Over-Rated or Really Terrible Generals

This forum is for discussions on the noteworthy events, people, places, and circumstances of both the past and the present (note: pop culture etc... is on the back porch).
User avatar
SoupOrMan
Posts: 5685
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2008 2:58 am

Re: Over-Rated or Really Terrible Generals

Post by SoupOrMan »

No, it's because junior enlisted realized how tough it is to brush splattered asshole bits off of the freshly-painted rocks.
Remember, folks, you can't spell "douche" without "Che."

“PET PARENTS?” You’re not a “pet parent.” You’re a pet owner. Unless you’ve committed an unnatural act that succeeded in spite of biology. - Glenn Reynolds
User avatar
D5CAV
Posts: 2428
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2008 2:48 am

Re: Over-Rated or Really Terrible Generals

Post by D5CAV »

Robert E. Lee

After studying many of the battles Lee was involved, I kept trying to sync that with "Greatest Confederate General" polemic I was taught in high school history classes.

I finally figured out he was the greatest general for the United States, because he was instrumental in helping the United States defeat the Confederate States.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
User avatar
Kommander
Posts: 3761
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2008 10:13 am

Re: Over-Rated or Really Terrible Generals

Post by Kommander »

I have heard that one of the reasons Lee is thought of as being so good is that the early northern generals were really just so bad. I will say that his decision to surrender rather than start a guerilla is really what makes him great.
User avatar
MiddleAgedKen
Posts: 2871
Joined: Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:11 pm
Location: Flyover Country

Re: Over-Rated or Really Terrible Generals

Post by MiddleAgedKen »

For my money, Longstreet was the best the Confederates had.
Shop at Traitor Joe's: Just 10% to the Big Guy gets you the whole store and everything in it!
Langenator
Posts: 1155
Joined: Sun Jun 27, 2010 2:10 pm

Re: Over-Rated or Really Terrible Generals

Post by Langenator »

Kommander wrote:I have heard that one of the reasons Lee is thought of as being so good is that the early northern generals were really just so bad. I will say that his decision to surrender rather than start a guerilla is really what makes him great.
I sometimes wonder how discussions of Civil War generalship would change if Joe Johnston hadn't been wounded at Seven Pines, requiring Lee to replace him. McClellan, for all his faults, might well have backed Johnston into the Richmond defenses, (much as Sherman backed him into Atlanta two years later) and from there it would likely have been only a matter of time before Richmond surrendered. Siege warfare seems to be something Mac would have been well suited to.
Fortuna Fortis Paratus
User avatar
Vonz90
Posts: 4731
Joined: Fri Sep 19, 2008 4:05 pm

Re: Over-Rated or Really Terrible Generals

Post by Vonz90 »

MiddleAgedKen wrote:For my money, Longstreet was the best the Confederates had.
+1 on that.

However, while Lee was not a god of war or anything like some of his fan boys seem to think, but he was a competent general who mostly followed sound tactics and was good at battle management. He had a tough strategic hand delta to him and not wide enough athority to really do what was needed.

The right strategic action would have been to strip everything non essential from everywhere else and go on the offensive in the east as quickly as possible in the east. The political leadership seemed think that time was on their side, but they were wrong.

I think Lee understood the situation, thus the Maryland and Pennsylvania offensives, but he did not have the resources for such offensive operations. The real time to do it was in the first year, but of course he wasn't in command then.
Johnnyreb
Posts: 471
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2008 2:02 am

Re: Over-Rated or Really Terrible Generals

Post by Johnnyreb »

You should read John S. Thomason's bio of J.E.B. Stuart. It was the first bio of Stuart and it convinced me that he was the best general Lee had.

As an aside, Lee was the best, but even the best can have a bad day. Lee was an old guy, pretty old for active service, and not feeling so great physically. He was not at his best at Gettysburg.

Stuart always obeyed his orders with speed and energy and showed up when and where he was supposed to be, the exception being Gettysburg. Ignore that crap from the Gettysburg movie and book about him playing glory boy, and leaving the army with no cavalry for scouting and screening, he didn't. That stuff was fiction and it came from a letter Longstreet wrote and later retracted because he could not back it up with fact, since Stuart did not take the whole cavalry corps with but left some of it with the army to do that very scouting job. If I recall the bio right it was 2 or three brigades worth that stayed with the army. I don't think Stuart ever took his whole cavalry force with him on any of his "rides."

He did just what Lee had told him to do, he went out and raided and made lots of noise and then came on back. His mistake was that on his way back to Lee, he captured a rather large wagon train full of lovely supplies, a couple of hundred wagons if I recall right. A bonanza for the ever hungry Confederates. Taking it all back with him, which any self respecting Confederate General would certainly do, slowed him down by a few days in getting back to the main army, and thus arriving after Gettysburg had begun.

It is said that Heath started the fight by going into the town to look for shoes. But since he knew another Confederate division had passed through the day before it is obvious he would have known there were no shoes left to find. He just wanted to find a fight and he did, the shoes thing was just an excuse made up before or after he found his fight. Stuart being away on his raid had nothing to do with the battle getting started when and where it did.

Jackson's men were called the foot cavalry because of their famous forced marches. However, if Jackson would have got his ass on the road right away instead of sitting around being all melancholy and then suddenly charging out of camp to force march to where he was ordered to be, he might have arrived with his full force reasonably rested and ready to fight instead or arriving with half or less of them worn out and dog tired with the rest scattered along the way with their feet all blistered up and useless for fighting until they'd had some days of rest.

Longstreet, on the other hand, did set out in good time, didn't march his men into the ground, and arrived with his full force rested enough to fight hard and well. But Longstreet had a real ego problem, he considered his own opinions superior to everyone else's, even Lee. When he got orders he didn't like, he dragged his feet over it, or otherwise did not carry them out with energy/vigor.

Stuart didn't have that problem, whether he liked the orders or not it was full steam ahead in carrying them out. After Jackson was killed, Stuart took over his corps for a few days because one or two other generals Lee slated to do it got hurt or something. Stuart fought that corps very well, with energy and vigor, he proved in that brief time that he was more than just a dashing horse soldier. But Lee kept him as cavalry commander because he didn't think he had anyone who could replace Stuart as cavalry commander and do as well.

So instead he gave that corps to one of the Generals Hill, I forget if it was A.P or D.H. but it was the one who had gotten his leg blown off the year before and just came back to duty. Before that he'd been a firebreather, after he came back on duty minus one leg he was not a firebreather any longer. Which is why he did not take the hill when Lee left that "if practicable" loophole in his orders.

If Stuart had been commanding that Corps and Lee had said to him "It would be sort of nice if you could take that hill so we won't have the enemy entrenched on it in the morning, then dark or no dark, Stuart would have charged right up that hill and taken it. And then it would have been the Union once more trying to knock Lee's army off of the good ground and Lee likely would have won.

I've become convinced that Lee's true mistake that cost him victory at Gettysburg was not fighting it or charging the center or any of that. His mistake was in not placing J.E.B. Stuart in command of Jackson's corp as Jackson's replacement.
Johnnyreb
Posts: 471
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2008 2:02 am

Re: Over-Rated or Really Terrible Generals

Post by Johnnyreb »

Another interesting viewpoint on bad generalship is this video about how the army stopped relieving senior officers. Called "Why Our Generals Were More Successful in WWII. Worth a watch if you are into history. The US Army War College channel has some good stuff too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OehvY94N-WA
User avatar
Jericho941
Posts: 5180
Joined: Sun Aug 24, 2008 8:30 am

Re: Over-Rated or Really Terrible Generals

Post by Jericho941 »

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaah... well, the thing is, Lee didn't make any one single big mistake when it came to Gettysburg. He made a handful of medium-to-large-ish ones, and that was more than enough. Artillery had advanced somewhat in the 48 years since Napoleon threw in the towel, for example.
Post Reply