Lincoln Davis v Lincoln

[Tin cup]

The southern states were sovereign and resisted much of their federal govt. Lincoln didnt have that issue.

They were not all THAT "sovereign" in the confederacy, Davis tromped all over folk's rights!

Kevin Dally

 

[Ara Oko]

We know how the book ends....

Yeah, I guess we do.
Permutations uber allies.

 

[leftyhunter]

That is a bloody good question.
Whatever Lee needed by means of a C in C I think he got from Jefferson.
Jefferson may have been, um,
Less exuberant, but by the same token was not anymans fool.
He **** near won at various points, but never could quite ram it home.
Am I being fair?

To be fair to Lee , Lee never outnumbered his opponents by a factor of two to one or better. It's one thing to win a battle but to effectively pursue an enemy force one has to quickly reorganize ones forces which is difficult then have a sufficient supply line to support ones troops that are in hot pursuit. Troops in hot pursuit don't have time to forage.
Leftyhunter

 

[jackt62]

I suppose the 64 thousand dollar question is did Davis lead the Confederacy to defeat because of personality defects or simply because of lack of man power and logistics combined with strong internal opposition? Has some have pointed out in a role reversal Davis would have won; certainly a debatable proposition.
Leftyhunter

I would not go as far to claim that Davis led the Confederacy to defeat because of personality defects. There were too many other factors that influenced Confederate defeat. However, in contrast I would definitely say that the northern victory could not have happed without Lincoln's firm resolve to do whatever it took to preserve the Union.

 

[OpnCoronet]

Just so. Exactly to the point. While Lincoln was lauded as a statesman and C in C, an oratory genius. A superb analyst.
Should we not analyse Davis more deeply?

Afreed and we have volumes of studies of Davis including his own own voluminous autobiography.

I think there were hidden depths to Lincoln's character and actions, that are not necessarily a part of Davis' , With Davis, what ou see is what you get, with Lincoln I think deep study and reflection is usually required to et close to his reality.

 

[damYankee]

There is another aspect to this question that is seldom addressed;
The Confederacy granted the states as much power, and in some issues, more power than the central government.
Lincoln had a Union, with more power to carryout the business of war and trade and administration than did Davis.
As an example, even while the war raged on, the Union was building the Transcontinental Railroad, carrying out another war against the Indians on northern plains, Davis on the other hand, proposed a simple additional railroad connection be built from Raleigh NC to Richmond Virginia early in the war to allow for better movement of troops and goods, and was roundly criticized by the southern press and most state legislatures for wanting to use other states taxes to build rail systems for the benefit of Virginia's defense.
Davis was as much a herder of cats as he was a president of a nation. This has a lot to do with the ability of the Union to attack the individual states thus requiring a local response tying down state militias and forcing deployments of CSA forces.
By doing this the strategies available to Davis or Lee were restricted, granted they did carryout short thrusts into Maryland and Pennsylvania, all those efforts were restricted in scope and deployments would be limited in duration.

 

[James N.]

I thought he had a general in chief in Lee...

And by the way, I have no axe to grind, I'm English.

Then you might have an excuse for not realizing (or is it remembering) that Lee did not become general-in-chief until 1865 when the Southern Confederacy was tottering on its last legs and any command he exercised was largely pointless. Davis had already fatally compromised the military situation beyond all hope by then. Lee was at first merely one of his military advisors and famously commanded ONLY the Army of Northern Virginia; it can easily be argued the war was lost in the West and everywhere else besides Virginia in 1862-63.

 

[rbasin]

They were not all THAT "sovereign" in the confederacy, Davis tromped all over folk's rights!

Kevin Dally

Yep. States rights can't win a war.

 

[rbasin]

That is a bloody good question.
Whatever Lee needed by means of a C in C I think he got from Jefferson.
Jefferson may have been, um,
Less exuberant, but by the same token was not anymans fool.
He **** near won at various points, but never could quite ram it home.
Am I being fair?

A little too fair. Davis Led a government into war that had almost no ability to win that war. Only Lincoln could have allowed the war to linger on that long.