Posted on 08/25/2008 9:11:18 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
Since the Civil War, the American way of war has been to break things and kill the enemy, and husband the lives of our troops.
Today, the anti-war protesters have helped the military so efficient in technology that the losses of Americans in battle has been reduced dramitically.
Franklin cost the Western Confederate Armies what they could least afford to lose-LEADERSHIP...
The number of Command-level officers killed, Wounded and captured there made it nearly impossible for the South to put together much in the way of Unified and effective commands in the west, after that.
15 out of 28 Confederate Generals were casualties, and 65 field grade officers were lost.
The defeat of the Confederacy was due primarily to the presence of three men: Lincoln, Grant and Sherman.
So your one of em, eh? /sarc
It's as if the Confederate Army of the Tennessee had decided to kill itself by chopping off its own head.
Two weeks after Franklin the CAT effectively ceased to exist as a coherent command and two weeks after that Sherman was having Christmas dinner in Savannah.
I’m in agreement with you on this. Being from a Southern state I was basically taught that Northern generals were butchers and that the only reason they won was because of superior men and resources. Well, along the way I read J.F.C. Fuller’s book Grant and Lee. He pretty well destroyed that silly argument. Ditto, Horace Porter’s Campaigning With Grant. Fact is, Grant is simply one of the greatest Captains ever. He was without guile or pretense, odd for a military man. There was nothing of the martinet in him. By all means, if you haven’t read it pick up his Memoirs, one of the greatest ever written. Shelby Foote was an unrepentent Southerner and he loved Grant. That speaks volumes.
Grant knew that in a stand up fight he could not compete with the Southern frame of mind and leadership in battle. Cold Harbor was indicative of that. He kept attacking so the South would break, which it never did, and made him realize he could only win by continuing to bleed off manpower. He had the logistics and men to throw in, the South was running out.
What a load of garbage.
To quote Grant from Shiloh: "Lick 'em tomorrow."
Grant had plenty of stand-up fights against Southern armies and generals and won most of them.
Grant did not buy into the Southern mystique at all, which is one of the reasons why he defeated the Confederacy's greatest captain.
Cold Harbor was indicative of that.
Do you even know anything about the Battle of Cold Harbor?
Far from being a stand-up fight, it was an assault by Grant against a Confederate army that was so well entrneched behind fortifications that Gordon Rhea - probably the expert on the Overland campaign - describes Lee's fortifications as the most brilliant defensive line built during the war.
The Union prevailed in the hand-to-hand fighting that occurred after the Union managed to smash through part of the defenses - but were slaughtered by the well-covered Confederate artillery emplacements that commanded the entrenchments they broke through.
He kept attacking so the South would break, which it never did
Of course the Confederacy did.
Grant cornered Lee in Petersburg, and then Lee, no longer able to defend Petersburg, made a run for it. Grant tracked him down and two weeks later Lee surrendered.
and made him realize he could only win by continuing to bleed off manpower.
He won the campaigns after Cold Harbor quite decisively, and not by bleeding off his own men, but by whittling Lee's force down to almost nothing.
He had the logistics and men to throw in, the South was running out.
When the Petersburg Campaign began Grant had 62,000 effectives and Lee had 42,000.
At Antietam McClellan had 87,000 effectives and Lee had 45,000.
Grant did a lot more with far fewer men than his predecessors, while Lee's numbers were not much smaller than they were two years before.
Grant's logistics were no better than McClellan's. Numbers and logistics did not finish Lee.
Grant and his leaner-and-meaner-than-McClellan's Army of The Potomac did.
This is only possible by making them come to us. We can't invade Indonesia, Morroco, Yemen, Egypt, and every other Muslim spot on the planet. The fact that we are succeding beyond our wildest dreams is clearly indicated by the fact that the last 3 major bombings have been by WOMEN. This an outrage for the jihadists, and it reminds me of Patton's line in the movie, "I knew we are winning when I saw the carts."
This not only will be over by the time McCain comes in, but he will not even have to deal with a WoT of the kind Bush had to fight, and probably won't appreciate Bush's contribution, either.
We did a good job of it in WW II, esp. in Europe. Fact is, Confederate commanders, supposedly playing defense, never should have lost higher % of men than the Union, but they did almost every time. Says something about southern leadership, which is that it wasn’t as great as it was cooked up to be. “The butcher” Grant lost a lower % of men than any general he faced.
Doing the right thing is usually divisive.
Presumably any state that had slave and joined the North would be allowed to keep its slaves to the detriment of the white workers.
Not "presumably" - according to the letter of the law they would. The Emancipation Proclamation had no effect on the slaveholders of Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware, Maryland or Washington DC.
Naturally the abolitionists wouldn't accept such an idea either.
Some abolitionists thought the EC wasn't good enough. The vast majority recognized it as an important step forward.
Lincoln's own attitude toward blacks demonstrates that the Proclamation wasn't based upon distaste for slavery as much as a war time measure against the South.
(1) Lincoln's "attitude toward blacks" changed over time. His attitudes and ideas in 1834 were not identical with his attitudes and ideas in 1864. Like most people, he learned quite a bit over the course of 30 years.
(2) Lincoln always had a distaste for slavery. He was one of the original freesoilers - one didn't need to have an enlightened view of black people in the 1830s to realize that slavery was a really, really bad idea.
(3) The EC was clearly a calculated move, but a calculated move that Lincoln also beleived was morally right. Lincoln quite openly told abolitionists that his main goal was perserving the Union and that he would agree to either maintaining slavery or abolishing slavery as long as the Union survived.
And Lincoln knew that once it was issued, the EC would prevent the UK and therefore France from entering the war on the side of the Confederacy.
Further given his treatment of any that spoke against his policies shows that divisions in the North cannot all be laid at the feet of any one group.
What "treatment" was that? Be specific.
And the draft riots show there was a full measure of racism in the North too
Of course there was.
Lincoln's handlers supposedly printed fake admission tickets to the GOP committee meeting the day of nominations to "pack" the house full of his Illinois supporters.
That failed misrably, the firing so heavy, men in the field had to dig makeshift fox holes with bayonets and tin cups. Thousands more wounded died in those fields because the whithering fire was so intense they could not be recovered.
The South did not break at Cold Harbor after the 1st. Grant took 12,000 casualties there, the South 4,000 or so.
Little Mac was a newspaper general. One who wanted fame without fighting and when he did, he made excuses for losing. Grant was nothing like Little Mac.
Grant had good interior lines, the railroads to move men/material where he needed them, good communications with his commanders, who didn't have good comprehension. Grant didn't care what the newspapers said or how he was portrayed. He didn't look like a general officer, much less act like one. He knew how to fight, and that is all Lincoln wanted.
Wouldn't surprise me - Douglas was very popular in central Illinois.
Lincoln's handlers supposedly printed fake admission tickets to the GOP committee meeting the day of nominations to "pack" the house full of his Illinois supporters.
Lincoln didn't have "handlers" - as Seward and others who attempted to "handle" him learned to their chagrin.
There were no "fake tickets" to the convention. Any convention officer's staff could issue a signed seating ticket to the convention and Lincoln-backing officers' staffs distributed every ticket they could give away to their favorite convention-goers.
Lincoln advocates also arranged for cheap fares to Chicago for Lincoln supporters out east so that they could get those tickets and use them. Obviously Lincoln backers had a much better campaign organization in Chicago than candidates from other states did.
Typical nineteenth century electioneering.
I didn't say the Confederacy broke at Cold Harbor. It held at Cold Harbor and broke at Petersburg.
Grant was nothing like Little Mac.
Precisely. McClellan, like Grant, had excellent logistics and he had even more men. But he wasn't Grant, and that made all the difference.
Seward was the front-runner by a long shot at the convention, but after 3 days of the Davis treatment, several states delegates jumped to the Lincoln camp.
I think Davis was behind the parades, the public image of Lincoln, and his rail splitter song/theme/persona. At any rate, Seward rested on his laurels and lost in the last minute (third vote I believe).
Yeah, right on all points. Grant naturally would take more casualties when on the offensive which was what his strategy was all about. He was the attacker. Lee suffered just as many casualties when on the offensive; eg., Malvern Hill, Gettysburg, etc. Grant won that war, period. He had the same numerical and material superiorities as Hooker, Burnside, McClellan, et.al., but he won, they didn’t. He was miles and miles beyond them. For an example of his leadership check out Porter’s initial chapter in Campaigning With Grant. He almost singlehandedly brought victory from chaos at Chattanooga, as indeed, he did elsewhere. Before Grant the Union forces were likened to a balky mule team. After Grant, they moved in concert and toward a common goal. To Sherman, Grant had all the tenacity of a Scottish Terrier. I don’t deny that Grant made mistakes. There was nothing pompous about him. His prose was as Spartan as his demeanor, eg., to Meade, “Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.” He also had a sense of humor. He once noted that one of his officers who was balding took special care to comb the hair on the back of his neck forward to cover his bare pate. Grant: “I see you have the rearguard doing picket duty at the front!” Sublime! Once again, I’m a Rebel born and bred but simple fairness compels my admiration for Grant. A very great man.
The CSA produced some of the greatest military leaders ever known such as Lee, Forrest, Dixon, Shelby, Jackson, AS Johnston, Mosby.
I'd say as a battle field commander in the Western theater (Belmont, Henry, Donaldson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga) Grant did a pretty damn good job of defeating the Confederates which is why he was promoted to command all of the Union armies. He then did what no one else considered -- directing not just one theater but organizing and coordinating both theaters to operate as one and finally bring the Confederacy to its knees.
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