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...Lincoln needed Democratic support. That is why people like Butler and Sickles got general's commissions. The south had their political generals, too, men like Leonidas Polk,....

I hadn't thought of that angle; I thought Butler was a Republican, like Thaddeus Stevens. And I remember Sickles's being a pol.....let's see, is he the guy who marched a brigade right up to Jackson's Corps at Antietam and got them shredded, or was he the idiot in the Wheat Field at Gettysburg who took a weak position in advance of his line and got thrashed by Hood?

Polk was political, and as wooden as they come (though Hood was the one called "Old Wooden Head"), but Braxton Bragg was the real operator. He was tight with Jefferson Davis and had much to do with the career chutes and ladders in the Confederate general staff. (He was actually captured with Davis in 1865 -- more "face time" with the boss!)

Equally political after the war were Jubal Early and Wm. N. Pendleton (the latter the only semi-competent chief of artillery). Early dominated the Southern Historical Society with Pendleton, and also the Lee Monument Association and the Association of the Army of Northern Virginia for some 30 years after the war, during which he built up the "man marmoreal" legend of Lee, to cover his own shortcomings, and was the inventor of the "dawn attack" slander against Longstreet's performance at Gettysburg. Now, that's political!

I hadn't thought of that angle; I thought Butler was a Republican, like Thaddeus Stevens.

As I recall from Bruce Catton, Butler basically controlled a state, I guess New York. He couldn't BE fired, at least until after the 1864 election, and he was fired afterward.

The troops he commanded down in the Bermuda Hundred were basically useless to Grant -- until Butler was fired.

Walt

I am reading now, "Five Tragic Hours" about the battle of Franklin. The authors suggest that Davis' visit to the Army of Tennessee after Hood took over only made things worse. All he did was remove some of the more cabable and experienced officers in favor of those like Cheatham, who had never proved themselves.

He also gave Beauregard very ambigous instructions and basically screwed up the whole command structure by giving him supervisory powers that were indistinct and violative of good unity of command principles. Of course Davis was generally very ineffectual as president. President Lincoln learned as he went along, but Davis never did.

Of course, it wouldn't matter who was in charge once the attack on Schofield's works at Franklin was ordered.

Walt

He was definitely the idiot at the Wheat Field but he commanded a division at Antietam, not a brigade. Give you an idea of the kind of guy he was, he lost his leg at Gettysburg. He had the amputated leg skinned and kept the bones and after the war he gave the leg bone and the cannon ball that took it off to what is now the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Bethesda, MD. He used to visit them every year on the anniversary of the amputation and you can still see it on display in the hospital museum. And people thought that Stonewall Jackson was eccentric.

On the other hand, prior to the war Sickles also murdered Philip Barton Key, son of the author of the Star Spangled Banner. Key was having an affair with Sickles' wife. Sickles got himself off by pleading temporary insanity. Maybe it wasn't so temporary after all?