On the Charlie Rose Show, presidential biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin said President Obama mustn’t be rushed to make a decision. After all, she noted, Lincoln waited until the right time to make the Emancipation Proclamation. I’m curious how a Pulitzer-Prize winning historian who has written a fantastic book on Lincoln’s political genius would make such a poor analogy — not merely because of the incongruity of the conflicts, but because it’s a tragic example of dithering that cost lives.
The Emancipation Proclamation did indeed require good timing, thus it followed on the heels of the victory of the Battle of Antietam. But Lincoln had already set his mind on freeing the slaves — the wording and political support merely needed to be solidified. He already knew of his strategy. The person who was causing the delay was in fact General George B. McClellan, whose willingness to delay action and refusal to do so allowed enemy forces to prepare and react.
McClellan’s, shall we call it, dithering, caused Antietam to become the bloodiest day of the Civil War, in fact, the single bloodiest day in American military history. General Lee had said of him, “He is an able general but a very cautious one. His army is in a very demoralized and chaotic condition, and will not be prepared for offensive operations—or he will not think it so—for three or four weeks.”
McClellan also constantly overestimated opposing forces, which led him to be overly cautious, and after the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, his officers admitted they had no clue what the strategy was.
The only way he was stirred to reveal his plans (or that he actually had any) was when Lincoln asserted himself. In many historical opinions, this was a bit late in the game — if Lincoln had been more willing to demand more of his general (or fire him right away), the Confederacy wouldn’t have advanced so greatly so early on.
Lincoln had even said, “If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.” In defending his decision to promote McClellan in the first place: “If he can’t fight himself, he excels in making others ready to fight.” Not so much a man of action, this McClellan fellow.
In fact, during the very conference where the Emancipation Proclamation was finally discussed (the War Governors’ Conference) the governors of Union states argued over whether to fire the general.
One need only do a search for “McClellan” in Kearns’ own book to know the problem.
So let’s be clear: General McChrystal told the president that the war could be lost in a year, and three months of that year have been given to the enemy to regroup and prepare. War, as it happens, is a zero-sum game in which waiting does, in fact, cost lives. This isn’t a mere political football. If you have a general who is competent, as McChrystal is, give him what he says he needs to win.
