AH Poll: Best American General

Which of these was the best American General in the 2nd Revolutionary War?

  • Lee

    Votes: 26 68.4%
  • Jackson

    Votes: 7 18.4%
  • Taliaferro

    Votes: 1 2.6%
  • McLaws

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Bragg

    Votes: 3 7.9%
  • Hardee

    Votes: 1 2.6%

  • Total voters
    38
With all the polls on here, I have never yet seen one where the people involved are in an AH. So, besides polling, you also have to figure out what the TL is....


I think that Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson speak for themselves. However, some of the other people may be less familiar:

Taliaferro commanded Jackson's lead division on the march to Manassas Junction, and he managed to deceive Kearny and flank him (Kearny, imagine that!) thus enabling Jackson to reach the old Manassas battlefield before Pope's force, meager though it was.

McLaws commanded one of Longstreet's "mini-divisions", but after both Longstreet and D. H. Hill were shot (thankfully neither fatally), he took command of the southern half of the field and destroyed Reynold's division, thus surrounding the assembled Yankee forces.

Bragg commanded the Army of the Tennessee (bet you didn't know that existed) and used the AoNV's success to reclaim Kentucky. To do so he defeated Buell's force (at least McCook's force) at Perryville.

Hardee, though, really was the ground commander at Perryville - plus, by fighting the other wing of the Yankee force, under the traitor Thomas, to a standstill, he enabled Bragg to reach the Ohio and so claim Kentucky even before the final surrender at Baltimore.
 
The Union forever

Firstly this seems one sided and begs the question of what is a good general. I therefore opt for Grant as he effectively won the war and saved the union and unlike Sherman didn't wage war on civilians although he wasn't too concerned about collateral damage. Grant wins in military terms.

I have a lot of time for Bobby Lee as he tried to fight a war by a set of rules. Good guy wrong side. The best General the confederates ever had. Mclellan as he was incapable of winning the war and later stood against Lincoln.
 
OT: this entire poll is not in OTL, so such a comparison is impossible.

AT: Andrew Hudson, what the * are you talking about?

Assuming, even for a moment, that the best general could have a been a Yankee (laughable, as they lost), your choices seem bizarre. Grant quailed in front of A. S. Johnson's (rest his soul) attack, and would have lost the battle if the American army was better trained, or if he wasn't massively reinforced on the second day of Pittsburgh Landing. Sherman, meanwhile was only a division commander and did not handle his force well at P. L.

And McClellan? it was 50% his fault that we won the war (the other 50% was Jackson's amazing stuff in the Valley, but then you should know that), because he refused to attack anything. Of course, probably we could have halted his attack anyway, even if Joseph Johnston didn't think so, but I will admit that McClellan did have numerical superiority and might have pulled off a battlefield victory. It shouldn't have changed anything, though....(great idea for a TL, that). Once Lee started attacking, Glendale was only a matter of time, and after that the war was essentially won (I only put McLaws and Taliaferro on the poll to placate the extremist group saying that Pope and others had some chance of halting Lee's juggernaut).
 
Firstly this seems one sided and begs the question of what is a good general. I therefore opt for Grant as he effectively won the war and saved the union and unlike Sherman didn't wage war on civilians although he wasn't too concerned about collateral damage. Grant wins in military terms.

I have a lot of time for Bobby Lee as he tried to fight a war by a set of rules. Good guy wrong side. The best General the confederates ever had. Mclellan as he was incapable of winning the war and later stood against Lincoln.

Uh...massively missing the point here.
 
Firstly this seems one sided and begs the question of what is a good general. I therefore opt for Grant as he effectively won the war and saved the union and unlike Sherman didn't wage war on civilians although he wasn't too concerned about collateral damage. Grant wins in military terms.

I have a lot of time for Bobby Lee as he tried to fight a war by a set of rules. Good guy wrong side. The best General the confederates ever had. Mclellan as he was incapable of winning the war and later stood against Lincoln.

Grant? The one who lost St. Louis for the Yankees because he was too drunk to wake up and read his orders??? The only reason Grant remained in uniform throughout the war was that Lincoln was desperate.

It's obvious. Lee and Hardee. If you want a decent Yankee general (if that's not a contradiction in terms) then the holding action Rosecrans led in Ohio was about the best-fought piece they had. But even at that he was responding to a diversionary attack. If Rosecrans had been in Cleveland instead of falling back to Youngstown after the Battle of Marietta the Union just might have hung on a bit longer...
 
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I voted for Bragg. Really, you'd think the man could get at least some credit for his leadership of the Army of Tennessee. After all, he's the guy whose campaigns convinced Kentucky to join the Confederacy, enabling Lee to use that state as a staging ground for his famous attack through Ohio and on to Cleveland that cut the Union in half and enabled Lee to go for the kill. Bragg also did a very good job of overcoming the defense of Chicago, and that's a feat no one can deny.
 
Ol' Stonewall, obviously.

OT: I thought the poll was about which general would've been the biggest asset to the Union at first.
 
Bragg was so unreasonable though, especially in the way he dealt with General Breckenridge. Admittedly Breckenridge didn't do himself any favors with Bragg but most of his disagreements with Bragg had merit. One of the major gripes between the two was in the planning for Kentucky.

Breckenridge, a Kentuckian, believed the best way to get Kentucky to join the Confederacy was by peaceful coercion of the existing State government while simultaneously driving the Union forces out of the State and making it fall firmly into Confederate hands.

Bragg on the other hand ignored the existing State government and installed a new one, with the backing of his close friend and admirer Jefferson Davis. To ensure that this new government had power in Kentucky Bragg willfully and sometimes enthusiastically crushed any support for the Union in that state, even if the support was only a small establishment or non-aggressive. Breckenridge protested loud and long against Bragg for this and that drove an even bigger wedge between the two than had already existed.

It was partly because of this that Bragg is today regarded in Kentucky as "Butcher Bragg" but also the incident that gives him this title was his forcing Gen. Breckenridge to attack an entrenched opponent who had the advantage of the high ground and manpower, unaided by artillery and with no help from other units at the Battle of Fallis Run. Bragg's subsequent expelling of Breckenridge and the Kentuckians as class from his Army in the aftermath of Fallis Run did little to improve his reputation with the people of Kentucky.

So my vote would be with the Marble Man, Robert E. Lee.

Breckenridge went on to do sterling work in Louisiana with Richard Taylor, P.G.T. Beauregard and Joe Johnston but like most of the action that took place in the smaller theaters they are mostly ignored.
 
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I thought that was Andrew Jackson not Stonewall Jackson. There are other great Generals you forgot; Andrew Jackson, George Washington, U.S. Grant, Sherman, McArthur, Patton, Eisenhower, and Zachory Taylor.

By the way, Grant was not a drunk, he was what we today would call a "Light Weight". He couldn't hold his liqure, otherwise he didn't drink alot. He was a heavy smoker though.
 
I thought that was Andrew Jackson not Stonewall Jackson. There are other great Generals you forgot; Andrew Jackson, George Washington, U.S. Grant, Sherman, McArthur, Patton, Eisenhower, and Zachory Taylor.

By the way, Grant was not a drunk, he was what we today would call a "Light Weight". He couldn't hold his liqure, otherwise he didn't drink alot. He was a heavy smoker though.

This is a poll about an Alternate Timeline. In this Timeline the Confederate States of America won the war, apparently by Braxton Bragg being more successful an managing to attack the Union western states of Ohio, Idiana and Illionois while Robert E. Lee gain victory after victory in the East.

This means that instead of that War being called "the American Civil War" it is being call "the 2nd Revolutionary War"

The Union Generals in TTL were apparently very poor though with the likes of Thomas, Sherman and Grant I find that unlikely.

As to the comment about Grant losing St Louis because of being drunk I would suggest that, in the timeline proposed by this poll, that Grant was accused of being drunk but wasn't and lost St Louis more through other factors (perhaps he was undermined by Halleck or Beull who wasn't as well informed on the situation or maybe he was simply out-generaled though that is even more unlikely) and the accusation of drunkeness towards him was something to help drag his reputation through the mud because of his failures tather than being the thing that caused his failures.
 
None of the above. It was obviously Giuseppe Garibaldi, who came to help free people from Northern oppression.

He's often overlooked because the Confeds don't like to admit they own their freedom to a foreign anarchist general
 
This is a poll about an Alternate Timeline. In this Timeline the Confederate States of America won the war, apparently by Braxton Bragg being more successful an managing to attack the Union western states of Ohio, Idiana and Illionois while Robert E. Lee gain victory after victory in the East.

This means that instead of that War being called "the American Civil War" it is being call "the 2nd Revolutionary War"

The Union Generals in TTL were apparently very poor though with the likes of Thomas, Sherman and Grant I find that unlikely.

As to the comment about Grant losing St Louis because of being drunk I would suggest that, in the timeline proposed by this poll, that Grant was accused of being drunk but wasn't and lost St Louis more through other factors (perhaps he was undermined by Halleck or Beull who wasn't as well informed on the situation or maybe he was simply out-generaled though that is even more unlikely) and the accusation of drunkeness towards him was something to help drag his reputation through the mud because of his failures tather than being the thing that caused his failures.

OOC: Grant's reputation for drunkenness stemmed from an incident early in his career when he was stationed at an isolated post in California, far from his wife and family. We'd probably have classified it as clinical depression today, but back then the symptoms could easily have been mistaken for drunkenness. The rumors and the reputation would dog Grant for the rest of his army career; only the Civil War gave him the opportunity to show what kind of officer he truly was.

It would be very easy to see another general, perhaps more responsible than Grant was in the theatre, using Grant's personal problems as an excuse for his own failings.

And of course the whole thing was written from the perspective of a Southern lay historian whose views are colored by nationalism and a natural contempt for a defeated foe. ;)
 
I voted for Bragg. Really, you'd think the man could get at least some credit for his leadership of the Army of Tennessee. After all, he's the guy whose campaigns convinced Kentucky to join the Confederacy, enabling Lee to use that state as a staging ground for his famous attack through Ohio and on to Cleveland that cut the Union in half and enabled Lee to go for the kill. Bragg also did a very good job of overcoming the defense of Chicago, and that's a feat no one can deny.

(OT: I'm not entirely sure that Robert E. Lee would ever abandon Virginia to launch a raid across Ohio. He was always far too concerned with how Virginia would be effected by his decisions to ever do such a thing and really doing something so reckless would leave Virginia far too exposed to a Union counterattack and leave Richmond almost defenseless to that counterattack, so I'm going to substitute Robert E. Lee for Stephan D. Lee and go into it here.)

I am of the opinion that Chicago made Bragg untouchable by history. If he hadn't died at the moment of his greatest success then he would have been more open to criticism by the post-war commentators of the conflict.

The Third Battle of Chicago (as it should be more accurately named) was fought not because it was something Bragg wanted to do but something he had to do.

He had launched the invasion of Indiana with the singular intent of reaching the Great Lakes and taking the fight to the very heartland of the Union. He did this without taking proper care in whether or not his supply lines would be protected.

Bragg's plan was to use his Army of Tennessee (a force of around 60,000) to attack through Indiana and reach the Great Lakes while leaving Stephan D. Lee's Army of Kentucky (a force of around 30,000) to keep William Rosecrans Army of the Cumberland (a force of around 60,000) busy.

Bragg managed to slip past Rosecrans and get to Batesville, Indiana before Rosecrans even knew he was gone. Rosecrans set out to follow him but was soon blocked by S.D. Lee's Army of Kentucky and forced to withdraw following the Battle of Braysville.

Rosecrans worried about losing his job if he let Bragg go unhindered into the Northern States but he needn't have worried because his superior in the Area, Henry Halleck, informed him that he had brought John Pope back from fighting the Indians to lead a new Army against Bragg and told Rosecrans to focus on Kentucky.

Rosecrans however did take one more move against Bragg. He deployed around 18,000 men under the command of Philip Sheridan to harass and strangle Bragg's supply lines. The small Army of Kentucky would be too hard pressed with Rosecrans to to actually make any real difference in protecting the supply lines

S.D. Lee realized that he wouldn't be able to protect Bragg's supply line and fight Rosecrans at the same time and, because his orders from Bragg were only to focus on Rosecrans, he ignored Sheridan and focused on Rosecrans.

Bragg had the opportunity to deploy any one of his three Corps (Hardee's D.H. Hills of Polk's Corps) to attack Sheridan and have a good chance of destroying his force at Hamburg before he got too far into his Indiana campaign but chose not to.

That decision was one of the worst he ever made.

After a series of running battles with Pope's Army of Idiana across that state (Pope tending to withdraw when Bragg go the upper hand, having been taught a harsh lessen in Virginia about being too offensive and letting himself be flanked) Bragg was involved in three Bloody assaults on on Chicago, the first of which he won but was unable to take the city, the second he lost but was not force to withdraw and the final one he won and took the City.

The whole reason Bragg chose to attack Chicago in the first place was because Sheridan had stopped all supplies reaching him and he believed that he could get fresh supplies from Chicago. Though Bragg's final assault of the City left the Army of Tennesse in charge of it Bragg himself fell in the attempt to a lucky shot to his left brest and Hardee, who took temporary charge of the Army of Tennessee following Bragg's death, found the supply depots in the City too strongly defended to get anything from.

The Army of Tennessee was soon forced to withdraw right back to Kentucky, masterfully handled by Hardee, and the whole campaign was a failure but because Bragg managed to gain control, for a short time, over Chicago and before he died the Army of Tennessee were perceived to be in a very strong position Bragg faced no criticism for his poor decisions.

President Jefferson Davis said that the loss of Bragg was the biggest tragedy the Confederate states had suffered since the death fo A.S. Johnston.

But, even though Bragg fell, the west was to see another great commander emerge when S.D. Lee took the fight to Ohio.

S.D. Lee's Ohio Campaign saw him easily outmaneuver Rosecrans and gain easy access to any part of that state he wished. Rosecrans did a very good job of chasing S.D. Lee and bring him to battle when he needed to but S.D. Lee always somehow managed to escape with his army intact and continue to threaten Ohio.

It was largely through S.D. Lee's work with the Army of Kentucky in Ohio that allowed the Army of Tennessee to regain itself after the failure of the Indiana campaign and become an effective force in the theatre again. They would never again launch an invasion like Bragg's Indiana or Kentucky campaigns but they did, nevertheless, keep the enemy at bay long enough for the war to be won.

The fact that Stephan D. Lee's invasion of Ohio was much more successful than Bragg's invasion of Indiana or that S.D. Lee took Cleveland with far less casualties than Bragg took Chicago is often overlooked by general history just because the fall of Chicago coinciding with the death of Bragg is so much more romantic in imagery.

S.D. Lee isn't as high profile as Bragg was either so he does tend to get overlooked.
 
As a native of the former state of New York, I always have to wonder what would've happened had history changed even in the slightest. Remember, it wasn't until the 1950s that the CSA finally surpassed the impoverished Union in terms of manpower and industry; back during the days of the Civil War (I refuse to call it a "Revolutionary War," since that insults the likes of true Americans, like Adams and Hamilton), it would've taken a miracle for you Rebs to even stand a chance. The fact that you had a general as capable as Braggs, without which there never would've been a European intervention, is pure luck, and nothing more. If Bragg had been removed from history, and Kentucky and Missouri stayed in the Union, the Confederacy never would've stood a chance.

Although my country is no more, I can always dream...
 
Uncle Joe and Ol' Bory go to New Orleans

Joseph E. "Uncle Joe" Johnston and P.G.T. "Ol' Bory" Beauregard were two high ranking generals in the Confederate Army that, through bad luck and bad connections, ended up fighting most of the war in obscurity out west.

Uncle Joe is most remembered today as being the General who withdrew from McClellan in the Peninsular and whose wounding lead to the rise of Robert E. Lee but he was more important to the Confederate cause than that.

Following the recovery from his injury at Fair Oaks Johnston was placed in the command of the Department of the West, In theory this gave Joe command of all the confederate forces in Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi but in practice he only had control of around 9,000 men and his direct power was so compromised by the President that he could hardly do anything without the Presidents approval.

So Joe was left as the figure head commander of the Western Theatre with really no power at all.

P.G.T. Beauregard is most remembers now, outside of Lousiana at least, as the hero of Fort Sumter, commander of the Confederate victory at 1st Manassas and the Guy who nearly lost the West at Shiloh and Corinth.

Following a short period where Beauregard commanded the Army of Mississippi and retreated in the face of overwhelming numbers to Corinth President Davis was presented with an opportunity to remove Bory. Beauregard took a little while off to recover from an illness. Davis claimed he did so without informing anyone and replace him with Bragg who then set about driving the Union back before invading Kentucky.

Beauregard declared himself fit to command again but to his dissapointment he was overloked for command of the three main Armies (the Army of Northern Virginia [Lee], the Army of Tennessee [Bragg] and the Army of the Trans-Mississippi [Kirby Smith]) and was charge with commanding the Vicksburg defenses, a job that required very little effort as he and his 30,000 men only had Union Gunboats to fight.

So there was Ol' Bory kicking his heels in Vicksburg doing little to nothing and then there was Uncle Joe sitting in Chattanooga doing nothing but pencil pushing.

As Bragg pushed further into his Kentucky Campaign, winning the Battle of Perryville, Johnston and Beauregard began a corispondence with each other. They argued over strategies and debated the situation on all fronts. They both felt slighted by President and wanted to do something to get their honor and reputation back to where they thought it sould be. The prefect opportunity to do so was with New Orleans.

Without informing the President and totally behind his back the two planned to unite their forces with those of Richard Taylor's Army of Louisiana to form a new army and retake New Orleans. Before they could bring their plans to actions however one more thing happened.

The Battle of Fallis Run.

Soon Joe Johnston received word that John C. Breckenridge's 5,000 Kentuckians were to join his meager force at Chattanooga and be kept in reserve but Johnston would use them himself. Soon after Breckenridge arrived at Chattanooga Johnston brought him into his conspiracy and Breckenridge agreed to join Johnston on his move down to Louisania.

Johnston's forces met up with Beauregard (who had left 10,000 men at Vicksburg as a garrison) at Le Tourneau, Mississippi before crossing into Louisiana and joining forces with Richard Taylor at Palmyra Creek.

This new force (around 46,000 men) was christened the Army of New Orleans, signifying the intent of its commanders and quickly reorganized by Johnston into a three corps system.

Johnston was in overall command but often held councils of war with his Corps commanders to decide the best course of action. 1st Corps commander was officially Beauregard but in practice he spent most of his time help Johnston with overall strategies and tactics so the 1st corps commander was effectively General John S. Bowen who had impressed Beauregard in Vicksburg and was his closet aide. 2nd Corps was commanded by the brilliant military mind of Richard Taylor and John C. Breckenridge commanded 3rd corps. The Cavalry fell under the immediate command of General Thomas Green.

The new Army of New Orleans was opposed in the area by Nathaniel P. Banks Army of the Gulf (at its height a force of around 30-50,000). Banks was a political soldier who held his post more through political connections than talent but nevertheless he proved to be a formidible enemy for the ANO.

The first encounters between the forces ended in Union Victory and soon the ANO was being treatened with being pushed out of Louisiana alltogether but the turn around came at, ironically, the Battle of Retreat, when Banks fell into a trap laid by Johnston and his Army was mauled. From then on the theatre was more of a seesaw for a long while.

The first President Davis discovered that the Army of New Orlean existed was when he sent demands to Joe Johnston's office at Chattanooga for reinforcement to be sent to Bragg in Kentucky only to be told that Johnston wasn't there and hadn't been there for 4 months.

Davis understandably wanted to courtmarshal Johnston and Beauregard for making such major moves without his consent but he was unable to do so because of the major victory the Army of New Orleans achieved at St Francisville that routed the Army of the Gulf. That victory prevented Davis removing and courtmarshaling Bearuegard and Johnston and their actions after that took any power Davis had to do so out of his hands.

In March 1864, with the Army of New Orleans camped within a weeks march of New Orleans itself General Beauregard recieved news via telegram that his wife had passed away. A Unionist paper in New Orleans claimed that Mrs. Beauregard's condition had been worsened by the "traitorous actions" of her husband. This claim was not well recieved and at the funeral of Mrs. Beauregard around 8,000 people turned up to pay their respects, General Banks provided a steamer to carry her body up river for burial in her native parish and the senior commanders of the Union Army of the Gulf and the Confederate Army of New Orleans attended the fenueral in a short cease-fire that would be lifted the next day. P.G.T. Beauregard never forgot this jesture by Nathaniel Banks.

Despite being on the verge of retaking New Orleans in early 1864 the final capture of the City by the Confederate would not happen until November of that Year when the Union garrison was being withdrawn for other purposes and the Naval superiority of the Union had been broken. Beauregard rode at the head of the Army of New Orleans as it entered the city and it was he who met with General Banks and accepted the surrender.

The Louisiana Campaign had turned into a festering sore for the Union. While they had to deal with the threat of Robert E. Lee in Virginia, Stephen D. Lee in Ohio, Bragg (until his death), Hardee and D.H. Hill in Indiana, Thomas C. Hindman in Arkansas and Missouri and Kirby Smith in the Trans-Mississippi they had to keep sending more and more men down to New Orleans, men they could have used better else where, just to keep hold of the city.

For the Union the Louisiana campaign was a failure but one with some success and one that the immediate commanders in the area, Banks in particular, could come away from with their heads held high.

For the Confederates the Louisiana Campaign was an astounding success. Johnston and Beauregard were established, and still remembered today West of the Mississippi, as the Best Generals in the West and the Army of New Orleans was, and still is, considered one of the finest and most unappreciated Armies to ever fight on the North American Continent.
 
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