McClellan Has any Civil War General divided opinion more than McClellan?

Having noticed that Saphroneth has placed all of the stuff on McClellan in one place (great work by the way!) I just wondered has any other general from either side divided opinion more than McClellan or even come close to the love him/hate him relationship he seems to have attained?
Definitely Longstreet.
 
Thank you for all of the contributions thus far - generating quite a list!
Surprised no one mentioned Bragg - or did everyone think the same about him, perhaps apart from Jefferson Davis?
Sheridan? considering what he did to Warren.

Didn't Sickles get lucky - his position may have been poor judgement but it disrupted the Confederate assault completely. If he had not been there would the Confederate assault possibly have turned the Union flank by hitting the line directly?
Bragg seems to be the one guy who isn’t controversial. It seems almost everyone agrees in their dislike of old Braxton. (Except Davis)
 
When you think about it, is there any well known commander, say of a division, corps, or army, that has not been involved in some kind of controversy? Even Cleburne was caught up in the dispute over arming slaves.
I agree. “Who wasn’t?” is the real question; this was/is democratic, opinionated, and vociferous America after all - there doesn’t seem to be a military decision that one can’t put a good or bad spin on if one is in the mood.
(So maybe... Floyd and Pillow at Fort Donelson and Dixon Miles at Harper’s Ferry weren’t controversial commanders - they just sucked. :D)
 
First, how are we defining "controversial"?

Forrest is controversial because of Fort Pillow and the Klan, but there's not a lot of divergence on opinions of his generalship. Cleburne wanting black regiments was controversial but his generalship isn't. Sherman's Hard War and Indian Wars policies are controversial from an ethical prospective, not a military one. Custer is in similar territory to Sherman. People negative about Lee are usually "he was a good, but overly-aggressive general" vs "he was Napoleon crossed with Jesus". Bragg and Hood are being reevaluated from "completely incompetent buffons" to "deeply flawed with some merits."

If we limit it to "widely divergent opinions on the general's military competence" we get a shorter list.

Grant: genius or drunk butcher? Opinions of him have varied wildly from the war to today.

Sheridan: once considered the third best Union general, after Grant and Sherman, his standing has been steadily declining in modern scholarship, as a person and as a general. And that's even without considering his Indian Wars activities.

Sickles: widely disparaged as an insubordinate jerk who nearly lost Gettysburg, he has a small but devout following convinced he single-handedly saved the battle.

McClellan: immensely popular in his time, with opinions of his generalship ranging from brilliant to incompetent. There are so many layers too, from inflating AOTP numbers and deflating ANV numbers at Antietam to make Lee look more brilliant and as a byproduct making McClellan worse, to the anti-Lincoln people want to boost McClellan. Like Sickles, he's got a small but very dedicated modern fanbase (I wonder if that Venn diagram is a circle?). I rate him as talented, but deeply flawed, which is probably the perfect recipe for controversy.

Longstreet: Lee's best subordinate, or the insubordinate general who lost the war? Longstreet is only really controversial because of The Lost Cause.
 
An interesting (though not conclusive) method is to look at the strength of Sickles' original line and then compare it to the strength of the force that it actually took to stop Longstreet's attack.

We can reasonably assume that Longstreet's attack was at least somewhat disrupted by fighting through the whole of Sickles' corps (albeit by less than the resistance Sickles would have been able to put up either fully established on the advanced line or fully established on the original line) but after going through 3rd Corps and despite a whole division veering off to attack the Round Tops it was still a lot of work for all the reinforcements (i.e. functionally 5th Corps) plus what would have been there in the first place (everyone else except for Sickles) to stop Longstreet.
Based on this, I suspect that there's a case to be made that if Sickles doesn't push his forces out then what actually happens is that Longstreet makes somewhat better progress against "Sickles plus the rest of the Union left flank, but not Sykes" than he did against "Sykes plus the rest of the Union left flank". (He would then be stopped by the arrival of part of Sykes.)
Since that means the fighting starts practically on top of the Taneytown road instead of several hundred yards further west, Longstreet would thus be likely to gain access to the Taneytown road. (If he pushed Sickles back just a couple of hundred yards this would be achieved.)

This is not immediately a better situation than historical.

On the other hand, I think that there is also a case to be made that what actually happened was the worst of both worlds compared to if Meade had actually gone over and looked (and verified either that the position was good enough and reaffirmed his orders to Sickles, or realized the flaw and moved the line further out in a timely fashion). As it was Meade did essentially everything to reinforce the idea that he wasn't paying attention to Sickles' concerns and just wanted him to shut up, even though the man he sent to reassure Sickles actually agreed with Sickles about the flaws in the line.


What this means is not that Sickles is exonerated, but rather that Meade also acted badly - he was paying no real attention to the part of his line where Lee's main blow fell on the second day despite the corps commander in question raising issues about the position. This can all be explained by the immediately previous history of the commanders, Sickles in particular having been in a situation so similar just a couple of months previously that deja vu is not an unwarranted term...
As I indicated, the point isn't whether Meade handled this the way he should have - he didn't. But Sickles made the circumstances much worse. Some years ago in Gettysburg magazine Dave Powell did an excellent analysis of the numerous reasons why Sickles' decision was an abysmally poor military judgment. Dave shows how Sickles actually facilitated Longstreet's attack, which would have faced a tougher obstacle had Sickles simply stayed put. It had to do with Longstreet's bad intel regarding the original Union line as established by Meade.
 
As I indicated, the point isn't whether Meade handled this the way he should have - he didn't. But Sickles made the circumstances much worse. Some years ago in Gettysburg magazine Dave Powell did an excellent analysis of the numerous reasons why Sickles' decision was an abysmally poor military judgment. Dave shows how Sickles actually facilitated Longstreet's attack, which would have faced a tougher obstacle had Sickles simply stayed put. It had to do with Longstreet's bad intel regarding the original Union line as established by Meade.
While I know Longstreet had bad intel on the original Union line, my understanding is that (and quite by accident) Longstreet's projected route of march would have the effect of forming an attack en echelon on the actual Union positions.


I made this diagram for the last time this came up:

Getty.jpg


Dark blue: Lee's assumption of Union positions
Light blue: true (initial) line of 2nd and 3rd Corps
Red-yellow-orange: progression of Longstreet's line over time on original route of march
Green circled: areas where Longstreet would be able to either not see Union forces he expected to see, or see Union forces in their true positions.


To mount an echelon attack masked by LRT there's not actually much about Longstreet's dispositions that need to be changed - just what they're to do as they advance. He needs to replan when he reaches the yellow marked position, but he has enough time to do so because he doesn't immediately need to change the directions of his divisions for them to become an echelon attack.


I'd also argue that a big part of what made Sickles' decision have the negative outcome it did was the timing of the move. If Sickles had moved a little earlier (an hour would suffice or more than suffice) then he'd have been better established on the new positions, and that's practically bad luck as much as anything.
 
Meade: hero of Gettysburg...or guy who had to be talked out of retreat? Guy who saved Sickles, or guy saved by Sickles? Guy who let Lee get away after Gettysburg because he was timid, or cautious general who refrained from bloody futile assaults at Williamsport and Mine Run?

The more I read about Meade the more I'm becoming convinced he was a very competent general, but had certain critical shortcomings that meant he would never be a war-winner.

Burnside is in the same category as Bragg and Hood: widely believed dumber than a bag of hammers, but modern reevaluation gives a more nuanced view. He was painfully self-aware of his skill level, had moments where he really shined, and was poorly served on a number of occasions by subordinates and superiors. (But certainly no unsung genius.)
 
I tend to the view that Meade was broadly capable, but had issues at Gettysburg because of how new he was to army command (I'm thus inclined to cut him slack on that front because he was after all so new to the job). In particular, the problems he shows at Gettysburg are:

- Getting overly focused on one part of the battle at a time, rather than being able to step back and consider the whole army (which is to say, he's still fighting "like a corps commander" and assuming that his area of responsibility is on that scale, even if not consciously)
- Committing his reserves too early (this happens on Day Two and Day Three; in neither case was it disastrous but it's something that still deserves noticing).
- Ending up out of comms on the afternoon of Day Three (probably a result of unfamiliarity with how to keep the comms network open, again a matter of lack of experience at army command).

None of these are unsolvable issues with more experience. Meanwhile his post-Gettysburg decisions are fairly reasonable, especially given how battered his army was.
 
To mount an echelon attack masked by LRT there's not actually much about Longstreet's dispositions that need to be changed - just what they're to do as they advance. He needs to replan when he reaches the yellow marked position, but he has enough time to do so because he doesn't immediately need to change the directions of his divisions for them to become an echelon attack.

True, but this is also dependent on him correctly recognizing the actual Union deployment and successful redirecting his men accordingly. It's also possible he recognizes the situation too late and unwittingly gets hit in the right flank by Sickles.

There's also another option: Sickles shifts to occupy LRT instead of the Peach Orchard, leaving a temporarily weakened Union center that is easier for Meade to fill and harder for Lee to exploit.
 
True, but this is also dependent on him correctly recognizing the actual Union deployment and successful redirecting his men accordingly. It's also possible he recognizes the situation too late and unwittingly gets hit in the right flank by Sickles.
As noted, if Longstreet continues on his original projected line of march he will end up doing an echelon attack, albeit not a very well handled one because they won't know that's what they're doing until contact happens. As far as I can tell in order to expose his flank to Sickles he would need to actively swerve left from his original conception, in order to launch an attack on troops he can see are not there (and to expose his flank to troops he can see are there).

As for shifting to Little Round Top, it's possible but it does open a hole in the Union position; indeed, given that it's not actually guaranteed in this timeline for Hood's whole division to get sucked into (unintended) fighting for the Round Tops then it might give Longstreet an opportunity that matches the scale of the inconvenience.
Deploying a brigade or two of Hood as a flank guard facing Little Round Top would do nicely, depending on the size of the force involved, and then suddenly there's a nice open flank for the rest of Hood and much of McLaws to hit (that of Hancock).


I think the reality that has to be faced is that

IF
the original position was strong enough that 3rd Corps could have held it in place without being pushed back
THEN
5th Corps could have taken up that position when they arrived, and held it in place without being pushed back

So the question that then arises is why 5th Corps didn't do that.
 
Without Sickles being where he was, doesn't what he feared become a reality - Confederate artillery at the Peach Orchard supporting an attack. Confederate advances had a nasty habit of outrunning their artillery and consequently falling apart due to lack of cohesive artillery support. With Sickles no longer in that position doesn't it open up more possibilities after they cross the Emmitsburg Road?
The advance goes into 'empty space' so they reach the Union line without suffering the same number of casualties that the presence of Sickles Corps caused. And there is time for Longstreet to bring forward the artillery to support the attack between Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top. Perhaps then we might be talking of Meade's intransigence rather than Sickles' poor judgement?
 
While I know Longstreet had bad intel on the original Union line, my understanding is that (and quite by accident) Longstreet's projected route of march would have the effect of forming an attack en echelon on the actual Union positions.


I made this diagram for the last time this came up:

View attachment 398267

Dark blue: Lee's assumption of Union positions
Light blue: true (initial) line of 2nd and 3rd Corps
Red-yellow-orange: progression of Longstreet's line over time on original route of march
Green circled: areas where Longstreet would be able to either not see Union forces he expected to see, or see Union forces in their true positions.


To mount an echelon attack masked by LRT there's not actually much about Longstreet's dispositions that need to be changed - just what they're to do as they advance. He needs to replan when he reaches the yellow marked position, but he has enough time to do so because he doesn't immediately need to change the directions of his divisions for them to become an echelon attack.


I'd also argue that a big part of what made Sickles' decision have the negative outcome it did was the timing of the move. If Sickles had moved a little earlier (an hour would suffice or more than suffice) then he'd have been better established on the new positions, and that's practically bad luck as much as anything.
Leaving both of his flanks open by good margins, more than doubling the length of his line, uncovering LRT, creating a sharp angle in his line subject to converging fire, and creating a relatively hollow spot in the middle of his line, are all fundamental defects which have little or nothing to do with the timing. He had 10,000 troops to man the extended line he created - far below what was needed to adequately defend that area. As the Powell article also shows, even Sickles' perception of an elevation disadvantage in his original placement was an overestimate. As Branch Rickey said, "luck is the residue of design". "Bad" design yields "bad" luck.
 
I agree. “Who wasn’t?” is the real question; this was/is democratic, opinionated, and vociferous America after all - there doesn’t seem to be a military decision that one can’t put a good or bad spin on if one is in the mood.
(So maybe... Floyd and Pillow at Fort Donelson and Dixon Miles at Harper’s Ferry weren’t controversial commanders - they just sucked. :D)
For sure, there are enough ineffective commanders to go around, such as the 3 you mentioned. I guess the more interesting question is which effective commanders were beset by controversy.
 
Leaving both of his flanks open by good margins, more than doubling the length of his line, uncovering LRT, creating a sharp angle in his line subject to converging fire, and creating a relatively hollow spot in the middle of his line, are all fundamental defects which have little or nothing to do with the timing. He had 10,000 troops to man the extended line he created - far below what was needed to adequately defend that area. As the Powell article also shows, even Sickles' perception of an elevation disadvantage in his original placement was an overestimate. As Branch Rickey said, "luck is the residue of design". "Bad" design yields "bad" luck.
Which is why Sickles first spends hours trying to persuade Meade to at least come and have a look. We know that Sickles thought that his current position was untenable, and we also know that Hunt agreed, while it doesn't seem like anybody at the battlefield at the time actually disagreed with Sickles after examining the position.


Of course, the line Sickles adopted with his force was one that was too long for him to man*, but then again he doesn't have the authority to have 2nd Corps adopt the same line, and nobody else does either except Meade (because there's no wing commander assigned); Sickles can only move his own corps.


* though not necessarily much too long; 10,000 men in a continuous two-deep line should be able to cover about a mile and a half. 3rd Corps is listed as 12,600 officers and men PFD on 30 June, so a two-deep line with a small reserve should be able to cover about two miles.
 
Which is why Sickles first spends hours trying to persuade Meade to at least come and have a look. We know that Sickles thought that his current position was untenable, and we also know that Hunt agreed, while it doesn't seem like anybody at the battlefield at the time actually disagreed with Sickles after examining the position.


Of course, the line Sickles adopted with his force was one that was too long for him to man*, but then again he doesn't have the authority to have 2nd Corps adopt the same line, and nobody else does either except Meade (because there's no wing commander assigned); Sickles can only move his own corps.


* though not necessarily much too long; 10,000 men in a continuous two-deep line should be able to cover about a mile and a half. 3rd Corps is listed as 12,600 officers and men PFD on 30 June, so a two-deep line with a small reserve should be able to cover about two miles.
"Of course, the line Sickles adopted with his force was one that was too long for him to man*, but then again he doesn't have the authority to have 2nd Corps adopt the same line, and nobody else does either except Meade (because there's no wing commander assigned); Sickles can only move his own corps."

And that's exactly why what he did was a poor military decision. That's like a guy saying I can make the jump with a parachute, asking for one, not getting it, and jumping anyway. He was far better off staying in the plane. The Powell analysis of (1) the quality of the original line and (2) the quality of the line after Dirty Dan used his Tammany training is really well done. And Dave is not the only qualified modern observer to come up with the conclusion that Sickles screwed up.
 
Hooker was ok. My opinion of him has changed, at least as far as a corps commander.
I agree. Say what you will about Chancellorsville, Hooker was a competent, solid corp commander. He was also the first Army level commander who saw the value of cavalry as serious troops in their own right.
 
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