Donald Stoker. The Grand Design

Donald Stoker begins his work boldly asserting that “none of the more than three score thousand books on the Civil War is dedicated to looking at the war's strategy” because historians, unlike political scientists or international relations experts, “are generally not taught to think in terms of strategy” (p. 2). He claims that his book “will reveal how Civil War leaders—especially the two commanders in chief, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis—construed strategy, revealing the development of their large-frame thinking about how to prosecute the war” (p. 4). Twenty-two chronologically organized chapters concurrently describe Union and Confederate perceptions of strategy. Stoker stresses that his study does not include a detailed investigation of battles. Moreover, while the book is based on a very careful reading of the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion as well as war-related correspondence, postwar reminiscences, and numerous secondary works, it does not feature any previously ignored sources.

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