usertron2020
Donor
I'm still waiting for someone to bring up a record of a survivor of the charge who reached the wall and still claimed years later "We almost had them".
I Doubt you'll Find One ...I'm still waiting for someone to bring up a record of a survivor of the charge who reached the wall and still claimed years later "We almost had them".
What an odd notion, luck as a finite quantity.
The blame for the failure should mainly be laid at the feet of Longstreet who planned for failure, and got it.
You get Varus in Germania A.D.9. You get the English Army in France against Joan of Arc. You get Tarleton against Morgan at Cowpens 1781. You get Napoleon against Wellinton at Waterloo 1815. You get Sir Edward Pakenham against Colonel Andrew Jackson in New Orleans 1815. You get George Armstrong Custer against Crazy Horse in the valley of the Little Big Horn 1877. You get Admiral Nagumo against Adm's Spruance and Fletcher at Midway 1942. You get Lee against Meade in Gettysburg, 1863.
Longstreet has been used by "Marble Man" historians since the ACW as the premier whipping boy for every defeat the AoNV ever suffered if he was within at least a hundred miles of the action. Fortunately, like the "Dunning Thesis", no serious modern historian pays any attention. It's interesting that the "Marble Man" advocates never seem to have much to say about what was going on in Virginia between Longstreet's wounding in the Wilderness and his return almost at the war's end. I suspect some people (Like, say, Jubal Early) don't know what to do without their favorite chew-toy.
YOUR LEVEL OF LUCK IS INVERSELY PROPORTIONAL TO YOUR LEVEL OF OVERCONFIDENCE.![]()
The battles you listed were Grant victoriesGrant at Fort Donelson?
Grant at Shiloh?
Grant in the Wilderness?
Grant at Spottsylvania?
Grant on the North Anna?
Grant at Petersburg?
(etc.)
Cook! I wuz gonna say that! Grrr...I remember reading that after the war a journalist asked George Pickett his opinion regarding the debate about who was responsible for the failure of Pickett’s Charge, Lee or Longstreet.
Pickett replied that actually he thought the Union Army had something to do with it.
This raises the question that has been asked repeatedly before:
What if Lee had broken contact after the first or second day’s fighting and tried to flank the Union army and get between them and Washington?
the confederate artillery mostly missed their mark, they overshot the Union lines and even had a few close calls to Meade's command post, forcing him to relocate. the smaller number of Union guns at the battle gave the Confederate artillerymen the impression that their barrages were having effect when in fact they were not.
Also, your comparison to the Battle of Franklin is of little issue, that battle was also a confederate defeat, the Union army did not retreat. If you really want to make that comparison, it merely shows that even if nearly all the officers hadn't been killed so quickly and the charge had in fact managed to get into the Union lines they most likely would have lost any remaining officers there and then been forced to retreat. The main difference between the two charges was that Pickets charge was defeated earlier than Brown and Cleburn's charge and as such suffered less severe casualties. Also another key difference is that at gettysburg concealed artillery positions on little round top raked Pickett's charge from its right flank the whole way, at Franklin there was no flanking artillery fire to deal with.