Should be subtitled "Won't Somebody Put on their Big Boy Pants, Do their Job, and Win this War?" ( )

The author is a professor of military strategy at the U. S. Naval War College. The writer assumes that the reader has a reasonably broad body of knowledge about the war and begins his narrative at that point. It is a technical analysis of the military history of the war that I found a bit impersonal and at times rather dry. I felt the author should have followed the lead of Herman Hattaway, the author of How The North Won: A Military History of the Civil War. Hattaway's book was a similar technical analysis of the military history of the war. He made good use of a large number of quotations from Bruce Catton, a writer with a journalist's eye for the human side of life, through the pages of his book and made it more engaging. This author had some interesting ideas but in my opinion history is first and last about people and this book lacked the personal touch.
The premise of the book is that the South lost the war because of their failure to create and implement an effective military strategy that met their political needs. This comes straight from the maxim of Clausewitz that war is the continuation of politics by other means. I agreed with several of the arguments which the author made to support this premise. At the beginning of the war the South possessed a mass of wealth in the form of a large cotton crop. Instead of selling the cotton and buying weapons they established an informal embargo to force England and France to come to their aid. They had memories of the French aid to the colonists which helped make the American Revolution successful. England and France did not come to their aid and it was not until the second year of the war that the South had decent arms for their soldiers.
In his assessment of the political leadership of the two combatants the author is very critical of Jefferson Davis and gives passing marks to Lincoln. Davis had much better experience for the task. He graduated from West Point, served in the Mexican War and was Secretary of War under Buchanan. The only experience Lincoln had was a short term in the militia in the Black Hawk War. The difference was that Lincoln was a better manager and he was open to learning instead of assuming that he knew everything. Davis would have preferred the position of commanding general and took his role as commander-in-chief very seriously vetoing bills passed by the Southern Congress that he felt impinged on his powers in that role. At the same time although vastly outnumbered he insisted on attempting to defend every mile of the perimeter of the Confederacy. As a consequence the South quickly lost the forts that controlled the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers and then New Orleans, the largest city in the Confederacy.
While acknowledging Lee's tactical skills the author uses Lee's own words to describe his strategic failings. Lee is quoted as saying that the great victory at Chancellorsville did not bring to the South one acre of conquered territory and the Northern casualties would quickly be replaced. Lee's failure to win any battles on Northern territory doomed the South to defeat. In contrast Grant by 1864 was pressing the South at several critical points. The South was outnumbered and forced to wage a defensive war which they could not win. Grant kept Lee engaged in Virginia while Sherman destroyed the productive capacity of the lower South.
I did find reading the book worthwhile and learned a good deal. The author displayed a deft command of a large body of knowledge about the war. The author's big picture analysis of the war added a new level to my understanding of the history of the Civil War. While I could spend a lifetime reading about the Civil War I have the urge to move on to another topic. In the last year I have read two good books about Medieval history and I would like to learn more about that era. So many books, so little time. ( )

While there is not that much here to surprise the serious student of the American Civil War, Stoker brings a different perspective as an individual who teaches strategy to professional naval officers. How he judges the protagonists of the war is based very much on how they learned as the war progressed, meaning that Stoker gives high marks to men such as Lincoln, Sherman, Grant and, to a lesser extent, Lee. On the other hand, Stoker is particularly damning of Jefferson Davis, seeing him as a man who never understood his responsibilities and role.

Actually, the interesting question to Stoker is not so much whether the Confederacy could have won its independence (though Stoker believes that Richmond had its opportunities), but why the Union side did not win in 1862. Stoker's tragic figure is George McClellan, who for all the infuriating failings of personality had the right idea in his concepts of military strategy; it's just that the men capable of carrying out the operational design were not yet on stage. Of course, as Stoker also notes, early Union military victory means that the tragedy of Afro-American enslavement would remain embedded in American society. ( )

The Grand Design is a Civil War history from the point of view of the senior commanders, the generals and the Presidents of the Union and the Confederacy. Its focus is on the successes and failures of strategy and policy in the conduct of the war. It is not a panoramic history, and goes into very little detail about battles, politics, economics, social phenomena, except as they affected policy and strategy on either side. The style is informal but thoughtful; the author is fond of ironic, even sarcastic, asides about various military figures of the war. The picture that emerges is disheartening, mostly a chronicle of failures on both sides. Though sometimes it seems like Monday-morning quarterbacking, there is a lot of searching analysis of the thought and actions of specific generals. Few meet with the authors plaudits. His bêtes noires, however, are not always the usual suspects. Stoker is free with his judgments and they are always interesting. A quick and enjoyable read from an unusual perspective. ( )