Hood was bothe a zealot and of fool IMHO. If you ask me what his plan was, I'd say it was kind of like a Hail Mary pass in the closing minutes of a football game. The Confederates knew they were losing and damn well needed som 'spectaluar victory' to change the tide. That is all assuming that Hood was a sane and rational commander. There are people who could question that opinion as well after his battle wound and his reliance on 'pain killing' drugs.
At any rate, he did manage to destroy a signifincantly large percent of the Confederate army in his futile attempt to get to the Ohio which never had a chance of success. This was all after Jefferson Davis fired their best commender, Johnston and put Hood in his place.
As to Clayborn, I don't know. He may have been the smartest of all of them, but he did not survive to tell his stories and he pissed a lot of very powerful people off by advocating arming slaves.
As i say- will be interesting to read the new information in June, documented— for balance to Hood. Included is his detailed medication records from the CSA surgeon (said to show he was NOT a laudanum addict). These were desperate times, and communications were abysmal. The written communications will shed some light on this hopefully.
Hood was being told what to do by Davis, who also had serious altercations with Johnston (and one cannot discount the politics of Johnston’s replacement with R.E. Lee who had Hood as Division commander under Longstreet in Army of NVA, Hood having prior served as a brigadier under Johnston in the Peninsula campaign, and Johnston severely wounded at Seven Pines). Lot of interwoven parts and politics.
One of the most interesting things to realize is that the largest city in the South was New Orleans— and yet Montgomery, AL was removed as Capitol of the South. The true money power was New Orleans. But the Virginians, who were late to secede— had the proximity to Washington, as a pressure point for military strategy. And poor Hood and his wife and one child died of yellow fever in New Orleans and left 10 other orphaned children. Truly a tragic ending.
Cleburne was a native Irishman who wanted to be a doctor in Ireland, emigrated to Arkansas and became a lawyer—and a brave man whose blood was up. If he had not
stormed the abatis and survived— imagine his impact post war. His is also, quite a story and sad.