Civil War: Generals before Grant.

[skipperbob]

You have to hand it to Little Mac that he was a great administrator. His caution was his downfall, but as I understand it, his spymaster was very much at fault, accepting reports of colossal Confederate armies at face value. Either his sources were lying or incompetent, but either way he accepted their work uncritically, as I understand it. Not the first or last time a commander has been let down by an abysmal intelligence officer...

He WANTED to believe he was greatly outnumbered. It gave him an excuse to delay and hesitate and be cautious in the extreme. One of the great enigmas of military history - a great organizer and moral booster whose soldiers worshipped him and yet when it came time to throw the dice and fight a battle - he just couldn't bring himself to do it. The classic example is Antietam - greatly outnumbered Lee and yet when he had finally broken through and had an entire corps in reserve to finish the Confederates off, he was unable to take the gamble. Lee was so successful in the battles of 1862 because he knew McClellan was so cautious.

 

[BombTaxi]

Am I right in thinking that the lost Confederate order which led to Antietam was considered to be a 'plant', and so McClellan held back even though he had full information about the Rebel army in his hands? Or have I just made that up from somewhere?

 

[syscom3]

Another set of books about the ACW that should be part of anyone's library, are those by author Bruce Catton. All well written and well regarded.

He and Shelby Foote were great writers.

 

[michaelmaltby]

".... In many ways, they set the template for the mass armies of Europe in the following half-century"

After a weekend of reflection, I'm willing tp agree with you, Parsifal

MM

 

[BombTaxi]

".... In many ways, they set the template for the mass armies of Europe in the following half-century"

After a weekend of reflection, I'm willing tp agree with you, Parsifal

MM

I think that was me? But what the hell, I'll share any compliments I can get

 

[michaelmaltby]

".... I think that was me? But what the hell, I'll share any compliments I can get".
Oops. My bad.

MM

 

[michaelmaltby]

I meant to point out to Parsifal that after weekend's reflection, , I somewhat agree with his assessment of Little Napoleon (Geo McClellan). That said, Parsifal, I want to quote you, to you: "Do not judge on abilities, but on choices". McClellan's record on choices (under the stress of war) is spotty - to be kind. The ultimate discredit was his decision to campaign for President against Lincoln (his former Commanding Officer). Let us appreciate that the United States of America is the only country that has held a democratic election while in the midst of fighting a continental-wide, vicious Civil War (Lincoln was re-elected). Weasel-George ran against Lincoln. It is to Lincoln's great credit that an election was conducted - and the soldiers voted - for Lincoln.

So yes - George McClellan was a master of some things military (to paraphrase Gilbert Sullivan ) but he fancied himself as a European General - a little spit and polish General. In contrast, I offer you the kind of brilliant - not from the ranks - Union Officer - (acting) General Benjamin Henry Grierson. A New England music teacher before the war - who rose through the ranks during the war and stayed on in the regular army as Colonel Grierson. Commanded the black buffalo soldier regiment(s) based in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Fought and won the Indian wars along the Mexican border by out-marching the Comanche warriors - to their water re-supply. Grierson ranks right at the top of brilliant amateur soldiers that the US has produced - that stayed on after war and became career soldiers.

The other point worth noting on this thread is that whole regiments of German Americans fought in the Union Army - under German American officers - leading them in German. (Some had fought together in the 1848 European wars).

And this - bloody riots in New York City in protest of fighting the war to free "the Blacks". The war was NOT popular which is what makes Lincoln so inspired.

As a Canadian I constantly repeat to associates ... you cannot understand the US and its "policies" (foreign, military, etc) unless you thoroughly understand the American Civil War. (The closest we come in Canada to understanding the trauma, was English Canada in 1914-18.)

Chairs,

MM

 

[renrich]

MM, you make an interesting point when you say the US cannot be understood without understanding the American Civil War. I think that there is a lot of truth to that. The impact that war had on this country was enormous, both in terms of the political and economic impacts but also in the psyche of the people involved and in the pysche of the children and children's children of the people involved.

Any study of that war must, however, include an understanding of the events in American History which led up to the war and what transpired after the war. Let me say though that the impact that the war had on the American People's psyche and their personality grows less and less every year. Let me make one point which, I think, illustrates what I mean. I was born in Texas in the mid nineteen thirties. My ancestors had come to Texas during the Republic and some fought against Indians and Mexicans. Some fought in the War of 1861-65 and some owned slaves. Now, Texas is a little different than the other states because it was once it's own nation but I have heard citizens in my age group from other states of the Southern Confederacy echo the same sentiments. Growing up, I considered myself as a Texan first and a citizen of the US second. I still feel that way, especially today, given our federal government. I served in the US Army and am proud of that service and would serve again if called, ( in a geriatric corps) LOL. But, if Texas, by some miracle, could successfully secede from the US today, I would move back in a heartbeat.

Before the War Between the States, most people in the South felt more allegiance to their state than to the United States and I believe that feeling was also present in the North, perhaps to a lesser extent.

 

[BombTaxi]

I think the ACW was a direct result of the sentiments which led to the American colonists ejecting the British 80 years earlier, and the war cannot be understood without first understanding the Revolution. In many ways the entire political and social history of the USA ties back to the Revolution and the Civil war, and you cannot understand the sentiments ren has expressed today without going back to 1776, maybe even a century earlier to the very reasons that the first colonists left Britain to being with.

 

[syscom3]

McClellan seems to me to be the perfect general you want to train and organize whole armies. But he wasn't a "fighting" general who will go for the jugular of his enemy. He just wasn't aggressive.

Rerich, your final comment reminds me of a passage I had seen in one of Bruce Cattons books. Before the war, we were a collection of states with little national identity. After the war, we were a nation with a "forged in fire" national identity. Perhaps it was due to the soldiers from all the states traveling and campaigning through out the nation.

 

[BombTaxi]

I think the ACW was a direct result of the sentiments which led to the American colonists ejecting the British 80 years earlier, and the war cannot be understood without first understanding the Revolution. In many ways the entire political and social history of the USA ties back to the Revolution and the Civil war, and you cannot understand the sentiments ren has expressed today without going back to 1776, maybe even a century earlier to the very reasons that the first colonists left Britain to being with.

 

[michaelmaltby]

".... He just wasn't aggressive." In the FIELD. I think he was plenty aggressive about many things - including his conduct with Lincoln.

Can you imagine the following: with an unpopular war in progress, LBJ decides to run for a second elected term and General Westmorland runs against LBJ on "conduct of the war" as the issue. (I think the Lincoln-McClellan contest is just that kind of thing. Few Generals make good Presidents - Ike and Washington are the exceptions.

The differences between North and South are huge - the south was born out of Plantation agriculture which (with no disrespect intended) predates feudalism as a form of social activity/organization. The rich hold most of the land which is only productive with slavery. The free masses (non rich majority) are struggling for subsidence -- 10 acres and a mule.

In the North - industrialization came quickly - and while the gap between rich and poor way be the same, the population was modernized by the industrial revolution. Industrialization gave machinery to both the farm and the factory.

BombTaxi - I'm not sure how far you have to go back. What is more critical to understand is that the Founding Fathers conceived a document that was in complete denial about the dependence on slavery. Denial on a grand scale is something that the US seems to persist at .... joining European WW2, illegal immigration, drug (prohibition), etc. etc. But that tendency is embedded right from the start.

Lincoln's war wasn't about slavery, it was about union. Preservation of the Union.

In Canada we have an interesting - and confounding similarity. Quebec (nationalists) want to succeed from our Dominion. They yearn to be a nation, a people, a unique society. But their ancestors came from a pre-Revolutionary France that was FEUDAL. Quebec has made more progress since 1960 (50 years) than they made from 1763 (defeat at Quebec and Treaty) until 1960. Association with Canada is deemed colonial yet that association is the very thing that has pulled Quebec out of its natural feudal state. But I digress .. .

MM

 

[renrich]

Sys, I believe the point about the soldiers traveling is a good one. The US was a much more rural country then than it is now and many people then lived and died within the immediate area where they were born. Of course, though, many soldiers on both sides had served in Mexico or in the West and still thought of themselves as Virginians or Georgians or Texans. Another example of how times have changed fairly recently though is that the grade school in Dallas I attended was named Stonewall Jackson and a portrait of that gentleman hung above the entrance to the cafeteria. My great aunt taught at another grade school nearby named Robert E Lee. I cannot feature today a new school in Dallas being named after a Confederate general. There is a park near downtown Dallas called Lee Park with a statue of Lee on Traveler and his aide on another horse in the park and many movements have been initiated to tear down the statues, which are enormous and rename the park. So far they have failed but one day they will probably succeed.

Another difference is that, in the forties, in school, we had many semesters of Texas history and Texas Independence Day, March 2 and San Jacinto Day, April 21, were state holidays. Today those days are not observed as holidays and Texas history is barely covered in school.

 

[renrich]

MM, there is no question that the plantation culture had a strong influence in the South, especially in it's politics but it is very misleading to think that the South comprised a few large rich plantations with the rest of the population being practically subsistence farmers. To begin with the population of the South was largely descended from the Borderers, the Scotch Irish, who migrated to America from 1700 to 1775. A book I recommend to you is "Albion's Seed " by David Fischer, a history of the US which traces today's regionalism to colonial days. This book will also outline many of the causes of the War which were rooted deeply within the four different waves of immigrants from England. It has been said that the Revolutionary War would never have taken place if the Backcountry Borderers had not been present in America. Secession would probably have not taken place without them either.

These small volume farmers and tradesmen comprised the vast majority of the population of the South and they owned the vast majority of the land and the property. Some had slaves but many did not. Actually, the increased popularity in the South of slavery and the huge runup in the value of slaves mostly took place after the invention of the cotton gin so that upland cotton became a viable cash crop.

However, there is no question that Lincoln's War was all about preserving the Union, not about freeing the slaves, which poses another philosophical question.

 

[michaelmaltby]

Fair enough, renrich, but in face of that, you have Lee's troops marching barefoot. That's not a middle class army. The South became fascinated by pre-feudal culture - Rome, Greece (Sparta, Athens, Rome - all familiar city names): the architecture -- Roman and Greek. The South's cultural touch-stone was pre-feudal Plantation Agriculture -- modeled after slave states: Greek cities and Rome.

The South was very modern in very many ways - but people who bought into the culture were buying into a social model that was 1500 years out-of-date. That may seem a brutal assessment but on the whole I think it's true.

Chairs,

MM

 

[vikingBerserker]

BombTaxi - I'm not sure how far you have to go back. What is more critical to understand is that the Founding Fathers conceived a document that was in complete denial about the dependence on slavery. Denial on a grand scale is something that the US seems to persist at .... joining European WW2, illegal immigration, drug (prohibition), etc. etc. But that tendency is embedded right from the start.

I have to disagree with that as many hours were spent debating that very topic while the US Constitution was being drafted. Congress was given the authority to stop the importation of slaves within 20 years and outlawed slavery to new states and to the Northwest Territories. That's about as far as it could go since the Southern States would have nothing to do with the abolishing of it.

Slavery and our Founding Fathers by James Frassett is a good source.

 

[BombTaxi]

My point was more about state's right's than slavery. The original colonists left Europe to live lives that they could not live in the Old World. The Old World power's followed them to the Americas and re-imposed the very government that the colonists had originally fled from - hence the Revolution. Eighty years later, the Southern states, rightly or wrongly, felt that the Federal government was taking away their right to self-government - hence the Civil War. Even today, a section of American society fears the encroachment of the Federal government on their right to self-determination - hence the Republican right, the Tea Party and even fringe movements like the Huttaree. Throughout American history there is a tension between the right of states to rule themselves and the tendency of the Federal government to centralise. It seems that this tension can only be resolved by periodic resort to violence. To an outsider looking in at the present-day American political and social landscape, this can only be understood, IMHO, if you follow the thread back through American history as I have done.

 

[michaelmaltby]

Fair points, Viking and BombTaxi. I agree that States vs Federal has been a tension in US government since the "beginning" but this is not entirely a unique tension to the US. It is more pronounced in the US than in other democracies like Canada, Australia or New Zealand - but there is a thread that links all democracies together and that is the tension of government trying to centralize power and grow itself while other forces (voters, state assemblies, special interest groups, etc.) push back. This tension doesn't exist in non-democracies because in these nations governments' interests lie in government - and they face no pressure to downsize or devolve. This pressure comes from democracy, capitalism and free markets.

Not to put too fine a point on slavery, but I believe it is fair to say that many people immigrated to the new world to achieve or possess what they could not achieve or possess in the old world. (There are exceptions to this, true.) But the question was: what kind of new world was the new world going to be? If your dream was to own 5,000 acres of river bottom and grow cotton, with a white house and shady grounds, then your dream almost certainly included owning slaves. The dream was simply not achievable without slavery (at that time - today it's thanks to Mr. J. Deere and Mr. Monsanto )

If on the other hand your dream was to create and tend a small mixed farm, live with like-minded neighbors. share Christian fellowship and be accountable only to God, then that dream was achievable with the help of a strong wife, sons and daughters. (Think Quakers in Pennsylvania).

You mention "limiting slavery", Viking, and I am well aware of that train of thought - but - the purpose was to limit the expansion of the southern (plantation economy) states - and history shows that before the Civil War there were numerous nasty, nasty clashes over the issue to slavery. By then there was no getting rid of slavery - only trying to keep it bottled up, and that never works.

Food for thought - would abolition have been successful in Britain if the sugar plantations had been in Britain and not in Barbados or Jamaica? The struggle to end slavery in Britain was achieved in large part by focusing public attention on a commodity - sugar - and organizing a boycott. Would THAT approach have worked in the US. Don't think so.

We know from the Lincoln-Douglas debates that Mr. Lincoln had views on slavery that were - to say the least - pragmatic. For example: Federal Government to abolish future slavery and PURCHASE all existing slaves. To do what with them ..? Turn 'em lose? Give them land?

While the Civil War was NOT about slavery, but about succession; in the end the only way slavery was going to be stopped in the US was by a terrible war in which one side utterly crushed the other and imposed its will. That it reached such a point is due to what I noted in an earlier post - there was denial at the outset by men who were conflicted between what was "right and Godly" and their personal lifestyle. How many were slave owners - landed Virgina gentlemen?

And today ....? How many Americans truly appreciate the extent to which the country is dependent on illegal immigration?

The public wants cheap food, fast service, personal service .... at what price?

Chairs,

MM

 

[renrich]

To begin with, it is interesting to me that this discussion includes people who are interested in the anatomy of the States War who are not even citizens of the US, I believe. I have no quarrel with them or their opinions and perhaps it illustrates a point I want to make.

Before I make the point, however, let me address the shoes question. The Confederate Armies were largely composed of illiterate, Anglo Celt, Protestant, yeoman types. They owned shoes when they joined the army and many had uniforms. The Confederate Cavalry troopers had to supply their own horses, which they were paid a stipend for and when those horses were killed or took lame, those troopers had to go get another one. The reason the The Texas Brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia was infantry, when many in the Brigade wanted to be cavalry was that Texas was too far away to get remounts. The point is that the Confederate Armies were not all paupers and could not afford shoes. The fact is that the Confederate Armies were very good at fighting but they were lousy at supplying themselves with everything including shoes. Once those shoes they brought with them wore out, many went barefoot. In the winter of 1863-64, in East Tenneesee, the Texas Brigade could be tracked through the snow and ice by bloody barefoot prints.

Now to my point and please remember this is only my opinion. The victors always get to write the history of wars. So I was schooled like every other American to believe this about the Civil War. The South was mostly agrarian and the main crop was cotton and that cotton was raised on large plantations owned by rich aristocrats who used slaves as farm laborers. Many of the slaves were badly mistreated. The North was more industrialized and a lot of the people in the North were abolitionists who wanted to do away with slavery which was an abominable institution. Of course we heard about John Brown and his doings. In the election of 1860 the South was nervous because Lincoln, who we were taught was practically a saint and who was undoubtedly one of the best if not the best president the US ever had, was anti slavery and if he won, slavery might be abolished and those rich planters would have no one to hoe their cotton.

Well Lincoln won and the South seceded and the South fired on a US fort and war ensued and the South fought manfully but was outnumbered and outgunned and after a bloody struggle, the Union won, the slaves were all freed and the Union was preserved and then a scoundrel named Booth shot Lincoln which was an absolute tragedy because then Reconstruction was horrible because Lincoln would have treated the Southern States better.

After much study and cogitation,I see a different picture. Many people in the South, most of whom did not own slaves were afraid that if the slaves were freed, they would run amok, raping and pillaging. That drove many to vote for secession. The Anglo Celt does not take kindly to authority or to anyone telling him what to do. Many in the South felt that the people in the North did not have the best interests of an agrarian South in mind. I do not believe that Lincoln was all he is cracked up to be. In fact, I believe he was an idealist who mishandled the situation and, along with his cabinet, precipitated a tragic war which need not have happened. Politics is the art of the possible and Lincoln lost sight of that. Remember that Lincoln strongly opposed the Mexican War in 1846-48. Where would the US or for that matter the world have been if Lincoln had had his way and Texas, New Mexico, parts of Colorado and all of Arizona and California had remained part of Mexico. If he had not allowed the attempt to resupply Fort Sumter in April, 1861, causing Beauregard to open fire and if Lincoln had not called up 75000 troops to put down the Rebellion, then it is very possible that Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Arkansas would not have seceded by June and a compromise might have been reached. Slavery was going away anyway and it seems doubtful to me that the freed slaves in the South as well as the already black freedmen in the North were tremendously better off as a result of that bloody war.

Aside from the more than 600000 men who died during the war, how moral is it to force at gunpoint the citizens of a political entity like a state, that joined the Union of it's own free will, back into the Union if it wants out of the Union.

 

[BombTaxi]

As one of the foreigners interested in the Civil War, I must admit that my interest only really developed after some relatives moved to NC. Speaking to them, it struck just how important events of a century and a half ago still are in the US. The Confederate flag is still seen in NC, and people tend to talk about The War of Northern Aggression. Having visited Richmond, I was further intrigued by the 'other side' of the story, and as you say, the 'well known' history is only half a story at best. It has always been clear to me that the war was not about slavery, and Lincoln held back on emancipation because he was not sure his own soldiers would support it - some of them didn't in the event. I can appreciate the desire of the southern states to defend their understanding of the country's founding principles. I can empathise with their need to defend their culture from being overwhelmed and eliminated by a another, largely alien neighbour (after all, isn't that at the heart of nearly all wars?) But I cannot agree that slavery was going away. My own understanding (limited as it is) is that slavery was an integral and necessary part of the Southern economy - imagine the effect on prices across the board if a huge unpaid labour pool suddenly had to be paid.And why would the South have fought so desperately, to the point of committing atrocities against black soldiers, to defend an institution which was dying out anyway?

And the freedmen of 1865 were not immediately 'better off' - they still faced a century of discrimination and abuse before they were treated with the full respect and dignity to which they were entitled. But their emancipation was an ultimately vital first step in that long process, and to suggest that in any way that emancipation was not of any great benefit to them is something I cannot personally agree with.