2011, ISBN: 9780143116141

Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2011. Softcover. Near Fine. AUSTRALIAN MILITARY The thrilling story of the young Australian Army engineers of 3 Field Troop who were the first allied soldier… Mehr…

Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2011. Softcover. Near Fine. AUSTRALIAN MILITARY The thrilling story of the young Australian Army engineers of 3 Field Troop who were the first allied soldiers to risk their lives in the darkness of the Vietcong tunnels of South Vietnam. Staring death squarely in the face every day, these young Australian Army engineers not only followed their enemy down into these unknown underground labyrinths, but matched the Vietcong's jungle warfare skills and defused thousands of their clever booby traps. Off duty, it was a different story. The bad boys of 3 Field Troop were a boozing, brawling, bonking bunch of larrikins, who cut a swathe through the bars and brothels of Saigon, fought American Military Police to a standstill, built a secret casino, and booby-trapped their own HQ to teach their officers a lesson. Thrilling, inspiring, and action packed, this is the true story of the unsung heroes of Australia's war in Vietnam. Living up to their motto of ""We Make and We Break,"" they created the legend of the Tunnel Rats. 242 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., maps, ports. ; 22 cm. #0621/210122/050923""Much of the material in this book, including interviews with the men of 3 Field Troop, was originally gathered by author Jimmy Thomson for Sandy MacGregor's self-published book 'No need for heroes'. Sandy has since added material from his own archives and research, which has been included in this version of the story, now presented as a military history rather than a personal memoir.""-MacGregor, Sandy, 1940-  |  Australia. Army. Royal Australian Engineers. Field Troop, 3.  |  Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- Personal narratives.  |  Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- Participation, Australian.  |  Tunnels -- Vietnam -- Cu Chi (QuaÌ‚Ì£n) Elizabeth's Bookshops have been one of Australia's premier independent book dealers since 1973. Elizabeth's family-owned business operates four branches in Perth CBD, Fremantle (WA), and Newtown (NSW). All orders are dispatched within 24 hours from our Fremantle Warehouse. All items can be viewed at Elizabeth's Bookshop Warehouse, 23 Queen Victoria Street\, Fremantle WA. Near Fine, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2011, 4, Penguin Books. Very Good. 5.45 x 0.97 x 8.4 inches. Paperback. 2009. 368 pages. <br>James M. McPherson's Tried by War is a perfect pri mer . . . for anyone who wishes to under?stand the evolution of t he president's role as commander in chief. Few histo?rians write as well as McPherson, and none evoke the sound of battle with gre ater clarity. --The New York Times Book Review The Pulitzer Priz e-winning author reveals how Lincoln won the Civil War and invent ed the role of commander in chief as we know it As we celebrate the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, this study by preeminent, be stselling Civil War historian James M. McPherson provides a rare, fresh take on one of the most enigmatic figures in American hist ory. Tried by War offers a revelatory (and timely) portrait of le adership during the greatest crisis our nation has ever endured. Suspenseful and inspiring, this is the story of how Lincoln, with almost no previous military experience before entering the White House, assumed the powers associated with the role of commander in chief, and through his strategic insight and will to fight cha nged the course of the war and saved the Union. Editorial Review s Review James M. McPherson's Tried by War is a perfect primer . . . for anyone who wishes to under?stand the evolution of the pr esident's role as commander in chief. Few histo?rians write as we ll as McPherson, and none evoke the sound of battle with greater clarity. There is scarcely anyone writing today who mines origina l ?sources more diligently. In Tried by War, McPherson draws on a lmost 50 years of research to present a cogent and concise narrat ive of how Lincoln, working against enormous odds, saved the Unit ed States of America. --The New York Times Book Review About the Author James M. McPherson is the George Henry Davis '86 Professo r of History Emeritus at Princeton University. He is the bestsell ing author of numerous books on the Civil War, including Battle C ry of Freedom, which won the Pulitzer Prize, For Cause and Comrad es, which won the prestigious Lincoln Prize, and Crossroads of Fr eedom. He lives in Princeton, NJ. Excerpt. ? Reprinted by permis sion. All rights reserved. On July 27, 1848, a tall, rawboned Whi g congressman from Illinois rose in the House of Representatives to challenge the Mexican War policies of President James K. Polk. An opponent of what he considered an unjust war, Abraham Lincoln mocked his own meager record as a militia captain who saw no act ion in the Black Hawk War of 1832. By the way, Mr. Speaker, did y ou know I am a military hero? said Lincoln. Yes, sir . . . I foug ht, bled, and came away after charges upon the wild onions and a good many struggles with the musketoes. Lincoln might not have i ndulged his famous sense of humor in this fashion if he had known that thirteen years later he would be- come commander in chief o f the U.S. Army in a war that turned out to be forty-seven times more lethal for American soldiers than the Mexican War. On his wa y to Washington in February 1861 as president- elect of a broken nation, Lincoln spoke in a far more serious manner. He looked bac k on another war, which had given birth to the nation that now se emed in danger of perishing from the earth. In a speech to the Ne w Jersey legislature in Trenton, Lincoln recalled the story of Ge orge Washington and his tiny army, which crossed the ice-choked Delaware River in a driving sleet storm on Christmas night in 17 76 to attack the Hessian garrison in Trenton. There must have bee n some- thing more than common that those men struggled for, said the president-elect. Something even more than National Indepen- dence . . . something that held out a great promise to all the pe ople of the world for all time to come. I am exceedingly anxious that the Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be per- petuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made. Lincoln faced a steep learning cur ve as commander in chief in the war that began less than two mont hs after that speech at Trenton. He was also painfully aware that his adversary, Jefferson Davis, was much better prepared for tha t daunting task. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Davis had fought courageously as a colonel of a Mississipp i regiment in the Mexican War and had served as an excellent secr etary of war from 1853 to 1857--while Lincoln's only military exp erience was his combat with mosquitoes in 1832. Lincoln possessed a keen analytical mind, however, and a fierce de- termination to master any subject to which he applied himself. This determinati on went back to his childhood. Among my earliest recol- lections, Lincoln told an acquaintance in 1860, I remember how, when a mer e child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a w ay I could not understand. Lincoln recalled going to my little be droom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my fa- ther, and spending the night walking up and down, and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep . . . when I got on such a hunt after an idea, until I had caught it. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck by me. Later in life Lincoln mastered Eucl idean geometry on his own for mental exercise. As a largely self- taught lawyer, he honed this quality of mind. He was not a quick study but a thorough one. I am never easy, he said, when I am han dling a thought, till I have bounded it North, and bounded it Sou th, and bounded it East, and bounded it West. Several contempora ries testified to the slow but tenacious qualities of Lincoln's m ind. The mercurial editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley , noted that Lincoln's intellect worked not quickly nor brilliant ly, but exhaustively. Lincoln's law partner William Herndon somet imes expressed impatience with Lincoln's deliberate manner of res earching or arguing a case. But Herndon conceded that his partner not only went to the root of the question, but dug up the root, and separated and analyzed every fibre of it.4 Lincoln also fo- c used intently on the central issue in a legal case and refused to be distracted by secondary questions. Another fellow lawyer note d that Lincoln would concede nonessential points to an opponent i n the courtroom, lulling him into a sense of complacency. But by giving away six points and carrying the seventh he carried his ca se . . . the whole case hanging on the seventh. Any man who took Lincoln for a simple-minded man would very soon wake up with his back in a ditch. As commander in chief Lincoln sought to master the intricacies of military strategy in the same way he had tried to penetrate the mean- ing of mysterious adult conversations whe n he was a boy. His private secretary John Hay, who lived in the White House, often heard the president walking back and forth in his bedroom at midnight as he di- gested books on military strate gy. He gave himself, night and day, to the study of the military situation, Hay later wrote. He read a large number of strategical works. He pored over the reports from the vari- ous departments and districts of the field of war. He held long confer- ences wit h eminent generals and admirals, and astonished them by the exten t of his special knowledge and the keen intelligence of his quest ions. Some of those generals, like Lincoln's courtroom adversarie s, eventually found themselves on their backs in a ditch. By 1862 Lincoln's grasp of military strategy and operations was firm eno ugh almost to justify the assertion of the historian T. Harry Wil liams: Lincoln stands out as a great war president, probably the greatest in our history, and a great natural strategist, a better one than any of his generals. This encomium is misleading in on e respect: Lincoln was not a natural strategist. He worked hard t o master this subject, just as he had done to become a lawyer. He had to learn the functions of com- mander in chief on the job. T he Constitution and the course of Amer- ican history before 1861 did not offer much guidance. Article II, Section 2, of the Consti tution states simply: The President shall be Commander in Chief o f the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of t he several States, when called into the actual Service of the Uni ted States. But the Constitution nowhere defines the pow- ers of the president as commander in chief. In Federalist No. 69, Al- ex ander Hamilton tried to reassure opponents of the Constitution, w ho feared executive tyranny, that the commander-in-chief power wo uld amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military forces, as first General and Admiral of the nati on. Hamilton's phrase supreme command and direction seems quite f orceful, but it lacks specificity. Nor did the precedents created by Presidents James Madison and James K. Polk in the War of 1812 and the Mexican War provide Lincoln with much guidance in a far greater conflict that combined the most dangerous aspects of an i nternal war and a war against another nation. In a case growing o ut of the Mexi- can War, the Supreme Court ruled that the preside nt as commander in chief was authorized to employ the army and na vy in the manner he may deem most effectual to harass and conquer and subdue the enemy. But the Court did not define most effectua l and seemed to limit the president's power by stating that it must be confined to purely military matters.7 The vagueness of th ese definitions and precedents meant that Lin- coln would have to establish most of the powers of commander in chief for himself. He proved to be a more hands-on commander in chief than any other president. He performed or oversaw five war- time functions in t his capacity, in diminishing order of personal in- volvement: pol icy, national strategy, military strategy, operations, and tactic s. Neither Lincoln nor anyone else defined these functions in a s ystematic way during the Civil War. If they had, their definition s might have looked something like the following: Policy refers t o war aims--the political goals of the nation in time of war. Nat ional strat- egy refers to mobilization of the political, economi c, diplomatic, and psychological as well as military resources of the nation to achieve these war aims. Military strategy concerns plans for the employment of armed forces to win the war and fulf ill the goals of policy. Opera- tions concerns the management and movements of armies in particu- lar campaigns to carry out the p urposes of military strategy. Tactics refers to the formations an d handling of an army in actual battle. As president and leader of his party as well as commander in chief, Lincoln was principal ly responsible for shaping and defining policy. From first to las t that policy was preservation of the United States as one nation , indivisible, and as a republic based on majority rule. In May 1 861 Lincoln explained that the central idea pervading this strugg le is the necessity that is upon us, of proving that popular gov- ernment is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, w hether in a free government the majority have the right to break up the gov- ernment whenever they choose. Secession is the essenc e of anar- chy, said Lincoln on another occasion, for if one stat e may secede at will, so may any other until there is no governme nt and no nation.8 In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln offered his most eloquent statement of policy: The war was a test whether the nation conceived in 1776 might live or would perish from the earth. The question of na- tional sovereignty over a union of all the states was nonnegotiable. No compromise between a sovereign United States and a separately sovereign Confederate States was p ossible. This issue is distinct, simple, and inflexible, said Lin coln in 1864. It is an issue which can only be tried by war, and decided by victory. Lincoln's frequent statements of this policy were themselves distinct and inflexible. And policy was closely tied to national strategy. Indeed, in a civil war whose origins l ay in a political conflict over the future of slavery and a polit ical decision by certain states to secede, policy could never be separated from national strategy. The president shared with Congr ess and key cabinet members the tasks of raising, organizing, and sustaining an army and navy, preventing foreign in- tervention i n the conflict, and maintaining public support for the war--all o f which depended on the public's support of the purpose for which the war was fought. And neither policy nor national strategy cou ld be separated from military strategy. Although Lincoln never re ad Carl von Clausewitz's famous treatise On War (Vom Kriege), his actions were a consummate expression of Clausewitz's central arg u- ment: The political objective is the goal, war is the means of reach- ing it, and means can never be considered in isolation fr om their purpose. Therefore, it is clear that war should never be thought of as something autonomous but always as an instrument o f policy. Some professional army officers did in fact tend to th ink of war as something autonomous and deplored the intrusion of politics into military matters. Soon after he came to Washington as general- in-chief in August 1862, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck b egan com- plaining (privately) about political wire-pulling in mi litary appointments I have done everything in my power here to se parate military appointments and commands from politics, but real ly the task is hopeless. If the incompetent and corrupt politicia ns, he told another general, would only follow the example of the ir ances- tors, enter a herd of swine, run down some steep bank a nd drown themselves in the sea, there would be some hope of savin g the country. But Lincoln could never ignore the political cont ext in which deci- sions about military strategy were made. Like French premier Georges Clemenceau a half century later, he knew t hat war was too important to be left to the generals. In a highly politicized and democratic society where the mobilization of a v olunteer army was channeled through state governments, political considerations inevitably shaped the scope and timing of military strategy and even of operations. As leader of the party that con trolled Congress and most state govern- ments, Lincoln as command er in chief constantly had to juggle the complex interplay of pol icy, national strategy, and military strategy. The slavery issue provides an example of this interplay. The goal of preserving th e Union united the Northern people, including border-state Unioni sts. The issue of slavery and emancipation, Penguin Books, 2009, 3<

2009, ISBN: 9780143116141

Rijswijk: Uitgeverij Elmar B.V., 1984 Boek met stofomslag in goede staat. Gebruiksspoortjes / naam- en adres op het eerste schutblad met pen geschreven. 101 pagina's. illustraties, ka… Mehr…

Rijswijk: Uitgeverij Elmar B.V., 1984 Boek met stofomslag in goede staat. Gebruiksspoortjes / naam- en adres op het eerste schutblad met pen geschreven. 101 pagina's. illustraties, kaartjes lijst van intekenaren. Voorwoord door Jonkheer H.A. van Karnebeek. . 1ste / 1st. cardboard / karton. good / goed/good / goed. Illus. by Warmer, Ir. Joh. A.G.. A4 oblong formaat., Uitgeverij Elmar B.V., 1984, 2.5, Penguin Books. Very Good. 5.45 x 0.97 x 8.4 inches. Paperback. 2009. 368 pages. <br>James M. McPherson's Tried by War is a perfect pri mer . . . for anyone who wishes to under?stand the evolution of t he president's role as commander in chief. Few histo?rians write as well as McPherson, and none evoke the sound of battle with gre ater clarity. --The New York Times Book Review The Pulitzer Priz e-winning author reveals how Lincoln won the Civil War and invent ed the role of commander in chief as we know it As we celebrate the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, this study by preeminent, be stselling Civil War historian James M. McPherson provides a rare, fresh take on one of the most enigmatic figures in American hist ory. Tried by War offers a revelatory (and timely) portrait of le adership during the greatest crisis our nation has ever endured. Suspenseful and inspiring, this is the story of how Lincoln, with almost no previous military experience before entering the White House, assumed the powers associated with the role of commander in chief, and through his strategic insight and will to fight cha nged the course of the war and saved the Union. Editorial Review s Review James M. McPherson's Tried by War is a perfect primer . . . for anyone who wishes to under?stand the evolution of the pr esident's role as commander in chief. Few histo?rians write as we ll as McPherson, and none evoke the sound of battle with greater clarity. There is scarcely anyone writing today who mines origina l ?sources more diligently. In Tried by War, McPherson draws on a lmost 50 years of research to present a cogent and concise narrat ive of how Lincoln, working against enormous odds, saved the Unit ed States of America. --The New York Times Book Review About the Author James M. McPherson is the George Henry Davis '86 Professo r of History Emeritus at Princeton University. He is the bestsell ing author of numerous books on the Civil War, including Battle C ry of Freedom, which won the Pulitzer Prize, For Cause and Comrad es, which won the prestigious Lincoln Prize, and Crossroads of Fr eedom. He lives in Princeton, NJ. Excerpt. ? Reprinted by permis sion. All rights reserved. On July 27, 1848, a tall, rawboned Whi g congressman from Illinois rose in the House of Representatives to challenge the Mexican War policies of President James K. Polk. An opponent of what he considered an unjust war, Abraham Lincoln mocked his own meager record as a militia captain who saw no act ion in the Black Hawk War of 1832. By the way, Mr. Speaker, did y ou know I am a military hero? said Lincoln. Yes, sir . . . I foug ht, bled, and came away after charges upon the wild onions and a good many struggles with the musketoes. Lincoln might not have i ndulged his famous sense of humor in this fashion if he had known that thirteen years later he would be- come commander in chief o f the U.S. Army in a war that turned out to be forty-seven times more lethal for American soldiers than the Mexican War. On his wa y to Washington in February 1861 as president- elect of a broken nation, Lincoln spoke in a far more serious manner. He looked bac k on another war, which had given birth to the nation that now se emed in danger of perishing from the earth. In a speech to the Ne w Jersey legislature in Trenton, Lincoln recalled the story of Ge orge Washington and his tiny army, which crossed the ice-choked Delaware River in a driving sleet storm on Christmas night in 17 76 to attack the Hessian garrison in Trenton. There must have bee n some- thing more than common that those men struggled for, said the president-elect. Something even more than National Indepen- dence . . . something that held out a great promise to all the pe ople of the world for all time to come. I am exceedingly anxious that the Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be per- petuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made. Lincoln faced a steep learning cur ve as commander in chief in the war that began less than two mont hs after that speech at Trenton. He was also painfully aware that his adversary, Jefferson Davis, was much better prepared for tha t daunting task. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Davis had fought courageously as a colonel of a Mississipp i regiment in the Mexican War and had served as an excellent secr etary of war from 1853 to 1857--while Lincoln's only military exp erience was his combat with mosquitoes in 1832. Lincoln possessed a keen analytical mind, however, and a fierce de- termination to master any subject to which he applied himself. This determinati on went back to his childhood. Among my earliest recol- lections, Lincoln told an acquaintance in 1860, I remember how, when a mer e child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a w ay I could not understand. Lincoln recalled going to my little be droom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my fa- ther, and spending the night walking up and down, and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep . . . when I got on such a hunt after an idea, until I had caught it. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck by me. Later in life Lincoln mastered Eucl idean geometry on his own for mental exercise. As a largely self- taught lawyer, he honed this quality of mind. He was not a quick study but a thorough one. I am never easy, he said, when I am han dling a thought, till I have bounded it North, and bounded it Sou th, and bounded it East, and bounded it West. Several contempora ries testified to the slow but tenacious qualities of Lincoln's m ind. The mercurial editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley , noted that Lincoln's intellect worked not quickly nor brilliant ly, but exhaustively. Lincoln's law partner William Herndon somet imes expressed impatience with Lincoln's deliberate manner of res earching or arguing a case. But Herndon conceded that his partner not only went to the root of the question, but dug up the root, and separated and analyzed every fibre of it.4 Lincoln also fo- c used intently on the central issue in a legal case and refused to be distracted by secondary questions. Another fellow lawyer note d that Lincoln would concede nonessential points to an opponent i n the courtroom, lulling him into a sense of complacency. But by giving away six points and carrying the seventh he carried his ca se . . . the whole case hanging on the seventh. Any man who took Lincoln for a simple-minded man would very soon wake up with his back in a ditch. As commander in chief Lincoln sought to master the intricacies of military strategy in the same way he had tried to penetrate the mean- ing of mysterious adult conversations whe n he was a boy. His private secretary John Hay, who lived in the White House, often heard the president walking back and forth in his bedroom at midnight as he di- gested books on military strate gy. He gave himself, night and day, to the study of the military situation, Hay later wrote. He read a large number of strategical works. He pored over the reports from the vari- ous departments and districts of the field of war. He held long confer- ences wit h eminent generals and admirals, and astonished them by the exten t of his special knowledge and the keen intelligence of his quest ions. Some of those generals, like Lincoln's courtroom adversarie s, eventually found themselves on their backs in a ditch. By 1862 Lincoln's grasp of military strategy and operations was firm eno ugh almost to justify the assertion of the historian T. Harry Wil liams: Lincoln stands out as a great war president, probably the greatest in our history, and a great natural strategist, a better one than any of his generals. This encomium is misleading in on e respect: Lincoln was not a natural strategist. He worked hard t o master this subject, just as he had done to become a lawyer. He had to learn the functions of com- mander in chief on the job. T he Constitution and the course of Amer- ican history before 1861 did not offer much guidance. Article II, Section 2, of the Consti tution states simply: The President shall be Commander in Chief o f the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of t he several States, when called into the actual Service of the Uni ted States. But the Constitution nowhere defines the pow- ers of the president as commander in chief. In Federalist No. 69, Al- ex ander Hamilton tried to reassure opponents of the Constitution, w ho feared executive tyranny, that the commander-in-chief power wo uld amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military forces, as first General and Admiral of the nati on. Hamilton's phrase supreme command and direction seems quite f orceful, but it lacks specificity. Nor did the precedents created by Presidents James Madison and James K. Polk in the War of 1812 and the Mexican War provide Lincoln with much guidance in a far greater conflict that combined the most dangerous aspects of an i nternal war and a war against another nation. In a case growing o ut of the Mexi- can War, the Supreme Court ruled that the preside nt as commander in chief was authorized to employ the army and na vy in the manner he may deem most effectual to harass and conquer and subdue the enemy. But the Court did not define most effectua l and seemed to limit the president's power by stating that it must be confined to purely military matters.7 The vagueness of th ese definitions and precedents meant that Lin- coln would have to establish most of the powers of commander in chief for himself. He proved to be a more hands-on commander in chief than any other president. He performed or oversaw five war- time functions in t his capacity, in diminishing order of personal in- volvement: pol icy, national strategy, military strategy, operations, and tactic s. Neither Lincoln nor anyone else defined these functions in a s ystematic way during the Civil War. If they had, their definition s might have looked something like the following: Policy refers t o war aims--the political goals of the nation in time of war. Nat ional strat- egy refers to mobilization of the political, economi c, diplomatic, and psychological as well as military resources of the nation to achieve these war aims. Military strategy concerns plans for the employment of armed forces to win the war and fulf ill the goals of policy. Opera- tions concerns the management and movements of armies in particu- lar campaigns to carry out the p urposes of military strategy. Tactics refers to the formations an d handling of an army in actual battle. As president and leader of his party as well as commander in chief, Lincoln was principal ly responsible for shaping and defining policy. From first to las t that policy was preservation of the United States as one nation , indivisible, and as a republic based on majority rule. In May 1 861 Lincoln explained that the central idea pervading this strugg le is the necessity that is upon us, of proving that popular gov- ernment is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, w hether in a free government the majority have the right to break up the gov- ernment whenever they choose. Secession is the essenc e of anar- chy, said Lincoln on another occasion, for if one stat e may secede at will, so may any other until there is no governme nt and no nation.8 In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln offered his most eloquent statement of policy: The war was a test whether the nation conceived in 1776 might live or would perish from the earth. The question of na- tional sovereignty over a union of all the states was nonnegotiable. No compromise between a sovereign United States and a separately sovereign Confederate States was p ossible. This issue is distinct, simple, and inflexible, said Lin coln in 1864. It is an issue which can only be tried by war, and decided by victory. Lincoln's frequent statements of this policy were themselves distinct and inflexible. And policy was closely tied to national strategy. Indeed, in a civil war whose origins l ay in a political conflict over the future of slavery and a polit ical decision by certain states to secede, policy could never be separated from national strategy. The president shared with Congr ess and key cabinet members the tasks of raising, organizing, and sustaining an army and navy, preventing foreign in- tervention i n the conflict, and maintaining public support for the war--all o f which depended on the public's support of the purpose for which the war was fought. And neither policy nor national strategy cou ld be separated from military strategy. Although Lincoln never re ad Carl von Clausewitz's famous treatise On War (Vom Kriege), his actions were a consummate expression of Clausewitz's central arg u- ment: The political objective is the goal, war is the means of reach- ing it, and means can never be considered in isolation fr om their purpose. Therefore, it is clear that war should never be thought of as something autonomous but always as an instrument o f policy. Some professional army officers did in fact tend to th ink of war as something autonomous and deplored the intrusion of politics into military matters. Soon after he came to Washington as general- in-chief in August 1862, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck b egan com- plaining (privately) about political wire-pulling in mi litary appointments I have done everything in my power here to se parate military appointments and commands from politics, but real ly the task is hopeless. If the incompetent and corrupt politicia ns, he told another general, would only follow the example of the ir ances- tors, enter a herd of swine, run down some steep bank a nd drown themselves in the sea, there would be some hope of savin g the country. But Lincoln could never ignore the political cont ext in which deci- sions about military strategy were made. Like French premier Georges Clemenceau a half century later, he knew t hat war was too important to be left to the generals. In a highly politicized and democratic society where the mobilization of a v olunteer army was channeled through state governments, political considerations inevitably shaped the scope and timing of military strategy and even of operations. As leader of the party that con trolled Congress and most state govern- ments, Lincoln as command er in chief constantly had to juggle the complex interplay of pol icy, national strategy, and military strategy. The slavery issue provides an example of this interplay. The goal of preserving th e Union united the Northern people, including border-state Unioni sts. The issue of slavery and emancipation, Penguin Books, 2009, 3<

2009, ISBN: 9780143116141

New York: Penguin Books, 2009. xv, 329 pages, [16] pages of plates, illustrations, map; 22 cm. Near fine. Tight, clean copy. Age toning. "James McPherson, a bestselling historian of … Mehr…

New York: Penguin Books, 2009. xv, 329 pages, [16] pages of plates, illustrations, map; 22 cm. Near fine. Tight, clean copy. Age toning. "James McPherson, a bestselling historian of the Civil War, illuminates how Lincoln worked with--and often agains--his senior commanders to defeat the Confederacy and create the role of commander in chief as we know it. Though Abraham Lincoln arrived at the White House with no previous military experience (apart from a couple of months spent soldiering in 1832), he quickly established himself as the greatest commander in chief in American history. James McPherson illuminates this often misunderstood and profoundly influential aspect of Lincoln?s legacy. In essence, Lincoln invented the idea of commander in chief, as neither the Constitution nor existing legislation specified how the president ought to declare war or dictate strategy. In fact, by assuming the powers we associate with the role of commander in chief, Lincoln often overstepped the narrow band of rights granted the president. Good thing too, because his strategic insight and will to fight changed the course of the war and saved the Union. For most of the conflict, he constantly had to goad his reluctant generals toward battle, and he oversaw strategy and planning for major engagements with the enemy. Lincoln was a self-taught military strategist (as he was a self-taught lawyer), which makes his adroit conduct of the war seem almost miraculous. To be sure, the Union's campaigns often went awry, sometimes horribly so, but McPherson makes clear how the missteps arose from the all-too-common moments when Lincoln could neither threaten nor cajole his commanders to follow his orders. Because Lincoln's war took place within our borders, the relationship between the front lines and the home front was especially close?and volatile. Here again, Lincoln faced enormous challenges in exemplary fashion. He was a masterly molder of public opinion, for instance, defining the war aims initially as preserving the Union and only later as ending slavery--when he sensed the public was at last ready to bear such a lofty burden. As we approach the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth in 2009, this book will be that rarest gift--a genuinely novel, even timely, view of the most-written-about figure in our history. Tried by War offers a revelatory portrait of leadership during the greatest crisis our nation has ever endured. How Lincoln overcame feckless generals, fickle public opinion, and his own paralyzing fears is a story at once suspenseful and inspiring. / James M. McPherson is the George Henry Davis Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University. He is the bestselling author of numerous books on the Civil War, including Battle Cry of Freedom, which won the Pulitzer Prize, For Cause and Comrades, which won the prestigious Lincoln Prize, and Crossroads of Freedom." - Publisher.. 1st. Paperback. Very Good. 8vo., Penguin Books, 2009, 3<