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Posted on 08/25/2014 4:04:23 PM PDT by BigReb555
Do you remember Rhett Butler telling Miss Scarlett O’Hara?
“Take a good look my dear. It's an historic moment you can tell your grandchildren about - how you watched the Old South fall one night.”
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
Damn that Sherman.
With so many fine generals, how did J. B. Hood get put in charge of an army? He was a fighter but just an awful general.
Thanks for this ... glad they’re saving the Cyclorama. It was awesome!!
Good question. It is unfair to second guess the person on the spot, but even as someone with no military training (God did I try to join but “too deaf to fire artillery’ according to the army) it seems like a case study of what NOT to do in defending a city.
Loved the cyclorama, even in 2004 when I was there is was impressive, must have been darn near virtual reality for 1921.
“...The Loews Grand Theater, originally DeGive’s Grand Opera House, was located at the corner of Peachtree Street and Forsyth Streets in Atlanta, Georgia...”
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Currently the site of the headquarters of Georgia-Pacific Corporation (owned by the “evil” Koch Brothers!)
Walker had been wounded so often in his Army service before the Civil War that his nickname was ‘Shotpouch’.
Who appoints the generals who fail their country?
Obama, Jeff Davis, the Kaiser, ....
Wilson got lucky with Pershing. It was one of the few decisions he made that was right. Bush was ill-served at the end of the First Gulf War when HIS generals back in Washington at the Pentagon and White House lost their nerve and refused to fight down the highway towards Baghdad. As a result, Saddam was able to survive, his military and his government were kept more or less intact, and we had to fight again.
I am inclined to think that if Saddam were still around the mid-east would be a tiny bit more stable.
Longstreet should have been put in charge of the Army of Tennessee. He couldn’t have held Atlanta, either, but he was brilliant on the defensive and might have held it at least until the November elections. Absent the fall of Atlanta, Lincoln might not have won. Lincoln himself, that summer, was convinced he would lose. Atlanta changed everything for him.
Here's the actual site - up in the woods.
The "Fighting Bishop" - Leonidas Polk.
“I am inclined to think that if Saddam were still around the mid-east would be a tiny bit more stable.”
What would the world look like had Bill Clinton given the order to kill OBL?
That was Jefferson Davis’s call. He did not like Joseph Johnson. Johnson’s strategy of tactical withdrawal in front of Sherman’s 3 armies was galling to Davis. With the possibility of loosing Atlanta looming, Davis relieved Johnson and appointed Hood to command the army. General Lee upon hearing of Hood’s appointment commented that he thought “General Hood had to much wolf and not enough fox in him.” As events would turn out, a pretty accurate appraisal of John Hood.
Where are the concern trolls attacking Mr. Johnson for excerpting his own writing?
IMHO no one could have saved the south much less Atlanta. The south did not have the combat power to succeed. Especially in the west. To think otherwise is a romantic delusion. As a southerner I once suffered from the delusion but not any more.
Actually it looks like a mod removed post #1. No matter, bigreb will post a duplicate thread in 2 or three days ;’)
Southern politicians like Senator Jefferson Davis were accustomed to dealing with "Dough-faced northerners" like Democrat President James Buchanan, who were themselves pro-slavery, and willing to do most anything to keep their slave-holding political allies happy.
So Confederate President Davis did not, in early 1861, think it would take much show of southern force to get such weaklings to give up any thought of preventing secession.
So Davis quickly called up 100,000 Confederate troops, at a time when the entire US Army was just 16,000 -- two-thirds scattered in small forts out west.
That would give the Confederacy a 10 to one advantage over any Federal force likely to soon appear.
And then, to demonstrate how deadly serious he was, Davis ordered the assault on and seizure of Fort Sumter.
That ought to show them Yankees, right?
Well, it didn't, and turns out that superior Southern motivation, courage and tenacity were not enough to overcome superior Northern numbers & logistics.
Still, the cause was not yet lost, since there were two major wild-cards which could turn the tide:
Talk about winning friends and influencing people.
Point is: the Confederacy could not, by itself, win the war, but the Union might easily have lost it.
So the real romance & delusion of our lost-causers was: that their Democrat northern allies were stronger politically and weaker morally than proved to be the case.
Sheridan's ride at the Battle of Cedar Creek, near Strasburg, Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, October 19, 1864:
Sorry, but I don't buy it as a realistic possibility.
By the 1864 election, the South had lost much of its territory, which was occupied and in the process of being reconstructed. Most notably the entire Mississippi Valley. Other large sections, such as everything west of that valley, most of Florida, etc. were for all practical purposes cut offfrom the rest of the CSA.
I have no doubt there were many Copperheads and other willing to negotiate a peace. However, does anyone seriously think Union public opinion would allow all that land they had conquered at immense cost in blood and money to just be handed back in negotiations?
Or does anyone think CSA public opinion would have allowed its government to accept anything but return of all its sacred soil?
Sometimes wars are very nearly impossible to get out of, even if both sides want to.
That was my point. The South could only win the war politically, a prospect that evaporated with the fall of Atlanta.
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