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Strategy from the Ground Level: Why the Experience of the U.S. Civil War Soldier Matters

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Strategy from the Ground Level: Why the Experience of the U.S. Civil War Soldier Matters
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By Alexandre F. Caillot
February 18, 2019
 

Does the humble private have a place in the making of strategy? For Civil War generals, the answer was no. Consider what Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant said in 1862: “The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.”[1] While his straightforward thinking contrasts favourably with infamously sluggish predecessor, Major General George B. McClellan, anyone who spends time immersed in Carl von Clausewitz’s On War knows that Grant’s prescription leaves out a great deal. Putting aside strategic complexities, the Union rank and file are noticeably absent from his dictum. This oversight implies that mastering warfare is a contest of wills between commanders whose armies are just the means to an end. The Civil War generation embraced a mindset historian Carol Reardon attributes to the influence of European military theorists who ignored “the all-important link between a military unit’s mission-effectiveness levels and the physical and mental condition of…the soldier.”[2]

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/02/18/strategy_from_the_ground_level_why_the_experience_of_the_us_civil_war_soldier_matters_114194.html

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