Civil War Strategy

Paper Summary:

The paper reveals the lack of strategy with which the American Civil War began but relates that the Army had one man, Abraham Lincoln, who had the vision to formulate a strategy that could win the war. The paper describes the events of the war and shows how despite several mistakes, Lincoln achieved his foremost goal of preserving the Union.

From the Paper:

"One of the remarkable things about the Civil War was the lack of strategy with which it began. In 1861, with the southern states in secession and war looming, President Abraham Lincoln came into office to find a woefully understaffed and inadequate Army and a Navy so small and poorly ordered that it clearly could not address the crisis which the nation faced.
"The Army, which would be reduced substantially as southerners left, numbered barely 16,000 men, and had no general staff to develop strategic plans or even to envision strategy. Although it was soon apparent where a good deal of the fighting would take place, the Army plunged into campaigns without even basic maps, so that units wandered from one location to another with little or no idea where they were going."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bailey, Thomas, & David Kennedy, The American Pageant: A History of the Republic. Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath, 1990.
• Benson, Godfrey Rathbone [Lord Charnwood], Abraham Lincoln. New York, New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1941.
• Eisenhower, John S.D., So far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846-1848. New York, New York: Random House, 1989.
• Griffith, Paddy, Battle Tactics of the Civil War. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1987.
• Livermore, Thomas L., Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861-5. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1957.

More papers on Civil War Strategy:

• Term Paper # 134848 : "Civil War Strategy"
• Book Review # 50275 : "Archer Jones's "Civil War and Strategy: The Process of Victory and Defeat"
• Essay # 8782 : "Southern Battlefields in the Civil War"

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