Why were lawyers and politicians such good generals?

The Union Army did not have a course of instruction named OCS but they did in fact have something very similar.
In order to become a USCT officer one had to be well recommended to become an officer and pass a Board of Examination . In addition to be appointed to become a Lt one had to pass " School of the soldier and Company". To be appointed a Capt or
Major one had to pass"School of the Battalion. To be appointed a Lt. Col or full Col one had to pass "School of the Brigade.
Sounds a whole lot like OCS or in Vietnam it was known as"shake and bake".
Source a PHd thesis that one can google"Selection and training of USCT Officers by Major DV Van Every or try this link
oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=htm&identer..
see p.3 and 49
Leftyhunter
There were examinations but there was no formal instruction. This, of course, also advantaged lawyers who were very used to taking a book and teaching themselves something.
 
On the Union side:
There were over 800 Union Brigadier Generals alone during the war. Meanwhile, there were only 638 West Pointers who served in the Union army during the war. Not all the West Pointers made it to general. Some were only 21 or 22 years old at the time of the war, others died or were seriously wounded before rising.

http://www.nytimes.com/1865/11/12/n...inted-each-year-rebellion.html?pagewanted=all
 
For a man without previous military experience perhaps the most important predictor of whether he would rise to general was the day his first regiment elected officers. Men who were passed over then were very unlikely to become generals later. Get a thousand men together from a specific geographic region and they are are likely to elect political leaders, who were often lawyers. Union regimental commanders were typically picked by governors who would be more likely to know other politcians and lawyers.
 
Being a lawyer also gave a man connections.

Consider Pat Cleburne. When he first came to Arkansas he was a pharmacist. Had he stayed a pharmacist he would likely not have risen to division commander. He had only lived in the South for a decade at the start of the war and he had no family there. However, when he became a lawyer, he developed ties to other lawyers involved in the Democratic Party and became close friends with Thomas Hindman.

Cleburne had served in the British army, but only in Ireland and never in battle. His service was never in any sort of command of other men.
 
In those days, colleges principally turned out either: 1) preachers, 2) doctors or 3) lawyers. In fact, many colleges were affiliated with one of the prevailing Christian denominations. Emphasis was placed on classical Greek and Latin studies. Evidently not many ministers of the gospel found army life appealing. Doctors often became army surgeons. That leaves lawyers to fill the remaining officer ranks, especially at the senior levels, of a greatly expanded army of citizen-soldiers that did not have enough military graduates to meet the demand.
Remember, you didn't have to have much formal education to be a lawyer, think Abe Lincoln, but it helped. As said by others, lawyers as politicians had leadership skills and connections which put them in line early for command positions. Probably most were weeded out early and it's the successful ones we hear about.
 
There were examinations but there was no formal instruction. This, of course, also advantaged lawyers who were very used to taking a book and teaching themselves something.
I quoted the the names of various courses of instruction that were required in order to obtain rank in the USCT. They equate to today's OCS.
Leftyhunter
 
I'm not sure you can even make a solid case that lawyers and politicians were such good generals.

The elected leaders on both sides certainly considered the professional military men as the only ones qualified to lead the armies -- Lincoln and Davis always turned to professionals like Halleck and Grant or Lee and Johnston to command the armed forces.

And there are certainly numerous examples of 'political generals' who screwed up and had to be sidelined.

The non-professionals who succeeded as military leaders are rather the exception, don't you think?
 
I'm looking a little farther down the roster. Even the best general is only as good as his troops' performance-- and they're only as good as their training and small-unit leadership. I think a strong lens needs to be trained on the company-grade and field-grade officers who were primarily responsible for training their regiments and leading them on the field.
 
Remember, you didn't have to have much formal education to be a lawyer, think Abe Lincoln, but it helped. As said by others, lawyers as politicians had leadership skills and connections which put them in line early for command positions. Probably most were weeded out early and it's the successful ones we hear about.
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Robert.… think of Lincoln … good call. IIRC Lincoln had a total of 14 months of 'formal' school. Being in a 1 room school house had its advantages. My dad went to one & he said a person good get a pretty good 7th grade education by the time you finished 5th grade!
 
I'm looking a little farther down the roster. Even the best general is only as good as his troops' performance-- and they're only as good as their training and small-unit leadership. I think a strong lens needs to be trained on the company-grade and field-grade officers who were primarily responsible for training their regiments and leading them on the field.
Good point. I think the best or most successful commands had a combination of all those factors: good leadership at all levels, troops with high moral and esprit de corps, adequate training and discipline, confidence in their superiors and vice versa. An officer who knows how to balance out discipline and respect usually turns out good troops. Cockrell's Missouri Brigade is a good example. Francis M. Cockrell was an attorney before the war with no prior military or militia experiences, yet he rose through the ranks from captain up. As a brigade commander he was known as an excellent tactician and drill master; his brigade possessed all of the above. As a leader he knew just the right balance between discipline and respect, and his men would fallow him anywhere for that.

Contrary to popular belief, Hood's Texas Brigade also had a few lawyers serving as company- and field-grade officers, though most turned out to be sufficient commanders. Of course the Texas Brigade wasn't known as the best drilled and disciplined unit in the war, but the troops had confidence in most of their commanding officers - and had a strong esprit de corps, as is often seen in the best of units.
 
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