Fiver said:
So what are your assumptions that lead to your conclusion that McClellan was a better general?
The only assumption I had to make was troop quality. Others have shown a CEV of 1.5 in the CS favour. Everything else (bar command quality) can and has been quantified. Lee has already been analysed (Hattaway and Jones) and found to be average.
So terrain, maneuver, goals, and success don’t factor into your calculations? And if a CEV of 1.5 has been shown, you should be able to tell us where they showed it. And you still haven’t explained what you mean by a better general.
As to Hattaway and Jones, they say “the data on Lee confirms that he was a representative Confederate general
except he won more… It says nothing about McClellan, let alone whether he was better than Lee. Their analysis only covers the years 1861 to 1863. One of their conclusions is a Union attack was about twice as likely to succeed as a Confederate attack.
And they are a lot more equivocal than you are, saying things like “The foregoing superficial quantitiative analysis should raise more questions than it answers.” and “Ceratianly the hypothesis of Confederate combat superiority should be carefully tested against individual battles to ascertain whether it correlates with, among other factors, the length of service and degree of combat experience of the units engaged, with the amount of offensive and defensive combat by each side, and with the quantitiy and quality of field fortifications used.”
Lancaster’s equation is obviously lumping together several different things in its calculation of efficiency – training, experience, equipment, terrain, leadership, etc. And it’s clearly presented as based on assumptions, the most obvious being that a force twice the size of its opponent will inflict twice as many casualties at any moment in time.
That’s, of course, highly idealized and ignores certain realities of combat, like not all members of an army of 100,000 can attack an army of 300 at the same time.
As for the seven days, it's interesting. After detachments to the rear are counted, Lee had more effectives, and effectives of a better quality. Had Lee been a better than competent General he should have been able to destroy McClellan, instead he batters himself in a series of frontal attacks.
He did better than McClellan did at Antietam and Lee didn’t have a copy of McClellan’s marching orders.
No familiar with
this field are you?
I’ve heard of Dupuy, as well as the criticism that his methods consistenatly overrate the defenders in any conflict. If your conclusions are based on his equations, then I’d say Dupuy’s critics have been unusually generous.
Anyway, it can be shown that on average the number of effectives on each side were usually roughly equal.
If it can be shown than maybe you should show it.
Fiver said:
Of course, your numbers could be explained by Union leadership quality rising throughout the war and/or Confederate leadership quality dropping. After all, if Lee’s troops are twice as effective at the end of the war as they were at the start, then Grant must more than twice as effective as McClellan, since Grant is actually beating Lee.
Really? Despite the near collapse in Grant's Army?
For those of us familiar with the actual American Civil War, we know that Grant actually beat Lee. If we accept your unsupported and unlikely claim that Grant’s army was near collapse, that logically means Grant must be more than twice as effective as McClellan to compensate for his inferior army.
Well, that's better than your initial claim that McClellan was "better than Lee...by a large margin", but if you want to persuade anyone you need to show what your assumptions are based on.
Very made that claim either. That's a strawman.
Perhaps you should read post 49 of this thread where someone named 67th Tigers said:
Yet Pope and McClellan both come out as better than Lee, the latter by a large margin
It’s no strawman; it’s an exact quote.