Volume 38, Number 6 · March 28, 1991
Generals in Politics
By James M. McPherson
Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West
by Steven E. Woodworth
University Press of Kansas,, 380 pp., $25.00
Abandoned by Lincoln: A Military Biography of General John Pope
by Wallace J. Schutz, by Walter N. Trenerry
University of Illinois Press, 243 pp., $32.50
Damned Yankee: The Life of General Nathaniel Lyon
by Christopher Phillips
University of Missouri Press, 287 pp., $26.00
The most famous aphorism in Carl von Clausewitz's classic study On War defines war as the continuation of politics by other means. In the American Civil War this was true in more ways than the one Clausewitz had in mind, the prosecution of national policy by armed force. The Civil War was precipitated by a political event—the election of Abraham Lincoln as president—in the world's most politically conscious society. It was fought mainly by volunteer soldiers who elected many of their officers. Most of these soldiers were also legal voters who helped elect governors, congressmen, and presidents during the war. The governors and presidents appointed regimental colonels and army generals, often for political rather than strictly military reasons.
Review, 3424 words
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