This is not your usual Civil War book, which makes it well worth reading, particularly by anyone interested in our current political and economic crises. Standard books cover the early successes of Robert E. Lee against McClellan and a host of other incompetent Union generals, Lee’s eventual loss at Gettysburg, Lincoln’s selection of Grant to lead the Union Army, and Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. For one thing, as this book explains, Lee’s surrender to Grant did not end the Civil War. It was followed by a crucial and not automatic surrender of Gen. Joseph Johnston and his army to Sherman 17 days later. Without some skillful political maneuvering by Grant and Sherman, it might well have degenerated into years of guerrilla warfare.
Grant and Sherman: the friendship that won the Civil War, tells the rest of the story. It is a fascinating and humanly messy tale of two deeply flawed West Point graduates: Ulysses S. Grant ―who had been forced to resign in 1854 for being drunk―and William Tecumseh Sherman―who voluntarily resigned in 1853 to run a business in San Francisco. It is also a story of political intrigues, petty jealousies and radical politicians which repeatedly threatened these two during and after the Civil War, the bonds of mutual respect and trust which enabled them to survive.
Grant, re-entered the Union army on June 17 1861, after considerable difficulties which included a personal rebuff by McClellan. He was made a Colonel, by acclamation, and placed in command of the Illinois Twenty-first, a regiment of 1000 volunteers who were in complete disarray when he arrived. Sherman, whose family connections included a brother who was a United States Senator from Ohio, went to Washington D.C. in May of 1861 where he was admitted to the army as a Colonel by Gen. Winfield Scott. He was soon given command of one of the brigades defending the Capitol, about 3400 men. Within one year, Grant was a Major General and Sherman a Brigadier General who first served under Grant at the battle of Shiloh, in Tennessee. During the battle Grant turned an initial defeat into the first Union victory of the war by boldly attacking when conventional military wisdom dictated retreat. Their success at Shiloh created bonds of friendship and mutual trust which were frequently strained, but never broken.
Grant and Sherman were military entrepreneurs. They developed a clear roadmap of what had to be done to win the Civil War. They operated from this roadmap. They became the Union Army’s most successful generals because of their abilities, relentless dedication to their joint vision, and their risk taking and military innovations which won battles. One of Grant’s innovations― which Sherman used in his march that cut the South in half― was to move great distances rapidly by abandoning supply wagons and foraging off the land for weeks at a time.
The story of Grant and Sherman includes valuable lessons for the present when CEOs of major corporations are routinely selected from pools of managerial bureaucrats who have dutifully acquired credentials, kept their skirts clean, gamed politicians and manipulated boards of directors. McClellan and the other failed generals who preceded Grant were selected from pools of career officers who followed conventional wisdom to the letter, accumulated military credentials and political connections, lost battles and lengthened the carnage by years.
Since our economy is dominated by cautious, narcissistic McClellan’s, we endure a perpetual carnage of unemployed workers and unbalanced budgets.