Geopolitical
Other promotions were used to gain the support of the specific group they represented, especially in cases of foreign immigrants. One of the largest ethnic groups in the U.S. at the time was relatively recent German immigrants, who had arrived in the late 1840s and early 1850s after the German revolutions of 1848–1849. Prominent ethnic German civilian leaders, such as Franz Sigel and Carl Schurz, both of whose prior military experience before the Civil War was fighting on the losing side of the German revolutions, were appointed to high rank for their usefulness in rallying fellow immigrants to the cause.
Two prominent Irish immigrants were also given promotions, as many Irish had arrived following the famines in Ireland. Thomas F. Meagher and Michael Corcoran were promoted, who before the war had been a captain and a colonel, respectively, in the New York State Militia. Meagher resigned in May 1863, but when Corcoran died in December 1863, the Army revoked Meagher's resignation to keep at least one Irishman in command.
Other officers were highly successful in their attempts to rally large numbers of troops, whether they were native-born or foreign-born. For instance, Daniel Sickles recruited many soldiers from New York.
Evaluation
Ezra J. Warner noted that during the American Civil War, a large number of political generals, including Sigel and Banks for the Union and Breckinridge for the Confederacy, were undoubtedly popular with their men, primarily because of their ties to the specific groups they represented. [2] However, the vast majority were considered incompetent because they were amateur soldiers without prior training or knowledge. This was a particularly large problem for the Union, where such generals were typically given fairly important commands. [2]
Brooks D. Simpson claimed that the misdeeds of three particular political generals on the Union side, Butler, Banks, and Sigel, "contributed to a military situation in the summer of 1864 where the Northern public, anticipating decisive victory with Grant in command, began to wonder whether it was worth it to continue the struggle—something on voters' minds as they pondered whether to give Honest Abe another four years in office. Perhaps Lincoln would have been wiser to dismiss these three men and risk whatever short-term damage his actions might have caused." [3]
Addressing the phenomenon of the Union political generals, Thomas Joseph Goss wrote, "Though much contemporary and historical attention has been placed upon these amateur commanders in the field and highlights their numerous tactical shortcomings, their assignment patterns demonstrate that political factors outweighed any military criteria in the administration's judgment of their success. For the Lincoln administration, the risk of these tactical setbacks was exceeded by the political support amassed every day these popular figures were in uniform, revealing how political generals and their West Point peers were judged using different standards based on distinct calculations of political gain and military effectiveness." [4]
David Work made a cross-section selection of Union political generals appointed by Lincoln, eight Republicans, and eight Democrats, including Francis Preston Blair Jr., John Adams Dix, John A. Logan, and James S. Wadsworth, among others, and scrutinized their performances during the war. He concluded that Lincoln's appointments were mostly successful as they cemented the Union and did not result in critical or unrecoverable battlefield failures. In addition, all Lincoln's appointees, even including such controversial figures as Nathaniel P. Banks, Franz Sigel, and Benjamin F. Butler, demonstrated promising results as logistical, recruitment and political managers in the war's tumultuous times. [5]
Benton R. Patterson emphasized that Union political generals who understood their shortcomings regarding military education and experience, i.e., former congressman John A. Logan, who rose through the war from a regimental commander to the commanding general of the Army of the Tennessee, did rather well; some, who thought that common sense, practicality, and life experience are enough to wage war, i.e., Major General Nathaniel Banks, wrought havoc on the battlefield, causing unnecessary loss of lives. Patterson cited Major General Henry Halleck, a West Pointer, who wrote in April 1864 to General William Tecumseh Sherman commenting on Banks's exploits in Louisiana, "It seems but little better than murder to give important commands to such a man as Banks, Butler, McClernand, Sigel, and Lew Wallace, and yet it seems impossible to prevent it." [6] To all political generals, Patterson attributed a tendency of insubordination, as they frequently used their political connections to overwrite particular orders from their superiors. In addition, several generals, including Logan and Blair, left their commands to participate in the 1864 presidential campaign on behalf of Lincoln, to the displeasure of professional soldiers. [6]
Lincoln, as commander-in-chief, experienced problems not only with political generals but with professional West-Pointers as well, as all were unable to realize on the battlefield the decisive Union's advantage regarding manpower and military resources until Ulysses S. Grant became the general-in-chief in March 1864. Despite all of that, Lincoln, who possessed a limited military background as a captain of a militia during the Black Hawk War, [7] did not succumb to a temptation to become involved in a war on a tactical level; instead, as James M. McPherson put it, he chose to persist "through a terrible ordeal of defeats and disappointments". [8] On the other side, President Jefferson Davis, who was a West Point graduate, served competently as a regimental commander during the Mexican War, and was an able United States Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce in 1853–1857, frequently intervened into the conduct of war below strategic level and made appointments based on political necessity and personal attachments; these war-making approaches did not serve him well. [9]
