Clark's Mountain; The Utter Destruction of the Army of the Potomac

Because it was Sherman's army that destroyed Hoods. Also, don't even try pretending like Sherman was better than Lee. It kind of distracts from the other points your making, and makes them sound less valid by association.

Um.... George Thomas was the Union commander at the Battles of Nashville and Franklin. 1) Sherman actually won his portion of the war. 2) He understood what modern warfare was. 3) He lost a lot fewer men as a proportion of the whole than Lee.

Lee wasn't the genius he was made out to be, and the scholarship on this has been pretty solid for the past 25 years or more. The Confederacy's best commanders were Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, and Nathan Forrest. Lee was a very charismatic man with very good subordinates who had the good fortune to go up against a run of incompetents. Lee didn't learn from his mistakes like he should have--he made the same mistake at Malvern Hill he made at Gettysburg, and less dramatically in several places in between. He lost more men as a proportion and as a number in the Seven Days' battles; he made the decision to fight at Sharpsburg and lost; even during his greatest victory, Chancellorsville, he lost nearly 20% of his men! Hooker lost about 12%. Gettysburg was one cock-up after another, and since Jeb Stuart did exaclty the same thing during this campaign that he did during the Sharpsburg campaign, it can't be blamed all on him. I mean, there's no question, were I a soldier during the period, I would not want to have been a soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia. It was far more dangerous than the alternatives.
 
Um.... George Thomas was the Union commander at the Battles of Nashville and Franklin. 1) Sherman actually won his portion of the war. 2) He understood what modern warfare was. 3) He lost a lot fewer men as a proportion of the whole than Lee.

Lee wasn't the genius he was made out to be, and the scholarship on this has been pretty solid for the past 25 years or more. The Confederacy's best commanders were Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, and Nathan Forrest. Lee was a very charismatic man with very good subordinates who had the good fortune to go up against a run of incompetents. Lee didn't learn from his mistakes like he should have--he made the same mistake at Malvern Hill he made at Gettysburg, and less dramatically in several places in between. He lost more men as a proportion and as a number in the Seven Days' battles; he made the decision to fight at Sharpsburg and lost; even during his greatest victory, Chancellorsville, he lost nearly 20% of his men! Hooker lost about 12%. Gettysburg was one cock-up after another, and since Jeb Stuart did exaclty the same thing during this campaign that he did during the Sharpsburg campaign, it can't be blamed all on him. I mean, there's no question, were I a soldier during the period, I would not want to have been a soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia. It was far more dangerous than the alternatives.
A lot of people think Lee is bad because he lost. I'm not saying he's the greatest ever, but that definitely wouldn't be a reason why he's bad. Sherman was fighting a much, much smaller, worse equipped, demoralized force. Lee was facing the opposite. Of course Lee lost, and Sherman won. Sherman easily would have lost against Grant. Lee would have easily beaten Johnston.
 
A lot of people think Lee is bad because he lost. I'm not saying he's the greatest ever, but that definitely wouldn't be a reason why he's bad. Sherman was fighting a much, much smaller, worse equipped, demoralized force. Lee was facing the opposite. Of course Lee lost, and Sherman won. Sherman easily would have lost against Grant. Lee would have easily beaten Johnston.

That line of argument sort of reminds me of a sports argument--"the Big Three Celtics were actually the best team of the 2000s," "Karl Malone was actually better than Tim Duncan,"--it might be true, but the only evidence we have is wins and losses, and those guys lost. Applying that to the war, we know that Sherman was smart enough to actually try and *avoid* battles where all of his soldiers got killed, and strike at what actually gave his enemies the ability to put armies in the field in the first place. Lee never seemed to get that. He was always thinking in terms of beating an army on a specific place and a specific time, and not winning a campaign and a war. The results were entirely predictable. The only way the Confederates could have won was by demoralizing the North, not by dueling with Joe Hooker. And that shouldn't have been something Lee needed to be told. He had access to the 1860 census and the 1850 census, so it's not like the information wasn't there for him to figure out that he was outnumbered, outgunned, and outproduced.

Lee was playing checkers, but the real game was Go.
 
That line of argument sort of reminds me of a sports argument--"the Big Three Celtics were actually the best team of the 2000s," "Karl Malone was actually better than Tim Duncan,"--it might be true, but the only evidence we have is wins and losses, and those guys lost. Applying that to the war, we know that Sherman was smart enough to actually try and *avoid* battles where all of his soldiers got killed, and strike at what actually gave his enemies the ability to put armies in the field in the first place. Lee never seemed to get that. He was always thinking in terms of beating an army on a specific place and a specific time, and not winning a campaign and a war. The results were entirely predictable. The only way the Confederates could have won was by demoralizing the North, not by dueling with Joe Hooker. And that shouldn't have been something Lee needed to be told. He had access to the 1860 census and the 1850 census, so it's not like the information wasn't there for him to figure out that he was outnumbered, outgunned, and outproduced.

Lee was playing checkers, but the real game was Go.
That analogy doesn't work because the teams are the same size and have the same equipment. But I get your point.
 
Top