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Had the so-called CSA been as committed to the cause as the colonists of 1776 had been, they would have been impossible to defeat.

Horsehockey Walt....one cannot compare a war with an enemy having to send an expeditionary force across the Atlantic with a nation at war with a huge and more powerful neighbor at their doorstep. Not to mention that fortunately Britian was preoccupied on other fronts quite unlike the Union.

I will admit this: Had the North been blessed with the caliber of General Officers the South had throughout the war, it would have been over in short order. Aside from Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan..and a handful of others...the North had some piss poor military leaders. On the Southern side, it was the complete opposite. Sure we had Pemberton and Bragg and a few other willynillys but we had a load of top notch field commanders. I shudder to think had Bedford Forrest or TJ Jackson been in charge of Union forces from the getgo...perish the thought.

I agree with that too loyal Union man that I am, Meade was an okay commander too. The best commander of the war however, Sherman, was on the Union side. The 2nd best was Forrest.

Horsehockey Walt....one cannot compare a war with an enemy having to send an expeditionary force across the Atlantic with a nation at war with a huge and more powerful neighbor at their doorstep. Not to mention that fortunately Britian was preoccupied on other fronts quite unlike the Union.

Colonial resources were miniscule compared to the material stolen from U.S. arsenals by the so-called CSA.

The so-called CSA also expected to start with a fat war chest with monies from northern PRIVATE creditors, which so-called CSA legislation directed be paid to the so-called CSA treasury instead of the lawful creditors.

It -was- widely thought in Europe that the insurection in the so-called seceded states could not be overcome.

Walt

I disagree. For the most part I would say that the south was poorly served by the army and corps commanders she had. Lee is everyone's ideal of an Army commander, but Lee still lost to lesser commanders like McClellan and Meade. Grant, on the other hand, beat every confederate general he came up against. After those two, I have to say that George Thomas, William Sherman, and George Meade were better than Braxton Bragg, Joseph Johnston, and P.G.T. Beauregard. Stonewall Jackson was without peer as a corps commander and my particular choice for the best general of the war, on both sides. But he stood alone. Longstreet and Early and Ewell and Polk and Hood were all average and not as good as generals like Hancock, Sedgewick, Logan, and Sheridan. Forrest was in a class by himself, but he would be more of a division commander since he never commanded troops at the corps or army level. And while the south had many competent division commanders, the North was even more blessed in that regard. If I had to rate the generals, I would put Jackson first; then Grant, Lee, and Thomas or Sherman. It's intersting to note that the one Union general who both Grant and Sherman thought was the best commander of the war was someone most people have never heard of, MGEN James Birdseye McPherson, killed at Atlanta in 1864.