs
20:00 – The Contradiction of the Founding Fathers
25:29 – How did the Founders View Immigration?
33:59 – When Did Immigration Come to the Forefront of America?
38:43 – Heritage Americans & The Civil War
46:00 – The American Revolution Is Not Over
51:15 – The Beginning of Immigration Reforms
1:00:34 – Trump’s Somali Comment
1:12:04 – A Diverse Society is Not a Risk
1:16:18 – Breaking Down the Discussion”
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Combined Operations in the Civil War
This book by Professor Rowena Reed looks at military operations in the Civil War that involved both army and naval forces acting in concert. Today we would call these joint operations, with the term combined operations referring to actions involving militaries from more than one country acting together. In this study she focuses on operations involving the United States Army and the United States Navy cooperating together.
In explaining the organization of her book, Professor Reed writes, “Since this study examines both the strategic and tactical application of Federal combined operations, it is organized into three parts, corresponding to the different uses of combined forces at various stages of the war. Part I explains the evolution of combined strategy from Lincoln’s proclamation of the blockade in April 1861 until McClellan’s removal as commanding general of the United States Army in March 1862. Part II examines the collapse of combined strategy incident to this change of command, its repercussions in the various military departments, and the split between the Army and the Navy over strategic priorities in the middle period of the war. Part III describes the evolution of combined tactics, and the relation of amphibious operations to Union war strategy, from the naval attack on Charleston in April 1863 to the reduction of Fort Fisher in the early months of 1865.” [p. x]
While the United States had an overwhelming naval superiority over the confederacy, there was still a problem. “A major strategic problem confronting the United States in the war with the Confederacy was how to employ its almost total naval superiority against a continental enemy. The necessarily defensive tasks of commerce raiding and coast protection during the Revolution and the War of 1812 had not prepared the U.S. Navy for a role as an invader. The limited experience of the Mexican War and minor campaigns against the Indians, while better than no experience at all, had not been sufficient to produce a very exacting approach to military problems or skill in handling large bodies of troops. Nor had the Navy’s experiences with blockade during the Mexican conflict or patrol to suppress the slave trade taught its officers how to command whole squadrons of vessels, and exploit their strategic or tactical possibilities. Despite the existence of West Point for fifty years and the recent founding of the Naval Academy, there were still few truly professional officers in either service.” [p. xii]
“The handicaps of inexperience and a still ‘amateurish’ approach to war,” she writes, might have been more quickly overcome had the Union forces not been burdened by an awkward command structure. At the head of the Army was the senior major general, variously styled the general-in-chief, the commanding general, the commander-in-chief, or simply the major general commanding. This office, filled by executive appointment, had no legal status and its authority was based solely upon the seniority of that individual in the regular army. Field command was determined in the same haphazard manner; that is, the senior officer present with a unit–in this case, including volunteer ranks–was automatically in command if he chose to be. Not surprisingly, arguments over who ranked who were common obstacles to the war effort.” [p. xiii]
The Navy had problems as well. “The command structure of the United States Navy was even more primitive. There was no chief of naval operations, nor was any one officer appointed commander of the United States Fleet so that he might consult directly in an official capacity with his Army counterpart. The lack of such an office, not to mention the lack of either an army or a naval staff, was a serious obstacle to combined operations. The highest professional appointment was that of squadron commander (commodore), or flag officer, later designated rear admiral. While the Navy escaped the Army’s problem of seniority for operational commands, grades were generally lower in the Navy and their equivalents in Army ranks not always clear. This caused confusion, especially in the West when the Mississippi Squadron was under the authority of the War Department and its officers thus subject to orders from their Army ‘seniors.’” [p. xiii]
According to Professor Reed, “Formulation of Army plans was the responsibility of the commanding general, subject to approval by the president and his Cabinet. Naval plans were devised by the secretary of the Navy or, in the Civil War, by the assistant secretary. Although squadron commanders were often encouraged to submit ideas and plans for specific naval or combined operations, no naval officer presumed to advise on naval strategy or operations as a whole (except for Captain Samuel F. Du Pont, when he was chairman of the Blockade Board). The higher military functions remained the prerogative of the civilian secretary. Furthermore, the secretaries were not required to cooperate or even consult with one another, or with the general-in-chief. This already confused politico-military chain of command was further complicated by the appointment, by both the president and the Congress, of special boards and committees. Washington swarmed with amateur Napoleons. Regardless of the merits or defects of any particular strategy, without a central planning and control agency, whether military or civilian, it was extremely unlikely that any one strategic idea would emerge in well-defined form and be consistently implemented.” [p. xiv]
Professor Reed has an appreciation of Major General George B. McClellan unsullied by the unreasoning hatred of the Stephen Sears school of McClellan interpretation. She’s willing to take his ideas seriously instead of simply dismissing them out of hand because Lincoln didn’t like them. “The appointment of McClellan to succeed Scott as general-in-chief in November 1861 temporarily brought order to the formulation of Federal strategy. Although he respected the Napoleonic concepts of mass and firepower on the battlefield, McClellan believed that it was no longer necessary (if indeed it was still possible) to destroy the enemy’s armies to gain a decisive victory. American geography and the extension of interstate rail lines in the 1850s made a different strategy against the South possible. Deprived of this ‘nervous system,’ large armies could not be maintained for extended periods at long distances from their base. Bludgeoning the enemy to death was unsound military logic when he could easily be paralyzed by the disruption of his internal communications. McClellan also saw, as General von Moltke’s later operations would confirm, that the strongest form of warfare under changed conditions was a combination of the strategic offense and the tactical defense. The increased range and accuracy of small arms and field guns was not the only factor diminishing the effectiveness of offensive battlefield tactics. Railways, again, were significant. They not only permitted a large initial concentration of troops in the field; they provided for constant supply and reinforcement from the rear. The enemy’s fortified line became more and more extended and long difficult maneuvers by detachments were required to outflank it. Such movements were perilous for an army on exterior lines, because the enemy could either fall on the enveloping column or meet the expected flank attack with a new fortified line. That the Confederates frequently succeeded with flanking maneuvers during the first two years of the war while the Federals generally failed was due almost entirely to superior Southern mobility and discipline. An added factor strengthening the defense was the facility for transporting heavy guns, materials for constructing gun emplacements and field works, and the continuous supply of ammunition.” [pp. xv-xvi]
She further considers McClellan’s strategic thought. “Of the men in the Federal high command, professional and civilian, during the first two years of the war only General McClellan envisioned the use of combined operations as the foundation of a comprehensive plan to paralyze the South from within. Perceiving the futility of relying on the slow and uncertain process of blockade, McClellan meant to grasp the enemy by the throat. The destruction of the main Confederate army in Virginia, even if possible, would not be decisive, for as long as Southern resources and the means to move them remained intact, another army could be raised, equipped, and transported to the front in a remarkably short time. Nor would seizing one strategic point, (for example, one important rail junction) such as Richmond end the war quickly. The Confederates could evacuate Richmond, fall back along their rail lines into the interior and, placing themselves in most inaccessible positions, prolong the conflict indefinitely.” [p. xviii]
“Instead,” she tells us, “McClellan proposed using the great water highways of the South. Penetrating deep into the Confederacy along the Mississippi, the Tennessee, and the Cumberland rivers. Federal armies could seize the great East-West rail lines connecting the Mississippi Valley with the Atlantic and Gulf seaboard, and with Virginia. Pushing into the North Carolina sounds and up the Roanoke and Neuse rivers, they could disrupt Richmond’s lines to the Deep South and force the Confederate army in Virginia to disperse for lack of supplies. From their beachhead at Port Royal, South Carolina, Union troops could entrench themselves along the Charleston and Savannah Railroad, threatening both cities and preventing their garrisons from reinforcing one another. Seizure of the rail junction at Mobile would disrupt communications between middle Tennessee and western Mississippi. To free themselves from this death grip, Southern generals would have to hurl their men against strongly fortified positions which could not be invested while protected by Union warships or gunboats.” [p. xviii]
According to Professor Reed, “Had McClellan’s brilliant strategy been fully implemented, it would have ended the Civil War in 1862, as intended. Built upon the North’s primary assets–larger industrial capacity, greater manpower, and command of the sea–it minimized the South’s advantages of more skillful battlefield leadership, better troop discipline, and superior marching and fighting endurance. Equally important, his strategy was compatible with the Union government’s war aims–to restore Federal authority in the seceded states as quickly as possible, alt the least cost and with the least disruption of social and commercial life.” [pp. xviii-xix]
Henry Halleck, who next held the post of general-in-chief, “not only failed to exploit the strategic potential afforded by Union command of the sea, he actually disapproved of combined operations, and did not follow up McClellan’s initial coast expeditions.” [p. xix] Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant replaced Halleck as general-in-chief in March of 1864. “Grant’s preferred plan, which had the same object as McClellan’s, was never carried out. Government interference with military movements–a pernicious and intractable feature of Civil War operations–and Halleck’s still-pervasive influence as Army chief of staff–dictated a continuation of costly, unnecessary, and unproductive land-based offensives.” [pp. xix-xx]
This is an excellent book. Professor Reed provides cogent analysis and gives us superb insight into the strategies the US commanders pursued. If you’re a serious student of the Civil War, you need to read this book.
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CWTR Episode 2210: Late to the Fight: Union Soldier Combat Performance from the Wilderness to the Fall of Petersburg
This is a pretty good conversation between host Professor Gerald Prokopowicz and his guest, Alexandre Caillot.
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The Right Hand of Command
This book by Professor R. Steven Jones focuses on the use of personal staffs in the Civil War, particularly by selected US Army commanders. “On paper, Civil War commanders had the organization at hand to give them the help they sorely needed–the military staff. Civil War historians Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones call the military staff a commander’s ‘management team,’ assigned to make the general’s job easier. Staff systems in both North and South were alike, for the Confederate Army copied the U.S. Army’s staff organization. Every general with a field command had a staff, sometimes called a ‘general staff,’ sometimes a ‘field staff.’ That staff was divided in two: One-half was the special staff, which handled the problems of supply and transportation for the command, be it division, corps, or army; the other was the ‘personal staff,’ which kept the records of the army and sent orders to combat units.” [p. viii]
He tells us, “On June 22, 1861, the U.S. Congress passed an act that allowed each brigade commander one assistant adjutant general and two aides-de-camp for his personal staff. The number of staff officers increased at higher command levels, and generals often took as many staffers as the War Department would approve, with the assistant adjutant general acting as the commander’s main assistant. As the war progressed, generals commanding independent armies usually had one chief of staff (acting as the main assistant instead of the assistant adjutant general), two military secretaries, up to seven aides-de-camp, two assistant adjutants general, and one inspector general. … An efficient personal staff could collect information, prepare plans, translate decisions and plans into orders, send those orders to lower echelons, see that orders were properly executed, and give opinions to commanders. Yet traditional usage in the army, and perhaps a commander’s uncertainty about what to do with his personal staff, often relegated staffers to the roles of office clerks or couriers.” [p. ix]
“Guidelines for personal staff,” he writes, “did exist in 1861, and they came from Europe, largely France and Prussia, where the Napoleonic Wars had swelled the size of armies, and, necessarily, advanced the duties and the functions of the staff. Military theorists in France and Prussia wrote about staff duties and organization, and some translations of their work were in the United States and available for Civil War generals to use. Their writings revealed that modern headquarters staffs had three major elements: clearly defined organization and duties; well-educated staff officers; and chiefs of staff who played key roles in the function of the staff. France and Prussia also developed national entities–the Staff Corps in the former, the Great General Staff in the latter–that trained staff officers specifically for assignments with field commanders. Those national staffs also developed wartime strategies and policies that staff officers used as guidelines when assisting army commanders. With no national general staff to help them, and with few War Department guidelines for staff work beyond the proper form for filling out reports, Civil War personal staff officers were adrift. Rather than reflect a national standard, staffs usually reflected the character of their commanding general and did as much–or as little–as he expected of them.” [pp. ix-x]
Professor Jones looks at how four commanders used their staffs: Major General George B. McClellan, General Robert E. Lee, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, and Major General William T. Sherman. In summarizing the results of his study he tells us, “Lee, a former staff officer himself, made the least use of his staff of any of the four men. To achieve so much in his three years of command would almost mandate an efficient staff with clarity of purpose, but Lee actually had few staffers and delegated to them few responsibilities beyond the prewar norms. Lee also made limited and ill-defined use of his chief of staff, Gen. Robert H. Chilton. Sherman had an economical view of staff work that was almost the antithesis of European staff usage. He believed staffs should be small, and he did not use them in any but the traditional functions of writing and delivering orders. Because Sherman trusted the commanders of armies under his command to execute his general strategies and orders, he would have considered it redundant to send a man from his headquarters to oversee their execution. Though Sherman did not make any staff advances, the traditional role of staffers worked satisfactorily in his command situation.” [pp. xiv-xv]
According to Professor Jones, “McClellan showed flashes of insight in his staff usage, and he picked his father-in-law, the capable frontier soldier Randolph B. Marcy, to be his chief of staff. McClellan’s tenure in command was brief, though, and he tempered any staff advances he might have made by frequently acting as his own chief of staff. Grant, renowned as perhaps the greatest general of the war, earns yet another military honor as the most progressive of the four in his conception of staff work. With an able chief, John Aaron Rawlins, and a willingness to listen to his staffers’ opinions, Grant molded his staff from a ragged collection of civilians with little military knowledge into a professional body functioning, albeit crudely and briefly, after the fashion of both a Prussian headquarters staff and Prussia’s Great General Staff. Grant’s staff advances were exigencies of war, which the increasing size of his armies triggered. He did not study staff progress in Prussia or intend to mirror his staff after any foreign army. But, with each of Grant’s victories his command grew, and, like commanders in Prussia, he needed a more efficient, professional staff at headquarters to help him manage his armies. Grant saw a need and created a staff to fill it.” [p. xv]
“In the end,” he tells us, “when a general sought personal staff improvements, three factors usually encouraged him to do so. The first factor was army size. Simply, the larger the force under his command, the more a general might seek staff help controlling it. The second factor was cooperative operations–separate columns or armies working toward a mutual objective. That may have involved separating an army for a two- or three-prong thrust in a single battle, or having two or three independent armies work in concert for a single campaign. The last, and most important factor, was the commander’s willingness to improve staff work. If a general saw no real benefit in staff work, then neither the presence of a large army nor a plan calling for cooperative operations could encourage him to improve it.” [p. xv]
Use of staff was one of the ways I identified Grant outperformed Lee in my own studies, and it’s gratifying to see the results of at least one academic study agree with my findings. This book fills a need by focusing on the use of personal staffs, which is an understudied topic. The only real criticism I have is the lower quality binding, at least on my copy, Stackpole used in putting the book together. I can highly recommend this book for serious students of the Civil War.
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The Week in Confederate Heritage
Stonewall Jackson High School was renamed Mountain View High School in 2020. The change was reversed by the Shenandoah County School Board in 2024.Credit…Eze Amos for The New York Times This week we look at this article from the Old Dominion. “On a crisp, cold morning in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia this month, a federal judge listened as lawyers argued over racism, the Confederacy and who deserves to be honored through historical memory. The trial, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, was ostensibly about whether a school board violated the rights of Black students when it reinstated the names of two schools that once honored the Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson after they’d been replaced in 2020. But when arguments ended last week, it was clear that the case, Virginia State Conference N.A.A.C.P. et al. v. County School Board of Shenandoah County, represented something much larger. Hanging over five days of proceedings was the question of how the nation moved from the racial reckoning of 2020, when Confederate memorials were purged from the public square, to 2025, when President Trump led the Confederacy’s historical retrenchment — and whether the fight over historical awareness still has life in it. That’s because part of the plaintiffs’ strategy for assailing the renamed Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary was to put the Confederacy itself on trial, not on the usual culture war battlefields of social media or television, but in a court of law. (Turner Ashby was also a Confederate commander.)”
The article continues, “‘The evidence will show that the school board named that school for Stonewall Jackson — a prominent Confederate general well known for fighting to preserve slavery — to make it very clear that Black students were not welcome,’ Kaitlin Banner, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in her opening statement. The lawyers representing the Shenandoah County School Board had a different task: to show that Lee and Jackson were worthy of being celebrated for traits not defined by the Confederacy’s racist ideology. That way, they could cast doubt that the names were reinstated with racist intent. One of the lawyers, Jim Guynn, hit many of those points in his questioning, suggesting that Lee was ‘the only West Point cadet to finish with no demerits’ (he wasn’t), and that Jackson taught his enslaved workers to read (he did). There was no ‘racist’ or ‘discriminatory’ intent in reinstating the name, Mr. Guynn said during his opening statement. And there was no impact on the ‘stellar’ Black students who attended the schools with Confederate names, he said. Segregation was not a proud moment, but it’s ‘in the past,’ he continued.”
We learn, “To prove that the Black students of Jackson High and Ashby-Lee Elementary were harmed by having the names restored, the plaintiffs sought to explain just what the Confederacy represented. Lee and the Confederacy launched an armed rebellion and killed their fellow countrymen for the ‘protection and expansion’ of chattel slavery, according to testimony from James Tyrus Seidule, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general and West Point professor emeritus of history. Lionizing Lee and Jackson merely as courtly gentlemen or brilliant military men, as many of their champions do, evades a bigger point: the rebels fought for a racist ideology that they were not shy about articulating, Prof. Seidule argued. Prof. Seidule pointed to an 1861 speech in which Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, said his new government’s cornerstone rests ‘upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.’ Pressed repeatedly, the defense lawyers at times sounded as if their client were the antebellum South. How would a man from Georgia, born in 1820, even know slavery was wrong, Mr. Guynn asked. Doesn’t he deserve grace? ‘Grace belongs with the enslaved,’ Prof. Seidule responded. What about the fact that Jackson taught his enslaved workers to read the Bible? That was so they could learn submission to a ‘master,’ Prof. Seidule said. Did Lee have any redeeming qualities? Mr. Guynn finally asked the witness. Maybe as a husband or a father, Prof. Seidule responded.”
The Shenandoah County School Board heard public comments in 2024 on restoring Confederate names on two Virginia schools.Credit…Shuran Huang for The New York Times According to the article, “Judge Michael Urbanski said it might take months for him to render a verdict, which he conceded was sure to be appealed. But the hearings, as Mr. Trump approaches the end of his first tumultuous year back in the White House, have had resonance in the closing weeks of 2025. Mr. Trump has made it a second-term mission to rewrite or downplay the history of racism in America. He has reinstalled a statue honoring a Confederate official near the Capitol grounds in Washington, and has reverted the names of recently rechristened military bases to their older Confederate titles (while technically naming them for other American soldiers with the same surnames as the rebel generals). He has also promised to restore ‘truth and sanity to American history’ by directing the removal of ‘improper, divisive or anti-American ideology’ from the Smithsonian Institution museums. Like much of the country, Shenandoah County, which is about 90 percent white, was rocked by the June 2020 racial justice protests stemming from the high-profile killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, all unarmed Black people.”
It goes on to say, “The school board passed a resolution proclaiming, ‘We urgently must act to stop the racial injustice that harms and anguishes Black people, who are our family, friends, neighbors, students, staff members and fellow Americans.’ It pledged to ‘stand steadfast in our commitment to foster an inclusive educational environment’ and to fight for civil rights. Stonewall Jackson High School would become Mountain View; Ashby-Lee Elementary would be Honey Run. The backlash was immediate. Students from the newly named Mountain View High School waved a Confederate banner over an overpass in July 2020. A contentious effort to reinstate the names in 2022 failed after a deadlocked vote by the school board. But with a board election looming in 2023, the issue did not go away. Voters elected three sympathetic board members, and on May 10, 2024, the school board voted to restore the Confederate names. The school board’s lawyers say the reinstatement had no racist intent; it reflected the will of Shenandoah County residents who were proud of their history and attached to the name of their schools. ‘People don’t like change,’ Mr. Guynn said during his opening statement.”
A 2024 protest outside Peter Muhlenberg Middle School in Woodstock, Va., before a school board meeting during which the renaming of Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary was discussed.Credit…Shuran Huang for The New York Times We further read, “The courtroom fight is playing out as a microcosm of far broader battles rattling American society. As lawyers argued in Virginia, lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol last week were replacing Lee’s statue with a new statue of Barbara Rose Johns, a Black girl who, at 16, led a 1951 walkout of her segregated high school in Prince Edward County, Va. Some of the students there sued and their case became part of the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down segregation in schools. Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, said at the unveiling: ‘You can’t tell the story of Virginia without telling the story of Barbara Rose Johns. You can’t tell the story of the American civil rights movement.’ Meantime, over the weekend, conservative activists at a conclave of Turning Point USA in Arizona argued over the idea of ‘heritage Americans,’ and whether such progeny of white, early arriving families have a greater claim to the nation than more recent immigrants. Throughout the trial over the schools’ names, the plaintiffs’ lawyers tried to establish that the Confederate names harmed Black students. One such student, A.D. Carter, described feeling an ‘invisible ball and chain’ weighing him down after the names were reinstated, according to one local news outlet. Several juvenile plaintiffs, identified by pseudonyms, testified via video call while the judge cleared the courtroom audience.”
Also according to the article, “On the last day of testimony, the defense called its final witness, Gloria Carlineo, a conservative school board member who voted in 2024 to reinstate the names and who said she had been motivated to run for office in 2023 after witnessing ‘indoctrination’ at her son’s school. In June 2020, she wrote an opinion piece calling Black Lives Matter ‘intrinsically racist’ and accused the left of trying ‘to completely remove true Christian values from society.’ The ‘Trojan horse of diversity and acceptance’ was being used, she wrote, to push drug abuse and sexual immorality. Ms. Carlineo said that she had ‘no feelings’ one way or the other about Stonewall Jackson, but that her constituents felt he was important to history. The school board shouldn’t ‘erase’ that, she added. Outside the Harrisonburg, Va., courthouse where the trial took place is a plaque commemorating it as the location where the state’s first desegregation orders were made. In 1958, Gov. J. Lindsay Almond responded by using what became known as massive resistance laws to close schools that had been ordered to admit Black students. The Virginia Supreme Court and a special federal court declared the closures unconstitutional in January 1959. That same year, Stonewall Jackson High School was built. It was segregated.”
As usual, racists lie about history and they lie about what they are trying to do.
Fort Novosel reverted to Fort Rucker in July 2025. (Jim Hughes/U.S. Army; Brittany Trumbull/U.S. Army) We next look at this article from Stars and Stripes, the US military newspaper., “K. Denise Rucker Krepp was thrilled when her distant Confederate cousin’s name was removed from Fort Rucker in 2023 and disheartened when the Trump administration returned the Army base in Alabama to the name, albeit with a different namesake, this summer. This fall, Rucker Krepp saw a glimmer of hope in Congress: the House and Senate passed versions of an annual defense policy bill with provisions reversing the Pentagon’s revival of Confederate-era names that a congressionally mandated commission had ordered stripped from military assets. Fort Rucker, originally honoring the Confederate Army Col. Edmund W. Rucker from 1942 to 2023, could once again be Fort Novosel, in honor of Chief Warrant Officer Michael J. Novosel, an Army aviator and Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipient. But the provisions were struck from the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act signed by President Donald Trump in December, infuriating lawmakers who had garnered bipartisan support for restoring the commission’s work on at least some of the nine Army bases that had been renamed.”
Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., and other lawmakers debate an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2026 on Tuesday, July 15, 2025, in Washington during a House Armed Services Committee budget markup. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes) The article continues, “‘This is an insult to the African-Americans who wear the uniform, and the 40% of enlisted service members who are minorities,’ said Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., the author of the provision in the House’s bill, in a statement. Rucker Krepp, a Coast Guard veteran who had served as a liaison to the commission and successfully lobbied for the removal in 2020 of a portrait of her great-great-great grandfather and Confederate co-founder Howell Cobb from the U.S. Capitol, was equally aghast. She had been elated by Strickland’s amendment, sending thank you notes to Strickland and Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a retired Air Force general who was one of two Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee to vote for the provision over the summer. When the Senate passed its version of the bill this fall with an amendment from Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., that overrode the Pentagon’s name changes for three bases in Virginia, a rebuke to the Trump administration’s push to reinstall names associated with the Confederacy had felt inevitable. ‘I’m sitting here all fall, going ‘All right, which one are they going to take, the House or the Senate?’ ‘ Rucker Krepp said. ‘And then to see the [final] bill come out and them take neither, I’m thinking, ‘What are you guys doing? That doesn’t make any sense.’ ‘”
Fort Rucker conducts a Post Redesignation Ceremony honoring aviation pioneer Capt. Edward W. Rucker Jr., July 17, 2025. (Kelly Morris/U.S. Army) We also read, “Strickland blamed House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., for the omission, accusing him of caving to Trump’s threat to veto the bill if the renaming provisions were included. Kaine also faulted Trump. The White House and Johnson’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but the White House in September said it ‘strongly’ opposed the measures. Trump, during the last days of his first term, vetoed the 2021 defense policy bill because it created the Naming Commission, tasked with identifying military assets named for Confederates and offering recommendations for their removal. Congress enacted the legislation by overriding Trump’s veto. Five months into his second term, Trump announced the restoration of ‘Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Gordon, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort A.P. Hill and Fort Robert E. Lee,’ arguing ‘we won a lot of battles out of those forts, it’s no time to change.’ The Pentagon, forbidden by law from reverting to Confederate names, developed a workaround by finding veterans with the same last names. Fort Lee in Virginia, for example, is now named for Pvt. Fitz Lee, a Buffalo Soldier who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Spanish-American War. Fort Rucker is named after Capt. Edward W. Rucker, a World War I aviator. Rucker Krepp said the name switch at Fort Rucker made little difference — ‘you can put one Rucker in and take one out, but it’s clearly a Confederate name.’ The Ruckers were prominent slave owners who were deeply intertwined with the history of the Confederacy, she said. ‘This is about using the name that is synonymous with slavery,’ she said. ‘Why would we do this? That’s what I keep asking: Why are we doing this?’”
We learn, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Senate Armed Services Committee in June that veterans and service members who deployed from places such as Fort Bragg or Fort Benning felt a connection to them, and it was important to uphold such intergenerational bonds. ‘This is something we’ve been proud to do, something that’s important for the morale of the Army and those communities appreciate that we’ve returned it back to what it was instead of trying to play this game of erasing names,’ he said. Kaine and Strickland say they are undeterred by their legislative loss in December and will look for additional opportunities to reverse the name changes next year. ‘I will continue to evaluate my legislative priorities and fight for the issues that matter most to our service members and their families,’ Strickland said. ‘One of those priorities includes ensuring that service members are not forced to serve at bases that honor Confederate traitors who fought to defend slavery.’”
The article goes on to conclude, “Rucker Krepp said it pained her to think about Black soldiers serving in such an environment. She also felt terrible thinking about the family of Novosel, who was awarded the military’s highest honor for conducting a medical evacuation under fire in Vietnam and had his name removed from Fort Rucker after just two years. ‘What I don’t want is people to think that the Confederate families are supporting this — that’s what I think is very important about this as we head into America’s 250th [anniversary] next year,’ she said, ‘There is no joy in me that my name has come back.’”
Finally, we have this from the Architect of the Capitol. “Virginia gave this statue to the National Statuary Hall Collection in 2025. Artist Steven Weitzman depicts Johns during a pivotal moment in her life: she is 16 years old speaking to her classmates at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia, convincing them to join her and other student organizers to strike for better school facilities and supplies. Her focused expression and clenched left fist show her passion and intensity as she exhorts her classmates. In her right hand, Johns brandishes a tattered textbook, titled The History of Virginia, indicative of the subpar, second-hand materials the school district provided for Moton students. Johns steps slightly forward on her right foot, a lectern to her left. The lectern, and the wood floor beneath, suggest the auditorium where Johns and the other organizers gathered Moton students on April 23, 1951. After asking the teachers to leave, Johns delivered the speech that convinced the entire student body to walk out of school to protest the severe overcrowding and unequal conditions endured by black students in the county. The students stayed on strike for two weeks, only returning to classes once they were assured legal action was imminent. They had contacted a Richmond law firm that worked with the NAACP on its national strategy to challenge segregated schools. The students convinced the lawyers to represent them, and the lawyers convinced the students and their parents to demand an end to segregation rather than merely equal facilities. Ultimately, the Supreme Court of the United States heard the case, titled Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, bundled with four other similar cases under Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. That 1954 decision ended segregation in schools nationwide, though Prince Edward County in particular resisted implementing the change.”
We learn, “Johns wears clothing typical for a teenager in the 1950s, including a crinoline under her skirt, short cuffed socks, and saddle shoes. Before the protest, she was an involved student and leader, though she wasn’t known as an activist. However, she was tenacious and persistent in her cause; she gave another impassioned speech before community members at a mass meeting that helped solidify wider support for the striking students and the new demand to desegregate county schools. In the aftermath of the strike, her family feared for her safety, so Johns completed her last year of school in Montgomery, Alabama, before attending Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. In Montgomery, Johns lived with an uncle, Vernon Johns. He was a preacher who headed Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in the years prior to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s tenure there. He made his library available to Johns during her childhood, and sculptor Weitzman placed examples of the books she may have encountered there—and that were less likely to be available at her school—under the floorboards of the statue’s self-base. The statue commissioners selected titles from prominent African American scholars and authors to signify the materials Moton students were missing. The titles and authors embossed on the books’ spines include:
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl/Harriet Jacobs
Poems/Phillis Wheatley
My Bondage and My Freedom/Frederick Douglass
Their Eyes Were Watching God/Zora Neale Hurston
The Souls of Black Folk/W.E.B. Du Bois
The Mis-Education of the Negro/Carter Godwin Woodson
The Weary Blues/Langston Hughes
The Negro in Our History/Carter Godwin Woodson
Cane/Jean Toomer
From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol/John Mercer Langston
Up from Slavery/Booker T. Washington
What the Negro Thinks/By Robert Russa Moton
The Talented Tenth/W.E.B. Du Bois
Native Son/by Richard Wright
Black Reconstruction in America/W.E.B. Du Bois“Johns’s nonviolent civil disobedience in 1951 had local and national consequences, but Johns herself did not engage in further activism. She left college to marry and move to Philadelphia, where she worked as a school librarian in the Philadelphia public schools and raised five children with her husband, William H.R. Powell Jr. She completed a degree at Drexel University in 1979. She so rarely spoke about this period of her life that her children knew nothing about it until a film crew asked to interview her for a documentary. Years after Johns’s death from bone cancer in 1991, her husband found an unfinished memoir about her youth and the strike which provided some insight into her inspiration and feelings during that period.”
We also learn, “The statue rises over 10 feet from the floor to the top of Johns’s head. It was cast at Laran Bronze in Pennsylvania and stands on a granite pedestal. There are inscriptions on three sides of the pedestal.
The front reads:
BARBARA ROSE JOHNS
1935-1991PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY
VIRGINIAA verse from the Christian Bible is engraved on the proper left:
…and a little child shall lead them
Isaiah 11:6A Johns quote is on the proper right side:
Are we going to just accept these conditions?
Or are we going to do something about it?“Weitzman won over the selection commission with his passion for the project and maquette, or small-scale model, of Johns. He worked with Johns’s younger sister, Joan Johns Cobb, and other family members to learn about her appearance, clothing, and hair, and he had a model wear a 1950s-style dress in the studio. Since there are very few existing photographs of Johns, and none in which she is speaking, Weitzman relied on her family members to refine her expression and posture. The statue was unveiled in Emancipation Hall on December 16, 2025, and is currently placed in the Crypt, joining other statues that represent the first 13 states.”
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ECW Podcast: Reconsidering Sheridan (with Jonathan Noyalas)
This is an excellent discussion of Phil Sheridan between host Chris Mackowski and his guest, Professor Jonathan Noyalas.
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‘The Great Task Remaining Before Us’: Lincoln’s Vision at Gettysburg
Abraham Lincoln (center, hatless) visible at Gettysburg hours before delivering his address. (Photo by Library of Congress/Getty Images) I found this article by retired Major General Mark Hertling: “On November 19, 1863—162 years ago today—the little town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, filled with soldiers, dignitaries, and townsfolk. Scars of the intense fighting of four months earlier, one of the bloodiest battles ever on American soil, were everywhere: barns riddled with damage from cannonballs, trees stripped bare, hastily dug graves marking where regiments had fallen. Cadavers of some rebel troops could still be seen rotting in the sun. The smell of decay was everywhere. Months earlier, Governor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania and a committee of state officials had concluded that a national military burial ground, placed next to the graveyard that overlooked the town on Cemetery Hill, was needed. It would honor the Union dead but as importantly restore some measure of dignity to the local farmers’ fields that had become a landscape of horror. The idea was noble, but the execution was hurried. The politicians had wanted to dedicate the cemetery in October, but the chosen orator, Edward Everett—a former secretary of state, governor of Massachusetts, U.S. senator, and president of Harvard—was unavailable. The distinguished-looking 69-year-old was considered the finest public speaker in the country, a man of enormous erudition and polished delivery; the elected officials of Pennsylvania were more than willing to accommodate his schedule, and so postponed the dedication a month.”
He continues, “Invitations were sent to governors, generals, and public officials. As an afterthought, President Abraham Lincoln was also asked to participate and was politely requested to deliver ‘a few appropriate remarks.’ Lincoln was the one who would follow the main act. The morning of November 19 dawned crisp and bright. Crowds gathered along the newly graded road, carriages clogging the narrow streets of Gettysburg. Bands played patriotic airs as the procession slowly made its way to the speakers’ platform. When Everett took the podium, he spoke for two hours from a memorized speech, describing the history of the republic, the causes of the war, and the heroism of the fallen. It was a learned, elegant address—meticulously constructed, intellectually rigorous, and entirely in keeping with the conventions of nineteenth-century public rhetoric. The audience was enthralled, and at the end, they applauded energetically. Then Lincoln stood. The rangy 54-year-old loomed above the dignitaries seated on the platform. His voice was pitched higher than the audience expected as, reading from a single sheet of paper, he spoke for barely two minutes—272 words in all. Some listeners were startled; a newspaper reporter later wrote that Lincoln’s speech ‘passed unnoticed by many’; another noted that its brevity was ‘a disappointment.’”
Gen Hertling tells us, “But Everett, the featured orator, understood. The next day, he wrote to Lincoln: ‘I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.’ It’s easy, from hindsight, to treat the Gettysburg Address just as one of our nation’s greatest speeches, a long-ago eulogy years for a war whose outcome we take for granted. But in November 1863, the outcome of the Civil War was anything but certain. Union forces would still suffer staggering losses for more than another year. The Confederate Army had returned from Pennsylvania and regained strong defensive lines in the South. Anti-war sentiment was still growing in the North, and Lincoln’s own political prospects were uncertain heading into the election year of 1864. Chaos remained for many months after the dedication ceremony at Gettysburg. The nation, in truth, still hung by a thread. Imagine the mood of the country that autumn. The casualty lists in Northern newspapers filled entire columns. Families across the nation grieved sons and fathers buried in places they would never see. The political debate was bitter and relentless. The press accused Lincoln of incompetence, even madness. Everywhere, people felt the nation’s center was giving way. The republic, it seemed, might not survive. And yet Lincoln spoke as if it would—as if its survival were not just possible, but necessary, and a part of our civic responsibility.”
We read, “The Declaration of Independence, to which Lincoln pointed in his opening line, had promised equality but had not delivered it. Lincoln’s genius was to reinterpret that document through the lens of the war’s suffering. In doing so, Lincoln took the present carnage honored at Gettysburg and used it to provide moral clarity for the future. In a time when the Union was far from saved, he dared to describe not what America had been or was, but what America ought to become based on the original promise. In that brief speech which illuminated a moment of both exhaustion and despair, Lincoln spoke not of the dead, nor even of victory. He spoke of purpose. He invited the country to see beyond the chaos—to glimpse the unfinished work of democracy itself. And then he asked his listeners to resolve that ‘this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.’ That was the genius of the Gettysburg Address that should still speak to us today, that should still speak to us in all the days of our democracy. It was not a declaration of victory or even a statement of confidence; it was an act of faith. Faith in the principle that a government of the people, by the people, for the people could endure even after chaos, division, and unspeakable loss. Lincoln’s words reframed despair into determination. They told Americans that meaning could be forged from suffering. That unity was possible through shared purpose.”
According to Gen Hertling, “There’s another subtle feature of the address that still deserves attention. As a smart Marine once told me, pay attention to Lincoln’s insistent use of the plural. He did not say I or me. He said we, us, and our. ‘We are engaged in a great civil war. . .’ ‘We are met on a great battle-field of that war. . .’ ‘We are met to dedicate a portion of it. . ‘.’It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. . .’ ‘It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here. . .’ ‘. . . that we here highly resolve. . .’ Amid the most divisive period in American history, Lincoln’s pronouns were unifying. He refused to divide his listeners into North and South, Union and rebel, righteous and wrong. He spoke to America itself—to a desire for shared identity beyond politics, geography, or ideology. He offered not blame, but belonging. And that linguistic choice still provides something extremely profound. Great leaders do not shrink the circle of citizenship; they widen it. They remind us that the first word of our Constitution—We—is both promise and responsibility.”
He goes on to write, “Today, eight score and two years after Lincoln’s speech, we hear predictions of national unraveling, the fear of another civil conflict—political, cultural, or even physical. We hear voices insisting that the ‘real America’ belongs to one side or another, that compromise is weakness, that empathy is naïve. It shouldn’t be overstated, but it’s true that the mood of November 2025 has echoes of November 1863 when Lincoln spoke: anxiety about the future, anger over leadership, distrust in institutions, and a creeping sense that we are two nations sharing the same land. But Lincoln’s message at Gettysburg remains a counterweight to despair. Democracy isn’t maintained by perfection; it is renewed by participation. Our republic survives not because of certainty, but because of faith: faith in each other, and in the unfinished work of freedom. When Lincoln spoke he had no guarantee that the Union would prevail, no promise that slavery would end, no assurance that he himself would live to see peace. Yet he still called Americans to imagine a better future—one founded on equality, liberty, and especially shared responsibility. If he could speak of a “new birth of freedom” amid such darkness, surely, we can speak of national renewal today—not as nostalgia, but as obligation, a shared purpose toward which we can work.”
He concludes, “A few weeks ago, I was with some friends at the place where Lincoln gave his address. That portion of the cemetery, where Lincoln spoke, remains one of the quietest places in America. The wind moves across the ridge, brushing the flags and passing across the graves. And if you stand there long enough, you can almost hear his words carried back through time—not as history, but as instruction. ‘It is for us the living. . .‘ “
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The Grand Design
In this excellent book, Professor Donald Stoker discusses the strategies of both sides in the Civil War and evaluates them using the writings of Karl von Clausewitz and Antoine Jomini. He writes, “To the mid-nineteenth-century American mind, strategy largely meant the maneuvering of forces … Essentially, this simplified it to mean what we would today call a combination of tactics, meaning the use of military forces in contact with or near contact with the enemy, and operations, the military campaigns mounted to prosecute the strategy. And indeed, most of the studies of Civil War strategy, even the ones that interject theory, and despite insistence to the contrary, invariably focus upon tactics, or at best campaigns. Worse, these efforts have too often been based upon the misreading or misunderstanding of the theoretical teachings they profess to use.” [pp. 2-3]
“The core of Clausewitz’s theory,” Professor Stoker tells us, “is that war is driven by a trinity of forces: chance, passion, and rationality. These are respectively governed (usually) by the military, the people, and the government. Their interrelationships dictate the nature of the war to be waged. Clausewitz defines strategy as ‘the use of the engagement for the purpose of the war.’ We go beyond this in our definition, as does Clausewitz when he develops his concept by giving us the general’s job in relation to this: ‘The strategist must therefore define an aim for the entire operational side of the war that will be in accordance with its purpose. In other words, he will draft the plan of the war, and the ain will determine the series of actions intended to achieve it.’” [p. 3]
In discussing Jomini, we find, “For military and political leaders of the Civil War era, Jomini was the source of technical vocabulary. When they write about strategy and its related issues, it is generally in Jominian phrases. Jomini, in his short definition, wrote, ‘Strategy is the art of making war upon the map, and comprehends the whole theater of operations.’ This, as the late Michael Handel pointed out in Masters of War, is clearly a reference to the operational level of war. Clausewitz’s On War, Handel also noted, suffers from the same limitations, as much of the time when he says ‘strategy’ he means what is currently called operations, meaning what the military does to implement strategy. Jomini’s expansive definition encompassed thirteen points, but only the first two relate directly to the strategic realm: ‘the selection of the theater of war, and the discussion of the different combinations of which it admits’ and ‘the determination of the decisive points in these combinations, and the most favorable direction for operations.’ Jomini’s other planks deal with the operational level of war.” [pp. 3-4]
Donald Stoker, The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War, p. 5 Professor Stoker introduces this inverted pyramid. “What it shows is that strategy–located in the precise middle of this inverted pyramid–is only a piece of the puzzle that is warfare, the most confusing and complex of human endeavors, and cannot be studied apart from its critical accompanying factors. The most important of these is policy, meaning the political objective or objectives sought by the governments in arms (these are sometimes described as war aims). Policy should inform strategy, provide the framework for its pursuit, but not dictate it. The term policy is often used when what is really being discussed is strategy or operations. Civil War leaders often spoke of ‘military policy’ when today we would speak of military strategy or operational strategy, depending upon the context. Strategy defines how military force is used in pursuit of the political goal.” [p. 5]
According to Professor Stoker, “Understanding the political objective is critical because it determines so much of where and how the war will be fought. Here, Clausewitz is particularly useful when he discusses determining the ‘nature of the war.,’ As he writes in On War, ‘The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish by that test the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something at is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive.’ One of the key elements here is ‘by that test.’ Clausewitz explains that the most important element determining what the war will be like is the political objective or objectives sought by the belligerents. Directly acting upon this is what he calls the value of the object, meaning that the importance the parties place upon the object (the political objective) will determine the duration of the war; Clausewitz argues that when one side is no longer willing to pay the costs of the war (blood, treasure, prestige, etc.), it will stop. This also influences the extremes to which a nation will go to prosecute the contest. The more valuable the object, the more willing the people and the state are to sacrifice.” [pp. 5-6]
He then turns his attention toward the Civil War. “During the Civil War the Union sought the complete destruction of the Confederacy’s government, an unlimited objective. The Confederates, on the other hand, [had a] more limited aim. They did not fight for the total destruction of the United States; they sought to secede and take with them some provinces. Connected to this is the touting of the Civil War as one of the first modern wars, if not the first. Several factors combine to produce this assessment. The first, once again, is the scale of the conflict. The Civil War was indeed a big war in many ways. It was a major conflict between two democracies in which both sides mobilized large segments of the population, sometimes via conscription. The second element was industrial mobilization. Fielding mass armies necessitates large quantities of equipment and supplies. Northern industry expanded to meet these demands; the South industrialized, at least in regard to arms and many of the accoutrements of war, in an effort to do the same. A third plank to the modernity argument revolves around technology. The Civil War is the war of the railroad, the steam engine, armored ships with turrets, telegraph communications, rifles, observation balloons, and trench warfare. None of these was the decisive element of the conflict, but all contributed to its character and influenced how it was fought., Most of these elements, though, affected only the tactical level; they exerted almost no influence on strategy.” [pp. 6-7]
The military instrument isn’t the only tool available to a belligerent government. “To pursue their goals in wartime, states tap their economic, political, and diplomatic resources. These nonmilitary components are sometimes lumped under the rubric soft power. All of these (including military strategy), are therefore elements of grand strategy. Implementing grand strategy requires the coordination of the various elements of national power with military strength. The term grand strategy is sometimes used to describe a major campaign or the broad sweep of a war (William Tecumseh Sherman used it this way), but that is too limited in scope.” [p. 7]
Getting back to Clausewitz’s writings, “Clausewitz proposes many useful concepts for analyzing and waging war at the strategic level. One was what he called ‘the center of gravity,’ which he describes as ‘the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends.’ He then advises that this ‘is the point against which all our energies should be directed.’ In other words, the center of gravity is the source of the enemy’s strength. This is what should be broken, if possible, because its collapse can lead to the end of the war. Clausewitz’s centers of gravity include the army, public opinion, the capital city, the political leadership, and any allies. Destroying the enemy’s army is almost always the quickest way to achieve your political objective, Clausewitz believes. But he also cautions that every enemy is different and that, depending upon the situation, there might be more than one center. Here Clausewitz is often misread. He’s accused of arguing that the only path to success consists of destroying the enemy’s army. What he actually says is to do what works.” [p. 8]
Professor Stoker brings the operational level of war into his discussion. “Operations are what military forces do in an effort to implement military strategy. Importantly, this includes the activities of military forces before and after combat. The conduct of these operations is known as operational art or operational warfare, or, if one prefers, operational strategy. While no one from the Civil War era would have been familiar with this exact terminology, they often thought this way. The remaining eleven points of Jomini’s baker’s dozen definition of strategy largely deal with the operational level of war and its execution. They also explain some expressions that commonly arise in Civil War writing. For example, to Jomini, the operational commander should determine the ‘fixed base and the zone of operations.’ Then he decides ‘the objective point, whether offensive or defensive.’ From this flows the placement of the forces for offense and defense, and the routes (or lines) directed at the objective point. He also talked of optional lines of advance, supporting and alternative bases of operations, logistical requirements, fortresses and entrenched camps (here he is drifting into the tactical), and any efforts at diversions. Jomini, with his exposition of strategy and his histories of the Seven Years’ War and the Napoleonic era, therefore taught military commanders to think in terms that today we would define as operational.” [p. 8]
What Professor Stoker calls the “core parts” of his analysis include “How the respective leaders planned their campaigns and what objectives they sought with them.” [p. 9] “Too often,” he says, “those concocting the plans did not take into consideration the realities of terrain, logistics, capabilities, and, perhaps most important, time.” [p. 9] “Tactics,” he says, “govern the execution of battles fought in the course of operations. In much military literature the words tactics and strategy are used interchangeably and indiscriminately, even though they differ starkly. … Political policy–the larger reasons a nation goes to war–gives shape to grand strategy, the merging of political, economic, and military thinking, which supports and influences the nature of strategy, the use of military forces, which is in turn implemented by operations, which is characterized at the point of the spear by tactics.” [p. 9]
Using Robert E. Lee’s plan in 1863 as an example, Professor Stoker writes, “His strategy was to attack the North’s will to fight by decisively defeating the Union on its own territory; his operational goals included throwing the Union Army back over the Potomac; his initial tactical plan was to defeat the opposing Union army in detail, ‘in detail’ referring to the tactic of bringing a large force to bear on a part of the enemy’s, destroying it, and then repeating this against the remaining elements of their army.” [p. 9]
This book is essential to understanding how the United States forces defeated the confederacy and, significantly, why it took four years to do so despite manpower and material advantages. “The main reason behind the Union’s victory in the Civil War is that its leaders eventually developed a military strategy capable of delivering the political end they desired.” [p. 11] Until they did, the war went on.
The book is well researched and provided much satisfaction to this reader regarding strategic analysis and criticisms. If you’re a serious student of the Civil War, this book needs to be on your shelf. I can highly recommend it.
Student of the American Civil War 2 Copyright 2025 