R. Steven Jones

Hard subject to research!

R. Steven Jones chose a very hard subject to write a study about; the evolution and usage of a general's personal staff during America's civil war.

Why hard to write? Because there is almost no information extent about such a subject for a writer to plum. There was no official staff organization for the US army until 43 years after the war, no president or Army commander created a formal system, no foreign systems were studied or implemented, and no real standard of usage was set out for American generals to adopt.

It was left up to the individual generals to create and implement their own conception of what a command staff should be. Some succeeded, some failed. But few of them wrote much about their staff organizations during or after the war. This left writer Jones with a dearth of source material, and little paper trail in army records.

However, Jones did an admirable job bringing together a study of his subject none-the-less. He chose the four biggest generals in the war and did his best to reveal the inner working of their respective staff work. Generals Lee, McClellan, Sherman and Grant served to show us four very different conceptions as well as proving the main point that there was no such thing as a staff organization during the war.

The most successful staff organization was Grant's and filled more pages in Jones' book than the other three (most likely because there was more info out there than there was for the other three). But Grant only arrived at his final formation after fits and starts of various failures and successes earlier in the war. Lee's staff was overworked and understaffed, Sherman's was micromanaged by a commander who's manic energy was set on high throughout the war, and McClellan's just wasn't used very effectively despite McClellan's vast experience observing foreign armies.

In any case, this is a good starting point to begin to learn about civil war staffs, a study that will have to serve as biographies of many and varied generals to be completed. Jones' efforts deserve a thank you.

Jones' work is certainly not scintillating, and might be thought of as a tad dry.... but the subject is not really one that leads to excitement, after all! Though, it is somewhat amusing that once done with the book you realize you read 219 pages expounding upon a subject that does not, in the end, exist, namely that of a system of personal command staffs of the civil war!… (meer)