By Peter G. Tsouras
The vital role of the military all-source intelligence in
the eastern theater of operations during the U.S. Civil War is told through the
biography of its creator, George H. Sharpe. Renowned historian Peter Tsouras
contends that this creation under Sharpe’s leadership was the combat multiplier
that ultimately allowed the Union to be victorious.
Sharpe is celebrated as one of the most remarkable Americans of the 19th
century. He built an intelligence organization (The Bureau of Military
Information – BMI) from a standing start beginning in February 1863. He was the
first man in military history to create a professional all-source intelligence
operation, defined by the U.S. Army as “the intelligence products,
organizations, and activities that incorporates all sources of information, in
the production of intelligence.” By early 1863, in the two and half months
before the Chancellorsville Campaign, Sharpe had conducted a breath-taking
Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB) effort. His reports
identified every brigade and its location in Lee’s army, provided an accurate
order-of-battle down to the regiment level and a complete analysis of the
railroad. The eventual failure of the campaign was outside of the control of
Sharpe, who had assembled a staff of 30-50 scouts and support personnel to run
the military intelligence operation of the Army of the Potomac. He later
supported Grant’s Armies Operating Against Richmond (AOAR) during the Siege of
Petersburg, where the BMI played a fundamental role in the victory.
His career did not end in 1865. Sharpe crossed paths with almost everyone
prominent in America after the Civil War. He became one of the most powerful
Republican politicians in New York State, had close friendships with Presidents
Grant and Arthur, and was a champion of African-American Civil rights.
With the discovery of the day-by-day journal of John C. Babcock, Sharpe’s
civilian deputy and order-of-battle analyst in late 1963, and the unpublished
Hooker papers, the military correspondence of Joseph Hooker during his time as
a commander of the Army of the Potomac, Tsouras has discovered a unique window
into the flow of intelligence reporting which gives a new perspective in the
study of military operations in the U.S. Civil War.
ISBN 978-1612006475, Casemate, © 2018, Hardcover, 592 pages,
Maps, Photographs & Illustrations, Appendix, End Notes, Bibliography &
Index. $34.95. To purchase this book click HERE.
