Jump to content

The Legacy of Generals Grant and Lee


Maithanet

Recommended Posts

The political genius of Bismarck coupled with the strategic genius of von Moltke far outshines that of the Lincoln/Grant pairing. Definitely agree there, if that is what you mean to imply. More importantly, the French loss can hardly be boiled down to "Napoleon III was an idiot."

The irony is that the Union's reluctance until 1864 to conduct the war as was neccessary might have cost more human lives than a more ruthless approach early on. It seems that Lincoln was fully aware of that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Didn't a courier drop some orders that tipped the Union? That can't be discounted.

And the Confederacy didn't have to have Lincoln lose, they needed to stymie the union forces long enough to get recognition from the European powers.

Recognition by European powers would never have happened. The importance of Uncle Tom's Cabin can be overstated here, but it would have never ever ever happened, as much as deluded proponents of cotton diplomacy argued otherwise. If they weren't going to intervene after the Trent Affair, there isn't much that could have drawn them in.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Didn't a courier drop some orders that tipped the Union? That can't be discounted.

And the Confederacy didn't have to have Lincoln lose, they needed to stymie the union forces long enough to get recognition from the European powers.

Nah - they were never going to get England, even with the economic ties (interesting how that then played out over the middle east btw). England got that it was about slavery and particularly in the immediate aftermath of Albert's death, real recognition and support wasn't going to happen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Didn't a courier drop some orders that tipped the Union? That can't be discounted.

And the Confederacy didn't have to have Lincoln lose, they needed to stymie the union forces long enough to get recognition from the European powers.

Those orders came into play outside of Sharpsburg/Antietam. Here's an interesting article on it: http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/civilwar/articles/ruseofwar.aspx

Great Britain was already tentatively supporting the Confederacy but wouldn't completely commit to it. The Confederacy's only hope was for Lincoln to lose the election to an anti-war candidate. They had no chance of ever winning the war militarily. Of course hindsight is 20/20 and I'm sure some in the Confederate ranks believed it possible, but Confederate leadership knew it was a lost cause once the war became protracted. Most expected a quick war but General Sherman correctly predicted a long and bloody war and was relieved of command because they thought he was crazy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hopefully forgotten in a hundred years completely. We make too much of a minor war from back when we were a minor nation. The Civil War is only important to the world because of the end of slavery in the US.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hopefully forgotten in a hundred years completely. We make too much of a minor war from back when we were a minor nation. The Civil War is only important to the world because of the end of slavery in the US.

I disagree. The civil war in its later stages was in many cases a blue print of the wars to come in the 20th century.

Besides that on a more philosophical level, learning from the past is the key to avoid the same mistakes over and over again. Human tragedy is that after a few generations we forget. Thus the circle begins anew.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I disagree. The civil war in its later stages was in many cases a blue print of the wars to come in the 20th century.

Besides that on a more philosophical level, learning from the past is the key to avoid the same mistakes over and over again. Human tragedy is that after a few generations we forget. Thus the circle begins anew.

:laugh:

I don't know about learning from the past, it seems rather optimistic. The past doesn't come with a set of bullet-pointed lessons to absorb, we decide subjectively, perhaps entirely wrongly, what to remember and what to learn.

I agree about the civil war in the USA as a blueprint of conflicts through to the end of WWI specifically in the strength of the tactical defensive with the use of longer ranged firearms, dug in positions and importance of logistics as key components to success, however despite the presence of international military observers throughout the war, many of whom were published and some of which are still available in print today, those lessons were repeated in blood right through to the end of WWI. In part because very few people wanted to learn the lesson that the spade and preserved food were more important to victory than elan and daring.

For me it demonstrates the 'dog in the forest' phenomenon very nicely: the first dog to visit a forest is free to pee on which ever tree it chooses, but every subsequent dog will be sure to pee on that same tree. The first Lost Cause writers, like General Early, still influence the terms of the discussion. But the point of the Lost Cause was to continue to fight the war by other means, ie if the language of the debate is about skill being defeated by superior force then General Early is the winner. Which in a way is interesting because I imagine relatively few people would today accept the honour culture foundation of the Lost Cause - that there comes a point were a ("real") man is obliged to resort to violence particularly if defeat is inevitable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hopefully forgotten in a hundred years completely. We make too much of a minor war from back when we were a minor nation. The Civil War is only important to the world because of the end of slavery in the US.

It wasn't a minor war, though. Over 600,000 men died.

I have lived in the deep south my whole life. The Civil War is a huge part of our culture and our history, although it's not for the reasons people think. My county was one of the few in my state that voted against secession, simply because they didn't feel like going to war to protect rich men's properties. They had no stake in the slavery debate; they were poor. The only reason family ancestors got involved was because they were forced to fight, or else they were protecting their homeland from an invading army. One battle was fought in an ancestor's backyard. There were literally hundreds of dead bodies scattered all over his property.

The Civil War and its aftermath is something that we live with every day here, simply because it was such a huge, catastrophic event. And while I don't agree with the tendency to romanticize it; I don't think we ought to sweep it under the rug. To me, the Civil War is one of the best examples of what happens when you allow the rich and powerful total control. The South seceded to protect a select few's property and way of life. And the whole region of the SE paid the price for that. Greed and selfishness is what the war was about. And it honestly pisses me off when I hear southerners wax nostalgic about Robert E. Lee and The War of Northern Aggression. We should never forget it, but not for the reasons some seem to think.

One of my ancestors was a Presbyterian chaplain in the war and he kept diaries about it, which are now housed at a university in my home state. He was very young, and hungry, and depressed for pretty much the whole of the war. His descriptions of what he saw, and frustrations at fighting a war to protect some rich men's lands is telling; and he wasn't the only one that felt that way. I really believe that if the Civil War had been fought out west, say, or up north instead of the majority of battles being fought in the south, it would have ended even sooner. I remember my great grandmother telling about how her father walked home from Rock Island, IL. He had been imprisoned there during the war. He signed a piece of paper stating he wouldn't fight anymore, and they cut him loose. He was sick with dysentry and walked all the way home to Mississippi from Illinois.

Don't get me wrong; I love the south and wouldn't want to live anywhere else, and I've read a lot about the Civil War. But Tormund's reference to the Saturday Night Live skit is spot on. The people who glorify the Civil War down here are the ones who haven't given a thought to what actually happened, what the south was fighting for, and what it cost. We basically wiped out two generations of men so that we could protect some rich slave owner's rights to continue to subjugate their fellow man.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Seconded.



Research suggests that 600,000 is probably at the lower end of the scale, with a possible death toll as high as 850,000.



Then there's the matter of the war's legacy: Reconstruction, an undeclared war to restore white supremacy in the Confederate states that ran twice as long and ended with the withdrawal of the US Army and the institution of Jim Crow. The dismantling of Jim Crow is it's own epic of fury and bloodshed. This conflict is an indelible mark, an inescapable fact of US history.


Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know about learning from the past, it seems rather optimistic. The past doesn't come with a set of bullet-pointed lessons to absorb, we decide subjectively, perhaps entirely wrongly, what to remember and what to learn.

Indeed, one of the most depressing things about the Civil War is about how much history was re-written and re-interpreted to cover up and deny the lessons it should have taught. Lessons that ES enumerated very well, which get passed over for the "Gone with the Wind" revisionism and anti-historical tripe that excuses the sins of the slavelords that led to the war.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It wasn't a minor war, though. Over 600,000 men died.

I have lived in the deep south my whole life. The Civil War is a huge part of our culture and our history, although it's not for the reasons people think. My county was one of the few in my state that voted against secession, simply because they didn't feel like going to war to protect rich men's properties. They had no stake in the slavery debate; they were poor. The only reason family ancestors got involved was because they were forced to fight, or else they were protecting their homeland from an invading army. One battle was fought in an ancestor's backyard. There were literally hundreds of dead bodies scattered all over his property.

The Civil War and its aftermath is something that we live with every day here, simply because it was such a huge, catastrophic event. And while I don't agree with the tendency to romanticize it; I don't think we ought to sweep it under the rug...

You only had to be filled with enthusiasm and the excitement of it all once to end up committed for the duration, for the rest there was conscription...

There's a lot of coverage of the injured and the dead in our recent and current conflicts yet the impact then was just off the scale by proportion and in absolute numbers. The rug you swept that all under would be awful lumpy.

...Then there's the matter of the war's legacy: Reconstruction, an undeclared war to restore white supremacy in the Confederate states that ran twice as long and ended with the withdrawal of the US Army and the institution of Jim Crow. The dismantling of Jim Crow is it's own epic of fury and bloodshed. This conflict is an indelible mark, an inescapable fact of US history.

which brings us all back to where this all began with a white youngster shooting up black people in a Bible study class. The past is never dead. It's not even past, as some bloke said.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But Tormund's reference to the Saturday Night Live skit is spot on. The people who glorify the Civil War down here are the ones who haven't given a thought to what actually happened, what the south was fighting for, and what it cost. We basically wiped out two generations of men so that we could protect some rich slave owner's rights to continue to subjugate their fellow man.

I wish I could find a video of that sketch. I have a feeling it would take a bit of the salt out of this argument. :frown5:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wish I could find a video of that sketch. I have a feeling it would take a bit of the salt out of this argument. :frown5:

I wish you could too, but not for me. I live down here and know exactly what you're describing. Thank God there are less and less of those people, but they are still around. And still really, really, stupid.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hopefully forgotten in a hundred years completely. We make too much of a minor war from back when we were a minor nation. The Civil War is only important to the world because of the end of slavery in the US.

Not quite. One major ramification of the Civil War was the creation of Canada. The British, apart from mill owners who wanted southern cotton, wisely knew that to get involved was to risk another North American war, and one they would probably lose, considering the size of the Union armies. Politicians in the British colonies in North America were rather fearful of the Union looking north and pushed for a political union that most would ordinarily have scorned. The Fathers of Confederation did not create Canada as a genial gathering of like minded people but out of fear of American aggression.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maarsen,

I didn't know that. Interesting.

Scot, believe me, there are libraries of stuff about the formation of Canada. Having Fenians invade Canada, from the US, just after the Civil War, made Upper and Lower Canadian politicians just shit their collective pants.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...