Posted on 04/06/2017 4:51:47 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
Confederate General Albert S. Johnson's 40,000 man Army of Mississippi attacked General Ulysses S. Grant's 45,000 man Army of the Tennessee camped at Pittsburg Landing, MS near a small church called Shilo. The attack that morning was successful, Grant's forces were driven back three miles all the way to the Mississippi River.
I’ll say it again. U.S. Grant was the Union’s version of Gen. Hood.
I can see the parallel you make, the major difference being Grant had the resources and manpower to overcome those mistakes inherent with aggressiveness, whereas Gen. Hood didn’t.
I am not enough of a military scholar to project how Grant would have performed had he been poorly supplied, short on men, and on the defensive all the time, but I deem it likely he wouldn’t have lasted the war either.
Ulysses S. Grant
Is there a worse person on one of the common denominations of money than this guy? He’s frequently on historians’ top worst Presidents lists.
But he was an outstanding General and leader of men...
IMO The first modern general who, foregoing frontal attack, understood movement, logistics and mechanized infantry(using trains) was General Longstreet.
How many battles did General Hood win? How many armies did General Hood capture?
Tactically speaking they were identical in every way.
I’m going on 71. My parents started taking me to Shiloh
when I was a young child. My great-great grandfather had
fought for the Confederacy at Shiloh. Back then, “The
Bloody Pond” was still a very dark old blood, dark brown
color from where the wounded and dying from that battle
crawled down to wash their wounds.
My grandmother once asked my great-great grandfather when
she was a small child, “Grandaddy, did you kill anybody
at Shiloh?”
He told her, “Izora, I don’t see any way I could have
kept from killing people even if I’d wanted to. Shiloh
was such a mess!”
The pond has faded over time; but it was once a deep dark
brown bloodstained reminder of that battle.
Tactically speaking, one man kept winning and the other kept losing.
But a successful General. Before the Civil War was over, three Confederate Generals surrendered their armies to him personally.
How many Yankee Generals surrendered their armies to General Hood?
General Grant would have no problem with Gen. Hood leading one of his corps had Hood been a union officer. They were simpatico.
It is just like Irwin Rommel and George Patton. Cut from the same cloth they just were on different sides.
and a successful General.
Nor did Lee. He was a brigade then division commander in the ANV.
If you call filing up grave yards needlessly as being successful then yes he was wildly so.
You mean sort like Lee did at Malvern Hill and Cemetery Ridge. That seems to be the meaning of success for Southern Generals.
In the aftermath of his defeat at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Confederate General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
The letter came more than a month after Lees retreat from Pennsylvania. At first, many people in the South wondered if in fact Lee had lost the battle. Lees intent had been to drive the Union army from Virginia, which he did. The Army of the Potomac suffered over 28,000 casualties, and the Union armys offensive capabilities were temporarily disabled. But the Army of Northern Virginia absorbed 23,000 casualties, nearly one-third of its total. As the weeks rolled by and the Union army reentered Virginia, it became clear that the Confederacy had suffered a serious defeat at Gettysburg. As the press began to openly speculate about Lees leadership, the great general reflected on the campaign at his headquarters in Orange Courthouse, Virginia.
The modest Lee took the failure at Gettysburg very personally. In his letter to Davis, he wrote, I have been prompted by these reflections more than once since my return from Pennsylvania to propose to Your Excellency the propriety of selecting another commander for this army No one is more aware than myself of my inability for the duties of my position. I cannot even accomplish what I myself desire I, therefore, in all sincerity, request your Excellency to take measure to supply my place.
Lee not only seriously questioned his ability to lead his army, he was also experiencing significant physical fatigue. He might also have sensed that Gettysburg was his last chance to win the war. Regardless, President Davis refused the request. He wrote, To ask me to substitute you by someone
more fit to command, or who would possess more of the confidence of the army
is to demand an impossibility.
Possibly. Hood as a brigade commander led the Texas Brigade when it broke the Union line at Gaines Mill. As a division commander he almost shattered the Union left at Second Bull Run and turned back the Union attack on the Confederate left flank at Antietam. While not agreeing with the attack on the second day at Gettysburg - Longstreet wasn't thrilled with it either - he led his men and almost broke the Union line once again. His corps almost won the day at Chickamauga. So yeah, I think Grant would have been thrilled to have Hood as a division or corps commander. Yes, both were simpatico in that both wanted to win. But as an Army commander Grant was heads and shoulders above Hood, as well as his peers.
I think Hood had a mental lapse late in the war. To much morphine? His unbridled butchery really got going when he took over the Army of Tennessee.
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