How do we manage overstatement?

Book titles are under the control of marketing departments. Sometimes they align with the book content, sometimes not. We often see in titles and marketing lit that this or that battle might have won the war.

Can battles win a war? I think ACW readers are deeply invested in this fallacy, witness the Gettysburg phenomenon.

Readers are also deeply invested in the fallacy that armies could be annihilated. Mr. Lincoln led them down this false path and Mr. Lincoln was never wrong about anything, ever (so we are told).

Likewise, ACW readers are deeply invested in the Great Man of History winning THE BATTLE by annihilating whatever army wherever to conclude the war. If you have never served in the military, this serves as plausible military science.

It seems painful to me that such should be the case in 2012 (or any earlier year).

A new book has emerged, Defeating Lee: A History of the Second Corps, Army of the Potomac. Can a corps win a war? How does a military unit win the ACW?

If you believe in battles, you need to believe in all of them, not some of them, and thus to win the ACW, you would need to defeat MG John G. Walker in Texas, would you not? And the Second Corps had nothing to do with him.

"Defeating Lee" does not win the war. This is painful for so many ACW readers to accept. It might get you closer to the end, but it is nowhere near the end.

The end is the surrender of forces in Texas AND the abandonment of a guerrilla warfare option AND capitulation of the rump Confederate government en route to Havana.