Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Age of the Big Battalions => Topic started by: vtsaogames on 10 August 2021, 08:02:39 PM
-
During the American Civil War, Abe Lincoln sacked a number of Union generals. And they usually stayed sacked. McDowell never got a major independent command again, Pope was sent off to chase the Sioux, Burnside and Hooker both got lesser commands and McClellan turned to the political arena after being relieved the second time – with the same lack of success.
But Jefferson Davis had to go back to the same well over and over. Of the first crop of full Confederate generals, only Lee was a success and got along with Davis. Albert Sidney Johnston died early at Shiloh and was not in the running afterwards. Beauregard wasn't bad – when he wasn’t feuding with and plotting against Davis. Joe Johnston was nearly as cautious as Little Mac; specializing in retreats and excuses – when he wasn’t feuding with and plotting against Davis. Then there is Braxton Bragg, a good planner and trainer who became indecisive in the face of the enemy, who feuded with his subordinate generals incessantly and lacked the common touch. Routed at Chattanooga, he finally resigned. His buddy Davis soon brought him back as virtual chief of staff. From this position he was able to continue his feud with his old subordinates and continue his baleful influence on the star-crossed Army of Tennessee. When Bragg’s generals had twice before agitated to have Bragg removed, one of the reasons Davis sustained him was he wasn’t fond of the other choices – Beauregard or Joe Johnston.
Only two others were later promoted to full general. Kirby-Smith was a good brigade commander who was promoted way above his level of competence. He became the telegraph-bound administrator of the trans-Mississippi. The other was John Bell Hood, a brilliant brigadier, a fine division commander, an average corps commander and one unfortunate army commander. Enraged by his subordinates in the Army of Tennessee (see a pattern here?), he sent Pat Cleburne and thousands of others to their deaths at Franklin. He then hung on outside Nashville long enough for George Thomas to come out and shatter his rump of an army.
When a full Confederate general was unsuccessful, he remained in the small stable of available army commanders, all but the martyr Albert Sidney. Was Davis incapable of firing someone or did the Confederate Constitution tie his hands?
-
Confederate Constitution tie his hands?
Not just his hands. Right to the very end, when Lee's army of
Northern Virginia were in rags there were warehouses full
of new uniforms, but they belonged to a different state.
If you go to war to defend 'States' rights it is difficult to
tell them what to do.
The ancient Greeks knew that in times of great troubles
you have to suspend Democracy & they would bring in
a Tyrant. Their trouble was often getting rid of the Tyrant
when the problem had gone, or was going.
Churchill, fighting for freedom, said, 'Truth is so important
that it needs to be guarded by a bodyguard of lies'.
Someone else said of the Confederacy, 'Too small for
a Country. Too large for a Lunatic Asylum'
Davis also was a bit of a meddler who thought he knew
what the Military should do. Lincoln just kept removing
those that weren't successful until he got ones that worked.
-
...If you go to war to defend 'States' rights it is difficult to
tell them what to do...
Now that you mention it, I recall Georgia's Governor Joe Brown repeatedly threatened to secede from the Confederacy, right up until Sherman made the point moot.
The two major differences between the USA and CSA constitution: the latter spelled out the right to own slaves and the right to secede.
-
'Too small for a Country. Too large for a Lunatic Asylum'
Priceless. Absolutely priceless.
-
The Lost Cause likes to state that all the Confederate generals were great and far better than their Union counterparts.
However, Davis really didn't have a lot of options. Most of the top generals had serious flaws. Even Longstreet, an excellent
corps commander failed when he had an independent command. You work with what you got.
-
I'd wager the more competent and level headed commanders realized early on that the confederacy was doomed to failure and simply kept their heads down.
-
...Someone else said of the Confederacy, 'Too small for
a Country. Too large for a Lunatic Asylum'...
While that's a fabulous quote, when the war started various military pundits thought the South would win because it was too large to be easily conquered. What they didn't consider was how steam engines in trains and ships would shrink the distances, allowing large forces to be supplied much further from their bases than previously. One thing the Union got down fairly early was keeping their forces stocked with beans and bullets. Getting the sharp end in better shape took longer.
-
While that's a fabulous quote, when the war started various military pundits thought the South would win because it was too large to be easily conquered. What they didn't consider was how steam engines in trains and ships would shrink the distances, allowing large forces to be supplied much further from their bases than previously. One thing the Union got down fairly early was keeping their forces stocked with beans and bullets. Getting the sharp end in better shape took longer.
The best aim for the South was not to win, just to stay in existence
until the North tired of the war. They also, erroneously, assumed
that Britain (then still a Super Power) would have to come to their
aid because of the need for cotton. It is a fascinating 'What if?'
that wargamers love, British intervention. Almost happened too,
Union ship had the absolute temerity to stop a BRITISH ship &
remove two Confederate Spies. Lincoln had the good sense to
quietly release them to Canada, saying to an aide, 'One war at
a time'.
There was an SPI board game (Dixie) that assumed the ACW
ended in stalemate only for it to bubble over again in the 1930s.
The ACW with TANKS & AIRCRAFT !!!! Another one for us to play.
(See LAF for just such a thing)
-
'Too small for a Country. Too large for a Lunatic Asylum'
Priceless. Absolutely priceless.
+1 - and something that ought to be reckoned with today, but States Rights has one heck of a Half-life (and a lot are still losing there's lives over it too).
-
The best aim for the South was not to win, just to stay in existence
until the North tired of the war.
That almost happened. Atlanta and Sheridan in the Valley turned it around, made the war seem winnable.
There was an SPI board game (Dixie) that assumed the ACW
ended in stalemate only for it to bubble over again in the 1930s.
The ACW with TANKS & AIRCRAFT !!!! Another one for us to play.
TANKS, AIRCRAFT? What about GAS? Pepperoni pizza would provide some of that...
Never got around to playing Dixie, tend to stick to the ones that actually happened.
Whatever floats your boat, though.
-
Didn't the game Dixie also have a variant that placed it also in modern times with jets ect?
-
Didn't the game Dixie also have a variant that placed it also in modern times with jets ect?
Been soooo long ago I don't remember. ???
-
To be fair* Roosevelt failed to punt the likes of Mark Clark and Douglas MacArthur, much bigger failures on much bigger stages. Even Truman, the last US president to sack a senior general famously sacked MacArthur for insubordination not his innumerable other failings. As Harry said:
“ I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”
* Quite a feat being fair to someone like Davis. ;)
-
To be fair* Roosevelt failed to punt the likes of Mark Clark and Douglas MacArthur, much bigger failures on much bigger stages. Even Truman, the last US president to sack a senior general famously sacked MacArthur for insubordination not his innumerable other failings. As Harry said:
“ I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”
* Quite a feat being fair to someone like Davis. ;)
The Truman quote is fabulous.
-
Right to the very end, when Lee's army of Northern Virginia were in rags there were warehouses full of new uniforms, but they belonged to a different state.
Not just uniforms - there were also thousands of men kept back in state militias that could have been sent to the front. Plus they had a real problem with guerrillas in areas that remained loyal to the union, as well as needing yet more thousands to guard against slave uprisings/desertions.
-
Yet at the (almost) end they employed black infantry.
-
Yet at the (almost) end they employed black infantry.
Yeah, in small numbers, over a year after Cleburne suggested doing it en masse. Davis and crew were shocked, said he was an abolitionist. Cleburne never got his deserved shot at corps command. He was certainly the best division CO in the western army by far.
I suspect Cleburne's version of abolition did not include the vote. It would have been emancipation on Confederate terms in return for combat.
-
Mmmm? Slaves fighting for the state.
Where did they get the idea from, Sparta perhaps?
-
He actually mentions the Helots of Sparta in his letter proposing the mass freeing of slaves.
-
He actually mentions the Helots of Sparta in his letter proposing the mass freeing of slaves.
There really is nothing new under the sun. :)
-
It's all Greek to me.....
-
Mmmm? Slaves fighting for the state.
Where did they get the idea from, Sparta perhaps?
Brazil has a long tradition of organizing slave armies. In the War of the Triple Alliance, which began in 1865, thousands of slaves were sent to fight Paraguay after the free whites got sick of dying en masse.
-
In a way it's a pity it didn't come to pass at an earlier junction . I doubt the irony of fighting for a regime that wanted to keep them enslaved against one seeking to free them would have bypassed many prospective slave draftees in the Confederate army. Mass desertion at the earliest opportunity seems likely and armed slave rebellions were hardly unknown in the US.
It would have been a security and logistical nightmare anyway. In Brazil during the Guerra do Paraguai, with perhaps one or two notable exceptions, slaves were integrated into existing units made up of the rainbow of ethnicities that constitute Brazil. Even where there was a heavily dependence on Afro-Brazilian draftees, the units weren't technically segregated. You can't imagine that happening in the old CSA. I mean the US Army wasn't desegregated until 1948 for fucks sake.
So would the CSA have had to form special units to ensure that the slave regiments didn't do a bunk en masse or start shooting their masters? Sounds a bit tricky to me.
Of course the various medieval Arab, Egyptian and Ottoman Armies managed to make it work for centuries so perhaps old Jeff Davis was looking to the east for inspiration.
-
I remember reading a statement by a slave who, after the war, said something like "The day they would have given us weapons would have been the last day of the war". I can't find the citation at the moment, but I'll look...
But the Confederate resistance to arming slaves shows very well that they themselves did not believe their propaganda about happy and loyal slaves...
-
Please forgive posting to an old thread. The only General that Davis removed from command was Joe Johnston. He commanded the Army of Tennessee. He was reassigned in July of 1864. He was removed for lack of aggression.
“If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone: ‘Died of a Theory.'”
Jefferson Davis
-
https://www.clevelandcivilwarroundtable.com/too-small-for-a-republic-too-large-for-a-lunatic-asylum/
-
I doubt that the Confederacy raised any black regiments, I suggest that it is one of those stories that has grown in the telling!
-
It has. Historians have shown that the whole black CSA soldiers is a myth.
-
It was approved by the CS Congress on March 13, 1865. It was an act of desperation. There may have been one small group that marched down main street in Richmond, very late in the war. It amounted to nothing.
“We must decide whether slavery shall be extinguished by our enemies and the slaves be used against us, or use them ourselves.” - R.E. Lee
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/confederacy-approves-black-soldiers
“If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong.” - Thomas Howell Cobb: Letter to Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon
https://magthehistorian.com/2016/02/07/298/
“What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?” - Confederate Congressmen
-
That small group was maybe a company or two, certainly not a regiment. They marched but I'm not aware of them actually fighting. It was a few days before Richmond fell.
There are stories of 5,000 to 7,000 slaves fighting as individuals for the Confederacy. Contrast this with the 180,000 Blacks who fought for the Union, in many cases after first escaping from the Confederacy.
The ones who fought for the slave power might be explained by Stockholm syndrome.
-
I doubt that the Confederacy raised any black regiments, I suggest that it is one of those stories that has grown in the telling!
I believe there was a free black regiment in Louisiana/New Orleans but they mostly had them walk up and down for propaganda photographs.
I believe they did fight but only to cover the retreat of other states regiments when they were pushed out of New Orleans shortly before its fall or liberation depending on your point of view.
The term regiment is also a bit generous as I think it was only able to recruit a few hundred or so, hardly thousands.
-
Correct. Just another lost cause myth. Never amounted to anything.
-
Please forgive posting to an old thread. The only General that Davis removed from command was Joe Johnston. He commanded the Army of Tennessee. He was reassigned in July of 1864. He was removed for lack of aggression.
Johnston was removed from command of that army, only to get it again after Hood wrecked the army. Davis removed Beauregard from command of that same army in 1862, but Johnston and Beauregard were both still full generals and available for army command.
When Lincoln canned people, they didn't get a second shot at commanding a major army - except for McClellan. Pope was sent out to deal with the Sioux, Buell became a troop trainer, Burnside and then Hooker got lesser commands. But whenever Davis went to the well, he had the same crew to pick from. Kirby-Smith and Hood were added to the pool. The first was a clerk. The second had, in Lee's words, "too much of the lion and not enough of the fox".
-
I don't believe McClellan ever got a second chance. He was commander of the Army of the Potomac that is it.
Lincoln hoped to replace him with Pope but that dream died at Second Bull Run.
-
I consider the Antietam campaign a second chance. True, little Mac was still officially the head of the AoP but most of his troops had been siphoned off to Pope. Of course, after Pope was thrashed at Second Bull Run Lincoln had no other real choice than to put everything back under little Mac.