Military Review English Edition November-December 2014 | Page 142

Lt. Gen. Ulysses Grant’s Overland Campaign
was rife with counterproductive conduct by political
appointees, office seekers, senior regular and volunteer
army officers, and newspaper correspondents. This
did much to foul the plans set forth by the overall
commanders—Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck, located in
Washington DC; Grant, overall commander of Union
forces; and Maj. Gen. George Meade, commander of
the Army of the Potomac—to bring the war to a more
rapid conclusion.
It was common knowledge that the Confederacy
had been bent back but was not broken. However,
even with the Unions’ vast resources in manpower and
the instruments of warfare, it could not take advantage of the situation. Though there were definitive
successes, more often than not, command conflicts
thwarted Union efforts to prosecute the war efficiently
or effectively.
The inability of the Union commanders to work as
a productive and supportive team led to the terrible
carnage of the Overland Campaign. They not only distrusted one another, but often delayed actions, ordered
fanatical and aggressive maneuvers without concrete
operational intelligence, and provided loose and often
miscalculated information on enemy strength and
position—much to the detriment of the fighting men
involved.
The definition the author uses to describe the
likes of Grant and Meade for example leaves one
to wonder whether they had any suitable qualities
other than merely being another level of bureaucracy.
The author does spend significant time on the lack
of confidence Grant and several of his men (such as
Gen. Phil Sheridan) had in a Maine soldier, Maj. Gen.
Gouverneur Warren.
Considering the authors’ background (she is a
Maine resident), it was not surprising that Warren
is one of those highlighted in the text. However, his
story is compelling, well documented, and well worth
recounting.
Smith’s chronological account is sound as it contains prime source material, but it should have included the final phases of the war as well. From 1865
through the end of the conflict, one particular battle
marks the highlight of this dysfunction, back stabbing,
and poor command relationships: the Battle of Five
Forks. It was here where these relationships led to the
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removal of Warren from command, and years later, to
a court of inquiry to clear Warren’s name. A discussion
of these events would have added much to what is
otherwise a well-written account.
Col. Thomas S. Bundt, Ph.D., U.S. Army, Fort
Lee, Virginia

ALL THE GREAT PRIZES:
The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt
John Taliaferro, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2014,
688 pages, $35.00

T

his biography is where we learn of the extraordinary life of an extraordinary American. John
Hay was a man who seemed to live a storybook
life in service to his nation. As author John Taliaferro
points out in an interview, Hay is known either for his
wartime service to President Lincoln as Lincoln’s private secretary, or as President William McKinley’s—
and later President Theodore Roosevelt’s—secretary of
state, but not as both.
In this rich and detailed narrative, the first of its
kind since the mid 1930s, Taliaferro paints a rich and
vivid picture of Hay’s life and its many intersections
with the great moments of the late nineteenth century.
To paint this picture the author uses the subject’s own
words to provide an authoritative account of Hay’s prolific life. Hay’s writings, and that of friends and family,
provide a lens through which to see many historical
events. We see a jovial Lincoln in his nightclothes
cracking jokes in the middle of the night to ease the
tremendous stress of the Civil War. We also see Lincoln
the human being in his most vulnerable times: when
his beloved son, Willie, dies, and during the formulation and delivery of the Emancipation Proclamation.
This book is not another story of Lincoln, although his
presence is felt throughout.
The next phase of the book describes Hay’s struggles to keep the Republican Party true to its most
famous member. Hay’s own writing provides firsthand
accounts of the corruption behind the Grant administration, which he criticized invectively through his
guest editorship of the New Yo ɬ