Who were the better soldier, Rebs or Yanks?

[FSPowers]

The South may have had great soldiers and its share of talented commanders, but that army still needed a sustained flow of food, equipment, arms, ammunition, and replacements in order to maintain that kind of fighting power. In the end, that effort could not be maintained.

The North went through a series of incompetent commanders before finding those who could properly use that power to finally defeat the Confederacy. The flow of food, equipment, arms, ammunition, and replacements could be maintained much longer by the North.

I feel it's not which side's soldiers were better, but how those soldiers were used.

[civilwarbuglertn]

Rating overall groups who talking about who was better. To many soilders they were no better than the man who was fighting next to him. In many battles, generalship was none existant and it came down to individual fighting here I will quote an:

We have nothing to brag of in this battle. I think they killed more of us than we did of them. The rebels drove us in all the time until noon and we were whipped, but in the afternoon we held our own. The first fire was on our right., and before we know it they drove the brigade we were supporting on our right. A regiment ran right through our ranks and broke us all to pieces. We reformed and were nearly surrounded. so we gave them one volley and fell back twenty rods to a fence. Every man fought on his own hook until they drove us into a swamp. Our unit was nearly surrounded and cut to pieces. they fired into us and piled our men in heaps. The balls were as thick as hail and shot and shell cut down trees like a scythe cutting grain. I hope not to see such a desperate time again.

Arza Bartholomew
21st Michigan
Jan 5, 1863.
3 days after the Battle of Stones River

I prefer to let the soilders speak for themselves. Both were good when it came do to it.

[Dave1861]

Interesting topic.

I agree with just about everything I've heard so far in this topic.

I do thing there was a rather striking inequality of command ability, at least in the East, in favor of the greybacks. The men of the AoP were tough, resilient and brave to a fault...nobody who wasn't could've made those charges up Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg time and time again.
Commanders such as Pope, Burnside, and Hooker didn't deserve the honor of commanding such men, IMHO. (Leaving McClellan out, as I know he has his partisans ).

That said, I have heard it said from several sources that , at least early in the war, Rebel cavalry rode rings around the inexperienced Blue troopers..at least in part due to the reason stated by a prior reply, that Southern farm boys were more at home on horseback than Northern farm boys. This was counterbalanced by a definite and decisive superiority on the Union side in artillery. Time and time again, Confederate artillery was outshot, overpowered and just plain whipped by the longarm of the Bluecoats. This was NOT only due to inequality in numbers of guns and crews, but also doctrine and perhaps even natural inclination. The North just seemed to produce better artillerymen, according to the sources.

Ah well, just my 2 pennies.

-Dave

[whitworth]

One also should consider the huge amount of small arm ammunition each side produced. It was in the multi-millions, just to kill and wound in the hundreds of thousands.

By mid-1863, the Confederacy was falling behind in cavalry mounts. By 1864, the Spencer Carbine was the official arm of the Union Cavalry. Wilson's raid of Spencer Carbine armed cavalrymen into Alabama and Georgia, was by the most powerful, independent cavalry corps of the war.

[larry_cockerham]

Originally Posted by Dave1861

Interesting topic.

This was counterbalanced by a definite and decisive superiority on the Union side in artillery. Time and time again, Confederate artillery was outshot, overpowered and just plain whipped by the longarm of the Bluecoats. This was NOT only due to inequality in numbers of guns and crews, but also doctrine and perhaps even natural inclination. The North just seemed to produce better artillerymen, according to the sources.

-Dave

Dave, I gotta take an exception to your evaluation of artillery. You are correct that when lined up in the field as at Gettysburg, there was an obviouis superiority by the Union forces. The exception is the mobile artillery that served with Nathan Bedford Forrest. They captured and sunk ships on the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, wasted many a railroad blockhouse and fort, and contributed to the continuation of life of many a Confederate soldier in close combat. Morton and Kelly were as good as there ever was.

[gary]

The best soldiers? The Irish of course and they'll fight you if you say otherwise.

Reminds me of Pat v. Pat. The Union Pat calls out and asks the Confederate Pat what's he fighting for. "$10 a month," replies the Corn-fed Pat. "Ha!" replied the Union Pat, "I'm fighting for $13 a month!"

[SpartanGSG]

Originally Posted by nbforrest

I would not rate the AOP terribly high. It just wasn't the greatest fighting force to emerge from the war. That doesn't have anything to do with bravery, but rather with a myriad of reasons relating to generalship, morale, and everything else. I mean, one doesn't see the same sort of panics the AOP experienced in the ANV or the AOT, do they? Of course that goes back to the myriad of reasons...but sometimes I like to compare say, the reaction of the Yanks at Atlanta on July 22 and the reaction of the Yanks at the Wilderness to flank attacks...very different.

Respectfully

NB, your last comments citing the AOP in the Wilderness would make the II Corps boys over on the left flank defending the Brock Road sector roll over in their graves. Night and day difference between them and Warren's Sedgewick's rout on the Turnpike over on the right. Though HAncock was to tell Longstreet years later that "you rolled me like a "wet blanket", I think you would be hard pressed to convince me that the Federals who fought on that flank for two days had inferior fighting qualities to Hill's and Heath's men they brawled with for two days prior to the arrival of Longstreet's hammer. This is the type of question that has no end in attempting to answer, just too many variables within each army much less trying to stack the blue against the gray in the main.
Respectfully,
Spartan

[larry_cockerham]

Originally Posted by gary

The best soldiers? The Irish of course and they'll fight you if you say otherwise.

Reminds me of Pat v. Pat. The Union Pat calls out and asks the Confederate Pat what's he fighting for. "$10 a month," replies the Corn-fed Pat. "Ha!" replied the Union Pat, "I'm fighting for $13 a month!"

The catch is the Corn-fed lad never got paid.

[Confederate Outlaw]

There are alot of good points made in this thread. I agree 100% that the better soldier is the one with flow of goods and supplies. That is the soldiers best asset and ally. I am in the Army and I know for a fact that we wouldn't be a threat to the insurgents in the sand box if we didn't have food, equipment and ammo. If we had to resort to throwing bayonets and eating grub worms to fight . . . we would just go home. I bet the brave Confederates who I am proud to call my ancestors, eventually grew weary of resorting to alternative means of survival in a grusome war.