A Leadership Lesson From the Civil War
By Ed RuggeroNewsday, July 2, 2007
For a few hours on July 2, 1863, the left flank of the Union Army at Gettysburg was in danger of collapse. Exhausted regiments from the two armies – some of the Confederates had marched 30-plus miles in 24 hours – clambered to the summit of Little Round Top to gain the advantage of high ground.
The Federal troops won the footrace, but the rebels launched repeated attacks; control of the wooded hill would dislodge the Union Army and scatter it across the Pennsylvania farmlands. Beyond the blue hills lay Washington and victory for Robert E. Lee’s forces.
Standing in the way of the Confederate success were 100 or so volunteers, citizen-soldiers from Maine led by a 34-year-old college professor with just a year’s experience in the Army. Joshua Chamberlain’s men held their position until they ran out of ammunition. Facing another assault and out of options, Chamberlain led his men in a charge that at first stunned and then routed the rebel troops who had been so close to victory.
Today the U.S. Army studies Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain as an example of creative leadership. Faced with the unexpected, good leaders improvise. The example is especially important because junior leaders fighting the insurgents in Iraq or the Taliban in Afghanistan are faced with complex, rapidly changing conditions that require the same kind of creativity Chamberlain showed on Little Round Top.
Today’s junior leaders go through months and even years of training – an advantage Chamberlain did not share. But over the past decade most of that training has been in conventional warfare. U.S. forces achieved lightning success in Iraq in 2003 because the Army had been practicing to fight that kind of force-on-force battle, where the bad guys wear different uniforms, drive different vehicles, and are out in front of you.
Now junior leaders must prepare and lead combat operations against an enemy whose tactics are constantly evolving. When they aren’t leading combat patrols, these young men and women are talking to local chiefs about opening schools; they’re overseeing medical attention for a community’s children; they’re hiring contractors to install sewer systems; they’re working hand-in-hand with the Special Forces, the CIA and State Department; they’re trying to calm sectarian tensions and teach an entire nation about the rule of law.
The dissonance can be staggering. One moment, soldiers on a foot patrol might have to dodge bullets from a rooftop sniper. Minutes later, when they prepare to search a house for signs of the shooter, they have to remember to be polite to the occupants, to respect their property, to avoid making more enemies in every building they enter.
The men and women leading soldiers today have to be every bit as creative as Joshua Chamberlain. It’s doubtful that any one of these leaders hold that fate of the entire struggle in his or her hands, as Chamberlain did, but they hold the precious lives of their soldiers.
But there is another parallel between Chamberlain and today’s leaders that should give us pause. Although Chamberlain became a well-known figure after the war and served four terms as Maine’s governor, it took Congress sixty years to award him the Medal of Honor. His reputation almost became a casualty of politics.
After April 1865 surrender, as the Union Army prepared to receive the battle flags of the last intact Confederate units, General Ulysses S. Grant chose Chamberlain to command the honor guard for the ceremony. As his worthy but defeated enemies marched by, Chamberlain had his men render a final salute. His sentiments and actions were consistent with Grant’s, who gave generous terms to the Confederates in order to being the healing process. But many in Congress were in a vindictive frame of mind. They wanted the rebels punished, and they lashed out at Chamberlain for his gesture. The former professor was officially censured, and his well-deserved Medal of Honor pushed aside.
The danger today is not that returning veterans will be victims of partisan politics. But our fascination with sound-byte politics shows how easily we can be distracted by the sensational. And when today’s Chamberlains return home, especially those who will carry physical and psychic wounds, they are going to continue to need our attention and support.
There’ll be talk about cutting veterans care and benefits, and in just a few years this war will be part of history, like the Civil War. It will be easy to forget these soldiers. But no matter how fascinated we are with pop culture, no matter how many pro athletes appear alongside their defense lawyers, no matter how many CEOs do the perp walk, we must not lose sight of what we owe to those who only wanted to serve us all.
All Contents of this website are Copyright Ed Ruggero
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