Who Had the Better Generals, the Union or the Confederacy?

Who Had the Better Generals, the Union or the Confederacy?

  • Union

    Votes: 43 32.3%
  • Confederacy

    Votes: 58 43.6%
  • 50-50 Tie

    Votes: 32 24.1%

  • Total voters
    133

Anaxagoras

Banned
Most of the discussion in this thread has focused, quite naturally, on the battlefield commanders. However, I believe that some thought should be given to the "behind the scenes" generals where I believe the Union had a distinct advantage. I believe that generals such as Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, U.S. Military Railroad General Herman Haupt and artillery General Henry Hunt contributed significantly to the victory of the Union and were more effective than then their Confederate counterparts.

The Confederacy had an outstanding example of a "behind the scenes" officer in the person of Colonel Josiah Gorgas, the Confederate ordnance chief. He built an entire war industry from scratch had greatly alleviated the Southern disadvantage in military material. On the other hand, their Commissary chief was Lucius Northrop, whose incompetence probably played a bigger role in the food shortages that afflicted Confederate armies than any other cause.

Although this thread is limited to generals, I believe that a brief word should be given to the civilian leadership of the respective armies. Although he may have had a "difficult" personality (some would say repulsive), Edwin Stanton was an effective Secretary of War unlike his several Confederate counterparts.

I don't think there's any doubt that the Union had the advantage here. The South didn't have a decent Secretary of War until John C. Breckinridge took over the department in February of 1865, and then it was obviously too late.
 
Was Lee a good general? Yes absolutely. How about as a tactician? Yes. However, once Sickles accidentally foiled his plans as Gettysburg, he had no way to win the battle. He decided to surprise the North with the least expected method... a moronic frontal assault into the teeth of the North's trenches. This only worth when you outnumber the enemy, never mind the fact that the North outnumbered the South in this battle!

Lee was a good defensive tactician, but Gettysburg shows he was a flawed tactician of offense.
 
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Lee handled offensive battles in Chancellorsville (OK, with some help with a northern decision to evacuate a key piece of terrain the South just occupied and hit them with), against Pope, and a few others. Antietam's plan was sound, it just didn't happen to work. Gettysburg Day 2 had a descent plan, and the frontal assault was just moronic. So I'd say he was a good offensive and defensive tactician, but he wasn't flawless and Gettysburg mistake was not just a mistake, it was really dumb.
 
I think the CSA remained hamstrung by the seniority system far longer than the US.
Later in the war, US was much more likely to promote effective generals over senior ones.
 
I think that as a whole the South had better commanders. This isn't necissarily looking only at the big name Generals, since I feel that the debate is a lot closer when looking only at them. But the southern states had far more of a military culture than the north, with so many of the younger plantation owner sons becoming professional military men, so down the ladder the Confederates had better leaders as a whole. So I agree with you.

The south did have a higher percent of graduates from military schools who pursued military careers, but when the war came, roughly 40% of officers from Confederate states stayed with the Union.
 
However, we have failures like Burnside, John Pope, Benjamin Butler, Buell, and Sigel.

Your post is excellent, but misses a key point. Burnside, Pope, Butler, and Sigel were failures when facing Robert E Lee, but against other Confederate generals they were winners.
 
Your post is excellent, but misses a key point. Burnside, Pope, Butler, and Sigel were failures when facing Robert E Lee, but against other Confederate generals they were winners.
While I am more willing to exonerate John Pope, that doesn’t justify the fact that they were average to below-average commanders. Sigel’s record of failure is pretty consistent (Wilson’s Creek, the run up to Pea Ridge, taking the German divisions of the army and running back to Missouri after the battle of Pea Ridge when he was supposed to be pursuing the enemy, and his miserable performance at New Market), the only time he gave a good performance was the second day of the Battle of Pea Ridge. I cannot find any evidence to justify that he was a winner not facing Lee.

Benjamin Butler has only contributed twice to the Union cause (suppressing the Baltimore riots, capturing New Orleans and acting as an administrator of New Orleans), aside from that his combat performance was an epic fail-the Battle of Big Bethel, his command of the Army of the James and the first expedition against Fort Fisher).

Burnside did perform well at the Knoxville Campaign and North Carolina, but his tenure as commander of IX Corps and Army of the Potomac was completely pathetic and not because Robert E. Lee; he lacked the moral courage to abort the attacks at Fredericksburg, had his Corps completely miss out of the battle in the Wilderness, fail to press his attacks at Spotsylvania Court House despite repeated urging by Grant’s staff officer and so on.

John Pope struck me as an aggressive and decent commander, but was not suitable for army command (as evidenced by the battle of Second Bull Run). However, there is no way one could exonerate the combat performance of Sigel, Burnside and Butler.
 
That roughly matches my understanding. We can argue if the Northern Generals or Southern Generals were better, I side with the Southern by a decent margin. What I have never seen anyone seriously dispute is south had better regimental officers. The field grade officers of South were better due to the military academies and the slave enforcement patrols. It is also the reason the South had better horsemen despite inferior material situation.

And I have never seen anyone do more than assert, without proof, that the Confederacy had better regimental officers

The influence of southern military academies has been vastly overrated. Even at West Point, little of the classwork was directly related to serving in the military, where the majority of the coursework was mathematics, science, and engineering. The actual military training was focused almost entirely on regiment or company command. Only 5% of graduates from southern military academies joined the US military. In 1860, there were 1108 officers in the US Army, 286 of whom joined the Confederacy.

The idea that field grade officers of South were better because of participating in slave enforcement patrols makes no sense. A handful of horsemen occasionally riding down an unarmed, untrained civilian on foot, might cultivate horsemanship and arrogance, but little else. It would not teach tactics, strategy, logistics, staff work, writing of orders, marksmanship, military organization, discipline, coolness under fire, or leadership.
 
At what point in the war?

FWIW, my impression is that the South had an edge to begin with, but the North had pretty much caught up by 1863.
 
While I am more willing to exonerate John Pope, that doesn’t justify the fact that they were average to below-average commanders.

You've missed my point. Those Union generals were were average to below-average commanders, but those average Union generals usually won when they weren't facing Robert E Lee.
 
You've missed my point. Those Union generals were were average to below-average commanders, but those average Union generals usually won when they weren't facing Robert E Lee.

Burnside had hits and misses. He was part of the defeated Federal Army at 1st Manassas, he launched a successful expedition into North Carolina, was a Corps Commander in McClellan's failed Peninsula Campaign and was held at bay at Antietam by Robert Toombs and A.P. Hill, he lead the AotP to defeat at Fredericksburg then got reassigned to Tennessee where he combatted raiders like John Hunt Morgan and captured Knoxville then thwarted Longstreet's attempt to retake it, thereafter he returned to Virginia where he did not perform all that well under Grant and was relieved of command after the debacle of the Crater.

Pope's successes came early in the war and he wasn't really in the thick of things after Lee beat him. He forced Sterling Price to retreat after a minor action in Missouri, captured New Madrid and Island No.10, was taking part in Halleck's Siege of Corinth when he was summoned to command the Army of Virginia which he promptly lead to defeat at 2nd Manassas, he was then sent out to Minnesota where he spent the rest of the war fighting Indians before returning to Missouri in 1865 to chase down the surrender of Kirby-Smith-dom. Simply put, Pope wasn't tested enough in battle know how good he could have been, he had some success early on but the first time he face a major Confederate Army he was defeated then sent out to rot far away from the main theater of war, not even fighting Confederates.

I dont understand the defence of Butler. He was more a military governer than a General and spent most of the war in charge of the administration of New Orleans. As a field commander he wasn't that good. Magruder beat him and embarrassed him at Big Bethel, New Orleans fell without resistance more due to Farragut slipping the Confederate defences than anything Butler did, and he was utterly exposed by Beauregard in the Bermuda Hundred.

Sigel had more misses than hit. He won at Pea Ridge, but then was part of the Federal forces outclassed by Jackson in the Valley and was in Pope's army at 2nd Manassas, he saw no action at Antietam or Fredericksburg, was relieved of command before Chancellorsville and returned in 1864 just in time to be humiliated by Breckinridge at New Market with a bunch of military cadets.
 
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