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Abraham Lincoln's Political Strategies

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Despite Abraham Lincoln’s lack of experience, especially compared to his opponent Jefferson Davis, Lincoln still managed to excel as Commander in Chief. Lincoln possessed many great qualities that made him so successful but Eliot Cohen, Williamson Murray & Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh, and James McPherson all agree that his clever use of his political skills pushed him one step above the competition. War is inherently political, so Lincoln used what he knew the most about to take charge of the war. Mcpherson makes the strongest case for this when he argues Lincoln’s strong political strategy mixed with his avid involvement in the war defined who he was as Commander in Chief which in turn led the Union to success. As stated by Cohen, Lincoln’s highly …show more content…

Once he realized the public was impatiently anticipating emancipation, he shifted his political policy to include it. Slavery carried the rebellion by feeding the Confederacy’s soldiers and giving them the strength to carry on. If Lincoln took away that crutch from the Confederacy, he would have another chance to turn the war in the Union’s favor. Lincoln’s political policies heavily influenced the other two aspects of his strategy. By shifting the war aim to include emancipation, he gained more support from the public which was exactly what his national strategy called for. Then, Lincoln shifted his military strategy to match. He knew he needed a victory to frame emancipation as an act of dominance not an act of desperation. The swiftness in which Lincoln adapted his plans was the cause for success. Overall, McPherson points out Lincoln’s clear and well organized plan to thoroughly explain Lincoln’s success as Commander in Chief. McPherson managed to cover and assess Lincoln’s most important qualities as Commander in Chief in three key points. Murray & Hsieh make a lot of the same points but they do not organize their chapter as well as McPherson since they make their claims without any clear direction of where they are going with them. Also, Cohen strays too far from his main argument when he goes into excessive and somewhat unnecessary detail on the qualifications of the generals Lincoln had

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