Happy April 9

Oklahomahawk said:
You do make a good point with the comparison to Zhukov. Their tactics were very similar in many ways. Use your vastly superior numbers and resources and eventually the other side runs out of resources and you win. You definitely get the end results you wanted but they don't seem quite a brilliant if you're one of the guys getting sacrificed in all those frontal assaults designed to bleed the enemy.
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Except Russia was going down until Zhukov and Rokossovky were given command. Hitler also had some moments of indecision that had an enormous impact on the outcome.
 
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Interesting question: was Lee's offensive war mistake?

Even the South knew it's only chance at success was the North growing tired of the war and suing for peace. The best way to do this though is debatable.

On one side you have the idea that quick, demoralizing losses by the North with a massive body count and battles on norther soil would shock the North into giving up.

On the other is the idea that a long, defensive war of attrition would grind away the will of the North to fight.

One common criticism of Lee is that his aggressive strategy spent men and supplies at an unsustainable rate especially compared with his defensive fighting.

But with the blockade strangling the South and other Northern armies moving through the South, Lee didn't have infinite time.

I'm not sure the strategy picked mattered as Lincoln wasn't stopping.
 
nsacpi said:
General Winter came through big time against Napoleon too.
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And Sweden a century before Napoleon. The way I look at it, if it's too cold for the Swedes in Russia, I AIN'T going.

By the way, the usual name given by the Russians themselves, General Frost and General Mud.
 
Oklahomahawk said:
And Sweden a century before Napoleon. The way I look at it, if it's too cold for the Swedes in Russia, I AIN'T going.

By the way, the usual name given by the Russians themselves, General Frost and General Mud.
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Those were no ordinary winters. At key moments mother nature blessed them with exceptionally severe winters.
 
nsacpi said:
I'm pretty sure there is something close to a consensus by now outside of Lost Cause historians.

The moneyball approach is mainly a fun exercise for discussion. But I suspect future military historians will try to refine and improve upon it.
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I'm not so sure about the consensus. It might depend on the measuring stick. Tactics vs strategy. If you need to pick a general to win a single battle, I think you pick Lee every time. Grant was not a great battlefield tactician. Lee was. Especially when he had Jackson he could trust to command divided forces.

Lee could pull off moves on a battlefield that Grant wouldn't be able to dream of. There's a reason Lee's battlefield tactics have been taught at West Point.

On the other hand, if you need someone to win a war, Grant is your man. Grant understood the bigger picture and what it would take to win a war. Grant knew he could replace losses that Lee couldn't. That if he kept Lee constantly engaged he would win the war of attrition. He smothered Lee in a way that Lee had no answer for.

Lee, for all his prowess on the battlefield, wasn't great at the bigger picture. He never seemed to grasp the concept of winning a battle but losing the war. He would attack a superior force audaciously, win a tactical victor, but spend resources and men he couldn't replace doing so.

So better general might be a question with more than one way of answering it.
 
Yeah, there is a distinction to be made between tactics and strategy (and a third element logistics). Grant's reputation is mostly that of a strategist. But the Vicksburg campaign shows him to be an audacious tactician.

As for the logistics part, which is very important (an army needs to be fed), Grant served as a quartermaster in the Mexican-American War. He at the time was disappointed with the assignment but he learned a lot about supplying an army from that experience. And maybe a few things about cutting off the supplies of the opposing army.
 
nsacpi said:
Yeah, there is a distinction to be made between tactics and strategy (and a third element logistics). Grant's reputation is mostly that of a strategist. But the Vicksburg campaign shows him to be an audacious tactician.

As for the logistics part, which is very important (an army needs to be fed), Grant served as a quartermaster in the Mexican-American War. He at the time was disappointed with the assignment but he learned a lot about supplying an army from that experience. And maybe a few things about cutting off the supplies of the opposing army.
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Logistics was huge and is often overlooked in books about the Civil War. Logistics doesn't show up on the nice maps with bars and arrows showing various maneuvers.

Lee was constantly undersupplied but was also terrible at conserving resources.
 
Krgrecw said:
If Lee had commanded the union army, would the south had even lasted a full calendar year? Doubtful
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VERY doubtful, but our northern friends have to pat themselves on the back from time to time about the war. Conveniently ignored facts, in population the North outnumbered the South about 22-5 in 1861. Now if you're outnumbered 22-5 every single one of those 5 had better be Chuck Norris in his prime. Don't have statistics about technology and industry but I would guess that was probably somewhere around 40 or 50 to 1. Of course there's the slavery issue, which they forget that less than 1 in 4 Southerners owned even 1 slave in 1860. Of course even 1 of those is too many but they always try to make the war about freeing the slaves, which it wasn't at all until the last year to year and a half of the war. The Emancipation Proclamation (which didn't free a single slave from a legal/constitutional standpoint) wasn't even issued to free the slaves, it was issued to keep Britain and France from recognizing (and aiding) the South. Also, there's the fact that New York state was seriously considering seceding from the Union when hostilities broke out (because of business/economics) and on the racism front there's the fact that Lincoln had to do some serious lobbying to Congress to get the necessary votes to pass the 13th amendment (which DID free the slaves) and when he went to bed the night before the vote he was anything but confident about how the vote would go the next day.

Sorry for the interruption, back to the "lost cause" programming now.
 
Oklahomahawk said:
VERY doubtful, but our northern friends have to pat themselves on the back from time to time about the war. Conveniently ignored facts, in population the North outnumbered the South about 22-5 in 1861. Now if you're outnumbered 22-5 every single one of those 5 had better be Chuck Norris in his prime. Don't have statistics about technology and industry but I would guess that was probably somewhere around 40 or 50 to 1. Of course there's the slavery issue, which they forget that less than 1 in 4 Southerners owned even 1 slave in 1860. Of course even 1 of those is too many but they always try to make the war about freeing the slaves, which it wasn't at all until the last year to year and a half of the war. The Emancipation Proclamation (which didn't free a single slave from a legal/constitutional standpoint) wasn't even issued to free the slaves, it was issued to keep Britain and France from recognizing (and aiding) the South. Also, there's the fact that New York state was seriously considering seceding from the Union when hostilities broke out (because of business/economics) and on the racism front there's the fact that Lincoln had to do some serious lobbying to Congress to get the necessary votes to pass the 13th amendment (which DID free the slaves) and when he went to bed the night before the vote he was anything but confident about how the vote would go the next day.

Sorry for the interruption, back to the "lost cause" programming now.
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This assessment is essentially correct. For some reason, the North chose to fight the war with one hand tied to its back (including a succession of incompetent commanders).
 
nsacpi said:
This assessment is essentially correct. For some reason, the North chose to fight the war with one hand tied to its back (including a succession of incompetent commanders).
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I've read speculation that some of the Union's struggles early on came from the fact that secession depleted its officer corp. That the southern aristocracy had a military tradition that resulted in a disproportionate number of the best trained officers being from the South.

However, I've never seen any numbers to back this up so I don't know if it's true or not.
 
According to Wikipedia:

"At the start of the war, there were 824 graduates of the U.S. Military Academy on the active list; of these, 296 resigned or were dismissed, and 184 of those became Confederate officers."

So roughly 35% of the West Point graduates left the officer corp at the outset of the Civil War. Compare that to 20% of the free population living in the South.

So disproportionate but maybe not hugely so.
 
nsacpi said:
This assessment is essentially correct. For some reason, the North chose to fight the war with one hand tied to its back (including a succession of incompetent commanders).
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Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery right? Lee turned Lincoln and Winfield Scott down so they went looking for their own Lee which of course was a dumb idea. Lee shredded the early Union generals because they were trying to play according to his playbook rather than writing their own. Personally I think Meade was an underrated general. Grant knew how to win, he just didn't care how many of his own men got killed in the process. Deep down though I think he did care. I think that's why he drank so much, I think at night when he was by himself those casualty lists started to talk to him, as it were.
 
striker42 said:
According to Wikipedia:

"At the start of the war, there were 824 graduates of the U.S. Military Academy on the active list; of these, 296 resigned or were dismissed, and 184 of those became Confederate officers."

So roughly 35% of the West Point graduates left the officer corp at the outset of the Civil War. Compare that to 20% of the free population living in the South.

So disproportionate but maybe not hugely so.
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Wait a minute, a practicing attorney is using Wikipedia as a source? Say it ain't so, lol.
 
Oklahomahawk said:
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery right? Lee turned Lincoln and Winfield Scott down so they went looking for their own Lee which of course was a dumb idea. Lee shredded the early Union generals because they were trying to play according to his playbook rather than writing their own. Personally I think Meade was an underrated general. Grant knew how to win, he just didn't care how many of his own men got killed in the process. Deep down though I think he did care. I think that's why he drank so much, I think at night when he was by himself those casualty lists started to talk to him, as it were.
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His problems with alcohol started long before the war and he had a debilitating fear of blood, an unusual quality for a general. He also loved animals, especially his horses. Like Wellington, he was an extreme introvert, but at the same time he had a gift for friendship. His best friend from West Point was Longstreet, who was in his wedding party and gave him some money when he was broke. After the war they resumed their friendship. When he was asked to give a speech at the outbreak of the war, he almost passed out from nerves. But he must have gotten over that to become president. He liked to drive his own carriage fast while president, and once got a speeding ticket for it.
 
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nsacpi said:
His problems with alcohol started long before the war and he had a debilitating fear of blood, an unusual quality for a general. He also loved animals, especially his horses. Like Wellington, he was an extreme introvert, but at the same time he had a gift for friendship. His best friend from West Point was Longstreet, who was in his wedding party and gave him some money when he was broke. After the war they resumed their friendship. When he was asked to give a speech at the outbreak of the war, he almost passed out from nerves. But he must have gotten over that to become president. He liked to drive his own carriage fast while president, and once got a speeding ticket for it.
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Longstreet was treated unfairly. Lee wasn't perfect. He made mistakes. The Lost Cause tried to push these mistakes off on Longstreet because he collaborated with northerners after the war.

Longstreet was actually an excellent general and Lee knew it more than anyone. Longstreet opposed Pickett's charge in the strongest possible terms and was absolutely correct.

Still, Longstreet wasn't Jackson. The death of Stonewall Jackson, not Gettysburg, is the turning point of the war in the east to me. Lee was less audacious after that.
 
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