Exhibit A: Scope of Responsibility and Authority

Maurer, Daniel

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-53526-5_7

Daniel Maurer²

154 Accesses

Abstract

Maurer turns first to, arguably, the most important of the features of jurisprudential agency: the principal’s determination of the agent’s scope of responsibility or “freedom of maneuver.” He relies on several historical vignettes to demonstrate the varying lengths by which civilian principles “leashed” their senior military officers. This chapter looks first to Jefferson Davis’s overbearing relationship with his generals, including Braxton Bragg and Robert E. Lee, then to Lincoln’s tactical dealings with McClellan, then to General Matthew Ridgeway’s frustration with President Eisenhower’s New Look strategy, and Kennedy’s reliance on retired (then later re-activated) General Maxwell Taylor. In these stories, Maurer stresses that scope of responsibility is a continuum ranging from tight-fisted civilian dominance to a fusion of responsibility, where “crisis” exists, it exists because one party or the other tacitly did not understand or agree with the limits imposed.

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Notes

1.
John Keegan, The Mask of Command 20–22 (1987).
2.
Letter from Jefferson Davis to Brigadier General Braxton Bragg, April 3, 1861, in Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings (ed. William J. Cooper, Jr.), 207–08 (2004).
3.
Id.
4.
Model Rules of Prof’l Conduct, at R. 1.2 (a) (emphasis added).
5.
Id. at R. 1.2(b).
6.
Id. at R.1.2 cmt.
7.
Id.
8.
Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant 344 (2001).
9.
James M. McPherson, Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief 138, 218 (2014).
10.
Id. at 5–6.
11.
Id. at 218.
12.
Id. at 43.
13.
Id. at 19, 110–11, 191.
14.
Id. at 15–16.
15.
Id. at 40.
16.
Id. at 41.
17.
Id. at 42.
18.
T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and his Generals 6 (1952).
19.
Letter from Jefferson Davis to General P.G.T. Beauregard, October 16, 1861, in Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings (ed. William J. Cooper, Jr.), 215–16 (2004).
20.
McPherson, Embattled Rebel, at 85.
21.
Letter to Varina Davis, May 16, 1862, in Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings (ed. William J. Cooper, Jr.), 235 (2004).
22.
Letter from Jefferson Davis to General Robert E. Lee, December 8, 1862, in Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings (ed. William J. Cooper, Jr.), 215–16 (2004).
23.
McPherson, Embattled Rebel, at 153–57.
24.
Donald Stoker, The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War, 22–23 (2010).
25.
McPherson, Embattled Rebel, at 10, 111.
26.
Id., at 92–94.
27.
Inaugural Address as Elected President, Feb 22,, 1862, in Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings (ed. William J. Cooper, Jr.), 215–16 (2004).
28.
McPherson, Embattled Rebel, at 70.
29.
Id. at 229–30.
30.
Id.
31.
Id. at 228.
32.
Id. at 235.
33.
Letter to John Forsyth, Feb. 21, 1865, in Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings (ed. William J. Cooper, Jr.), 359–60 (2004).
34.
McPherson, Embattled Rebel, at 219.
35.
Letter to Varina Davis, April 5, 1865, in Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings (ed. William J. Cooper, Jr.), 365–66 (2004).
36.
T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and his Generals 24 (1952) (suggesting that the public’s initial warm reception of McClellan “clouded his sense of reality” and his own abilities, and “he developed a Messianic complex.”)
37.
Brian Holden Reid, General McClellan and the Politicians, Parameters, Sept. 1987, at 101, 103–04.
38.
McClellan Papers, at 344–45.
39.
Id. at 344–45.
40.
Id. McClellan’s political views are important for placing this recommendation in context: he was a Democrat, and supported the Union’s initial and more limited aim of restoration, not the abolition of slavery. Reid, General McClellan and the Politicians, at 103.
41.
Historian Ethan S. Rafuse suggests that the issue of emancipation had definite military implications, and this letter only evidenced the general’s attempt to engage his Commander-in-Chief in a substantive dialogue, one “national security professional” to another, and did not inappropriately breach any civil-military divide. Rafuse, General McClellan and the Politicians Revisited, at 79.
42.
T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and his Generals 26 (1952).
43.
Rafuse, General McClellan and the Politicians Revisited, at 71–75.
44.
Id. at 74.
45.
Id.
46.
Andrew J. Bacevich, Sycophant Savior, The American Conservative, October 8, 2007, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/sycophant-savior/.
47.
McClellan earned this nickname, not intended to be flattering, for his combination of intellect, apparent ego, and a willingness to pose for photographs in a classical “Napoleonic pose” with his hand slid between buttons of his jacket. Reid, General McClellan and the Politicians, at 104.
48.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln 662–666 (2005). Some scholars suggest that McClellan’s reputation as a politically-oriented exemplar of broken subordination to civil government is overblown: that his (in)action, reluctance to engage the Confederate Army in battle, and deliberate shielding of information from President Lincoln were partly a symptom of his suspicion that Lincoln could not keep a secret, and provided repeated fodder for the congressional “Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War” to publically denounce McClellan’s warfighting strategy and his fidelity to the cause, calling him a coward and traitor. Reid, General McClellan and the Politicians, at 104–08.
49.
Geoffrey Perret, Eisenhower 458–462 (1999); see also Bacevich, Paradox of Professionalism, at 315–16.
50.
U.S. Dep’t of Army, Field Manual 100–5, Field Service Regulations: Operations 5 (27 Sep 1954), available at http://www.cgsc.edu/CARL/docrepository/FM100_5_1954.pdf.
51.
Id.
52.
Bacevich, Paradox of Professionalism, at 323.
53.
Id. at 311–24.
54.
Office of the Secretary of Defense, Oral History interview of Matthew Ridgway (April 19, 1984), final transcript dated August 28, 1984, available at http://history.defense.gov/Portals/70/Documents/oral_history/OH_Trans_RidgwayMatthew4-19-1984.pdf.
55.
Moten, Presidents & Their Generals, at 274 (commenting how “surprising” Eisenhower’s strategy was at the time, including his twenty percent cut to the Army’s budget).
56.
President Eisenhower called this “legalized insubordination.” Id. at 275.
57.
Bacevich, Paradox of Professionalism, at 325. Ridgeway eventually retired after his first two-year tour as the Army Chief of Staff, an unusal move and indicative of his disaffection with the political administration’s handling of national defense; see also Moten, Presidents & Their Generals, at 274.
58.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House 290–91 (2002).
59.
Id. at 296.
60.
Id. at 297.
61.
Id. at 290.
62.
General (retired) Maxwell Taylor, Swords and Plowshares 253 (1972); and see Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy 421 (1977).
63.
Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy 418–20 (1977).
64.
Moten, Presidents and Their Generals, 274–75, 276.
65.
General (retired) Maxwell Taylor, Swords and Plowshares 253 (1972).
66.
Moten, Presidents and Their Generals, 280.
67.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House 292 (2002); Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy 457–58 (1977).
68.
Taylor, Swords and Plowshares 195.
69.
McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 11–12.
70.
Taylor, Swords and Plowshares 197.
71.
Id. at 198 (1972).
72.
Id. at 195–96.
73.
Id. at 197.
74.
Id.
75.
Gordon M. Goldstein, Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam 8 (2008).
76.
Taylor, Swords and Plowshares 198.
77.
Id. at 197.
78.
Id.
79.
Id. at 253.
80.
Id. at 253–54.
81.
Id. at 255.
82.
Id. at 252.

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Office of the Staff Judge Advocate, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, USA
Daniel Maurer

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Maurer, D. (2017). Exhibit A: Scope of Responsibility and Authority. In: Crisis, Agency, and Law in US Civil-Military Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53526-5_7

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53526-5_7
Published: 16 May 2017
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-53525-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-53526-5
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