Supreme Confederate Commander

An idea I saw floating around some discution threads on the American Civil War a while back was to split the political and military sides of the Confederacy to be almost totally seperate entities.

In OTL Davis was the commander of all confederate forces and he ran things according to whom his favorites were and by his ideas of offensive-defence.

One of his major quarrels with P.G.T. Beauregard and Joe Johnston was that those two general's wanted the overall strategy planning to be in the hands of experianced generals like themselves and not left to the politicians while Davis wanted to manage the whole war his way without the interferance of the generals.

As a result Beauregard was assigned to a backwater, out of the way corner of the war while Joe Johnston only got a proper chance to prove himself twice, once in the Peninsular which was cut short due to his injury and the other time in the Atlanta campaign when Davis relieved him and replace him with Hood when, by all right, Beauregard should have gotten that job.

So the idea then is to create an office when the Confederate states are formed establishing one overall Supreme Commander of all the Confederate military giving them the power to over-rule the president in military matters.

Which General would get the job and how would such a post change the course of the war?
 
An idea I saw floating around some discution threads on the American Civil War a while back was to split the political and military sides of the Confederacy to be almost totally seperate entities.

In OTL Davis was the commander of all confederate forces and he ran things according to whom his favorites were and by his ideas of offensive-defence.

One of his major quarrels with P.G.T. Beauregard and Joe Johnston was that those two general's wanted the overall strategy planning to be in the hands of experianced generals like themselves and not left to the politicians while Davis wanted to manage the whole war his way without the interferance of the generals.

As a result Beauregard was assigned to a backwater, out of the way corner of the war while Joe Johnston only got a proper chance to prove himself twice, once in the Peninsular which was cut short due to his injury and the other time in the Atlanta campaign when Davis relieved him and replace him with Hood when, by all right, Beauregard should have gotten that job.

So the idea then is to create an office when the Confederate states are formed establishing one overall Supreme Commander of all the Confederate military giving them the power to over-rule the president in military matters.

Which General would get the job and how would such a post change the course of the war?

I think that you would have to get rid of Davis as President of the Confederacy at the very least to get this through. I don't think that the member-states of the Confederacy would be at all comfortable with the idea of a supreme military commander, especially with that person being a serving general. I believe it would be, in their view, an unhealthy concentration of power in the hands of an essentially unaccountable general (if he uses his army, then he becomes unaccountable). The examples of what Roman generals did with their armies would weigh heavily in the mind of the Confederate law-makers.

The Confederates were confident of victory, and if that victory were delivered by a single general commanding the entire war effort, then the chance to pull a Caesar (Julius or Octavian, I don't know which you want to use) would certainly be there. Plus, if you give it to one man, that man would be a (insert-state)-man (for instance, Lee was loyal to "his country"- Virginia) and the fear of central dominance was simply too great.

So while it would be logical, the Confederates were operating under a different set of assumptions then the 2008 observer.
 
At the beginning of the Civil War, the general with the biggest military reputation appears to be Albert Sydney Johns(t)on (I never remember who has that "t" in their name). He was even Lee's commander in Texas before the war, He would get my vote for independent military commander.

Is he the best? Well, dying in one's first battle leaves few clues as to his abilities. He seemed to lose control over the Confederate forces at Shiloh, but one must remember that the army was little better than militia. How much control could any general have. As military commander, he would not have been in the middle of the fighting where he would have been a target. I would suggest that such a professional soldier would have done a decent job.
 
While the Confederates may have benefited strategically, it would certainly overturn much of US precedent to have a general as complete C-in-C, rather than a civilian power. I see two ways:

1) the Confederate Constitutional Convention at Mobile spends a bit longer ruminating on potential abuses of power and creates the office of C-in-C as a counterweight to the president (much like semi-presidential system have a person separate from either PM or president who is c-in-c of all armed forces, but answers to one or both). I'm not sure how likely this is, since the Confederate's almost exculsive goal was to protect states' rights and slavery in their constitutional changes. Odd, given the provocation they took Lincoln's action in raising an army, but true.

2) Davis manages a massive screw up very early in the war, which prompts the Confederate Congress to set up a Jt. Cmte. on the Conduct of the War and ultimately to appoint a c-in-c (force Davis to do so) who will be more accountable to them than to Davis. This might be easier to have happen, but a Jt. Cmte. may be a recipe for even more deleterious political interfering than OTL.

Also, recall that in the converse example, it was a very good thing that Lincoln could force his generals to fight the war as he though it should be fought and thus could fire those that fought poorly until he discovered Grant.
 
Let us look at a few facts.

1)Beauregard and J.Johnston were West Pointers, but so was Davis.

2)B+J were junior officers in the Mexican war, Davis was a Full Colonel.

3) J.Johnston was of senior rank when the CSA was formed, Davis was U.S. Secretary of War second only to the Prez. in the chain of command.

With these facts in mind whom among the three would be perceived as having the most experience for running a national army?

Davis did almost as good a job as anyone could as Commander in Chief of the CSA. The only thing he could have done better was not to replace Joe with Hood. Had he not the outcome of the War would have been the same,just more Confederate soldiers would have survived.
The CSA could not and would not have won the ACW, the only chance the had was intervention by the UK. That hope was crippled at Antietam and died at Gettysburg.
Davis did manage to pry soldier after soldier from reluctant states,in so doing allowing the Army to fight on. I doubt anyone good have done better with the cards dealt the CSA.


PS. Many of the innovations used by both Armies were introduced during Davis term as Sec.War including but not limited to the adoption of the Minie-ball(sp) and the Kepi.
 
Davis did almost as good a job as anyone could as Commander in Chief of the CSA.

I'll disagree strongly. Davis supported generals based on how well he liked them, not how well they fought. Joe Johnston and Beauregard were sidelined, while Polk, Bragg, and Hood had repeated chances to inflict damage on their own cause. Lee is a rare exception of a competent general that Davis supported. The Comissary General of Army was another incompetent friend of Davis, leading to troops lacking food, clothing, and shoes. And there's Davis' lack of a plan to win the war.
 

Glen

Moderator
I'll disagree strongly. Davis supported generals based on how well he liked them, not how well they fought. Joe Johnston and Beauregard were sidelined, while Polk, Bragg, and Hood had repeated chances to inflict damage on their own cause. Lee is a rare exception of a competent general that Davis supported. The Comissary General of Army was another incompetent friend of Davis, leading to troops lacking food, clothing, and shoes. And there's Davis' lack of a plan to win the war.

Sounds like Booth assassinated the wrong president and too late if he really wanted to help the South....
 
Its hard to see the CSA faring much better than they did in much of the fighting. Because of slavery and internal secessions within their own borders (many small pieces of the CSA actually seceded from itself), the CSA could not really retreat into its own borders.

Nor is there anything that the CSA can do about the US Navy, lead by David Farragut, which is likely to not only blockade CSA merchant shipping, but also start sending troops into the coastal regions of the country. Indeed, the CSA can't do much about the Union seizing the Mississippi river.

I think that the CSA was trying to fight an opponent with four times their economic and population base, while forced to cover as much as possible and no navy to speak of. They gave a very good account of themselves, but the rebellion was probably doomed.
 
At the beginning of the Civil War, the general with the biggest military reputation appears to be Albert Sydney Johns(t)on (I never remember who has that "t" in their name). He was even Lee's commander in Texas before the war, He would get my vote for independent military commander.

Is he the best? Well, dying in one's first battle leaves few clues as to his abilities. He seemed to lose control over the Confederate forces at Shiloh, but one must remember that the army was little better than militia. How much control could any general have. As military commander, he would not have been in the middle of the fighting where he would have been a target. I would suggest that such a professional soldier would have done a decent job.

The only way for a supreme commander to actually effect history is for him to be appointed early in the war, as in before or near 1 Manassas. If this happened, then it would be A. S. Johnson.

He had the most experience of the Confederate high command at the beginning of the war. However, for the doubters who say that there was no big change he could effect, he could have removed one commander very early:

Leonardis Polk.

He was a major general in the western theatre, and in the late summer of 1861, while certain border states were considered undecided and both sides still respected Kentucky's neutrality, Polk violated orders and moved his army up the Mississippi River to get a supposedly better defensive position. However, it was easily flanked from the east once Grant moved his force into Kentucky also, and more importantly it made the Confederates the aggressors.

As supreme commander A. S. Johnson could have prevented Polk's move for a time, and Kentucky could have remained neutral for a while longer, making the north appear like the aggressor. Once Kentucky was acceptable to Confederate forces moving in, if not joining the CSA, Forts Henry and Donelson could have been built on the high ground at each river, and with more rigorous defense could have held longer.

Beyond this, events get iffy, but at the least the North would not achieve immediate and everlasting success in the western theatre.
 
More likely the Union sends forces further west to Lyons and the CSA is fighting to hold in northern Louisiana by the time a response is formed to the loss of Arkansas. Since the CSA treated Tennessee as a poor cousin in OTL it is difficult to imagine more support going out to Baton Rouge or Texas.
 
The only way for a supreme commander to actually effect history is for him to be appointed early in the war, as in before or near 1 Manassas. If this happened, then it would be A. S. Johnson.

He had the most experience of the Confederate high command at the beginning of the war. However, for the doubters who say that there was no big change he could effect, he could have removed one commander very early:

Leonardis Polk.

He was a major general in the western theatre, and in the late summer of 1861, while certain border states were considered undecided and both sides still respected Kentucky's neutrality, Polk violated orders and moved his army up the Mississippi River to get a supposedly better defensive position. However, it was easily flanked from the east once Grant moved his force into Kentucky also, and more importantly it made the Confederates the aggressors.

As supreme commander A. S. Johnson could have prevented Polk's move for a time, and Kentucky could have remained neutral for a while longer, making the north appear like the aggressor. Once Kentucky was acceptable to Confederate forces moving in, if not joining the CSA, Forts Henry and Donelson could have been built on the high ground at each river, and with more rigorous defense could have held longer.

Beyond this, events get iffy, but at the least the North would not achieve immediate and everlasting success in the western theatre.

One small nit to pick. while Ft.Henry on the Tennessee was on low ground, there was no higher ground on the Cumberland short of Clarksville some 40 miles further up river. The high ground at Clarksville was not close enough to the Cumberland, with the exception of the area just west of the junction of the Cumberland and the Red to be an effective fortification. There was a Fort on the bluff at the junction of the Cumberland and Red, it was evacuated soon after the fall of Donelson.
Down river of Donelson to the junction with the Tennessee there is no place better suited for denying access to Nashville.
 
It depends on what point in the war the post is created. If it had been in 1861-62, probably Pierre Beauregard. In early 62, it may have been Albert Sydney Johnston. After he was killed at Shiloh, I dunno. Maybe it would have been Stonewall. But from the fall of 1862 until the end of the war, there is little doubt it would have been Robert E. Lee. But I don't know to what extent Lee would have exercised the powers of that office.

If you will recall, Lee was given a post similar to that in January 1865. But all he did was recall Joe Johnston, and by that point it made no difference.
 
The Confederacy did a lot of things after it was too late to matter. Giving Lee this position is one. Allowing the raising of black troops was another. Firing thier incompetant Commisary General was another. Spring of 1865 was 3 years too late.
 
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