Best leader to succeed McClellan in 1862?

TFSmith121

Banned
I don't disagree about Hooker, but my thought on

Sumner no. Age is a factor given what a general was supposed to do at the time, and what Sumner would himself try to do. He probably knows he is ill and certainly has no stomach for the politics of managing his Corps Commanders. His previous performance is questionable, certainly nothing that would indicate he is the next Army Commander in Waiting and an ability to follow orders implies someone is giving the orders. Giving him an elderly CoS does not help.

The problem with the notion of splitting the AoP operationally is that its not that much bigger than the ANVa. There is the continual risk of being defeated in detail, which arguably is what happens at Chancellorsville.

I don't disagree about Hooker, but my thought on Sumner as a theater commander is that he restores the "professional/above politics" imprimatur (which the AotP et al needs after McClellan and Burnside, certainly) and he's a fighter.

And Humphreys was in active harness in the field (as Meade's cos and then as CG of the II Corps, relieving Hancock) until 1865. "An elderly COS" he is not; he's actually an hell of a soldier.

The figures I have (BaL) are ~117,000 US, ~78,500 rebel at Fredericksburg and ~130,000 US and ~61,000 rebel at Chancellorsville. Seems like enough to give Reynolds a detached force to raise hell in the Shenandoah.

Best,
 
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Theatre command is conceptually very innovative. I can’t see a guy born when Napoleon I was kicking ass in Italy inventing it. Or anyone being able to operate it on a scale. Even Moltke with all his advantages.

A force in the Valley is a separate force and detached for weeks. Now that may be a good idea in itself but its really two armies separated by a mountain range with the lower exit pluggable from CSA reserves, there are quite a lot possible just not regularly deployable. A small army there is containable. A large one and you run the risk of either giving Lee the opportunity to destroy the AoP or slip it and destroy the large detachment with superior numbers. Lee does have very significant intelligence and recon advantages when he is in Virginia.

The problem you get is the Confederates ability to detach a very large part of the ANV for days at a time and no one knowing about it until they descend on you a la 2nd Manassas campaign, or Chickamauga or Chancellorsville.

The chance for a non political commander of the AoP is non-existent after Lil Mac, its probably non-existent after Washington and highly unlikely after Andy Jackson. Everyone knows what happens to successful US generals, they run for office it’s in noone’s interest to have a non political GinC when there is the chance of getting your man in as GinC.

Humphreys, whatever his later record is an elderly (for the job and era) staff officer who had a few good days in combat. Solid, yes in 62 a reasonable choice as a staff officer yes, but not an obvious one and it’s not like anyone had good Division commanders spare or that the CoS job was seen as being more than chief administrator for the field army. Prussia this ain’t. Making the CoS role important means elevating study of the Prussian system of 1812-15 over that of the Napoleonic ( I or III) or Wellingtons for that matter. The fact that it does work very well is not obvious.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Actually, it's the US "Department" concept and there's

Gannt the chartist;10525149 - Theatre command is conceptually very innovative. I can’t see a guy born when Napoleon I was kicking ass in Italy inventing it. Or anyone being able to operate it on a scale. Even Moltke with all his advantages.

Actually, it's the US "Department" concept and there's this guy named Halleck who basically was doing it as of 1861-62... when he held dpeartmental (i.e., theater) command and Curtis, Pope, Grant, and Buell (ultimately) commanded in the field beneath him, and pretty competently, actually. He failed in 1862 trying to get Pope and McClellan in harness, of course, but that's as much on Pope and McClellan as Halleck, and why I suggest Sumner might be able to make it happen. Essentially, he is a "northern" RE Lee, with all that implies, in terms of respect. Grant did it sucessfully in 1864-65, but he had to grind through the likes of Butler, Sigel, et al first. Sumner may not have to do that, given his rank and experience. I'm looking for some alternative than what happened historically, basically, that doesn't involve bringing Grant east.

A force in the Valley is a separate force and detached for weeks. Now that may be a good idea in itself but its really two armies separated by a mountain range with the lower exit pluggable from CSA reserves, there are quite a lot possible just not regularly deployable. A small army there is containable. A large one and you run the risk of either giving Lee the opportunity to destroy the AoP or slip it and destroy the large detachment with superior numbers. Lee does have very significant intelligence and recon advantages when he is in Virginia.

Again, the AotP in this period was easily 30-40 percent larger than the ANV; detaching some piece of it under someone well-regarded as ready for independent command (Reynolds). Is it a guarantee of success? No, but Hooker's strategy wasn't either (obviously) and Sheridan et al showed the impact it would have. The Shenandoah was the granary for northern Virginia; take the hard hand of war to it in 1862, and things will certainly change for the US cause.

The problem you get is the Confederates ability to detach a very large part of the ANV for days at a time and no one knowing about it until they descend on you a la 2nd Manassas campaign, or Chickamauga or Chancellorsville.

Certainly a risk; war is like that. Battering forward across the Rappahanock and through the Wilderness is not risk-free, either.

The chance for a non political commander of the AoP is non-existent after Lil Mac, its probably non-existent after Washington and highly unlikely after Andy Jackson. Everyone knows what happens to successful US generals, they run for office it’s in noone’s interest to have a non political GinC when there is the chance of getting your man in as GinC.

Except, of course, the political commander in 1862 was Lincoln; Sumner would be a tool to an end - and given the understanding of Hooker's slef-conception, it is not impossible Sumner might be just the sort of tool Lincoln and Stanton et al were looking for; they brought EA Hitchcock back on active duty for a reason, after all.

Humphreys, whatever his later record is an elderly (for the job and era) staff officer who had a few good days in combat. Solid, yes in 62 a reasonable choice as a staff officer yes, but not an obvious one and it’s not like anyone had good Division commanders spare or that the CoS job was seen as being more than chief administrator for the field army. Prussia this ain’t. Making the CoS role important means elevating study of the Prussian system of 1812-15 over that of the Napoleonic ( I or III) or Wellingtons for that matter. The fact that it does work very well is not obvious.

Sumner and Humphreys are both more than that, and the RA connection to Sumner is not something to overlook. Again, from the theater commander perspective (Hooker and Reynolds as the army commanders), Sumner is 66, but is in command of what amounts to an Army-sized formation (the LGW) at Fredericksburg and was still in good standing until Hooker's promotion, when Sumner asked to be relieved and was so; yet even then, he was not put on the shelf, and instead was given the department command in Missouri.

Humphreys is 51 in the winter of 1862-63, West Pointer, topog (essentially, the army's brain trust), and chief topographical engineer for McClellan in 1861-62, and so would appear the prime candidate for Sumner's CoS at the theater level in 1862-63. As far as his fitness, historically he commanded a division at Fredricksburg and Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, served as Meade's cos from Pennsylvania to Virginia, and took command of the II Corps all the way to Appomattox.

He also had the advantage of being another regular, which presumably makes the whole set-up (Sumner on down) work more smoothly than having a volunteer in the role; plus, all the US theater and army-level staffs were works in progress in 1862, so this isn't really any more ahistorical than Marcy serving as McClellan's COS.

Best,
 
Since this is alternate history, how about a son of Zebulon Pike?

In our timeline, Zebulon Pike Jr. married Clarissa Harlow Brown in 1801. They had one child who survived to adulthood, a daughter, Clarissa Brown Pike, who later married John Cleves Symmes Harrison, a son of President William Henry Harrison.

Pike had heroic qualities and had he not been killed during the War of 1812, would surely had advanced in the Army - and been a General at the time of the Mexican War.

Zebulon himself would have have been in his 80s by 1862, but an adult male child could have been in his prime; should he have followed his father's career and been as politically connected as someone whose sister married the son of a President, he certainly could have been in the running - and at the right place at the right time. Kinda like a Yankee parallel to Robert E Lee (Lee would likely have been a few years younger; Pike the Younger might have been a mentor to REL).

Just sayin'.
 
Since this is alternate history, how about a son of Zebulon Pike?

In our timeline, Zebulon Pike Jr. married Clarissa Harlow Brown in 1801. They had one child who survived to adulthood, a daughter, Clarissa Brown Pike, who later married John Cleves Symmes Harrison, a son of President William Henry Harrison.

Pike had heroic qualities and had he not been killed during the War of 1812, would surely had advanced in the Army - and been a General at the time of the Mexican War.

Zebulon himself would have have been in his 80s by 1862, but an adult male child could have been in his prime; should he have followed his father's career and been as politically connected as someone whose sister married the son of a President, he certainly could have been in the running - and at the right place at the right time. Kinda like a Yankee parallel to Robert E Lee (Lee would likely have been a few years younger; Pike the Younger might have been a mentor to REL).

Just sayin'.

You'd need a pretty divergent few decades for that to happen. The ACW as we know it wouldn't likely be the same at all.

Mind you as cool an idea as that is for an alternate-civil war scenario it's not quite applicable to this thread :) I'm looking for the boards opinion on the best leader who was available at the time to succeed McClellan.
 
Not so Much.

In 1862 Humphreys is an elderly desk officer who has briefly had Division command with 1 days combat experience since the Seminole wars. He was Lil Mac’s chief topographical engineer for the Peninsula a campaign, one remarkable for the absence of anything resembling an accurate map.
Most of the rest of time he was surveying the Miss delta and drinking with his Best Buddy Jeff Davis, currently of Richmond Va.

That’s his record at eo 62. Whatever he did later does not count. After Mac nobody is going to put Jeff Davis drinking pal in as the eminence grise of a sick, weary man entering his dotage, or so the Committee on the Conduct of the War will describe him after they ask why this incredibly junior Brigadier is being proposed for the post.

If you want a bright, young, vigorous staff officer with a stellar combat record who actually outranks the ancient and decrepit Humphries at this point (and in fact forever after),James McPherson. Halleck likes him too.

There is ( not read yours btw too advanced for me to comment on except destructively by the time I noticed it.) a nice timeline where that does happen, McPherson is given a corps command early in 63 and army later in 63.

If Topog is the US armies Brains Trust, alumni include Fremont and Pope, it explains a lot about the abysmal performance of the US army in the early years. They also ran the lighthouses. These men are good civil engineers and surveyors, TRADOC or the Operations division of the general staff in waiting they are not.

Nor are Departments Theatre commands in any 20th century sense. Halleck (briefly) manages a landgrab in the west but he does so by UNITING the three armies in the area into a single blob oozing slowly in a single direction to no apparent effect. Its really an administrative convenience because the armies are operating off a single LOC at the time and Halleck is mistaken for Grant.

The main field armies generally are technically the Department and Army of the Potomac, the Department and Army of the Cumberland etc etc. when communications are by unreliable telegraph and horse courier and reinforcement speeds at the pace of a marching man for the most part that’s good enough. A rear echelon commander cannot get into a position to influence events without being with the main field armies at the point of decision. Which is why Grant goes where he goes when he goes later in the war.

To exercise 'Theatre command' requires the ability to give orders and change dispositions in an operationally relevant timeframe. Operations take place over matter of hours, couple of days at most trying to exercise command at a distance in that situation simply will not work.

To take the far more sophisticated Prussian army of 1866 in the Silesian theatre, Moltke with all his advantages ( including having the King and War Minister present so no possibility of confusion) a trained general staff corps, common doctrine and having three armies converging on a single spot within a days march never gets control of his forces and has to depend on the decisions of the Army commanders on the spot. Ofc the system he had tended to ensure that the army commanders would make common decisions and converge without specific command and control being exercised.
 
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