The prime essential was military
success. Lincoln gained it. Judged in the retrospect of nearly half a
century, with his every written word now in print and with all the facts
of the period brought out and placed in proper perspective by the
endless studies, discussions, and arguments of the intervening years, it
becomes clear that, first and last and at all times during his
Presidency, in military affairs his was not only the guiding but the
controlling hand."
It is interesting, as the War progressed, to trace the development of
Lincoln's own military judgment. He was always modest in regard to
matters in which his experience was limited, and during the first twelve
months in Washington, he had comparatively little to say in regard to
the planning or even the supervision of campaigns. His letters, however,
to McClellan and his later correspondence with Burnside, with Hooker,
and with other commanders give evidence of a steadily developing
intelligence in regard to larger military movements. History has shown
that Lincoln's judgment in regard to the essential purpose of a
campaign, and the best methods for carrying out such purpose, was in a
large number of cases decidedly sounder than that of the general in the
field. When he emphasised with McClellan that the true objective was the
Confederate army in the field and not the city of Richmond, he laid down
a principle which seems to us elementary but to which McClellan had been
persistently blinded.
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