Civil War project help

[ManPerson]

Me and a partner were given a project in school to debate a Civil War topic. Ours is "The military leadership in the Confederacy (South) was superior to the military leadership in the Union (North)."

We are supposed to argue for this point (Not against it). We were wondering if you (People of the Forum) could help us out.

(I am in no way affiliated with PersonMan.)

[Haruki-kun]

Me and a partner were given a project in school to debate a Civil War topic. Ours is "The military leadership in the Confederacy (South) was superior to the military leadership in the Union (North)."

We are supposed to argue for this point (Not against it). We were wondering if you (People of the Forum) could help us out.

I'm afraid we can't. It would be considered political discusion, and that's not allowed here by forum rules.

Sorry, but you'd have to ask somewhere else.

[PersonMan]

Jeez, guys. Read the rules before posting next time, alright?

I'm working on the same project. Go here to see my thread. We'll see if that gets anything.

[RationalGoblin]

I believe a better place for your question would be the "Got a Real-World Weapon or Armor" thread. It deals with military leadership, as well as the weapons themselves.

Links here.

[ManPerson]

This is not a political question. This is a question of battle efficiency. It is only a political question if you choose to make it so. ( It would not be relevant to the original question, though)

[Spiryt]

I'll only note that Civil War has from whatever reason serious potential to cause sh**storm among polish historical forum users, so it probably can cause something extraordinary among USAns - more personally connected with it.

Crazy people.

[arguskos]

I'll only note that Civil War has from whatever reason serious potential to cause sh**storm among polish historical forum users, so it probably can cause something extraordinary among USAns - more personally connected with it.

Crazy people.

It is a highly divisive topic in certain circles here in the States still. ManPerson, even though you are billing this as a non-political topic, the authorities around here will not, and most likely, will close this thread. For your own protection, I highly recommend you PM Roland St. Jude and ask his permission for this topic to be discussed, given it's polarizing nature and potential to become a highly charged political nightmare.

[Fifty-Eyed Fred]

Every time I see "Civil War" on the internet I think "Yay, now's the time to use my knowledge of the English Civil War for the benefit of everybody on the internet." Then I realise it's referring to the American Civil War.

I wouldn't mind, but it gets me every single time, even when it's clearly an American website.

[TSGames]

Me and a partner were given a project in school to debate a Civil War topic. Ours is "The military leadership in the Confederacy (South) was superior to the military leadership in the Union (North)."

We are supposed to argue for this point (Not against it). We were wondering if you (People of the Forum) could help us out.

(I am in no way affiliated with PersonMan.)

I would recommend that you research the military and aristocratic tradition of the South. They were probably the closest thing to a 'warrior caste' that America has ever had(excluding the natives, of course).

[raitalin]

There's absolutely no basis for turning this into a political discussion.
I could write pages on this, so I'll just try to hit major points.

• Many more southern officers than northern ones had gained experience as part of the Mexican-American war.
  
  Many of Lee's victories were against numerically superior forces. While victories like Fredericksburg were as much due to Union general's recklessness as Lee's tactics, victories like Chancellorsville show Lee's ability to win on the offensive against a numerically superior force. Even when they discovered his battle plan for Antietam they only managed a stalemate.
  
  Until Grant took over, every Union general was a colossal failure. Either from being too sure of their numbers, to not valuing their troops, or being too timid to run Lee's army down when they had the chance.
  
  James Longstreet (CSA) was developing tactics later utilized in WWI.
  
  By the time of Gettysburg, the Southern soldiers loved Lee so much that after Pickett's charge failed horribly, many of them were eager to attack again. No Union general outside of McClellan had anything close to this level of adoration.
  
  Grant and Sherman's victories had less to do with tactics and more to do with their realization that as long as they kept pressure on the south and it's armies, the north would win eventually. War of Attrition and Total War are the watchwords here.

EDIT: If you need any more help and this thread gets locked, feel free to PM me

[Gamerlord]

Every time I see "Civil War" on the internet I think "Yay, now's the time to use my knowledge of the English Civil War for the benefit of everybody on the internet." Then I realise it's referring to the American Civil War.

I wouldn't mind, but it gets me every single time, even when it's clearly an American website.

Are you suggesting no American knows about the English civil war ? .

You just met one.

[Lycan 01]

Robert E. Lee.

There. That's all you need.


He was brilliant, tactical, and noble. He was nicknamed "The Ace of Spades" because of his mastery of fortifications and entrenched defenses. But a series of misfortunes, such as the death of Stonewall Jackson, made his job harder and harder... And when the war ended, IIRC, his only real request was that his men would be allowed to return home safely, which they were.

The Confederate Cavalry was also pretty nifty. IIRC, it was Jeb Stuart who led a Cavalry charge through a major Union camp, where witnesses saw a half-dressed General Hooker storm out of his tent followed by a lady of the night.



Edit: And also, I don't really see this as political. Its military history. Lets keep it that way.

[Shishnarfne]

One key aspect of successful debating is to anticipate the key counter-arguments. So, while Lee was (probably) the best tactical mind in either army, Grant was his superior as a strategist. (I invite you to look into events to see why I'm making this claim without defending it.) And unfortunately, Lee suffered tactical setbacks in the two battles that could have feasibly won the war for the Confederacy: Antietam and Gettysburg.

I think that if you can keep the debate focused on Lee's merits and the drawbacks of most Union generals in Virginia, you have a good chance of winning the debate. In the Western theater, Confederate armies had a few inconclusive battles (Shiloh, Perryville, Stones River), and only one clear tactical victory (Chickamauga), whose follow-up led to a Union victory largely denying the Confederacy any long-terms gains from that success.

Sorry, I felt the need to play "devil's advocate" by pointing out some of the real merits of Grant, who often gets overlooked for his military abilities.

[Tirian]

Sorry, I felt the need to play "devil's advocate" by pointing out some of the real merits of Grant, who often gets overlooked for his military abilities.

In addition, Grant was preceded by a long string of generals in high command of the Union forces who were often mediocre at best while Lee marshaled his forces effectively throughout the war. The Union had some roses in a field full of thorns, but the Confederacy was more uniformly qualified.

[Lycan 01]

As a resident of Mississippi, I can vouch for Grant being good at his job.

[ForzaFiori]

As a resident of Mississippi, I can vouch for Grant being good at his job.

As a resident of SC, and living near Georgia, I can do the same for Sherman. People around here STILL hold a grudge about the march to the sea.

[Don Julio Anejo]

it was Jeb Stuart who led a Cavalry charge through a major Union camp, where witnesses saw a half-dressed General Hooker storm out of his tent followed by a lady of the night.

Wait, is that where the name came from?

[Lycan 01]

As a matter of fact, YES.

If I knew where my books on Civil War officers and Civil War myths and legends were, or weren't too lazy to go find them, I'd cite it for you. But yeah, the term came into use because of that story I mentioned, and the fact that a large number of prostitutes followed his forces around...

[Mauther]

As a matter of fact, YES.

If I knew where my books on Civil War officers and Civil War myths and legends were, or weren't too lazy to go find them, I'd cite it for you. But yeah, the term came into use because of that story I mentioned, and the fact that a large number of prostitutes followed his forces around...

The term "hooker" to refer to prostitutes pre-dates the unfortunate Gen Hooker by at least 2 decades. But rumors at the time said that Hooker and his staff traveled with a harem of ladies of ill repute known collectively as Hooker's Brigade.

2 additional factors added to the appearance of Lee's superiority. The tactics of the time and the terrain of the east coast greatly favored the defensive. The fact of the matter is that in the Eastern Theater, no one had much success on the offensive. The proximity of cities, rivers and mountains constrained maneuver, greatly favoring the defense. Its worth remembering that the genius Lee also suffered major defeats when he went into Northern territory (Antietam and Gettysburg). The north also suffered from a cluttered chain of command. The bulk of the major fighting in the east was conducted by the Army of the Potomac. The various generals who took that command all had their own agendas and were also receiving instructions from General-in-Chief William Halleck, Secretary of War Stanton, and President Lincoln. The South had a similar issue but Lee's popularity and political infleunce amoung the east coast old guard and especially the Virginia aristocracy insulated him as long as he was able to maintain southern territorial integrity.

As Shishnarfne pointed out below, Grant was a superior strategist. In fact, argueably the north routinely had stronger strategists: Scott, Halleck, Meade, Grant were all superior logisticians and strategists. But all but the last were unable to execute those plans decisively.

One major advantage the South did enjoy was a uniformity of purpose. The South sole goal was a separation from the North. There was no serious intent to conquer the Union, or to use the war to infleunce "internal" Union politics unrelated to the war. In the North you had at least three separate camps, all working at cross purposes. You had those who wanted to see the Union restored by federal power (military victory) like Scott, those who wanted to see the Union restored with as little violence as possible (diplomacy), and those who wanted to see peace without necessarily restoring the federal integrity of the United States (two state solution). So you didn't have a uniform policy implemented in the field.

Another advantage the South enjoyed was a less ruthless political input. In the North, generals who failed were removed from command, in many cases without regard to previous successes. For instance, Union Gen Rosecrans was very successful including defeating Lee by Maneuver in West Virginia, argueably one of the Union's top 3 battle commanders; but a poorly worded command at the Battle of Chickamauga resulted in a major Union defeat and the end of his career. Multiple Confederate generals suffered major defeats but were able to remain in command and survive their mistakes: Lee (West Virginia, Gettysburg), Bragg (Tullahoma, Chatanooga), Jackson (Seven Days Battle).

[Cyrion]

Another angle you can pursue the argument from is one of resources. A couple of analyses I've read look at the idea that, without a quick victory for the CSA, the result of the war was a foregone conclusion. The major industrial centers and the ability to produce the materials necessary to sustain the war were almost completely located in the Union. One measure of the success of the CSA officers could be the length of time they were able to contest the issue.

I haven't read enough about the Civil War to know if that's really accurate, but it might be worth checking out.

[Tyrandar]

One of the best things going for your argument is that the Union *desperately* wanted Lee to head the Union Army, but he declined, not wanting to fight against his home state of Virginia. So at the very least, Lincoln would back you up in that assertion.

Like Tirian said, it took the Union a long string of awful generals before they fielded Grant and Sherman.

Then there's the environmental factor. In the South, you had people riding horses and hunting since childhood, which put the Union at a huge disadvantage. As a result of this, the majority of the officers in the United States Army were from the south already, and many of those enlisted in the CSA.

(Unfortunately, I had a very biased professor for my Civil War & Reconstruction class, so there were a lot of ravings about how Lee fed his men into a meatgrinder and how Davis was a terrible micromanaging commander-in-chief. Shoulda read more textbooks. >.<)

[ThePhantasm]

I fear that this topic will be locked.

1) This sort of topic is a troll magnet.
2) Its hard for people's feelings not so show through about which side was right, etc.

[Fifty-Eyed Fred]

1) This sort of topic is a troll magnet.
2) Its hard for people's feelings not so show through about which side was right, etc.

I'm sorry, but the Royalists were obviously right and I'm not about to refrain from announcing it!

[Lycan 01]

I haven't seen any mention of who was wrong or right, just who the good generals were and what sides they were on. Its not the cause they fought for we're discussing, its how the fought for it.

[Renegade Paladin]

If you have to defend the idea that Confederate military leadership was overall superior to their Union adversaries, I'm afraid you're ever so slightly hosed, because that's an absolutely untenable position, especially in the later stages of the war. Sherman didn't sack Atlanta and Savannah by being a bad general, and Lee didn't order a suicidal advance up Cemetery Ridge into the teeth of Union artillery by being a good one. The Army of the Potomac had it's share of generals ranging from overly conservative (Meade) to outright incompetent due to paranoia (McClellan), but Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas won their battles largely through superior generalship. (A study of command decisions throughout the war in all theaters reveals that before Grant was made general-in-chief, he both performed brilliantly in capturing Vicksburg and opposed Halleck's Red River Campaign through Louisiana in favor of attacking Mobile and cutting off the Confederate armies from smuggled supplies, which again, he was right about.)

That's about all I can say without getting into politics. If you wish me to elaborate, my PM box is open.

[Tirian]

If you have to defend the idea that Confederate military leadership was overall superior to their Union adversaries, I'm afraid you're ever so slightly hosed, because that's an absolutely untenable position, especially in the later stages of the war.

It's certainly a position that your opponent will raise: if the Confederates were better militarily than the Union, then they would have won. You certainly should be prepared to dispute it. I agree with Renegade Paladin that this probably isn't the place to get into too much detail on the matter, but I would suggest that the Confederacy had been badly outplayed on the diplomatic and economic fronts, and eventually those losses were bound to show up on the battlefield in terms of both shortages and desperation.

In fact, I've seen so many arguments for "If only THIS had happened, the Confederacy would have prevailed" that I'm inclined to believe that we live in the only alternate universe in which the Union won.

[Renegade Paladin]

In fact, I've seen so many arguments for "If only THIS had happened, the Confederacy would have prevailed" that I'm inclined to believe that we live in the only alternate universe in which the Union won.

On the contrary, it was fortunate to survive as long as it did; the war wouldn't have lasted three months if McClellan had just attacked at the outset when the Army of the Potomac outnumbered the Army of Northern Virginia almost two to one, but he was so afraid of attacking that he kept reporting that he had certain intelligence that the opposite was true (that is, that the Confederate forces arrayed against him numbered almost a million men) as an excuse for not advancing.

[Seffbasilisk]

"When God was handing out brains, he asked the North, but they thought he said 'Trains', and said 'No, we've got plenty.' "

You could look into the maneuvers and stances of Lee, of Stonewall Jackson at the Battle of Manassas, See the simple-minded brutal efficiency of Sherman, that had to arise to contend with the know-how, and capable officer material.

[Renegade Paladin]

"When God was handing out brains, he asked the North, but they thought he said 'Trains', and said 'No, we've got plenty.' "

You could look into the maneuvers and stances of Lee, of Stonewall Jackson at the Battle of Manassas, See the simple-minded brutal efficiency of Sherman, that had to arise to contend with the know-how, and capable officer material.

Ah yes, a key component of the Lost Cause myth (used in the folkloric sense). But it's just not a true statement; Lee and Jackson were extremely capable commanders, it's true, but I'm quite comfortable saying that Grant was the finest general officer of the war. He won all of his campaigns, compelled the surrender of three enemy armies, and never suffered decisive defeat once all the while. Why? It wasn't because he simply had more men and resources to pour into the conflict; the Army of the Potomac had that all the while and until Meade took over it wasn't winning a whole lot of anything.

The first time Grant compelled the surrender of a Confederate army was at Fort Donelson in Tennessee. The Confederates attempted a breakout attack while Grant was downriver conferring with Admiral Foote (commanding the Union river gunboat flotilla), and Grant returned to find his army's right in shambles and General McClernand, the division commander, in a panic. Rather than retreat as advised, Grant said, to quote:

Some of our men are pretty badly demoralized, but the enemy must be more so, for he has attempted to force his way out, but has fallen back. The one who attacks first now will be victorious and the enemy will have to be in a hurry if he gets ahead of me.

He then proceeded to do just that, making a diversionary attack from his left while reorganizing the right to again trap the Confederates, and compelled unconditional surrender of the army holed up in the fort the next day.

Grant operated by taking the initiative and keeping it, something that takes great skill, not simply brute force. He did the same thing at Shiloh, the Wilderness, and all the way to Appomattox. Grant's command style has often been mischaracterized as simple unskilled use of the army as a blunt instrument for reasons I am bound not to discuss, but there was far more to it than that; he had a gift for strategic thinking (again, he wanted to act to cut off Confederate supply lines to the entire Western theater by taking Mobile, though he was overruled by his then-superior Halleck, not to mention Sheridan's... neutralizing of the Shenandoah Valley as a resource base and the grand flanking maneuver that was the march to the sea); he did not simply hammer away at whatever was in front of him.

And as for Sherman, who you singled out, well... that's simply slander and nothing but. Sherman's army had the second lowest casualty rate of all armies on both sides of the war (the Army of Northern Virginia under Lee had the highest). Sherman repeatedly flanked Johnston's forces out of prepared defensive positions in the summer of 1864, and when Johnston was replaced by John Bell Hood, Sherman baited him into attacking apparently isolated units and ambushed his army four separate times with the end result of 18,000 Confederate casualties and the capture of Atlanta. Sherman practically invented modern maneuver warfare, a fact that's easy to overlook if you simply read a campaign map showing straight arrows running from Atlanta to Savannah to Charleston to Raleigh.

[toasty]

I think the most important thing to remember here is that Lee was an amazing leader, but perhaps not the greatest General. Lee's men would have fought till the Union had shot each and every one of them, and most likely they would have gotten right back up and fought some more... oh wait... wrong setting.

Anyways, my point is that Lee was an amazing man in terms of leadership and you can't but help appreciate him for that nature. He knew the war was going to be long and bloody and he knew that he would probably lose unless he did some very risky things (he did, and he failed and lost). But he fought. That is kickass, if you ask me.

Anyways, another thing that really killed Lee was his lose of Jackson. Stonewall Jackson was also another brilliant leader (though perhaps less romantic than Lee), but furthermore, Jackson understood what Lee meant when he gave his orders. I remember somewhere reading how Lee's orders were often Vague because Lee trusted his (generally competent) generals to do their job correctly. With Jackson, these orders worked perfectly because Jackson's style of command (or something) was very similar to Lee.

This really hurt during Gettysburg. Of course the South also lost Gettysburg cud Jeb Stuart was joy-riding, essentially. Longstreet wanted Stuart fired for that mistake, that's how bad it was. But anyways, the thing is that Pickett's Charge, while a disaster, actually, in theory, could have worked if they had send another charge up the hill, I was told once. Jackson, supposedly, would have done just that because he was the kind of man to get a job done or kill all his soldiers trying. Longstreet was in charge of the charge (heh... in charge of the charge) and he didn't even like the idea of Charging, he wanted to outflank the Union army and force them to fight on his terms (a very smart piece of advice that Lee should have listened to, but that was another failing of Lee: he liked to be on the offensive). So when the initial charge was a disaster, he decided not to follow it up.

And yes, Grant and Sherman were actually good generals. By the time they had started to fight Lee's army, the war was essentially already over, but they did a lot of things right and fought very well. Grant interests me in particular because the war turned him from the Town drunk into a man popular enough to become a president of the United States.