But Cohen demonstrates that throughout the last year of the war itself, Clemenceau was able successfully to play off against each other the differing talents of his two main generals, promoting Henri Pétain’s cautious tactical genius in a manner that did not obstruct the more aggressive strategic goals of Ferdinand Foch. One does not normally associate Georges Clemenceau, Cohen’s second case study, with adroitness in human relations or with military acumen, but rather with obstinacy and a fierce parochial determination to promote French interests in the Versailles peace negotiations of 1919 at the expense of both the defeated Germans and France’s own allies. Lincoln himself had little say in the decision to make this radical advance through the Confederate hinterland, shrugging that he knew which “hole” Sherman had gone into but not the one from which he would emerge. Grant opposed the march, and so did other major Union generals like George Henry Thomas. He stumbles only once-in not fully crediting Sherman for his revolutionary march through Georgia and the Carolinas, an action that more than anything else brought the war to a close in the spring of 1865. Grant barking ferociously at the South’s front door while William Tecumseh Sherman ran wildly to the rear.Ĭohen’s portrait of Lincoln the supreme commander is masterful. Moreover, Lincoln’s ideas for squeezing the South went beyond the original and rather restricted plans of his generals as he correctly saw, success would involve putting an end to the export of cotton, capturing an iconic city like Atlanta, and creating a tandem effect by having the tenacious bulldog Ulysses S. By late 1864, these innovations had ensured that Union troops would enjoy superior mobility, superior communications, and superior firepower-and it was thanks to Lincoln’s own hands-on effort that they were made available to the army en masse.
Far more so than his generals, the President grasped immediately the long-term value of the telegraph, the railroad, and rifled weapons.
Without Lincoln, it is hard to see how Northern armies could have won on the battlefield.
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