American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Suh, <salute>

It seems debatable whether Napoleon ever said those words. There is another oft quoted reference from him “Give me lucky generals.” It is certainly not in his Maxims. Some brief research elicited the following, which may have historical merit "

as an avid amateur historian he (Napoleon) probably based them on something Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister of France in the 17th century, said. Mazarin had noted that one must not ask of a general “Est-il habile?” (“Is he skillful?”), but rather “Est-il heureux?” (“Is he lucky?”)

Your servant, Suh,

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Karl McEntegart
Brigadier General
Officer Commanding
Army of Tennessee





Make my enemy brave and strong, so that if defeated, I will not be ashamed.

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

Albert Johnston

Jefferson Davis judged him the Confederacy's greatest general before the emergence of Robet E. Lee. Ulysses S. Grant believed him overrated. Through the years, Johnston's reputation has seesawed, so that it is at least safe to say he is the single most controversial major Confederate commander to emerge from the Civil War.

Much of the controversy can be attributed to the unfinished nature of his career. He died in the middle of his one great battle, but that he died attempting what others would have considered impossible, mounting a bold offensive amid the collapse of an entire theater of war, hints at greatness. On the other hand, his willingness to entrust the execution of hi bold and daring plans to others suggests a fatally flawed style of command.

HISTORIANS RATING: INCOMPLETE


I didn't know "incomplete" could be a rating... but it does fit.

Chances are strong that Johnston would not have been able to make any appreciably difference at Shiloh had he lived. The Confederate forces were exhausted, disorganized, and out of time after their full day of fighting on April 6. By the 7th, Grant's army was ready for battle and was strongly reinforced by Buell's army. Johnston could have done nothing about that.

Johnston's failure in 1861 and early 1862 to protect the western theater's key points is incredible. He allowed his army to be cut in half by Grant's move down the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. He left an utter vacuum in leadership at Fort Donelson and then skedaddled to Nashville and beyond without making any allowances for supplies to be evacuated. He did not stop until he had reached Corinth, Mississippi, where he linked with the other part of his army from Columbus, Kentucky. The arrival of Beauregard only confused things further as neither man seemed to be in full control and a split command seldom has success. Beauregard's grandiose plans for the army at Shiloh should have been recognized as impractical, but Johnston did not overrule them. Johnston's instincts were correct at Shiloh (attack!) but the execution was very poor.

Had Johnston lived it is almost certain he would have been relieved of command or reassigned elsewhere. He lost the faith and trust of the army and the western states even before Shiloh. Johnston was in a no-win situation when he took command in late 1861. And it played out exactly in that fashion, he could not win. Does that mean he is a poor commander based on the limited sample size? I'd still say yes.

One Star in my book.

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

I actually prefer the incomplete.

Johnston was given an impossible mission with inadequate resources by Davis.

While assigning Floyd to command Ft Donelson may have been an error, Floyd's two immediate subordinates, Pillow and Buckner, were experienced leaders, and they pretty much called the shots. The surrender of the army at Donelson was an unmitigated and unnecessary disaster, but blaming Johnston would be like blaming McClellan for Banks' failures in the Shenandoah Valley.

There is no doubt Johnston was poorly served by his subordinates.

The attack at Shiloh was a success on the first day, even though the forces were fairly equal. My biggest knock on Johnston was that as commanding general, he had no business leading a charge.

I disagree that, had he lived, he would have been replaced. That wasn't how Davis dealt with generals he liked.

I have no idea what would have happened with him in charge after Shiloh, but it's hard to believe he could have done worse than Bragg.

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

Henry Halleck

Henry W. Halleck was a military scholar who did much to create and promote the quasi-Napoleonic war-fighting doctrine that dominated the officer corps on both sides of the Civil War. He also did much to promote an ethos of military professionalism. Despite his academic and professional achievements, however, Halleck was an unimaginative, overly cautious tactician, whose views on the nature of warfare lagged behind the realities of modern combat fought on massive scales. As general-in-chief of the Union armies, he defined his role too narrowly, functioning as an administrator rather than a genuine military leader. Too often, he impeded rather than aided the field commanders (including Grant) who reported to him. Although he proved to be an able administrator, logistician, and liaison between civilian and military leaders, Halleck was personally arrogant, defensive, aloof, uninspiring, and unsupportive. Nevertheless, after (at his urging) Grant was appointed general-in-chief of the Union armies, Halleck invented the role of chief of staff, singlehandedly creating the modern concept of the staff officer and thereby profoundly influencing the ways America would fight future wars, especially in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

HISTORIANS RATING: TWO STARS



Okay. Two stars. I am indifferent towards Halleck. In my mind he is just an inept general who got lucky enough to be Grant's senior and steal his credit early in the war. His later accomplishments as a chief of staff save his reputation.

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

I think your historian is giving Halleck a lot of undue credit there.

Credit for the creation of "the modern concept of staff officer" must surely go to Prussia very early in the 19th century in response to their massive loss to Napoleon at Jena (although Prussia had staff officers for over a century before that). Particular credit for that creation should go to Scharnhorst and his compatriot Gneisenau [interestingly, both had WWII battleships named after them].

As for "Halleck invented the role of chief of staff": that's complete rubbish. Gneisenau was appointed as Blucher's Chief of Staff in 1815 and that was very much in the modern concept of staff officers that he and Scharnhorst had invented and developed after Jena.

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

If it had been Henry Halleck or Benjamin Butler versus Joe Johnston, the war would still be in process.

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Gen Ned Simms
2/XVI Corps/AotT
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

Braxton Bragg

There were flashes of brilliance, as when, after Shiloh, he put his army on a train to ride the long way round to Chattanooga to checkmate Don Carlos Buell, and there were spasms of ferocity, as when his II Corps went up against the Hornet's Nest at Shiloh. Many of his contemporaries believed that he was a fine trainer of soldiers and that the harsh discipline he meted out was just the tonic for the unruly, ill-educated Confederate enlisted boy and man. More typically, however, Braxton Bragg showed himself to be pathologically disputatious, unimaginative, indecisive, hesitant, insufficiently aggressive, unwilling to exploit his few victories, and generally contemptuous of others. Perhaps the only major figure in the Confederate military hierarchy who had faith in him was Jefferson Davis. Of course, that counted for a great deal.

HISTORIANS RATING: ONE STAR


You knew this one would be controversial, right? Bragg has gone through a period of resuscitation over the past few years. Biographies by Earl Hess and others have sought to redeem him (some) and point out that he suffered from severe supply shortages, a department far too large, and an officer corps bordering on mutinous. While that is all true... Bragg was still a stinker. Sometimes you are what your record says you are. Bragg's record of losses and reversals places him at the bottom of the CSA officer "fantasy draft" pool.

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

Bragg is the Captain Sobel (Band of Brothers) of the Confederacy, Great trainer but poor commander.

It would be a great misstep though to underrate training.

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Lt. Colonel JJ Jansen
3rd Calvary Brigade, 4th Calvary Division
Army of Tennessee
CSA

I notice you do not include Rosecrans in your list of generals. Commenting on Bragg made me think of him.

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Jim Gleason LTG
LTG 3-3-II AoP

That is interesting. I don't know why the author excluded Rosie. Seems like one of the more obvious choices to have reviewed.

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

Ulysses S. Grant

During his tenure as commander of the Army of the Tennessee and as general-in-chief of the Union armies as well as in historical retrospect, the criticism most often leveled against U.S. Grant was his willingness to outspend the Confederacy in human sacrifice. Aware that the Union could replace men and equipment, while the Confederacy could not, Grant often traded man for man in combat, knowing that the losses would hurt the enemy more than they hurt him. For this, Grant was - and, by some, still is - condemned as a "butcher." That Grant, by the time of the Overland Campaign, conducted a war of attrition is true. That he spent many lives is also true. But so did the Union generals who had preceded him. The difference was that Grant purchased victory with the blood he spilled, while his predecessors had gained nothing for it. Grant was not a butcher. He was a skillful leader who had a natural grasp of tactics and strategy. He redirected Union military doctrine from expending blood and treasure to conquer territory and towns to killing the army of the enemy - a means by which the final objective, a victorious end to the war and restoration of the Union, could most effectively be achieved. To achieve this objective, he willingly exploited the economic, industrial, and demographic advantages of the North to overwhelm and overcome the South. In this, he exhibited a profound understanding of the nature of modern warfare as well as the moral courage to pay the price of winning a modern war.

HISTORIANS RATING: FOUR STAR


Agreed. Grant was a modern general ahead of his time. Grant understood warfare in the industrial age before others and won because of it. You could have plucked Grant from his period and inserted him into any future war and he would have been right at home. It's hard to imagine many others being able to so successfully make the leap from Napoleonic Warfare to Modern Warfare so efficiently.

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

Grant, a lacklustre general who showed little finesse and was happy to sacrifice thousands in a war of attrition against the Confederate armies while encouraging his subordinates [Sherman, Sheridan (and others), I'm looking at you] to wage war on civilians. Grant's bludgeon was akin to Lee's rapier. As Lee wrote in his final order:
"After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources."

I remember reading that historian's ratings a long time ago and recall dismissing his work based on on the subjective ratings that enabled Grant to receive four stars while more skillful generals got lower ratings. I also recall obvious factual errors in his work although I had not recalled the utter rubbish of "Halleck invented the role of chief of staff, singlehandedly creating the modern concept of the staff officer" - a bogus claim.

I do concur that Grant would have a place in modern warfare, probably as a Russian general. Massive allocation of a very large army in unimaginative and costly assaults while simultaneously waging war on civilians.

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

I rather want a general that utilizes what he can to wage & win a war instead of one that holds himself back for whatever reasons.
Want a gentlemen fight, then go for the The Three Musketeers, this is war.

Just caught some lines that may fit to Grant:
I am iron!
I am wrath!!
I AM DOOM!!!
And doom he was for the Confederates.

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Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac

"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."

As predicted FOUR STARS for the great general from Illinois.

War is not fought between gentlemen in an open field with an agreed set of rules and equal forces like a chess game. It is fought between nations using their industry, manpower, and transportation, to the best of their ability. The South can keep their Gone with the Wind mythology of knights and round tables, we will keep the portrait of Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox above the fireplace.

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Maj. Gen. Mitch Johnson
ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE COMMANDER