Themes of the American Civil War The War Between the States by Susan-Mary Grant (z-lib.org)
Towards a Modern System? Initially the Civil War was fought by North and South with command systems that were mirror images of one another. Both sections shared similar illusions about the nature of command, not least an overemphasis on field command. So strong was this notion that Grant and Sherman were able to galvanize the Union command system in 1864 only by directing forces in the field themselves. Yet the Union system did develop, though not far enough to be accurately described as a modern command system. Although Grant and Sherman succeeded in organizing and directing the Northern war effort, their methods relied heavily on personalities rather than institutional innovation. Indeed, they relied more on the traditional methods of the US. Army than is sometimes acknowledged. The stress on the cooperation of key personalities is not surprising, as the Union army lacked a trained great general staff which owed its allegiance to a chief of staff rather than to individual field commanders. Grant and Sherman made the existing system work more efficiently and over a greater span than it was ever designed to operate. Once the exigencies of Civil War were no longer pressing, the system over which they presided could easily mutate back to meet the needs of Indian fighting on the Western frontier. Perhaps this explains why, in command terms, the Civil War seems to have had little impact on the remainder of the nineteenth century. Command and Leadership •
