two years. It covered a wide variety of issues: the Mine Crater incident during the Siege of Petersburg, the Fort Pillow episode, the military expeditions at Fort Fisher and up the Red River. Extensive testimony was taken on ordnance, contracts to supply ice for the war effort, turreted Monitor-class warships, and the massacre of friendly Cheyenne Indians at Sand Creek, Colorado. 1866 A two-volume supplement was published in 1866 to present reports of several witnesses: Major Generals Sherman, Thomas, Pope, Foster, Pleasanton, Hitchcock, Sheridan, and Brigadier General Ricketts. Legacy Tap shows that Radical Republicans used the committee to challenge Lincoln's role as commander-in-chief. During the 37th and the 38th Congresses, it investigated every aspect of Union military operations, with special attention to finding the men who were guilty of military defeats. Its members assumed an inevitable Union victory and considered failure to indicate evil motivations or personal failures. They were skeptical of military science and, especially, the graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point, many alumni of which were leaders of the enemy army. The committee much preferred political generals with a known political record. Some members suggested that West Pointers who engaged in strategic maneuvers were cowardly or even disloyal. It ended up endorsing incompetent but politically loyal generals. Tap finds that "the committee's investigations, its leaks to the press, and its use of secret testimony to discredit generals such as McClellan certainly were instrumental in creating hostility between the army's West Point officers and the nation's civilian leaders." Finally, because of its collective ignorance of military science and preference for the heroic saber charge, "the committee tended to reinforce the unrealistic and simplistic notions of warfare that prevailed in the popular mind," writes Tap. The Committee on the Conduct of the War is considered to be among the harshest congressional investigating committees in history; Gershman says that it conducted witch-hunts, rather than fair inquiries. Senator Harry S. Truman cited the committee's style as an example of what not to follow when he led the Truman Committee, which investigated military appropriations during World War II. Truman stated that he did not want to second-guess war strategy. His committee succeeded in demonstrating government waste and inefficiency to assist the war effort. Notes Sources Hyde, Bill. The Union Generals Speak: The Meade Hearings on the Battle of Gettysburg. Louisiana State University Press, 2003, . Reid, Brian Holden, "Historians