This civilian commander in chief, who never served in arms and never held a national political position before becoming president and commander in chief at a time of war, this man saw the grand military situation as none of the professionals did and he saw it from the beginning.
In 1861 he had tried to impress on his generals that the point in having superior resources in men and materiel was to combat the Confederates at multiple points at the same time. His logic was infallible but it was not military doctrine and the generals ignored it.
This civilian saw where none of his generals did that the point was to destroy the Confederate armies, not capture its cities. The Confederacy lived because of its armies and if they were killed so would be it.
Hooker...thought he himself ought to march at once for Richmond.
He suggested this to President Lincoln...He told Hook that Lee's army, not Richmond, was the proper objective. (emphasis added)
This tall, ungainly bumpkin saw that Robert E. Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania was an opportunity for the United:
Although Lee did not know it...his real opponent now was Abraham Lincoln, a man not trained for command but nonetheless commanding.
What a mismatch, huh? The greatest general of the war against this callow, Kentucky-twanged, Illinois-resident civilian!
No one on either side saw Lee's advance into Pennsylvania quite as Mr. Lincoln did. He recognized it, of course, as a dire threat, but he also saw it as a limitless opportunity for the Union cause. He had grasped a strategic point of importance: when a Confederate army left its own territory and went north it exposed itself to outright destruction. If could be cut off, forced to fight...and in the end removed from the board; by the mere act of invasion it risked its very existence, and the chief responsibility of a Federal commander was to make sure that what was risked was lost. (This is also the reason Lincoln was furious with General Meade after Gettysburg for not pursuing Lee south and destroying his army.)
It was hard to get generals to see it. McClellan had not seen it...Buell had not...[and] so two armies of invasion had got away. As a civilian Mr. Lincoln could not be entirely certain that he was right [but he was] and that the trained soldiers were wrong. Yet the belief grew on him, and as this invasion month of June passed the President actually seemed to grow more composed. Catton, Never Call Retreat, Remorseless Revolutionary Struggle, "Aftermath of Victory" (Confederate, at Chancellorsville) 162-64.
Everybody underestimated him, his Secretary of War too, but came around, and we did not know what we had and what we lost when Edwin M. Stanton said as the death rattle stopped, "Now he belongs to the ages". Never, ever was there a president the likes of Abraham Lincoln.
