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Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?
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Author:  Scape [ Mon Jul 05, 2021 10:22 pm ]
Post subject:  Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?




Author:  Tricks [ Tue Jul 06, 2021 8:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?

Before watching, if I remember right, Bragg, Hood, Pemberton, and I think Benning were all pretty shit generals.

Author:  xerxes [ Tue Jul 06, 2021 11:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?

Tricks Tricks:
Before watching, if I remember right, Bragg, Hood, Pemberton, and I think Benning were all pretty shit generals.


They were. And the rejoinder to that will always be Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Forrest. But they were always going to lose. The Union has more men and more resources than the South.

Author:  Scape [ Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?

True, but that wasn't the aim of the insurrection. Their whole plan was to cause enough damage to force the north to sue for peace terms that would be favorable (IE they keep the slaves) to the south.

At no point was the souths intent to conquer the north but to tell them to 'stay in their lane'. and to that end the Jim Crow laws was a pyrrhic victory for the south.

Author:  JaredMilne [ Tue Jul 06, 2021 3:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?

What was the proportion of shit generals to good ones among the Union as compared to the Confederates? I'm definitely not an expert on this, but the best ones I'm aware of in the Union were Sherman, Sheridan and Grant. Or maybe the Union incompetents are more famous? It's too bad BartSimpson stopped coming around here-he could probably answer this no problem.

But the larger point the first video made is that the Union focused more on big-picture strategy, while the Confederacy was obsessed with short-sighted tactics in individual battles. I'm pretty sure that's where the military saying "amateurs study tactics, while professionals study logistics" came from.

Author:  rickc [ Tue Jul 06, 2021 3:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?

JaredMilne JaredMilne:
What was the proportion of shit generals to good ones among the Union as compared to the Confederates? I'm definitely not an expert on this, but the best ones I'm aware of in the Union were Sherman, Sheridan and Lee. Or maybe the Union incompetents are more famous? It's too bad BartSimpson stopped coming around here-he could probably answer this no problem.

But the larger point the first video made is that the Union focused more on big-picture strategy, while the Confederacy was obsessed with short-sighted tactics in individual battles. I'm pretty sure that's where the military saying "amateurs study tactics, while professionals study logistics" came from.

Pretty sure that General Lee was on the Confederate side.

Author:  JaredMilne [ Tue Jul 06, 2021 7:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?

rickc rickc:
Pretty sure that General Lee was on the Confederate side.


*facepalm*

That should have been Grant. Corrected.

Author:  Thanos [ Tue Jul 06, 2021 8:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?

Confederates had better generals at the beginning but lost too many of them through attrition. Union had better mid-rank generals at the beginning but they were led by popinjays & martinets like McClelland - it wasn't until Gettysburg that the fops had been completely removed from command due to their own incompetence and replaced by the new breed type like Grant, Meade, Sherman, and Sheridan. The end of Confederate supremacy on the field could be seen as early as Antietam - when a Union army would be determined to hold a position despite taking heavy casualties then the best the South could achieve in a single battle would be a tactical draw. The debacle at Chancellorsville was almost an exception to the way battles in the mid part of the war were developing, and that one was entirely due to Hooker's foolish deployment of his flanks that were easily routed.

Once the Union understood that all they had to do was hold the line, let the Confederates exhaust themselves in attacking strong positions, and then bring up the overwhelming strength of their reserves then the pattern that would win the war was cemented in the tactics & strategy books. Too bad so many men ended up dying before the glory-hounds, well-connected morons, and outright bozos were kicked out of the Union command hierarchy altogether.

Author:  JaredMilne [ Tue Jul 06, 2021 9:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?

Thanos Thanos:
Confederates had better generals at the beginning but lost too many of them through attrition. Union had better mid-rank generals at the beginning but they were led by popinjays & martinets like McClelland - it wasn't until Gettysburg that the fops had been completely removed from command due to their own incompetence and replaced by the new breed type like Grant, Meade, Sherman, and Sheridan. The end of Confederate supremacy on the field could be seen as early as Antietam - when a Union army would be determined to hold a position despite taking heavy casualties then the best the South could achieve in a single battle would be a tactical draw. The debacle at Chancellorsville was almost an exception to the way battles in the mid part of the war were developing, and that one was entirely due to Hooker's foolish deployment of his flanks that were easily routed.

Once the Union understood that all they had to do was hold the line, let the Confederates exhaust themselves in attacking strong positions, and then bring up the overwhelming strength of their reserves then the pattern that would win the war was cemented in the tactics & strategy books. Too bad so many men ended up dying before the glory-hounds, well-connected morons, and outright bozos were kicked out of the Union command hierarchy altogether.


How did those idiots get their command positions in the first place? Was it through knowing the right Congressmen, buying their commissions the way wealthy British buffoons like Lord Cardigan did or because Abraham Lincoln sucked at choosing who to promote?

Author:  Thanos [ Tue Jul 06, 2021 11:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?

Six of one, a half dozen of the other. For whatever reasons, and I'm sure there's a multitude of them, the planter-class nobility in the South was simply better at field-level leadership than their counterparts in the North were during the first two to three years of the war. I have no doubt that corruption in buying officer commissions was just part of it. At that stage in the American military system places like West Point certainly weren't capable on their own of turning out enough competent officers to staff the massive national army that was being built. Hence the "need", for lack of a better word, for rich men who were presumed to be competent to fill in the gaps where trained staff officers weren't available.

The assumption would have been that wealth equals leadership quality. The prevailing wisdom of the time would have been that no one could have become rich without being a leader. Obviously that's a complete crock when things like the ridiculous sons and grandsons of the original wealth-earner turning out to be little more than hair-brained fops being more the rule than the exception, and then being something the Northern military didn't find out until the morons succeeded in getting most of their own men gunned down and the survivors running away in a panicky rout. The first three years of the war was effectively a weaning-out period where hard experience only finally succeeded in purging those clowns out of the officer ranks.

I'm not sure why the South managed to avoid the same effect that plagued the Northern ranks. It's not like they had a shortage of their own of wide-eyed dreamers fantasizing about Napoleonic-grade cavalry charges smashing everything in front of them. Maybe the relationship between Lee and Jefferson Davis was different, where Lee could build the army he needed simply because didn't have to acquiesce to favouritism the same way Lincoln and the Northern military leadership did. Maybe Lee could literally tell the politicians to go fuck themselves and stay out of his way so he could win their damn war for them, something that couldn't be done in the circles of corruption and the boys network the Union had in Washington DC. Or maybe it's as simple as the South genuinely believing that they were fighting for their homes and for their very lives, something that forced them to not tolerate the sort of idiocy in their own officer cadre because they just couldn't afford to have half-cocked fools jeopardizing the very existence of their way of life.

I wish Bart was still here. He could explain this far better than the rest of us can.

Author:  Sunnyways [ Thu Jul 08, 2021 7:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?

On the best we need you, Bart. I would venture to suggest that Grant understood the changing nature of warfare better than most and was willing to accept the horrific casualties necessary for victory.

Here’s a few of the worst including the wonderfully named Gideon Pillow, perhaps a descendant of Brave Sir Robin:

$1:
After gaining ground trying to cut an escape path for the Confederates during the February 1862 siege of Fort Donelson by Union forces led Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Pillow pulled the troops back to the fort to resupply them. As a result, he relinquished ground paid for with his soldiers’ blood. Fearful of capture, he turned over command to Brig. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner and fled the fort on the night of February 16 in a boat that carried him across the Cumberland River to safety. For his cowardly performance, Pillow was severely reprimanded. Nevertheless, he commanded a brigade in Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge’s Division at Stone’s River, where once again he demonstrated his incompetence and cowardice, making him one of the worst Civil War generals who fought for the Confederacy.


https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboo ... als-169521

Author:  herbie [ Fri Jul 09, 2021 11:42 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?

General Pillow Guy.

Author:  Sunnyways [ Sat Jul 10, 2021 12:56 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?

herbie herbie:
General Pillow Guy.

:D

Author:  herbie [ Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?

Did the CONFEDERACY Have BETTER GENERALS?
- No they're all just as dead as the Union's.

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