>>16514498
fighting retards

>>16514498
He was drunk and still able to BTFO white supremacists on the battlefield and on the ballot.

>>16514498
Credit Mobilier mostly.

>>16514505
>on the ballot
Southerners were banned from running. This game has been played for a long time.
>Captcha: Trust the Plan

>>16514515
Seems like they fucked around and found out.

>>16514498
human wave tactics.

He was an excellent horseman, racing around the battlefield and giving direct verbal instructions to his sub-ordinates. Unlike McClellan who staying i an office writing letters to his wife and newspapers

Not a crybaby who whined that he can't fight the enemy because he didn't have this and that and that Radical Republicans are selling him out and only he can save the country.

he wasn't, and enjoyed every concievable advantage both in terms of industrial capacity and extra manpower
playing on ez mode for sure, Lee was an objectively superior general and it's not even close

he threw his men headlong into meatgrinder frontal assaults on fortified positions fruitlessly on the reg, because why not he had personel to spare
he sometimes outnumbered Lee 2 to 1 and still failed

he was given his command because of his willingness to engage in this kind of slaughter, to the amusement of Lincoln
whereas McClellan was much more careful with the lives of his men

>battle of the crater
>Cold Harbor
>Shiloh
>Wilderness
>the bloody angle

this is coming from the descendant of a Union private who saw campaigning from 63 through till the end of the war

>>16515132
They didn't call Grant the Butcher for nothing.

>>16515132
Thats a union private take,Lee had been successful because McClellan retreated to lick his wounds after every defeat.

Grant realised the importance of attritional warfare to wear Lee troops out. In the end Lee only had 7000 troops, the rest had deserted

>>16515156
>when Grant uses meatassault tactics in the ACW

OMG
GENIUS
SOUTH COULDNT SPARE THE MEN SO IT MAKES SENSE TO SACRIFICE YOUR OWN JUST TO WHITTLE THEM DOWN

>when Russians use meatassault tactics in Ukraine

WOW RUSSIANS ARE SO DUMB AMIRITE
DRUNKS LMAO
WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY CAN SPARE THE MEN AND UKRAINE CANT

>muh attrition
okay but don't pretend like it's a big brain play when you have twice as many men to begin with

it doesn't take a genius to make that call, much the opposite

>McClellan retreated to lick his wounds after every defeat
imagine actually retreating when you lose a battle, crazy
almost as if he fought Lee when he was at his most dangerous, when the Army of NV was still fresh, and took his capabilities seriously

>>16515145
>>16515132
>>16515181
Lee had the highest casualty rates of any general in the war. Even with the Confederates mostly fighting the Overland Campaign from fortified positions on their own territory as they were pushed back toward Richmond/Petersburg, Confederates only went 1.8:1 casualty-wise in the entire campaign, per McPherson.
>he fought Lee when he was at his most dangerous, when the Army of NV was still fresh, and took his capabilities seriously

McClellan imagined, basically every time he did anything, that he was severely outnumbered, or that some other malady meant he couldn't do anything. And McClellan's opinion of Lee was low, and colored by projection:
>I prefer Lee to Johnston - the former is too cautious and weak under grave responsibility...wanting in moral firmness when pressed by heavy responsibility and is likely to be timid and irresolute in action

>>16515232
The ANV sustained an average of 20% casualties in every major battle it fought outside Fredericksburg.

>Grant thread which focuses 90% on May-June 1864 and none of the rest of the war
Not again.

>>16515232
>Lee had the highest casualty rates of any general in the war.

uh huh
well you'd sustain a lot of casualties too if you were outnumbered

>McClellan imagined, basically every time he did anything, that he was severely outnumbered

military intelligence is a bitch
his caution was warranted, if you remember that he didn't have the benefit of hindsight

>>16515289
That's the most important part of Grant's career.

He had better much performance when his command wasn't over the entire army.

>>16515380
>his caution was warranted,
Didnt he have an entire corps of infantry in reserve at Antietam?

He could have destroyed Lees army and became the next president, but he decided caution was warranted.

>>16515232
Actually Grant had higher total casualties in both number and ratio.
Grant lost 180,000 men to preventable causes due to ill kept camps.
The McPherson numbers are retarded because he counts casualties instead of deaths. Getting men off the field alive is a feat.
The CSA had a 3:1 against Grant in terms of human loss of life.
Furthermore McClellan actually was horrifically outnumbered and his caution kept him alive and kept his casualties down.
McClellan, despite fighting more battles than Grant against Lee, never actually fought a bad battle and McClellan also deployed the Union navy. Grant never did.
McClellan also crossed Virginia in a few weeks while Grant took months.

>>16515396
>he would have destroyed Lee
No?
His forces in reserve were decisive in preventing a Confederate counter attack and in a security role as they could respond to the 30,000 Confederates who were in the region but not at the battle.
Antietam didn’t give much opportunity to deploy a reserve of infantry anyway as the Confederates were withdrawing and screening their withdraw with cavalry which McClellan didn’t have the cavalry to decisively match.
Also the
>one more good attack and we’ve got them
Is a trap that most generals fall into. The fact McClellan never did says a lot about him.
Very few generals in history have understood this Venus flytrap of command.

McClellan was not going to throw his last unused troops into battle when he was facing an unknown number of Confederates. That would have just been basic military common sense.

>>16515132
>Shiloh
Was an unavoidable mess because it was so early in the war and nobody had any clue what they were doing.

>>16514498
He and Sherman were literally playing 4D chess while the rest of the Northern generals were playing 3D and even 2D chess.

>At Jefferson City in late summer 1861, Grant dismissed the idea of having his troops construct fortifications. He had no engineer to lay them out and he'd forgotten what little he'd learned at West Point about them. "I had no desire to gain a 'Pillow notoriety' for a branch of the service I knew nothing about," he recalled. Grant was referring to the notorious Gideon Pillow, an incompetent and quarrelsome political appointee who had gained derision in the Mexican War for constructing a line of fortifications and then digging the ditch on the wrong side of it, and who was now commanding something vaguely styled an "army of liberation" in southeastern Missouri. Grant detested Pillow and he seems to have been one of the only Confederate generals that he was openly contemptous of.

>Kentucky meanwhile was still officially neutral and no state was more divided. Its governor Beriah Magoffin was a strong supporter of secession but the state legislature was Unionist while the aged Senator John Crittenden had a year ago tried to arrange a national compromise that would avert war and had one son who became a Union general and another who became a Confederate general. The state's neutrality was bound to come to an end sooner than later as the Union armies must cross its territory to invade the South. It was only a question of which army would enter Kentucky first. At length, Confederates under Leonidas Polk marched across the border on September 2.

>Also in Kentucky was one Simon Bolivar Buckner, a regular army captain who had served in Mexico and was an old friend of Grant's, having loaned him money when he resigned from the army in 1854 and couldn't afford the trip back home from the West Coast. Buckner was presently commanding state militia and President Lincoln was prepared to offer him a commission as a brigadier general should he accept it. But he was also offered a brigadier general's commission by Jefferson Davis and on September 14, he accepted the latter's offer.

>>16515466
>he was facing an unknown number of Confederates. That would have just been basic military common sense.
Lee stops at Antietam and faced McClellan, why?He was initially outnumbered 10 to 1, but old common sense McClellan waited 36 hours, watching Lees army get reinforced

I guess Lee knew little Mac wouldnt attack until the time was right(for the confederates)

>District commander in Missouri was John Fremont, the colorful "Pathfinder" who had been the Republican Party's first presidential candidate and could easily be its next presidential candidate, and who was a pet of the radical abolitionist crowd. Fremont's headquarters in St. Louis contained a colorful assortment of European soldiers-of-fortune many with commissions obtained extra-legally. Unfortunately Fremont's skills as a general were almost nil but he did at least have aggressive instincts and he envisioned grandiose plans for invading deep into Southern territory. He assigned Grant to command in southeastern Missouri as he believed a professional soldier was necessary for that assignment.

>Unlike Fremont, Grant was not an abolitionist nor a Republican but he did make clear that his army was under no obligation to help return the runaway slaves of secessionists, at the same time forbidding his camp to become a refuge for slaves.

>>16515289
Everyone knows Grant was the best of the west. The argument everyone wants to have if he was better than Lee. He wasn't.

>>16515445
>Actually Grant had higher total casualties in both number and ratio.
The "lee had higher casualties" argument includes the men surrendered at Appomattox as "casualties". It's an obviously deceptive statement and the fact that "historians" like Mcpherson repeat it shows how shit modern academic history is.

he hated jews

>>16515232
>1864
>Army of NV was still fresh
God McPherson is such a hack, thanks for reminding me. Watching that libtard get his bell rung by the 1619 crowd was hilarious.

>>16514498
His great great whatever grandson is a faggot lmao

>>16515602
They do exactly the same thing with ww2 in Europe to pad up the USA's numbers by pretending like the surrendering Germans in late 1945 count as casualties inflicted.

>>16515475
It was avoidable.
Definitely a mess, though.

>April 6
Johnston ordered a general attack.

>Grant was in Savannah having breakfast at his Cherry Mansion headquarters when he heard the distant sounds of artillery fire.[97] He was on crutches as he recovered from a fall from his horse...

>Beauregard spent the evening near Shiloh Church in what had been Sherman's tent. Most of the Confederate army moved back to the original Union camps.[203]

"Beauregard spent the evening near Shiloh Church in what had been Sherman's tent. Most of the Confederate army moved back to the original Union camps."

>Grant's army had 7,000 men killed and wounded, 3,000 more captured, and 10,000 men who were afraid to fight.[197] Before being reinforced, he had an estimated 18,000 fighters formed on his Last Line.[42] Since most of the Union camps had been captured, these hungry and tired men would have to sleep in the open without blankets, and rain and cold weather added to their misery.[209] At 7:15 pm, 5,800 fresh troops from Lew Wallace's division arrived at the battlefield and were positioned next to Sherman.[210] Brigadier General Thomas Crittenden's division from Buell's army began arriving at 9:00 pm, and two hours later the entire division was at the landing. Eventually, Buell would have nearly 18,000 men available for the battle.[210] The Union line from west to east consisted of the divisions commanded by Lew Wallace, Sherman, McClernand, Hurlbut, Crittenden, and Nelson. Prentiss' division was effectively destroyed, and Tuttle was behind the line trying to reorganize W.H.L. Wallace's division.[210]

Damn.

Why do we always have extremely detailed threads about that strategies and tactics of the American Civil War, yet never for the American Revolutionary War or the War of 1812?

>>16515694
nobody except a couple of deranged leafs cares about the War of 1812. also those wars were just fought in the old fashioned line infantry way where guys stood in a row and shot volleys at each other.

>>16515694
because those wars were mostly about survival and avoiding battles. very few open pitched battles with complex strategies when you're a small upstart fighting the world power.

>Union command in Kentucky initially went to Robert Anderson, the hapless officer who surrendered Ft. Sumter but his health gave out and he soon resigned his command. In Anderson's place went William T. Sherman who fretted over the poor state of readiness his green troops were in and soon became panicked over the possibility of a large-scale Confederate attack. He had a nervous breakdown and was denounced and ridiculed by the newspapers as insane, which left him with an everlasting hatred of journalists. After Henry Halleck succeeded Fremont to command in Missouri, he offered Sherman a minor post at Sedalia but he continued to be despondent. "Sedalia is a bleak, desolate place without water, fodder, or shelter. If the winter doesn't wipe us out [Sterling Price] will," he wrote.

>Sherman's place in Kentucky was taken by Charles F. Smith, a white-haired, mustachio-ed regular in his 50s who'd been commandant of West Point when both Grant and Sherman were there and both were in total awe of their former teacher--Grant never felt right issuing orders to him and indeed some other regulars felt that Smith was more entitled to a command as he'd worked his way up in the army for over 30 years while Grant owed his commission to Congressman Elihu Washburn.

>Smith held the rank of lieutenant colonel when the war began and was all business--he never bothered delivering eloquent speeches about saving the Union and the War Department distrusted his loyalty as a result and he was initially put on the back burner. Smith was doing recruiting duties in New York City when the battle of Bull Run was fought and when McClellan tried to get him afterwards he wasn't able to. John Fremont eventually obtained an assignment out west and Smith was made a brigadier general of volunteers in September.

>>16515289
any discussion of the Overland Campaign must take into account the fact that Grant did not have the operational freedom he'd enjoyed in the West. no general in the Virginia theater did. there was always the constant need to ensure that Washington D.C. was screened from Confederate armies. furthermore the Army of the Potomac had a very toxic culture in its officer corps that did not exist in the Western armies.

>>16514498
He was the first US commander to support the use of scorched earth tactic. The deliberate attack on civilians to break the resolve of an opponent. The intent is to destroy, loot and terrorize the civilian population. Under the guise of foraging soldiers steal food, kill livestock, burn crops and dwellings, cities and rape the female. This tactic was also continued during the occupation after an opponent is defeated.

>Unlike some generals, Grant was flexible enough to adapt to the administration's program for abolition of slavery--he believed as a soldier his duty was to obey all orders within reason. Once established at Corinth, his family made regular visits--although it was often claimed that Julia Grant visited her husband regularly, she denied this in an 1880 interview with a newspaper. However Grant was happy to welcome the family whenever things were quiet and he wasn't in the middle of an active campaign.

>At the edge of Corinth was a fine house owned by a committed secessionist--one of the few Southern civilians Grant sent north in chains for his intractable behavior and this house became his headquarters. Grant claimed in his memoirs that he'd never arrested a civilian the whole war--here he seems to have had a lapse of memory as he did arrest at least this one Mississippian and in early August he wrote his father to say "We are keeping house on the property of a truly loyal secessionist who has been furnished free lodging and board at Alton, Illinois."

>>16515132
while true, it won the war. McLellan would never have accomplished that.

>>16515719
The biggest battle of the Revolutionary War was White Plains which had a total of 35,000 men on the field between Washington and Howe's armies.

>>16517370
what was the biggest battle of the ACW? genuinely curious.

>>16517471
Fredericksburg would have had the most men on the field--almost 180,000 between the two armies.

>>16517488
Officially the Army of the Potomac had 114,000 men but assume 30% of that figure is support personnel so the actual number of combat troops was 85,000 to 90,000 men.

as a general he mastered using railways for military logistics which was key to victory in the Civil War
as a tactician meh
as a president pretty bad, but he was more of a pawn president setup by the republicans

he's fine but gets too much hate from the south and too much "praised" from Unionfags

>>16516897
>it won the war
No, the sieges and blockade won the war.

Northern population and industrial advantage won the war, not Grant.

>McLellan would never have accomplished that.

Why not? Because he didn't conduct his forces in the batshit way Lincoln demanded and kept a clean camp?

>The most common version of Lee ranking McClellan among the war’s best—if not the best—is recorded in Robert E. Lee Jr.’s Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee, published in 1904. After the war ended, a son of one of Lee’s cousins asked the former general “which of the Federal generals he considered the greatest,” to which Lee “answered most emphatically ‘McClellan by all odds.’”[1]

>A wartime letter written by a friend of McClellan’s to the general reported that his own friend had just returned from the Confederacy. While there, he supposedly heard one of Lee’s daughters exclaim, “Genl McClellan was the only Genl Father dreaded.”[2] Furthermore, on January 18, 1869, Lee said of his former Union adversary, “As regards General McClellan, I have always entertained a high opinion of his capacity, and have no reason to think that he omitted to do any thing that was in his power.”[3]

"Historian Ethan Rafuse wrote, “McClellan and Lee shared a common understanding of the strategic, organizational and operational dynamics of the Eastern Theater and the war in general. It was this shared understanding, rather than the disparagement of his foe’s considerable abilities that was at the heart of Lee’s remarks.”[6]"


Lee himself ranked McClellan as one of the best Union generals of the war. Let that sink in. His main criticism was that McClellan was too cautious, but that doesn't mean he was a bad general.

Grant was always on the move, always thinking of how to get at the enemy and never needed prodding from above.

>>16518148
"It's the rare man who can kill thousands of men in a day and then sleep peacefully that night. That was Grant's greatest skill. He knew that he could replace his dead soldiers while Lee could not. So instead of fighting for decisive victories, Grant tried to engage his enemy wherever he could to win the war of attrition. That's a truly horrifying strategy, but it was an effective one. ... Grant won the war not by tactical acumen, but by simply be willing to engage. Over and over. Not regardless of the human cost, but because of it. I think we might have stumbled in to why he was such a drinker."


This is the highest praise you can give to a general.
That he was so willing to drunkenly sacrifice his own men's lives by the thousands because they are so easily replacable.

>>16515475
Grant in spring 1862 was still relatively inexperienced and made some errors in judgement such as underestimating the enemy. The war had been so easy so far that he assumed most Southern soldiers weren't serious about it and only fought because they must. He was rudely shaken out of that belief by the sheer ferocity of the Confederate attack at Shiloh.

>>16518172
what? Lee was no better. he was willing to lose tons of men in frontal assaults.

>>16518172
Outside May-June 1864 Grant generally went out of his way to avoid casualties. Ft. Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga had relatively low body counts.

>>16518197
No, Lee was a much better general than Grant and it's not even close. And it shows, because he was so beloved by his men despite the years of privation and blood that they suffered.

Pickett's charge was arguably the closest the Confederacy came to securing an end to the war, during a critical engagement in enemy territory. It was a daring call even if it didn't end well.

Compared to the wasteful and unnecessary assaults at Cold Harbor, and elsewhere.

>In late February 1862, shortly after the occupation of Nashville by Nelson's division, Grant wrote his wife the following letter:

>"I have just returned from Clarksville. Yesterday some citizens of Nashville came down there ostensibly to bring surgeons to attend their wounded at that place but in reality no doubt to get assurance that they would not be molested. Johnson with his Army of rebels have fallen back about forty miles south from Nashville leaving the river clear to our troops. Today a Division of Gen. Buell's army reported to me for orders. As they were on steamers I ordered them immediately up to Nashville. 'Secesh' is now about on its last legs in Tennessee. I want to push on as rapidly as possible to save hard fighting. These terrible battles are very good things to read about for persons who loose [sic] no friends but I am in favor of having as little of it as possible. The way to avoid it is to push forward as vigorously as possible. Gen. Halleck is clearly the same way of thinking and with his clear head I think the Congressional Committee for investigating the Conduct of the War will have nothing to enquire about in the West."

>>16518239
lolno there was no chance that Pickett's Charge would have ever succeeded

I'm not saying that McClellan was an unqualified better general than Grant in every way, or that his own political hangups and ambitions didn't color his decisions.

But clearly McClellan is the favorite punching bag of Lincoln fanboys, who overrate Grant for similar reasons.

McClellan is criminally underrated, while Grant lionized for his tactical mediocrity and enjoyment of enormous stategic advantages.

I think Grant preformed better with a lesser command than he did over the whole army.

>>16518148
>Grant was always on the move, always thinking of how to get at the enemy and never needed prodding from above.
He spent 9 months sieging Petersburg, where the confederates had an army twice smaller. If McClellan had been in charge instead of Grant, you guys would be saying that it's another case of him being too sluggish.

>>16518286
>there was no chance that Pickett's Charge would have ever succeeded

Sure kid. Even if that is so, there would be no way for Lee to have known that at the time.

Meanwhile...

>The trenches were hot, dusty, and miserable, but conditions were worse between the lines, where thousands of wounded Federal soldiers suffered horribly without food, water, or medical assistance. Grant was reluctant to ask for a formal truce that would allow him to recover his wounded because that would be an acknowledgment he had lost the battle. He and Lee traded notes across the lines from June 5 to 7 without coming to an agreement, and when Grant formally requested a two-hour cessation of hostilities, it was too late for most of the unfortunate wounded, who were now bloated corpses. Grant was widely criticized in the Northern press for this lapse of judgment.[58]

"Grant was reluctant to ask for a formal truce that would allow him to recover his wounded because that would be an acknowledgment he had lost the battle."

"... when Grant formally requested a two-hour cessation of hostilities, it was too late for most of the unfortunate wounded, who were now bloated corpses."

>Memphis in late summer 1862 remained a defiantly secessionist town and although Grant was legendary for his coolness, the strain of this summer was wearing on him and he did an uncharacteristic thing by arresting a reporter. The Chicago Times was an infamous Copperhead newspaper and its Memphis correspondent was one W.P. Isham, the brother-in-law of the paper's owner Wilbur Storey. Isham was a notorious figure whose room at the Gayoso Hotel in Memphis was a hangout for secessionists and he'd been sending north propaganda stories to disillusion loyal Unionists including the claim that Memphis under Union occupation was a cesspit of disease, public drunkenness, and would soon be liberated by large Confederate forces. He also wrote the entirely fictitious story about how ten English-made ironclad gunboats bristling with guns and impenetrable armor were on their way up the Mississippi; they would give the Confederate fleet a firepower which nothing the Union had could match.

>Grant informed Sherman about this and directed him to arrest Isham and send him north to Illinois to be imprisoned for the duration of the war. Sherman hated all journalists and gladly complied while the Chicago Tribune reported that Isham's stories were propaganda created from whole cloth to demoralize the Union cause. A totally different reporter, Sylvanius Cadawaller, was sent by the Times to replace Isham and he became one of Grant's closest friends.

>>16518303
>He spent 9 months sieging Petersburg, where the confederates had an army twice smaller
no. actually Grant lost a lot of men from regiments' enlistment terms expiring.

>>16518310
>there would be no way for Lee to have known that at the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV_Qjq-qRn8

The union troops chanted "Fredericksburg" as the confederate forces approached.

>>16518481
That misses the overall context of Gettysburg.
It was essentially the only time in the war that the rebels were able to take the fight into Union territory.

If Lee simply withdrew, there was no guarantee that he would ever get the opportunity to force a peace agreement again. He was in a tight spot, and I can see why he made the decision to attack even if it was desperate.

Moreover, Lee committed all his brigades to a single push. Unlike Fredericksburg, where and I quote...

"Seven Union divisions had been sent in, generally one brigade at a time, for a total of fourteen individual charges,[48] all of which failed, costing them from 6,000 to 8,000 casualties.[49] "

Grant was willing to actually fight and to keep fighting and not let the Confederates have any rest until they either died or surrendered. If anything Grant and Sherman understood that was the only way to beat the Confederacy. Southern honor culture demanded the south fight to the bitter end so the only way to make them tap was to completely demoralize them. Lee only finally tapped out when he seen that there was no way for him to get around Grant and that Grant was more than willing to just keep grinding Lee down.

Lee himself was not as pleased as the rest of the South. He later wrote, "At Fredericksburg we gained a battle, inflicting very severe loss on the enemy in men and material; our people were greatly elated—I was much depressed. We had really accomplished nothing; we had not gained a foot of ground, and I knew the enemy could easily replace the men he had lost, and the loss of material was, if anything, rather beneficial to him, as it gave an opportunity to contractors to make money."[64]


damn, that's cold af

>>16518728
most low IQ post in this thread.
>Southern honor culture
this does not exist
>just keep fitin
McClellan did far more effectively and inflicted more losses.
>completely demoralize them
Their espirit du corps only got higher when fighting Grant because they could run circles around his army.

>>16518197
No he wasnt. The only time Lee lost 'tons' of men was when catastrophe struck.
Grant knowingly wrote off thousands of lives, Lee never sent his men in without a serious expectation of victory.
Malvern Hill and Gettysburg were tactical blunders which Lee admitted were mistakes.
Grant never admitted a mistake save for once, when he lamented the 14th failed assault during the march on Richmond.
As if the other 13 were too close to call LOL

>>16515558
>McClellan scouts for a day
>manages to have roughly equal casualties despite a huge defender advantage in terrain

Yeah, anti-McClellan shills are monkeys. McClellan did nothing wrong.

>>16518727
>Lee committed all his brigades to a single push. Unlike Fredericksburg,
He committed all his divisions at Mulvern Hill as well, and they all got shot to pieces by union artillery

Longstreet had also been at Mulvern hill and seen the slaughter

>>16515475
They had reports of Confederate movement in the area and Grant literally wrote it off as the anxiety of his troops.
Grant was saved by the reinforcement of 15,000 men and a number of heavy gunboats.
If Grant wasnt reinforced, really, if the Confederates didnt spend A DAY AND A HALF in a traffic jam, Grant loses the entire army.
Shiloh was an incredibly close battle if not a Southern win on day 1, Buell hard carried.
Without the Gunboats there is nothing to prevent the Confederates from mass surrendering the entire Union Force

>>16516735
>Toxic culture
You mean the emergence of actual warriors and soldiers?
Westtards hated the Eastern front Officer corps because the battles in the East were huge, violent, and extremely hard bitten.
In the West no one really cared and it was filled with as many bandits as it was soldiers. The East saw large highly motivated die hard elements clashing for weeks at a time in non-stop fighting.
The West was a skirmish by comparison.

>>16518481
nice movie but the actual charge was made successfully by two brigades the day before, it stands to reason two brigades the day before being successful is a good indicator that you can exploit such an opening.
There was no way Lee could have known Meade had gambled everything on reinforcing the center. Had Lee tried to go around Wolf or make another push up the Round tops he would have found half strength brigades with less than 10 rounds per man.
Meade took a huge gamble and it paid off, this wasnt a gamble like Alesia, this was a gamble like the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg.
It only works once and is mostly luck.

Pickett's charge is romanticized so people tend to read into it. It was mostly dumb luck.
Had Lee remained in Pennsylvania and simply marched around Gettysburg, even after the fourth day, he probably could have sustained a Northern offensive as his men had enough forage for a few months of being disconnected from their own supply lines.

>>16518813
Hmm. That would be hard to defend.

>a series of blunders in planning and communication had caused Lee's forces to launch three failed frontal infantry assaults across hundreds of yards of open ground, unsupported by Confederate artillery, charging toward firmly entrenched Union infantry and artillery defenses

Sounds like an unintentional communications error caused by fog of war to me.

>Lee had told Huger's two brigades under Armistead and Ambrose Wright to advance to the right part of the Confederate line. Upon hearing of this, Magruder was quite confused. He sent Capt. A. G. Dickinson to find Lee and inform him of the "successful" charge of Armistead's men and request further orders. Contrary to this message, Armistead was in fact pinned down halfway up Malvern Hill. At the same time, Whiting sent Lee an incorrect report that Union forces were retreating. Whiting had mistaken two events for a Federal withdrawal—the movement of Edwin Sumner's troops, who were adjusting their position to avoid the Confederate fire, and the relaxing of Union fire on his side, which was actually the Union artillery concentrating their firepower to a different front.[51] Whiting and Magruder's erroneous reports led Lee to send a draft of orders to Magruder via Dickinson: "General Lee expects you to advance rapidly", wrote Dickinson. "He says it is reported that the enemy is [retreating]. Press forward your whole line and follow up Armistead's success."

Yes, it rather does seems like that now. Although the original plan called for a coordinated push, as the fighting developed misleading reports caused this coodination to break down.

>when they heard yells and the commotion of a charge from their right flank, roughly where Armistead was supposed to be.[h] Hill took the yell as the signal and shouted to his commanders, "That must be the general advance. Bring up your brigades as soon as possible and join in it."[62]

What a mess. Not at all according to plan.

>>16518894
So that would lead one to think advancing tight formations over open ground against fortified artillery was a bad move?Unless you were General Lee of course

>>16518946
It's difficult to put myself in Lee's shoes.

He thought the Union army was in worse shape than it really was, and he definitely had them pinned. Would have benefitted from the kind of caution McClellan exercised, but the opportunity to destroy his army would have been hard to ignore.

Still if you're going to assault a fortified artillery position the way to do it is a coordinated push, not piecemeal. That was the original plan, one massive assault.

But because Lee drafted such vague orders, the plan fell apart after shit happened and their battalions went in without any real cohesion. His additional orders given under the false impression of Confederate success only exacerbated the problem.

Maybe it would have worked if literally everything that could go wrong didn't, but that's generally not how these things work.

Lee's plan to envelope the AOP fell apart because the staff work was awful and most of the roads the army had to use were narrow dirt tracks that were very hard to maneuver through.

>>16514515
didn't stop Lincoln from winning when southern states kicked him off the ballot

>McClellan rejected the tenets of Scott's Anaconda Plan, favoring instead an overwhelming grand battle, in the Napoleonic style. He proposed that his army should be expanded to 273,000 men and 600 guns and "crush the rebels in one campaign".

Was this really infeasable?
McClellan had already proven himself a highly skilled organizer, assembling such a doomstack really might have been possible.

>On March 11, 1862, Lincoln removed McClellan as general-in-chief, leaving him in command of only the Army of the Potomac
>the general-in-chief position was left unfilled
>Lincoln, Stanton, and a group of officers who formed the "War Board" directed the strategic actions of the Union armies that spring

why though

>>16517957
>as a general he mastered using railways for military logistics which was key to victory in the Civil War

McClellan did it first.

>McClellan resigned his commission January 16, 1857, and, capitalizing on his experience with railroad assessment, became chief engineer and vice president of the Illinois Central Railroad, and then president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad in 1860.

>McClellan's army moved towards Richmond over the next three weeks, coming to within four miles (6.4 km) of it. He established a supply base on the Pamunkey River (a navigable tributary of the York River) at White House Landing where the Richmond and York River Railroad extending to Richmond crossed, and commandeered the railroad, transporting steam locomotives and rolling stock to the site by barge.[53]

>... by the end of the Seven Days Battles, McClellan had dramatically improved his operational situation."[55] But McClellan was also tacitly acknowledging that he would no longer be able to invest Richmond, the object of his campaign; the heavy siege artillery required would be almost impossible to transport without the railroad connections available from his original supply base on the York River.

lil'Mac got shit done

>>16519176
Also Lee had a bunch of shitty generals like Magruder and Huger that he got rid of after the campaign was over. Another reason for the high Confederate casualty rate in the Seven Days is that close to half the ANV had smoothbore muskets while most of the AOP had rifles--after the battles were over they acquired enough rifles from battlefield pickups to rearm themselves reasonably well.

>>16519285
didn't know it was that bad

>>16519295
In the very early battles of the war both armies mostly just had smoothbore muskets, rifle conversions of same, and M1841 "Mississippi" rifles. The most modern weapon available was the M1855 Springfield but almost all of those were in the hands of the regular army. During fall and winter of 1861-62 European weapons began to arrive, both the M1853 Enfield and assorted continental weapons. The Army of the Potomac mostly had Enfields and M1861 Springfields in the Peninsula Campaign although some units had smoothbore muskets. As for the ANV it still had a lot of smoothbore muskets along with Enfields and other miscellaneous junk. They reequipped themselves during the Seven Days and Second Bull Run so most men had modern weapons by late 1862.

The problem with European weapons is that the correct ammo type was usually not available in the US and some were finicky about cleaning and maintenance. The Enfield for example was just used with .58 cartridges instead of its intended .577 ammo and the Austrian Lorenz rifle was used with M1841 Mississippi ammo which reduced its accuracy.

Should add that the Army of Tennessee was generally the worst-equipped Confederate army and many men still had smoothbore muskets as late as 1864. Some will be surprised to learn that the trans-Mississippi armies were better equipped and Enfield rifles were common there as they were easy to bring in through Texas's ports.

>>16514515
>Southerners were banned from running. This game has been played for a long time
Literally irrelevant, even with the 3/5s compromise the Souths population and presence was next to nothing

>>16519050
Lee's orders gave too much freedom to career pencil pushers.
West Point was an engineering school that out of 4 years of rigorous classes devoted less than 6 months to military theory, tactics, strategy, and campaign management and the infantry, the supposed "queen of battle" was given to the absolute monekys who couldnt pass their engineering tests.
Artillery, the one element most absent from the US arsenal is where the West Point elite were put.

So you have a bunch of idiots who should have been roadworkers leading the infantry and a bunch of very intelligent but also unimaginative nerds leading a nearly non-existent branch of the army.
Cavalry which was in abundance received the middle of the road individuals.
I think the highest IQ guys were also put into military engineering as well but I dont remember exactly.

anyway if Lee had been born in any other time and place the man is a quasi-Napoleon. Same for a few others like Sheridan, Forrest, and Lyons (he died very early on).
But put yourself in the position of being surrounded by dorks with the most common type being very stupid and very argumentative.
How best do you lead them but to try and wash your hands of it by giving them operational freedom in excess?

>>16519572
>put yourself in the position of being surrounded by dorks with the most common type being very stupid and very argumentative

where do you think we are
come to think of it, you're 100% right

however, I think Lee was in the habit of being vague because he wanted his officers to take initiative on their own when the moment was right if an unforseen situation were to arise

having orders that are super complicated can paralyze a lot of men, because their officers won't move out until the specific prerequisites are met

however in this situation where an envelopment was the idea, he should have had a better signal than "yell loudly"

>>16519572
The high IQ guys who finished at the top of the class were most often from the Northeast as it had the best public education systems while Southerners tended to finish near the bottom, but were usually more aggressive fighters. West Point was then indeed engineering-focused because of an ingrained American resistance to producing too many warriors who would emulate European militarism.

>During the occupation of Memphis, many ministers in the city were urging their congregations to offer prayers for Jefferson Davis. It was suggested to Grant that these prayers needed editing and they should be compelled to pray for President Lincoln instead. This was going too far for his taste and he replied "You may compel preachers to omit any treasonable remarks from their sermons that you wish but you shall not compel the substitution or insertion of anything."[9]

As the Confederate armies advanced into Kentucky in September 1862, Buell was forced to abandon his laborious march on Chattanooga and chase after them. The Army of Ohio was disillusioned; they felt they were making no progress and were in fact in retreat by giving up the effort to take Chattanooga and morale steadily dropped as they marched north. Also Buell lost one of his most trusted subordinates. William Nelson, the 300 pound ex-Navy man who commanded a division and was one of Buell's best subordinates, was murdered in an incredibly trivial dispute.

Brig. Gen Jefferson C. Davis and Nelson got into an argument concerning the defense of Louisville and at Nelson's headquarters in the Galt House on September 22, whe the latter asked how the preparations were going, he got unsatisfactory answers from Davis and lost his temper. He ordered Davis to leave the town at once. Davis was offended and asked only that he be treated respectfully as a soldier but Nelson would not back down and said he was to go to Cincinnati and report to the department commander there, Maj. Gen Horatio Wright, for further orders. If he did not comply, he would be arrested and forcibly sent across the Ohio River. Davis went to Cincinnati but Wright quickly agreed that he should return to Louisville, especially as Buell himself had arrived in the town.

Back in Louisville on September 28, Davis went to the Galt House which was full of important people including Indiana's formidible governor Oliver Morton. Nelson entered and Davis asked for an apology. Nelson replied "Go away you damned puppy, I don't want anything to do with you." Davis threw a wadded up piece of paper at him and Nelson responded by smacking him across the face with his huge hand and then stalked away. Davis rubbed his face for a few moments before asking a friend for a pistol. He went upstairs to Nelson's office and fired at him. The round went into Nelson's chest and punctured his heart. Stricken, he made his way down the hallway before collapsing. He said "Send for a clergyman. I wish to be baptized. I have been basely murdered." Nelson died half an hour later.

No real punishment awaited Davis for murdering a major general in cold blood; as an Indianan, he enjoyed the protection of Governor Morton and continued to serve in the army for the remainder of the war, although possibly because of his actions, he was never promoted to major general and remained a brigadier.

Buell's attempt to find a replacement for Nelson caused further headaches. He ended up selecting the army's inspector general Charles Gilbert, a crisp regular army captain. Gilbert was given a field promotion to major general but a few days later President Lincoln appointed him to brigadier general. Nonetheless, Buell considered Gilbert a major general and he donned the two stars of the rank but in the end the Senate decided he was no general at all and didn't bother confirming his commission so it expired the following March and he reverted back to the rank of captain. In his brief career as a general, however, Gilbert commanded one third of the Army of Ohio and also proved the perfect example of a certain type of regular army officer who could not manage volunteer troops.

One evening near midnight Gilbert was riding along a road accompanied by staff when he spotted a half-asleep captain by the roadside. "What regiment is this?" Gilbert called out. "Seventeenth Ohio," was the reply. "Damn fine regiment. Why didn't you salute me when I passed?" "Just who the hell are you?" the captain replied. "Major general Gilbert, by God, sir. Give me your sword, you are under arrest!" At this point a number of men in the 17th Ohio started waking up including its colonel John Connell. Connell said that the men had been marching for days and needed sleep and he wasn't going to hold a dress parade at midnight for any damn fool living.

Gilbert then announced that the 17th Ohio was totally undisciplined and he was going to take away the regiment's colors so the rest of the army might know its shame. An angry mob of soldiers emerged from their tents and declared that they would not let the general take the 17th's colors and would shoot him if he tried. Someone stuck Gilbert's horse with a bayonet, causing the animal to jump and start running, taking him with it amid a chorus of boos and jeers, including the threat to kill Gilbert if they ever saw him again. Some of his staff's horses were also prodded with bayonets. Clearly it took a special knack to handle Western troops and not every general possessed it.

Wasting lives is okay when Lee does it.
Achieving nothing is okay when McClellan does it.

What /his/cels want is Lee perpetually on the offensive and McClellan perpetually on the defensive, resulting in stalemate and possibly an armistice. Basically a Confederate victory. Lincoln and Grant said fuck that and put Lee on the defensive until he broke.

Be less transparent.

>>16521990
McClellan consistently had a positive casualties ratio against Lee. Grant consistently had a negative casualties ratio. Now think about what this trend would have looked like on the long term for McClellan if he had been allowed to continue what he was doing instead of having men pulled away from him into other armies before being sacked. We would have seen a union army that gets constantly bigger and a confederate army that gets constantly smaller. Eventually, McClellan would have been able to decisively defeat Lee, while losing far fewer men than Grant did, and most likely faster too.

>Guerillas were a costly nuisance. Grant had little cavalry to answer them with and his attempts to get Washington to send him more were unsuccessful. He had to use infantry instead but it did little good as they couldn't outrun the swift-moving horsemen while attempts to create improvised cavalry with horses seized from plantations also did little good.

>A painful example of Grant's troubles happened on August 22 when guerillas took one of his outposts at Clarksville and the way it came about was especially headache-inducing. The town was garrisoned by part of the 71st Ohio, which along with its colonel Rodney Mason had broken and ran at Shiloh the moment the shooting started. Mason had begged Grant for a second chance and was given it. Now when Confederates approached Clarksville and demanded its surrender, Mason consulted with his officers and one man was sent out to estimate how many enemies they were facing. The man guessed around 800, some of them "horrendously armed with volcanic rifles" by which he apparently meant repeaters. Mason agreed that it was hopeless and he threw up the white flag. The colonel and 12 subordinates were cashiered but it did little good.

>>16521990
Almost the entire war was fought in the South.

It was Lee who was always playing defense, not the other way around.

>>16521718
this sounds a lot like William Westmoreland in Vietnam making a long-winded speech to soldiers in the pouring rain

>>16521718
>>16521710
Nelson had been wounded in a skirmish on September 7 and Buell appointed Gilbert major general to fill in for him; two brigadiers in Nelson's division (Charles Cruft and James Jackson) declined to take his place, and then Nelson was killed two weeks later. As was noted there, the president promoted Gilbert to brigadier general of volunteers but Buell considered him a major general and he acted in that capacity until after Rosecrans took command of the army and replaced him in corps command with Thomas Crittenden. The Senate didn't confirm his promotion and he reverted to a lower rank. Gilbert continued serving in the army until retiring in 1886 with the rank of colonel.

>>16514498
Why does this photo make him look so modern? Just the way he's sitting plus the way his facial hair is groomed, like he's a time traveller

>>16523274
>Why does this photo make him look so modern? Just the way he's sitting plus the way his facial hair is groomed, like he's a time traveller
In the early months of the war Grant had a quite long beard that went down to his chest but by the winter of 1862 he'd trimmed it to the stubble seen in the photos as his wife thought it looked sloppy.

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Early photo showing Grant and John McClernand in 1861.

>>16514505
Imagine actually having this child like view of things

>>16514498
manlets are the best leaders

>>16515181
>b-but its not 100% fair and even!!!!
welcome to the real world kid

File: James_Longstreet.jpg (140 KB, 470x613)

140 KB JPG

>>16518310
>Sure kid. Even if that is so, there would be no way for Lee to have known that at the time.
Could have sworn he had an experienced infantry officer (instead of a engineer lmao) telling him that his plan was fucking crazy.

>>16515618
Lol i thought you were talking about me for a moment
>>16515625
Kek its ogre

>If the Union wished to occupy Tennessee, northern Mississippi, and Alabama, it was necessary to get all the railroads in the region in shape, especially since water levels in the Tennessee River would drop during summertime and reduce the amount of boat traffic. But the railroads were only a part of it. Corinth had to be fortified and garrisoned, and Samuel Curtis over in Arkansas needed reinforcements. Memphis had to have a force occupying it as well; Sherman and his division were sent there after Corinth was taken and they arrived in the city on June 14.

>But most important of all was eastern Tennessee, which had been an obsession of the White House for months. A small force under George Morgan was to occupy the Cumberland Gap but it needed backup; Chattanooga had to be taken and Buell was directed to do just that. In northern Alabama was the division of Ormsby Mitchell, which had been detached from the Army of Ohio prior to Shiloh and spent the past two months there. Rebel guerillas were actively burning bridges and rail lines and troops had to guard the repair parties and above all the move on Chattanooga.

>Nonetheless, the only significant Confederate army in the region was Beauregard's command, now under Bragg, which was given the chance to rest and reorganize at Tupelo. The continued survival of this army was absolutely essential to the Southern cause; without it, nothing would stop any Union force from going anywhere in the Deep South it pleased.

>becomes president
>steals a bunch of gold with insider trading
>after he dies horrifically from throat cancer, his family continues to steal gold

>>16524615
Ormsby Mitchell was a classmate of Robert E. Lee's at West Point, graduating in 1829. He founded the first astronomical observatory in North America and was given a brigadier's commission in September 1861. Mitchell came to command a division in the Army of Ohio, detached and sent to Alabama in April 1862 around the same time he was promoted to major general. He resigned his command in July after disagreements with Buell and was reassigned to the Carolinas but died there of yellow fever on October 31.

>>16524000
Eh, I guess you have a point.

Still, I can see why he thought Meade wouldn't have reinforced his center.