The Empty Chair: Eight Civil War Commanders and What They Taught Me About Leadership
What if you could sit across from Robert E. Lee and ask him what he was thinking at Gettysburg? Ask Ulysses S. Grant how he kept moving forward after failure. Ask Stonewall Jackson what made Robert E. Lee trust him so completely. Ask J.E.B. Stuart about the risks of initiative, A.P. Hill about conflict and promotion, William Tecumseh Sherman about purpose, Philip Sheridan about attacking problems, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain about character.
The Empty Chair creates those conversations.
Through historically grounded reconstructed interviews, Angelo DiTullio sits down with eight of the most fascinating military leaders of the American Civil War and asks the questions history left behind. The conversations follow each commander's life chronologically, examining victories, failures, relationships, rivalries, difficult decisions, and the moments that ultimately defined them.
These are not imagined conversations untethered from history. The battles, events, relationships, documented quotations, and decisions are grounded in the historical record. Where history cannot provide a direct answer, the responses are carefully reconstructed from the commander's writings, memoirs, correspondence, recorded conduct, and historical evidence.
But this is not simply a book about the Civil War.
Each conversation reveals a different quality of leadership:
Robert E. Lee - Duty
Ulysses S. Grant - Persistence
Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson - Resolve
J.E.B. Stuart - Initiative
A.P. Hill - Intensity
William Tecumseh Sherman - Purpose
Philip Sheridan - Offense
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain - Character
Their greatest strengths helped make them extraordinary leaders. Those same strengths could also become weaknesses when carried too far.
That may be their most important lesson.
The Empty Chair is about leadership under pressure, responsibility when decisions go wrong, trust between commanders and subordinates, learning from failure, knowing when to act, knowing when to change course, and understanding that leadership is rarely as simple as history makes it look after the outcome is already known.
Eight commanders.
Eight conversations.
Eight lessons in leadership.
And one empty chair.
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