Greatest American Civil War Leader

Who was the best general of the American Civil War?

  • Robert E. Lee

    Votes: 18 16.2%
  • U.S. Grant

    Votes: 45 40.5%
  • William Sherman

    Votes: 21 18.9%
  • Phil Sheridan

    Votes: 1 0.9%
  • George Thomas

    Votes: 9 8.1%
  • Nathan Forrest

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson

    Votes: 6 5.4%
  • George McCllellan

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Jeb Stuart

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • James Longstreet

    Votes: 3 2.7%
  • Albert Sidney Johnston

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Joeseph Johnston

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • George Meade

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Patrick Cleburne

    Votes: 2 1.8%
  • Other (please put who)

    Votes: 6 5.4%

  • Total voters
    111
Grant in a close tie with Sherman. They both seemed to have a better grasp of the strategic than their peers.

No other officers in the Civil War mastered the science of the command of Army Groups, as opposed to Armies. Meaning they could both bring forces to bear in numbers no one on either side could match. If officers like Rosecrans or Canby had the command skills of these men, the Deep South States would have fallen during Sherman's March to the Sea.

Grant was better able to recover than Sherman when things turned to poo, and was at least willing to admit error ONCE in his life (Cold Harbor). That was more than Sherman ever did (Kenesaw Mountain).
 
Because in the years prior to the Civil War the Virginian Winfield Scott chose to show rank favoritism to officers of Southern extraction. Also, there were more economic opportunities for Northern officers in the private sector, such as in railroads. Besides, it was no secret in the army about how a southern drawl did wonders for your chances at promotions and plum assignments.

That's why virtually the entire senior Union Army command at war's end were men who had been West Pointers, but were no longer in the army at the time of Fort Sumter (with a few notable exceptions).

Hell, you have men like Grant who detested the war with Mexico.

I'm a big fan of William Tecumseh Sherman in the ACW, but I think he's more important for some of the ideas on waging war that he brought to the table more than his leadership as such.

Still, Lincoln is the clear winner here. He is the one who had to deal with the political consequences.
 
No other officers in the Civil War mastered the science of the command of Army Groups, as opposed to Armies. Meaning they could both bring forces to bear in numbers no one on either side could match. If officers like Rosecrans or Canby had the command skills of these men, the Deep South States would have fallen during Sherman's March to the Sea.

Grant was better able to recover than Sherman when things turned to poo, and was at least willing to admit error ONCE in his life (Cold Harbor). That was more than Sherman ever did (Kenesaw Mountain).

With the exception of Thomas, no other officers of the Civil War had the chance to command Army Groups. Sherman and Grant were only two of the three men to ever command more than one Army in the field at one single time - and Thomas's only got the chance towards the end of the war and proved to be effective in that role.

Scott, McClellan and Halleck all were the heads of the Army but they never commanded more than one Army in the field during that war and Scott never took direct command, Rosecrans, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, Butler, Banks, McDowell, Lyon, Curtis, Steele, Schofield, Buell, McPherson, Howard, Logan, Sheridan, Meade or anyone else in the Union never had the opportunity to command more than one army.

On the Confederate side of things, Joe Johnston comes closest to being an Army Group Commander because he commanded the Army of the Shenandoah and the Army of the Potomac at Manassas, in the Atlanta Campaign he commanded the Army of Tennessee and the Army of Mississippi and at Bentonville he commanded the Army of Tennessee and the Army of the South, but in the cases the "armies" he commanded were little more than corps or division which then became perminant parts of one army so even in this case it cannot really be argued that he was an Army Group Commander.

Lee was head of the Army and often sent a corps or so into the Shenandoah and he was the commanding officer of Beauregard's task force in the Bermuda Hundred but he never commanded more than one army at a time, Bragg, Beauregard, Hood, Taylor, Kirby Smith, Buckner, Early, Sidney Johnston, Pemberton, Breckenridge, Van Dorn, Price, McCulloch, Polk and Hardee never commanded more than an Army and some of them only had temporary command when the did so.

Therefore, saying that Grant and Sherman were the only men to "master" Army Group Command during the Civil War is kind of mis-leading since it is only a group of three men than can be consider for that bracket and the third man - Thomas - was not noticably worse in the role than the other two.
 
No other officers in the Civil War mastered the science of the command of Army Groups, as opposed to Armies. Meaning they could both bring forces to bear in numbers no one on either side could match. If officers like Rosecrans or Canby had the command skills of these men, the Deep South States would have fallen during Sherman's March to the Sea.

Grant was better able to recover than Sherman when things turned to poo, and was at least willing to admit error ONCE in his life (Cold Harbor). That was more than Sherman ever did (Kenesaw Mountain).

OTOH Grant was extremely insistent that Belmont was a victory, when he didn't exactly have to be that insistent on it. I mean it's worth noting here that the only ACW general to have a splendid first battle was George H. Thomas at Mill Springs........
 
OTOH Grant was extremely insistent that Belmont was a victory, when he didn't exactly have to be that insistent on it. I mean it's worth noting here that the only ACW general to have a splendid first battle was George H. Thomas at Mill Springs........

Oh, Grant made many mistakes he wouldn't own up to.
 
Nytram01

Couldn't it be said that McClellan had at his disposal forces large enough to form up as an army group, but instead of doing so he kept everything together as one unwieldy body in the Army of the Potomac?
 
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Nytram01

Couldn't it be said that McClellan had at his disposal forces large enough to form up as army groups, but instead of doing so he kept everything together as one unwieldy body in the Army of the Potomac?

Yeah, but he got to form them in neat long lines and ride his horse along to their cheering.
 
Nytram01

Couldn't it be said that McClellan had at his disposal forces large enough to form up as army groups, but instead of doing so he kept everything together as one unwieldy body in the Army of the Potomac?

Yes, that could be said. Halleck also had that issue in the first Corinth campaign. However if we factor in that McClellan was the kind of man who built up a massive army for linear warfare and completely and idiotically failed in organizing cavalry, one of the most vital elements of the total war "package", McClellan's flaws in organizing the AoTP were far, far deeper than simply oversized forces.
 
Indeed. I don't recall him ever saying, "I sat on my butt outside of Iuka while Rosecrans was fighting for his life a mile or so down the road."

Actually that was an acoustic shadow. He wasn't the only one it happened to, either. It happened to Buell at Perryville, and to Bragg once, IIRC.

The acoustic shadow, as I understand, was one of those products of war before the invention of modern C3 technology.
 
Actually that was an acoustic shadow. He wasn't the only one it happened to, either. It happened to Buell at Perryville, and to Bragg once, IIRC.

The acoustic shadow, as I understand, was one of those products of war before the invention of modern C3 technology.

Yep, Grant can't help a situation he can't possibly know about.
 
Still not one of his more shining campaigns. I wouldn't Grant entirely flubbed it, but if his final Vicksburg campaign is better than "genius", this was a tired and mortal Grant at work.
 
Well, you see, there's this thing in warfare called "reconnaissance" . . .

Which almost nobody in the ACW ever actually bothered with, with one of the most idiotic examples of this being Gettysburg, where after weeks in Pennsylvania Lee was actually surprised the Yankees followed him. :rolleyes:
 
Well, you see, there's this thing in warfare called "reconnaissance" . . .

I don't have my copy of Cozzens's book on the campaign in question handy, but was Grant really that close?

And if so, does he have reason to suspect that anything is going on that would merit investigation?

It's easy for us - knowing precisely where Rosecrans is and what he was facing better than Rosy himself did - to say that this sort of thing should be obvious, but we have a perspective no one at the time would be capable of having without being a time traveler.

This is not to say Grant did all that could reasonably be expected of him, just pointing out that saying he just sat on his ass and whittled needs to answer some questions - the answers say a lot about the situation.


Frankly, if Rosy is only a mile away from an idle Grant, that he didn't send a messenger saying "being attacked. Send help plz." is just as damnable on him as any inaction on Grant's part.
 
I don't have my copy of Cozzens's book on the campaign in question handy, but was Grant really that close?

And if so, does he have reason to suspect that anything is going on that would merit investigation?

It's easy for us - knowing precisely where Rosecrans is and what he was facing better than Rosy himself did - to say that this sort of thing should be obvious, but we have a perspective no one at the time would be capable of having without being a time traveler.

This is not to say Grant did all that could reasonably be expected of him, just pointing out that saying he just sat on his ass and whittled needs to answer some questions - the answers say a lot about the situation.


Frankly, if Rosy is only a mile away from an idle Grant, that he didn't send a messenger saying "being attacked. Send help plz." is just as damnable on him as any inaction on Grant's part.

It's also a view that obscures how battles in practice do not unfold as neatly predictable things at the time. Even when armies had things like telephones and more instant communications it was perfectly possible for things to go much more awry than they did at Iuka. Lee's idiocy in the lead-in to the Gettysburg campaign is much more egregious to me.
 
It's also a view that obscures how battles in practice do not unfold as neatly predictable things at the time. Even when armies had things like telephones and more instant communications it was perfectly possible for things to go much more awry than they did at Iuka. Lee's idiocy in the lead-in to the Gettysburg campaign is much more egregious to me.

All I can say is, how Lee managed to have his biggest cavalry force ever, and - treating Stuart's behavior as the best that could be done in the circumstances (get a copy of Plenty of Blame to Go Around if you disagree - the book's well worth the read) - have so little to show for it is the least painful part of the campaign.

Lee could have, potentially, done a lot of damage here - it'd probably take Davis backing him to the hilt for starters, but a campaign with a real and for true OMGLEE! result would not be entirely out of the question. Instead, he gets his ass handed to him by Meade.

Lee's behavior in the lead in makes me wonder what the hell he was trying to do. I mean, the only possible purpose for what he asked for reinforcement wise is beating the hell out of the Army of the Potomac and causing the Union strategy in the East and Tennessee to have to scramble to deal with the fact its not really a good time for the main Eastern army to get mauled.

But it should go without saying that the only way to do that relies on the Army of the Potomac following him.

So if he wasn't doing that, why did he try to beef up his army more than usual?

A gigantic raid doesn't need a battle at Gettysburg with or without the army concentrated.

So . . .

Yeah.

Lee's dethroning moment of suck.

More than twice as expensive as Antietam and without a whole lot more to justify any of it.
 
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