Realistic CSA victory timeline

So which period British generals do you see as better than Lee? They weren't exactly impressive in the Crimea.

All of the ones of the 1850s-1870s, really. They were, for one thing, able to actually win battles without taking more casualties than armies that outnumbered them without any strategic gain whatsoever and to issue orders they knew would be followed as opposed to orders that were unclear and never had a chance to be followed. Lee, rated as a general, is frankly put not suited to fight anyone with a modicum of competence as Gettysburg showed. Or anyone with the least hint of aggression and willingness to target him first, as all the engagements with Meade under Grant's command showed. And for that matter as his failure in West Virginia showed.
 
1) The British Imperial army did not *need* to be big. Against a Union army that made to fight competent enemies will be shown to rely on mass and sheer dumb luck more than is feasible they don't need quantity, either. Again this is the kind of argument that would lead to thinking Barbarossa should have been over in three weeks.....with the Soviets having broken up all three German Army Groups.

2) The British had plenty of experience fighting big armies in this time, see: Mutiny, Sepoy. See: War, Second Opium. They were used to fighting armies that outnumbered theirs as much as six to one, and the CSA in terms of military experience and preparation to fight modern war ranks somewhere around Saddam Hussein and Luigi Cadorna. CS armies were terrible at fighting. The British are not. There's not going to be the kind of flagrant incompetence CS leaders had on a regular basis, and that's quite dangerous for the Union Army that must keep most of its troops occupying a region the size of Western Europe and hasn't a great mass of troops to fight the British with in the first place.

3) Sure, the British never fought any large-scale civil wars since Cromwell's time. The British have an army plenty sufficient to deal with whatever the USA will scrape together and can't use against the Confederacy. Contrary to some impressions US manpower in this war was not inexhaustible.

4) He said that about Scott's campaign. Nobody will ever say this about Zachary Taylor.

5) The British lost Lsdanlswana because the Zulu had the oxhide shields and spears version of encirclement battles and the British had a classical linear formation. The Zulu War is a poor guide to what the British army of the pre-machine gun age would do against the US Army of this time. The US Army, after all, *wants* to fight the kind of war the British do, not that of the Zulu.

6) I never said superb, only that they know how to use it better than the Union and Confederate armies do. And neither of them used it well.....

7) And the USA has to have the bulk of its military power fighting and occupying a region the size of Western Europe. It can't pony up troops to do anything else here.

1. If Stalin hadn't been so bone headed and the Soviets armies actually on alert and prepared they very well could have bounced the Germans. Here, given the distances and logistical difficulties involved on both fronts, that kind of strategic surprise is frankly impossible unless one side or the other convinces their opponents that full frontal lobotomies are the 'Cool, hip thing to do'. To actually give assistance to the CSA and/or invade the USA the Brits will need large armies or else they are just annoying Lee and Bragg with their better common sense and invading 'Treeland, USA: Now with more Adirondack Mountains.' The Brits got a lot of 'easy wins' against larger armies by outsmarting or killing their leadership more than anything else. I doubt the Brits could burn down the White House with 20k men like they did the Qing Emperor's Palace, nor could they take any port of significance and hold it against a Union force outnumbering them 6:1.

2. The Brits aren't fighting a force that is completely distracted by the biggest conflict of the century (and totally beholden to them for their 'fire sticks'). The Brits aren't fighting against 'rebels' in their vacation home territory of the British Raj. The Brits in Canada aren't going to be fighting in a nice tropical zone with lots of open plains. Canada is full of trees, and gets very cold in the winter... If the Brits ever become subject to a siege they can't break out of they are either dead or surrendering.

3. Again... you are immediately assuming Britain will go into 'total war' mode and is willing and politically able to raise an army of over 100k men at the drop of a hat. The US will have a year and a half lead lead in mobilization by the time any Trent Affair campaigning really kicks off from a northern front, and, again, the Brits are a foreign power, there won't be the 'brother v brother' reticence of the Union's 'native' population and there sure a heck are a crapload of Irish immigrant who were very reticent about fighting in the ACW but would be much less so vs the Brits. (Not to mention the enormous numbers of militia who could and would be raised in local areas to defend their homes).

4. Zachary Taylor had been dead by this time for 11 years, Winfield Scott is still alive and kicking... I wonder who would have more influence over strategy... :p

5. The British are going to be fighting a totally different war from what their experience is, against a totally different enemy for which the only real guide is Napoleon vs. Russia and that was 60 years ago and everyone knows how that ended up...

6. And, unlike the CSA the Union had enough generals with enough sense to rise above the challenge.

7. The Union mobilized 2 million men over the course of 4 years, the CSA, 800k, and the CSA lost when they had an area the size of Western Europe to fall back on with 'only' a 1:2 disadvantage on paper. The CSA has no offensive power, and if the Brits think they can beat a Union army on the defensive without at least parity of numbers because they beat the Sepoys and the Qing...
 
1) Not in 1941, no. The Germans had much more even distribution of higher-quality weapons than the USSR did and the Red Army was in a frankly put, terrible position for defense for unavoidable political reasons. There's no means to fix *that* problem from Stalin alone.

2) That's nice and all but how's the USA fight over a region the size of Western Europe *and* cough up an extra 30,000-60,000 men, their food, guns, support bases and the like?

3) Um, no, I'm pointing out what the USA has to do here. The CSA is huge, its manpower reserves are far from inexhaustible, and 60,000 inexperienced green troops against a smaller number of veterans are so much cannon fodder.

4) Abraham Lincoln. ;)

5) Um, actually the USA's in a position completely unprecedented here. The UK has the easy task.

6) Yes, after it finally put Grant in charge. Nothing guarantees the Union won't be stupid enough to have say, Sigel, against the UK....

7) The CSA was able to inflict serious damage on the Union Army, and this despite how terrible its armies actually were. The UK at its worst is better than the CSA at its best.
 
1) Not in 1941, no. The Germans had much more even distribution of higher-quality weapons than the USSR did and the Red Army was in a frankly put, terrible position for defense for unavoidable political reasons. There's no means to fix *that* problem from Stalin alone.

2) That's nice and all but how's the USA fight over a region the size of Western Europe *and* cough up an extra 30,000-60,000 men, their food, guns, support bases and the like?

3) Um, no, I'm pointing out what the USA has to do here. The CSA is huge, its manpower reserves are far from inexhaustible, and 60,000 inexperienced green troops against a smaller number of veterans are so much cannon fodder.

4) Abraham Lincoln. ;)

5) Um, actually the USA's in a position completely unprecedented here. The UK has the easy task.

6) Yes, after it finally put Grant in charge. Nothing guarantees the Union won't be stupid enough to have say, Sigel, against the UK....

7) The CSA was able to inflict serious damage on the Union Army, and this despite how terrible its armies actually were. The UK at its worst is better than the CSA at its best.

1. Okay, maybe not bounced, but if they had been at the ready the Germans would never have gotten anywhere close to where they actually did get.

2. Yeah... 22 million population + war with foreign power = greater recruitment thanks to patriotism, jingoism and immigrant grudges...

3. Green troops are green, they aren't useless... the trained core of the British army is tiny AND there are US troops who are gaining experience on how to shoot forward in the already ongoing war against the CSA, experience that will work on ANY battlefield when facing an army equipped similarly. Anyways the Brits from Canada are already traveling through virgin wilderness, their logistical train is going to be a nightmare and a half and they are going to be fighting an offensive against doubtlessly well prepared positions. This isn't Sevastopol, where supplies can come in through shipping for the Brits... they can for the Union though.

4. Yeah, he's the CiC... who has the services of Winfield Scott and not Zachary Taylor, unless you have some knowledge about seances or zombie Zachary Taylor, I still say Scott has the greater impact...

5. Easy... are we seriously going back to 67th Tigers land here!? But if you're seriously going to assert that the UK would have an easy task I'm just going to have to reply with "Yeah sure, whatever." But here's a hint, the side that is defending their homes is going to be a whole lot less casualty averse than the side that has to try and justify EVERY body bag since it is fighting on behalf of a nation that practices a morally repugnant system to the vast majority of its populace.

6. The US can afford to 'lose' and gain learning experience and for Lincoln to realize General Idiot was appropriately named... If the Brits fuck up and are pushed back in any Canadian offensive it's a loooong walk through the woods to say nothing of what happens when Winter, 1862 rolls around anyway and the US have rivers, canals and railroads to their industrial and agricultural heartland while the Brits have whatever they could build during the year through the Adirondacks...

7. And everything we'ree debating is ignoring the huge elephant in the room, whose name is disease, the fact that every army at war suffered greater losses to it than direct casualties. The CSA inflicted 30% of the Union's casualties, disease killed the other 70%... For the Brits in the Crimean, if the internet is to be believed, they suffered 77% of their casualties from disease... and that's with an open supply line across the Black Sea! So... yeah... if a soldier comes down with the flu, or cholera, or tuberculosis and dies it really doesn't matter how well trained he is. And if you aree going to put forth the supposition that the Brits were so superior in quality as compared to the Union that a small 'limited war' force could decisively beat a much larger Union force such that attrition from disease and exposure are overcome, a Union force that is on the defensive, as it would be in an invasion from Canada scenario, you're really going to have to back that up with solid and convincing evidence.
 
The fact that the Crimean War ended a few years earlier and saw a coalition of frightening power against Russia with more nations negotiating entry into the coalition and no one coming to Russia's aid?


The British had a standing army of over 100,000 regulars so it certainly won't take long for the British army to play a role in North America...
 

WeisSaul

Banned
Aside from allowing volunteers to fight for the southern cause (and perhaps smuggling some weapons into the south) I don't really see the British doing much.

The French seem like the ones more likely to intervene in the Civil War. With the Franco-Mexican war raging next door, and Lincoln tactically supporting the Republicans (US putting troops on the border to force Maximillian to put his troops on the border as an intimidation force, this lessening Imperial Mexico's able troop numbers, etc.) the French may coordinate with the CSA to counter possible American intervention (considering the troops were LITERALLY ON THE BORDER).

You'd have a North American war of the United States of America and the United Mexican States fighting the Confederacy and the French, Austrian, and Mexican Empires. Considering the Russians had two fleets sitting in New York harbor, France and Austria could end up using the January Uprising as an effective counter to Russian Power. This could lead to Russia intervening.

If the US captures French St Pierre and Miquelon (Choking off the St Laurence river) or the Russians intervene, Britain would never support the Confederacy. Even if a psychotic Jingoist took dictatorial power, they'd have to be a massive boob to think that things wouldn't end horribly.
 

amphibulous

Banned
1) The British Imperial army did not *need* to be big. Against a Union army that made to fight competent enemies will be shown to rely on mass and sheer dumb luck more than is feasible they don't need quantity, either.

This isn't even a coherent sentence, let alone a coherent argument.

2) The British had plenty of experience fighting big armies in this time, see: Mutiny, Sepoy. See: War, Second Opium. They were used to fighting armies that outnumbered theirs as much as six to one
This neglects that the rebelling Sepoy troops didn't actually form an army - just small bands with no unity and command structure.

, and the CSA in terms of military experience and preparation to fight modern war ranks somewhere around Saddam Hussein and Luigi Cadorna.
You think this, I agree. But is the thought an intelligent one based on actual evidence? Wellington rated the US officer corps as outstanding, and the CSA got the best of it. And British military observers attached to the forces of both sides often rated their generalship very highly. You might think that Lee was a poor general (bizarrely you think Lee didn't know what combined arms warfare was) but Lt Col. Arthur Freemantle of the Coldstream Guards thought Lee and Longstreet to on Alexander's level and that Southern victory was certain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Months_in_the_Southern_States

Now, you don't have to agree with Freemantle. But for you to dismiss the opinion of a fairly senior officer in an elite regiment as worthless - one who goes on to be a general - and for you to argue that the British are vastly more military competent that either American army would be pretty damn strange! You'd certainly need to produce some extraordinary evidence to convince people of this.

3) Sure, the British never fought any large-scale civil wars since Cromwell's time. The British have an army plenty sufficient to deal with whatever the USA will scrape together and can't use against the Confederacy. Contrary to some impressions US manpower in this war was not inexhaustible.
As shown, the British can assemble about 14,000 men for a field force. US military manpower peaks at around a 1,000,000. I.e. the possible British force is a about 1.4% of US military manpower! Which means that you are being very, very silly indeed.

You seem to have a vast number of opinions but no knowledge of definite facts - you never refer to numbers of troops or refer to sources - there's no indication that you know anything the US military of the time, let alone the British one.

Oh - and for extra Historical Ignorance points:

3) Sure, the British never fought any large-scale civil wars since Cromwell's time.
Leaving aside the Napoleonic Wars because you're agreeing with about the British Army commitment being relatively small (which doesn't make the war small, but we'll ignore the inexact phrasing) - hello? MARLBOROUGH??? The Nine Years War wasn't quite on the same scale as the ACW - nothing was - but it was rather larger than the ECW!
 
You seem to have a vast number of opinions but no knowledge of definite facts - you never refer to numbers of troops or refer to sources - there's no indication that you know anything the US military of the time, let alone the British one.

As much as I want to go "America F-yeah!", I must ask, what exactly are your sources?
 
1) My argument is simple: the USA has to keep the bulk of its troops in the Confederacy. The Confederacy is the size of Western Europe. The USA does not have an inexhaustible amount of manpower. The Union Army, in occupying the Confederacy, produced a leadership class as undistinguished at best and incompetent at worst as its CS counterpart. The Union Army has no preparation to fight European armies from fighting the incompetent conscript Confederate army. Thus, in a British invasion the British will not be fighting any significant number of US troops, and will have a bare minimum of competence the CSA's forces never had at any point.

2) And what of the Second Opium War?

3) My evidence relies on the historical reality of the Confederate Army. It's no co-incidence that all positive statements rely on the Virginia theater, as this is the only one where the CS Army was able to produce Pyrrhic tactical victories that all wound up being in the long term strategic defeats. In Virginia the CSA had favorable geography, it had a functional cavalry arm where McClellan did not, and unlike Hooker and Burnside it had an overall balanced structure and leadership team....until Lee's very aggressive style of warfare started degrading that army and until it had to actually fight a sustained style of warfare that rendered it irrelevant in six weeks for the duration of the war strategically and to a much greater extent than generally given credit for tactically also.

And this is the Virginia theater. If we start discussing the CS Army in the West, it's a question whether this is tragedy, farce, or tragifarce. The CS Army in the West fought hard, but nobody who accused Bragg, Johnston, Pemberton, AS Johnston, Price, Van Dorn, and so on of brilliant leadership would find enough to indict any of them. The most damning comment about CS leadership in the West/Trans-Mississippi is that its most brilliant guy was a division commander. :rolleyes:

4) And that worked so well for Russia in the Crimea, did it? Your argument is that quantity = quality. Quantity does not in fact equal quality in any sense of the word. The Union didn't win that war with simple quantity, in fact Grant was one of the most frugal generals on either side with human life. Human waves are self-destructive as far as tactics go.

5) "Large scale CIVIL WARS". I assume that the Napoleonic Wars and Sepoy Mutiny and the like were not, in fact, civil wars, right?
 
1) My argument is simple: the USA has to keep the bulk of its troops in the Confederacy. The Confederacy is the size of Western Europe. The USA does not have an inexhaustible amount of manpower. The Union Army, in occupying the Confederacy, produced a leadership class as undistinguished at best and incompetent at worst as its CS counterpart. The Union Army has no preparation to fight European armies from fighting the incompetent conscript Confederate army. Thus, in a British invasion the British will not be fighting any significant number of US troops, and will have a bare minimum of competence the CSA's forces never had at any point.

2) And what of the Second Opium War?

3) My evidence relies on the historical reality of the Confederate Army. It's no co-incidence that all positive statements rely on the Virginia theater, as this is the only one where the CS Army was able to produce Pyrrhic tactical victories that all wound up being in the long term strategic defeats. In Virginia the CSA had favorable geography, it had a functional cavalry arm where McClellan did not, and unlike Hooker and Burnside it had an overall balanced structure and leadership team....until Lee's very aggressive style of warfare started degrading that army and until it had to actually fight a sustained style of warfare that rendered it irrelevant in six weeks for the duration of the war strategically and to a much greater extent than generally given credit for tactically also.

And this is the Virginia theater. If we start discussing the CS Army in the West, it's a question whether this is tragedy, farce, or tragifarce. The CS Army in the West fought hard, but nobody who accused Bragg, Johnston, Pemberton, AS Johnston, Price, Van Dorn, and so on of brilliant leadership would find enough to indict any of them. The most damning comment about CS leadership in the West/Trans-Mississippi is that its most brilliant guy was a division commander. :rolleyes:

4) And that worked so well for Russia in the Crimea, did it? Your argument is that quantity = quality. Quantity does not in fact equal quality in any sense of the word. The Union didn't win that war with simple quantity, in fact Grant was one of the most frugal generals on either side with human life. Human waves are self-destructive as far as tactics go.

5) "Large scale CIVIL WARS". I assume that the Napoleonic Wars and Sepoy Mutiny and the like were not, in fact, civil wars, right?

1. So you're saying the US is going to just let the Brits march into Albany, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and elsewhere because, for some reason, they can't halt their offensives, consolidate their positions and shuttle troops to meet this new threat? The only way the Brits are going to affect the Union on land is if they commit to an invasion. An amphibious one will either end up on 'Rocky Shores, Maine, population: forest critters' or 'Staten Island: Welcome to the 9th level of Hell.' Joining their forces with the CSA's is a recipe for disaster and an independent army in the CSA will go over as well as refried cow pies.

2. Comparing the 2nd Opium War to the Brits in the ACW is complete bunk. The Brits and French were going up against non industrialized forces using completely obsolete tactics and taking shameless advantage of the political situation to get many positions to just let them waltz right in without firing a shot and 'winning' once they took the 'castle'. Lincoln's not going to let the Brits waltz into DC like the Chinese did at Beijing. The entire strategy of the Brits at this time was 'base control', gaining control of a few key points that their opponents had to hold in order to 'win'. The ACW was all about area control, coordinating a huge number of troops over a massive territory and claiming that territory in whole because there are a multitude of 'key points', all of which aren't so key... in the Union the only true 'key' is NYC, but good luck capturing it without a million man army...

3. You're really not helping your argument that Britain would win by pointing out how piss poor pathetic the CSA's leadership and tactics are... :p

4. In terms of battlefield casualties Russia gave as good as she got and gave up after losing their 'key point' and gateway to their soft underbelly, which was easily accessed through the Black Sea. The Union has an underbelly, but reaching it and exploiting it requires marching hundreds of miles through poor infrastructure and mountains, trying to hit easily defendable centers of industry that are flung far and wide. And they have to do it basically alone because, as you point out, the CSA was completely incompetent and dysfunctional in that theater and only lasted as long as it did because of the sheer distances involved. Any British land force is going to have to contend with those same distances just to get to their starting points and actually hit Union soil if coming from the CSA, or contending with a whole lot of nothing before hitting anything major or vital if coming from Canada.

And you're really going to have to show how the tiny trained core of the British army backed up by conscripts and volunteers maintains and will be able to maintain an overwhelming advantage in quality over the Union such that attrition, quantity, and home field advantage do not matter, the Brits have no established bases close to the fronts, as they did with China and India, they can't take advantage of local politics to gain control of bases or retain loyalists, as in China and India. They do not hold a monopoly on modern military thought, tactics and strategy over a foe who is, at best, one generation removed from bows, swords and spears as in China and India. The British can't annihilate any of the main Union armies in a single battle unless they have a lot more troops than their core land forces, again unlike China and India. In any British invasion they are at the end of an enormously long and poorly built supply line until they actually hit something of value, and in that case the logistics go all the wrong way, while the US has a metric ton of infrastructure to fall back on.
 
1) No, not at all. I'm asking how they find the troops to occupy the Confederacy and fight the UK at the same time, based on the sheer size of the Confederacy and the number of troops required IOTL during the war to do this. How many of that 1,000,000 men would be able to actually fight the UK v. occupying parts of the Confederacy?

2) Leaving aside that the Union has the problem of raising a large army to fight two wars at one time given that it had a lot of trouble raising one such army for one war at one time.....

3) On the contrary, this is the strongest argument, namely in that it torpedoes the "Union beat Lee so it can take on anyone else" argument by noting that after all the CSA really *wasn't* that good in the first place.

4) Well, realizing that the bulk of the US Army *won't* be facing the British is a first step in this process........
 
Lloyd, that's all well and good, but even if British success on land isn't a war winner on it's own, can't they cut off American trade by sea? That naval presence will allow them to apply pressure in ways that land forces cannot.
 
1) No, not at all. I'm asking how they find the troops to occupy the Confederacy and fight the UK at the same time, based on the sheer size of the Confederacy and the number of troops required IOTL during the war to do this. How many of that 1,000,000 men would be able to actually fight the UK v. occupying parts of the Confederacy?

2) Leaving aside that the Union has the problem of raising a large army to fight two wars at one time given that it had a lot of trouble raising one such army for one war at one time.....

3) On the contrary, this is the strongest argument, namely in that it torpedoes the "Union beat Lee so it can take on anyone else" argument by noting that after all the CSA really *wasn't* that good in the first place.

4) Well, realizing that the bulk of the US Army *won't* be facing the British is a first step in this process........


1) Go on the defensive vs CSA and drive the relative handful of troops somewhere in NY out. I think 50,000 is the max the Brits will use for this and probably less. It won't be a popular war and they have an entire empire to protect.

2) You can raise enough Irish troops in New York and Boston to handle them. Until they're trained go on the defensive in the South. The Irish were reluctant to fight the CSA due to worries about losing their jobs to Blacks but they will sign up in droves to fight the English. Once they're trained throw them at the Brits and return the troops handling the Brits to the South.

3) You greatly underestimate Lee and even the Western CSA troops. The Western CSA was woefully undersupplied and was going up mostly against Grant, Sherman and Thomas the best generals the USA had. British observers considered Lee a very good general and you have to give good reasons for me to believe you over professional soldiers of that era who not only have bettter training for that era's warfare (I don't know if you ever served in the US armed services so I can't say if they had better military training over all as MODERN US military training is first rate by all accounts.). and who was actually on hand to see what he did and hnow he did it.

4) It doesn't need to. The Brits can't send much.
 
Lloyd, that's all well and good, but even if British success on land isn't a war winner on it's own, can't they cut off American trade by sea? That naval presence will allow them to apply pressure in ways that land forces cannot.
That they can do but unlike the CSA the USA is pretty self sufficient. It will take an economic hit but it is big enough to keep fighting without outside supplies.
 
1) No, not at all. I'm asking how they find the troops to occupy the Confederacy and fight the UK at the same time, based on the sheer size of the Confederacy and the number of troops required IOTL during the war to do this. How many of that 1,000,000 men would be able to actually fight the UK v. occupying parts of the Confederacy?

2) Leaving aside that the Union has the problem of raising a large army to fight two wars at one time given that it had a lot of trouble raising one such army for one war at one time.....

3) On the contrary, this is the strongest argument, namely in that it torpedoes the "Union beat Lee so it can take on anyone else" argument by noting that after all the CSA really *wasn't* that good in the first place.

4) Well, realizing that the bulk of the US Army *won't* be facing the British is a first step in this process........

:rolleyes: I'll try one last time to get past that Titanic sized blind spot you have... But you do realize the concept of defense and offence, right? If the British are INVADING, they are on the OFFENSE... right? They have to cross rugged terrain with little infrastructure to reach anything of value in the Union. Now the Union, in this instance are the ones being invaded so they are on the DEFENSE... they have to stop the Brits from capturing their cities and destroying industry and what not, since the Union is already there in those cities they can prepare defenses, right? Now, if the Brits are invading they need enough men to gain control of places even over the defenses... They need enough supplies to make it down to their target, overcome the defenders and hold that position long enough to either damage or destroy its value or force the Union to fight on their terms, right?

Now, you keep going on and on about the Union's manpower problems... the Union has a population of 22 million... In the OTL ACW the Union mobilized 2 million men over 4 years, and aside from CSA 2 offensives that didn't do much disruption, remained unmolested and on the offense throughout the war. They had war exhaustion because they were on the offense the whole time. Now they are on the defense. The British invasion is threatening their homes and cities... a much better motivation to get up and fight for the Union than esoteric national concepts and later slavery. The CSA mobilized a much larger percentage of its fighting population than the Union (15% vs 9% or thereabouts) Every 1% greater mobilization the Union is able to rally is 220,000 more men... and I seriously doubt the Union is so lacking in motivation that they couldn't raise their mobilization levels to face the Brits.

Now we have the British side of the invasion equation. If the Union is able to raise 200k men who are willing to defend then the Brits have a problem. Their hard core of trained men is 25k and those are far flung all over the Empire, the rest will be on the same level as the Union troops in training. Even by your best metrics the Union now has a 10:1 advantage, better than your 6:1 magic ratio which you seem to think is what one 'Spartan II' Brit is worth vs one Union soldier (I don't accept that at all but lets give you all benefit of the doubt here for the sake of argument). So now the Brits have to raise an army above what they got. They have to ship that army over the Atlantic, they have to base that army deep in Canada, they have to march that army over the Adirondacks to hit anything of value, and if they lose or are forced to implement a siege they have to stay at the end of a very long supply line while the Union is working off its internal rail and road networks...

Now, if we robotomized everyone, took out politics and simplified logistics and boiled it down to a game of Civilization the Brits could, theoretically, muster more men than the Union, they could put a million man army in Canada, march it down to NYC and take it after sustaining Nappy'esque casualties while building another million man army to replace the losses... but this isn't a game of Civ... and the Brits don't have the nofog cheat on to see exactly what they are going up against, all the while the Union has the home field advantage.
 
1) Easier said than done no matter when the war is. Again, the USA did well against an incompetent enemy whose armies consisted of poorly trained conscripts. This is not nor has it ever been a description of the British army of professionals.

2) Fanaticism and quantity do not a proper army make.

3) Actually I rate them quite fairly. Lee was over-aggressive and prone to headlong attacks whenever his subordinates didn't take latitude with his "suggestions". When his subordinates did not "get this" his orders were vague, inappropriate to situations, and almost impossible to follow. Lee did well against enemies who didn't know basic tactics, as his own extremely foolishly audacious ones did not backfire as they would against someone merely competent. Gettysburg would have been a perfect opportunity for Lee to show his reputation was warranted against a merely competent enemy and instead Meade had the most lopsided victory against Lee of all his opponents.

The only other CS general to win a strategic victory is Braxton Bragg, and he won the biggest one of the war.....because his enemy screwed up at the right/wrong moment. Lee's reputation got bloated far out of proportion because his enemies were crap, not because he was good. And because his enemies magnified his skills to cover up for how bad at war they actually were. Erwin Rommel and Lee are justly compared for the same reason: they look good when their enemies are crap, they don't look good when they have enemies who are competent, and they can win battles but never will win wars.

4) Then the British don't need a giant army to fight a small number of US troops, either, do they?
 

amphibulous

Banned
All of the [British Generals] of the 1850s-1870s [were more competent than Lee], really.

So Cardigan? Lucan?

They were, for one thing, able to actually win battles without taking more casualties than armies that outnumbered them without any strategic gain whatsoever and to issue orders they knew would be followed as opposed to orders that were unclear and never had a chance to be followed.
Have you even heard of the Crimean War and the Charge Of The Light Brigade???

Lee, rated as a general, is frankly put not suited to fight anyone with a modicum of competence as Gettysburg showed. Or anyone with the least hint of aggression and willingness to target him first, as all the engagements with Meade under Grant's command showed. And for that matter as his failure in West Virginia showed.
Lee quite possibly is over-rated. But that doesn't make him worse than Lucan or Cardigan!

Reasonable overview for the completely ignorant (anyone who has "The Reason Why" or even "Flashman At The Charge" will know vastly more than this):

http://www.historyhome.co.uk/forpol/crimea/people/commanders.htm

The Cavalry Division was given to the fifty-four-year-old Earl of Lucan. He was a military maniac. Like Sir George Cathcart, by numerous exchanges and purchases he got himself the command of a regiment without ever having done much to prove himself worthy of it. In the same year that Cathcart bought the command of the 7th Hussars the Earl of Lucan bought that of the 17th Lancers for £25,000. He turned it into 'Bingham's Dandies'. But it was more than a toy; it was an obsession. He rose before dawn, worked unceasingly. He was conscientious, prejudiced, vindictive, brave, narrow-minded and violently unpopular.

His brother-in-law, the Earl of Cardigan, commander of the Light Brigade in his division, possessed most of his faults and few of his virtues. He was as heartily disliked as Lucan and even more arrogant. They hated each other.
Brigadier-General Sir James ScarlettThe Hon. James Scarlett, who was given command of the Heavy Brigade, was, however, quite unlike either of them. Sensible, pleasant, easy-going, his was a character everyone liked and admired. Men hoped that his sound common sense would do something to help hold the cavalry division together.

Finding officers for the staff was as great a problem as finding competent generals. Lord de Ros, who was appointed Quartermaster-General of the army and thus made responsible for a variety of duties far more extensive than the name of the appointment would seem to imply, was 'an extremely curious fellow'. He was 'very eccentric, both in his habits and dress; very amusing, too'. But a more unsuitable officer for a position which combined the present-day duties of Chief of Staff with those of Quartermaster-General it would have been difficult to find. He not only lacked experience but did not seem in the least anxious to acquire it. He was very fond of sunbathing.


Brigadier-General James Bucknall Estcourt, appointed to be Adjutant-General, was more industrious. But he also had little experience. He had never been to war and was, in fact, more interested in exploration than in the Army. While sitting as MP for Devizes he had gone on the Euphrates Valley Expedition to find a route to India from the Persian Gulf. He was a man, one of his officers thought, 'of remarkably kind and courteous disposition'. But these are not qualities much required of an adjutant-general, responsible for the discipline of an army. General Estcourt was 'too kind and too forgiving'. He was, however, a great deal more efficient than most officers who were given appointments on the staffs of the various divisional headquarters.


The real trouble was, of course, as the Secretary-for-War was later to observe, there was 'no means of making General Officers or of forming an efficient staff'. The Senior Department of the Royal Military College had been in existence for many years, but few officers thought it worth while to attend it. That sort of thing was all very well for Frenchmen and Germans and even for those officers who were unfortunately obliged to think of the Army as a career and to serve in India, but it did not do for gentlemen.


Indeed, the less exciting departments of the Army were handed over altogether to civilians. And no one had yet had cause to doubt the wisdom or convenience of leaving the humdrum matters of supply and transport almost entirely in the hands of a department of the Treasury. Administered by bureaucrats, many of them grotesque in their pedantry and ineptitude, the Commissariat Department was hopelessly ill-equipped to move and supply an army of 30,000 men, and Lord Raglan at the Ordnance Office had frequently complained of its insufficiency and its lack of any reserve of trained officials. Appointed to run it was Mr. James Filder, a man of sixty-six called from an already lengthy retirement.


To hold this muddled assembly together and, what was perhaps of more importance, to hold the allies together, there were fortunately a few men who appeared at first sight to have some qualifications. Lord Hardinge, Lord Gough, Lord Combermere and Lord Raglan were all distinguished officers, and the names of all of them were mentioned as suitable commanders. But when their records were examined it was found that Lord Raglan was the only one under seventy. On reflection it seemed that there could only be one choice.



More:


http://www.victorianweb.org/history/crimea/blunder.html


Lords Lucan and Cardigan had already begun to argue and fall out which led to dissension among the officers. To add to the difficulties, Raglan rarely issued orders: he was very polite and imprecise. He advised his officers and left the decision in their own hands. Sir Colin Campbell, who commanded the Highland Brigade, had served under Moore and Wellington and had fought all over the world — Spain, America, China. He was brave, talented, and highly respected by his men, but since he had neither money nor influence after 44 years of distinguished service, he remained a colonel. Sir George Brown, who commanded the Light Division, was the most unpopular infantry officer in the army — a bully who believed in flogging. He was very short-sighted (as were most of the high-ranking officers — it seems almost a pre-requisite for the job), but disdained the use of spectacles and never listened to anyone.
 
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