Partners In Command

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 1 NOV. 1993

Glatthaar follows his seminal Forged in Battle with this provocative study of high-level command structures in the Civil War. By 1861, warfare was too complex to be directed by a single individual in the style of Napoleon; political and military leaders needed to learn how to collaborate. Glatthaar's six case studies show that the process depended heavily on professional attitudes, especially the leaders' ability to understand one another's strengths and weaknesses. It was often a difficult task when dealing with statesmen and generals: witness the lack of cooperation between Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan, and on the Confederate side between Jefferson Davis and Joseph E. Johnston. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson for the Confederacy; Ulysses Grant, William Sherman and Admiral David Porter for the Union illustrate effective combinations, but they were all military men. Glatthaar calls the Lincoln-Grant team ``the Ultimate Success'' in a process still in the trial-and-error stage--and which, more than a century later, he notes, still involves large amounts of serendipity.