i suggested Smith P. Bankhead as a POSSIBILITY because he was WELL-known as a hunter/woodsman/leader & was also "well-regarded on his home ground" by citizens. (NOT a bad start to lead a home-based guerrilla movement. LTC Wendell Fertig had FAR LESS obvious knowledge at his founding of USFIP.)
further, you have for the second time failed to notice (or possibly intentionally ignored) that he (nor any of the other CSA leaders) was NOT ordered by President Davis and/or GEN Lee to "go home, organize & continue the fight".
free dixie,sw
He was a Memphis lawyer and newspaper publisher before the war. Sounds pretty city-slicker to me.
Plus there's that whole "giving information to the Yankees to get a free pass home early" thing. Not surprising he was beaten to death by confederate dead-enders.
Morris Dees claims many things.
Explain to me why it is "abusive" for me to use a term which I did not consider offensive (would you prefer to be called a "palaeo-Confederate"? or just plain "Confederate"?) once, but not abusive for you to use the term "Damn Yankee" repeatedly?
i suggested Smith P. Bankhead as a POSSIBILITY because he was WELL-known as a hunter/woodsman/leader & was also "well-regarded on his home ground" by citizens.
So well regarded, apparently, that some of them beat him to death.
further, you have for the second time failed to notice (or possibly intentionally ignored) that he (nor any of the other CSA leaders) was NOT ordered by President Davis and/or GEN Lee to "go home, organize & continue the fight".
General Lee, who was only responsible for his own command, had surrendered. Lee had no legal authority inside or outside of the Confederacy to recruit new troops for a new mission.
Jefferson Davis, who presided over the dissolution of the Confederate government on May 5th, was a private citizen when he was apprehended. As such he also lacked any legal authority inside or outisde the Confederacy to recruit new troops for a new mission.
Jubal Early and John Bell Hood did not look to Davis or to Lee as their commanders anymore, and they took it upon themselves of their own initiative to try to start a guerrilla movement.
They failed. Hood surrendered soon after and Early fled overseas.
Early, Hood and Forrest were the probably highest ranking officers in the Confederate army yet to surrender after May 5, 1865. They were thus, by definition, the highest ranking government officials in the Confederacy and were the only people who could issue such a call under the old chain of command.
And they did issue such a call. And they were all three men of great ability who commanded great respect from Confederate citizens and Confederate soldiers. No one can say that Forrest was not a born guerrilla leader.
Their collective failure demonstrates that a guerrilla campaign was not a realistic undertaking.
There is no point in saying "if only they had." They actually did. And it didn't work.
I would also point out that during the Confederacy's successes, Jefferson Davis did not generally issue orders to Lee or any other general telling them how or when to fight.
Lee never asked permission to enter Maryland. Lee never asked permission to enter Pennsylvania. Lee basically disregarded strong "requests" by Davis to transfer troops to the west. If Lee had believed that a guerrilla campaign was winnable, he would not have awaited orders from Davis - he would have done what he had always done: made an executive decision right there on the spot, and hold himself accountable to dismissal or arrest if it went wrong.