Difficult Topics

[NedBaldwin]

The soldiers put up a good fight. It's Pillow and Floyd who chickened out.

Always surprises me how peoples give Buckner a pass .


This is how the National Park Service describes it: "The weary generals descended into gloom and confusion. Pillow counseled renewed fighting and holding their position. He did not want to yield a foot of Tennessee soil. But an increasingly despondent Buckner told of Smith's breakthrough and an enemy massed to crush his wing of the army on the morrow".

 

[diane]

Always surprises me how peoples give Buckner a pass .


This is how the National Park Service describes it: "The weary generals descended into gloom and confusion. Pillow counseled renewed fighting and holding their position. He did not want to yield a foot of Tennessee soil. But an increasingly despondent Buckner told of Smith's breakthrough and an enemy massed to crush his wing of the army on the morrow".

This was after Forrest had assured him his troops could shot-gun a hole in Grant's lines and hold it long enough to let the army escape. They'd done it before and he was sure they could do it again. I think Buckner gets a pass because he agreed to hold the yukky bag while the other two boogied. Floyd sure had his escape nicely planned!

 

[NedBaldwin]

This was after Forrest had assured him his troops could shot-gun a hole in Grant's lines and hold it long enough to let the army escape. They'd done it before and he was sure they could do it again. I think Buckner gets a pass because he agreed to hold the yukky bag while the other two boogied. Floyd sure had his escape nicely planned!

I think Buckner gets a pass because Floyd and Pillow are so caricatured that they make easy targets of scorn whereas the standard image of Buckner is more flattering so despite the evidence he is given a pass.

 

[diane]

I think Buckner gets a pass because Floyd and Pillow are so caricatured that they make easy targets of scorn whereas the standard image of Buckner is more flattering so despite the evidence he is given a pass.

Well, you have to admit it's very hard to take up for any of them!

 

[Billy Yank]

Massed, frontal assaults against entrenched positions, i.e., Marye's Heights, Pickett's Charge, etc. Senseless killing.

 

[Malingerer]

Why on Earth Jefferson Davis thought it was a remotely good idea to make Leonidas Polk a major general.

Or Bragg?

 

[JeffBrooks]

Or Bragg?

Bragg had been a career army officer with a distinguished service record, including combat during the Mexican War. Polk, by contrast, had served in the peacetime army for a mere five months and spent his entire prewar career as a priest.

Appointing Bragg at the start of the war made perfect sense. Whether Davis should have kept in command...

 

[Malingerer]

Bragg had been a career army officer with a distinguished service record, including combat during the Mexican War. Polk, by contrast, had served in the peacetime army for a mere five months and spent his entire prewar career as a priest.

Appointing Bragg at the start of the war made perfect sense. Whether Davis should have kept in command...

I guess that was my point.... especially at the close of the war when there were so many top commanders (eg D.H. Hill) without a command to send to defend Wilmington, which Lee considered existentially vital, Braxton Freaking Bragg, is something I cant wrap my poor little mind around.

 

[Blessmag]

For many of you it must be anything Trans-Miss. Stupid eastern theater!

Or for Wayne, Nate, BBF and others: TEXANS

As daddy used to say, stay away from politics and religion and you can have a discussion!!

 

[Pat Answer]

Massed, frontal assaults against entrenched positions, i.e., Marye's Heights, Pickett's Charge, etc. Senseless killing.

Killing, yes. Absolutely tragic but not senseless, at least not from the standpoint which already recognizes that war itself is a horrible tragedy. Not senseless from the standpoint that the vast majority of weapons were still single-shot: to mass fire did still mean massing men for an attack - which commanders almost always sought to combine with some kind of flanking maneuver (or overwhelming with artillery first or numerical weight when possible &c). I guess that's one of my difficult topics: the ACW is often described as an unprecedented conflict in scale, losses, lack of tactical acumen, lack of appreciation for the rifle, and the rest. I'll grant that it must have seemed like that to contemporary Americans who were seeing war on the European scale for the first time, but I feel like historians should know better.
(Not (at all!) meant to pick on you, Billy Yank . It's been a common theme since the days of T Harry Williams and I sometimes wonder why it persists. And I'm willing to consider that maybe Paddy Griffith and Brent Nosworthy have brainwashed me a bit, too... )

 

[NedBaldwin]

... I'm not talking about the most volatile topics like secession and slavery, but topics that are hard to grasp - to "wrap our minds around" so to speak. ...

Logistics.

When compared to the pre-war population densities, to have armies of 100,000+ moving around can be hard to wrap your mind around. All those men had to have fresh water to drink, food to eat, as well as sanitation (for lack of a better word). There needed to be sufficient and proper ammunition close at hand; space for tents; etc. And then there are the 10s of thousands of horses.

Traffic management to move large bodies of men, horses and wagons on minor country roads is itself hard to wrap my mind around and I work with people who design roads (we have the advantage of pavement, traffic signals, marked travel lanes, standard signage, etc.).

Evaluation of commanders tends to focus on who could wave their sword and yell charge (oversimplification I know) when it seems to me that much of civil war generalship was an exercise in complex organizational management. Cash did a good blog post about this recently.

 

[Billy Yank]

Killing, yes. Absolutely tragic but not senseless, at least not from the standpoint which already recognizes that war itself is a horrible tragedy. Not senseless from the standpoint that the vast majority of weapons were still single-shot: to mass fire did still mean massing men for an attack - which commanders almost always sought to combine with some kind of flanking maneuver (or overwhelming with artillery first or numerical weight when possible &c). I guess that's one of my difficult topics: the ACW is often described as an unprecedented conflict in scale, losses, lack of tactical acumen, lack of appreciation for the rifle, and the rest. I'll grant that it must have seemed like that to contemporary Americans who were seeing war on the European scale for the first time, but I feel like historians should know better.
(Not (at all!) meant to pick on you, Billy Yank . It's been a common theme since the days of T Harry Williams and I sometimes wonder why it persists. And I'm willing to consider that maybe Paddy Griffith and Brent Nosworthy have brainwashed me a bit, too... )

My compliments Corp. Pat, I most definitely concur with your understanding of the tactical necessity of a massed attack where a successful breach is possible. I was, on the other hand, attempting to put a fine point on the questionable logic behind the almost certain doom of attacking in such fashion against an impregnable position, citing the heights at Fredericksburg and the strong Federal position at Gettysburg.

 

[Eric Wittenberg]

I've spent 45 years studying the Battle of Gettysburg, have been there hundreds of times, and I STILL don't have a solid handle on the fight for the Wheatfield. I doubt that I ever will.

And the whole Nathan Bedford Forrest thing. I will never, ever understand that.

 

[JeffBrooks]

My compliments Corp. Pat, I most definitely concur with your understanding of the tactical necessity of a massed attack where a successful breach is possible. I was, on the other hand, attempting to put a fine point on the questionable logic behind the almost certain doom of attacking in such fashion against an impregnable position, citing the heights at Fredericksburg and the strong Federal position at Gettysburg.

Is the position impregnable? Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there?

 

[Greg Taylor]

Black Confederates.

 

[M E Wolf]

Always surprises me how peoples give Buckner a pass .


This is how the National Park Service describes it: "The weary generals descended into gloom and confusion. Pillow counseled renewed fighting and holding their position. He did not want to yield a foot of Tennessee soil. But an increasingly despondent Buckner told of Smith's breakthrough and an enemy massed to crush his wing of the army on the morrow".

I suppose many can empathize with General Buckner, when his superior Generals Pillow and Floyd made their escape as to save their hides, leaving the troops behind in Buckner's care in a forlorn hope and inevitable surrender.

Just my opinion.

M. E. Wolf

 

[John Davison]

Then the question comes up, and I believe it's been discussed before, why were such men given command? They had no "guts"?

Pillow was a first class weasel!

 

[Billy Yank]

Is the position impregnable? Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there?

The best way, I believe, to "find out," is to scout the position ahead of time like Lee used to do personally as Scott's chief engineer in the War with Mexico.

 

[Pat Answer]

The best way, I believe, to "find out," is to scout the position ahead of time like Lee used to do personally as Scott's chief engineer in the War with Mexico.

This is quite correct. But the problem becomes the gaps in "real time" between the scout's gathering of information and his getting back to HQ (if not intercepted in some way en route) to report it. And then the commander has to make a decision based on this (and other) scouting reports. If these don't conflict too much, then the decision has to be translated into the placing of troops at the right place, which as you can guess by now may no longer be the right place...

And if you consistently wait for everything to be perfect, people start calling you Little Mac.

 

[JeffBrooks]

Black Confederates.

All three of them?