If not McClellan, then who?

[Saphroneth]

Also I has assumed that he did speak French. Although that was not something I read anywhere.

He may have learned it afterwards - he was born in NJ and from an Irish family, though he later spent years living in Paris.

@Saphroneth @67th Tigers As to using influence to advance himself I think that was pretty common.

Yeah, I'm not saying otherwise. I'm just saying that he doesn't stand out as unusually professional when the main defence that can be applied to his actions is that he's acting like everyone else did!

 

[OpnCoronet]

I'm kind of surprised by this description, because even by the account of a pro-Kearny book he was easily bored and had trouble focusing on administration. He didn't go to West Point, and when he did get picked as one of three cavalry officers to go through the French cavalry school he by all accounts got bored within days and left, squandering the opportunity. Consequently he never had any real degree of professional officer training.

Obviously I don't know what you mean by "a true professional", but...

Everyone has an opinion, I will at only say Grant's record at West Point was spotty at best, possibly because he was bored in a peace time Army. Some military men find their true talent actually fighting wars rather than studying about it.

 

[Saphroneth]

Everyone has an opinion, I will at only say Grant's record at West Point was spotty at best, possibly because he was bored in a peace time Army. Some military men find their true talent actually fighting wars rather than studying about it.

Then that's part of the question, isn't it - in what way does Kearny's talent show through in 'actually fighting wars' that shows him as a professional?

By my count he exercises meaningful command in battle at Williamsburg, Seven Pines, Glendale, Malvern, Second Bull Run and Chantilly.

Williamsburg sees Kearny's division turning up as reinforcements that rescue Hooker's division from the problem Hooker created. This is a march of nine miles in seven hours over bad roads (creditable, though not exceptional) and accounts by Ward and Strong indicate that on multiple occasions Kearny ordered fragments of regiments (less than all of Ward's regiment, three times; three companies of the same regiment under Strong, also three times) to charge fortifications, while the 40th NY reports that the left wing of his command was led forward in a charge by Kearny without the colonel being informed.

This isn't Kearny blossoming into a good battlefield leader. Operationally he's okay but tactically he has a preference for the exciting small unit charge over actually organizing the battle line.


Seven Pines sees Kearny overriding Heintzelman's orders (to Birney) to move by rail to the front and reinforce Keyes, which sees Birney court-martialled for disobedience of orders. Kearny then grabs the left wing of the 37th NY and leads it in a charge without telling the regiment's colonel. This forms a hole in the line of Berry's brigade and forces the 37th NY to fall back, complicating Berry's conduct of his battle (he says he could have driven the enemy further back had that not happened).


At Glendale Kearny takes the wrong position, forming north of where he was originally meant to be, and this is part of why McCall's division is in the front line; also during the fighting, Kearny can't be found to approve moving his reserve brigade (Berry) to support McCall, which is part of the reason why McCall's division gets overstrained.


At Second Bull Run, Kearny outright disobeys operational orders (they were poorly formed by Pope, though, overworking the unit) and then (per Return to Bull Run) at the battle itself he drags in a brigade of 9th Corps instead of committing his own (unused) reserves.


Chantilly may (emphasis may) see Kearny disobeying orders to actually go there, but if he did disobey orders then this was a good decision. When he does turn up at Chantilly, though, he doesn't form his division in line of battle. Instead, he turns up at the 21st Massachusetts, a regiment from a completely different corps (and not even from the 9th Corps division that lost its commander earlier that day) and orders them to advance with wet cartridges on pain of being bombarded with artillery.

This is when Kearny dies.


Kearny is clearly personally brave, and his men march to the sound of the guns on more than one occasion (though other times they don't march despite orders, like during the lead up to Second Bull Run). He does, however, seem to have considerable trouble doing the difficult work of organizing and controlling his division and regularly goes down to the level of ordering regiment or sub-regimental charges personally, despite being a division commander.


I'm not sure how one can conclude that this man is anything really above average as an AoP division commander in 1862. His one standout quality is aggression, but the fact he keeps ordering small-scale charges that disrupt the battle-line suggests that he has been promoted above the level of his span of command. He might well be a good colonel.

 

[OpnCoronet]

Then that's part of the question, isn't it - in what way does Kearny's talent show through in 'actually fighting wars' that shows him as a professional?

By my count he exercises meaningful command in battle at Williamsburg, Seven Pines, Glendale, Malvern, Second Bull Run and Chantilly.

Williamsburg sees Kearny's division turning up as reinforcements that rescue Hooker's division from the problem Hooker created. This is a march of nine miles in seven hours over bad roads (creditable, though not exceptional) and accounts by Ward and Strong indicate that on multiple occasions Kearny ordered fragments of regiments (less than all of Ward's regiment, three times; three companies of the same regiment under Strong, also three times) to charge fortifications, while the 40th NY reports that the left wing of his command was led forward in a charge by Kearny without the colonel being informed.

This isn't Kearny blossoming into a good battlefield leader. Operationally he's okay but tactically he has a preference for the exciting small unit charge over actually organizing the battle line.


Seven Pines sees Kearny overriding Heintzelman's orders (to Birney) to move by rail to the front and reinforce Keyes, which sees Birney court-martialled for disobedience of orders. Kearny then grabs the left wing of the 37th NY and leads it in a charge without telling the regiment's colonel. This forms a hole in the line of Berry's brigade and forces the 37th NY to fall back, complicating Berry's conduct of his battle (he says he could have driven the enemy further back had that not happened).


At Glendale Kearny takes the wrong position, forming north of where he was originally meant to be, and this is part of why McCall's division is in the front line; also during the fighting, Kearny can't be found to approve moving his reserve brigade (Berry) to support McCall, which is part of the reason why McCall's division gets overstrained.


At Second Bull Run, Kearny outright disobeys operational orders (they were poorly formed by Pope, though, overworking the unit) and then (per Return to Bull Run) at the battle itself he drags in a brigade of 9th Corps instead of committing his own (unused) reserves.


Chantilly may (emphasis may) see Kearny disobeying orders to actually go there, but if he did disobey orders then this was a good decision. When he does turn up at Chantilly, though, he doesn't form his division in line of battle. Instead, he turns up at the 21st Massachusetts, a regiment from a completely different corps (and not even from the 9th Corps division that lost its commander earlier that day) and orders them to advance with wet cartridges on pain of being bombarded with artillery.

This is when Kearny dies.


Kearny is clearly personally brave, and his men march to the sound of the guns on more than one occasion (though other times they don't march despite orders, like during the lead up to Second Bull Run). He does, however, seem to have considerable trouble doing the difficult work of organizing and controlling his division and regularly goes down to the level of ordering regiment or sub-regimental charges personally, despite being a division commander.


I'm not sure how one can conclude that this man is anything really above average as an AoP division commander in 1862. His one standout quality is aggression, but the fact he keeps ordering small-scale charges that disrupt the battle-line suggests that he has been promoted above the level of his span of command. He might well be a good colonel.

If you command a larger better equipped and supplied army how above average do you have to be.

 

[Saphroneth]

If you command a larger better equipped and supplied army how above average do you have to be.

I sort of think that at this point the argument has descended to that Kearny isn't so terrible that he would manage to completely destroy his army. But even then, don't forget that we have several cases of Kearny getting sucked in so deep into ordering charges that he loses track of managing his division. In fact it's his default mode, it happens basically every battle he's in.

What about Kearny, exactly, leads you to the conclusion that he is particularly professional? It's not his peacetime administrative ability or his willingness to do boring work, because he doesn't have that; it's not his ability to manage a division, because he's not good at that either. He can order a mean charge, though notably not often a successful one (six or seven failed charges at Williamsburg alone), but if all the Union needed was someone to shout charge they'd have won the war in early 1861 - shouting "charge" is not hard.

 

[67th Tigers]

The idea that Kearny saw action on the Algerian campaign comes from Thomas Kearny, his nephew in the 1930's. John Watts de Peyster's earlier book has letters from Kearny, with him reporting arriving at Algiers and sending a message requesting permission to visit the army on campaign, but they soon return to Algiers. He gets permission to be an Honorary ADC to 1er Ch d'A whilst they're in camp, and writes a report on their organisation etc. which is lost to history.

A lot of the modern ideas about Kearny come from Thomas, who cannot be trusted.

 

[35th MA InfRegt]

@Saphroneth I am under the impression that Kearny quit the French cavalry school because he wanted to get an up close and personal view of the French war in Algeria. It seems to me to be a reasonable thing to do for an American officer anxious to learn the trade of soldiering. I'm not sure anyone could have predicted with any certainty that a civil war was coming, or how intense the fighting was liable to be and other then that there doesn't seem to have been much likelihood of any other chance for an American officer to get actual battlefield experience, at least that I am aware of.

Although he wouldn't have been my first choice for Army commander I admit to a bias as I'm a Kearny fan, but I would not just write him off for bigger things had he survived longer.

John

The US Army did see combat in the 1830s, in the Second Seminole War 1835-1842). Admittedly an officer of the dragoons might not see much glamour in chasing Indians through the swamps, but combat did occur. In fact, the 2nd Regiment of Dragoons fought in the campaign as dismounted infantry. If Kearny had wanted an assignment there, it probably could have been arranged.

 

[Saphroneth]

The US Army did see combat in the 1830s, in the Second Seminole War 1835-1842). Admittedly an officer of the dragoons might not see much glamour in chasing Indians through the swamps, but combat did occur. In fact, the 2nd Regiment of Dragoons fought in the campaign as dismounted infantry. If Kearny had wanted an assignment there, it probably could have been arranged.

An interesting question to me in this respect (post-Mexican War, anyway) is about whether Kearny asked for a posting to the West and was denied, or didn't get one, or got one and didn't go. He spends three years in New York, then goes to California (leaving NY in July and turning up in August) and resigns in October.

 

[35th MA InfRegt]

The cavalry manual having his name on it doesn't necessarily mean he did any of the work to produce it, since the three soldiers sent would have all their names on it. It's a group project and we need to assess how much work Kearny did individually; we would naturally expect the two men who actually attended the school to have had most of the input.

Being assigned to Scott's staff is not really an indicator of wanting a more professional American army, and certainly not of doing so successfully - it's not nothing but it's more indicative of Having Connections than anything. Remember, his commission comes about because his uncle happens to be running the regiment, and he goes straight in at 1st Lt (skipping 10-15 slots on the seniority ladder compared to a USMA graduate, which must have been nice).

Similarly his peacetime service in California sees him show up August 1851 and quit in October the same year. What I'm getting at here is that Kearny is not "anomalously professional" and in fact you could make a case that he is otherwise.

The Army Register has Kearny down as a second lieutenant in the 1st Dragoons with entry from March 8th, 1837. Half of the second lieutenants entered from the Military Academy, the others from civil life.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433008010492&seq=193&q1=Kearny

I would argue Kearny was not really much of a professional officer but his failure to attend and graduate from West Point was not to blame for that. Many fine officers entered the Army directly from civil life-Winfield Scott for one. What such officers needed to do was engage in systematic self-study and to make the most of their OTJ training opportunities. Kearny had these opportunities but seems not to have made the most of them. I would say that is down to a relatively unserious attitude about his PME. That is hardly indicative of a dedicated professional!

 

[35th MA InfRegt]

An interesting question to me in this respect (post-Mexican War, anyway) is about whether Kearny asked for a posting to the West and was denied, or didn't get one, or got one and didn't go. He spends three years in New York, then goes to California (leaving NY in July and turning up in August) and resigns in October.

I have no idea. I do wonder if the death of his uncle in 1848 and the subsequent loss of such an influential patron may have played a part in his decision to leave the Army.

 

[Saphroneth]

The Army Register has Kearny down as a second lieutenant in the 1st Dragoons with entry from March 8th, 1837

I admit to being mistaken, then - I saw it put that he entered the US military as a 1st LT in June 1837, but this shows he was still a 2nd Lt in 1838 and is an authoritative source. More fool me for believing the book I got it from, I suppose...

I would argue Kearny was not really much of a professional officer but his failure to attend and graduate from West Point was not to blame for that. Many fine officers entered the Army directly from civil life-Winfield Scott for one. What such officers needed to do was engage in systematic self-study and to make the most of their OTJ training opportunities. Kearny had these opportunities but seems not to have made the most of them. I would say that is down to a relatively unserious attitude about his PME. That is hardly indicative of a dedicated professional!

Oh, absolutely - Kearny starts off with a disadvantage in "baseline" professionalism because he doesn't have the West Point education, but he could absolutely have educated himself to become a professional. He doesn't and so he can't be said to be more professional than average.

 

[Saphroneth]

So something that might be useful to consider more generally is that army commander is really a kind of distinct role. This is something that a lot of expanding armies can struggle with, and the US is one of them.


When you're talking about command of units below the regiment level, any independent command is going to be no more than a few hundred men. That's still going to be quite sizeable - it's going to be a few hundred feet wide! - but the logistics impact of the unit is small. The size of the unit is small. It can react very quickly because it takes less than a minute for a man to cross from one side of the unit to the other, and the unit marching down the road is going to take only a few minutes to go past. In every sense this is a formation you can control in person. You don't even have much admin work to do, and it is feasible to know literally everyone in the unit. The most combined-arms you have to handle is working with, maybe, an artillery section or battery; cavalry on this scale is mostly about elan and panache, because at such a small size order matters less.

As units get bigger, logistics and coordination and time matter more. At the regimental level you have to be able to delegate at least somewhat; your unit is bigger and when deployed as part of a line it involves more of the line. You now have input into whether to rotate your regiment out of combat during a firefight (to replenish ammunition for example, something that with smoothbores might be needed every 10-20 minutes) and the unit is getting large enough that it takes longer to arrive, longer to deploy, and you can't necessarily see the whole unit in person. It may well be that things are different on the two flanks of your unit.


Brigades mean working with subordinate units. A brigade commander may sometimes have to go to the front themselves, but they have people for that (the colonels, and each colonel has a lieutenant and then two majors to take over). The duty of a brigade commander includes managing a substantial part of the front line and may in smaller campaigns involve independent action. In a larger battle a brigade often has a continuous front and at least one regiment will usually be in reserve unless specifically committed, and a brigade commander has to manage that. A brigade is also large enough that serious attention needs to be paid to logistics.


A division has subordinate brigades and certainly also has artillery. Division commanders have to manage multiple brigades and in fact for a division commander to go forwards is often a mistake - by the time you are a division commander the front line your unit is managing may be as much as a mile wide and a crisis on the wrong end of it can take ten minutes for word to reach you. It is a more powerful but also more ponderous unit. At the division command level, attention to logistics is essential - a division at full strength is a fairly sizeable mobile town and your men need to eat every day, as do your horses. Divisions are supposed to be able to largely handle themselves, from the point of view of higher up, but that means that as a division commander you have to do that handling. You need to manage the commitment of divisional reserves. Your unit may be fighting divided and if so you need to make decisions about where to be and how to delegate command of the detached unit.


A corps is very big. The ideal corps (early 1862 Union ones, Overland campaign ones, Confederate ones) is small enough that it can fit down a road in a day but big enough that this is actually quite a significant chunk of the capacity of the roadway; a corps is an independent army, though often Civil War ones don't have the cavalry necessary to actually do this. Nevertheless, a corps is big enough that a corps commander should basically never (in practice) be at the front - their job is battle management and administrative. Corps always (or should always) have reserves and be managing a very large fighting front, potentially multiple miles wide, or be rotating units in and out along an active battlefront a mile wide.


And an army commander is managing multiple corps, both operationally and tactically. Indeed, the main jobs of the army commander are to move their constituent units (corps and any independently moving divisions) so as to create favourable tactical situations, to take good battles and avoid taking bad ones, and to ensure that the army is moving in such a way that its logistical needs can be met.



In the case of Kearny specifically, I would argue that the man is certainly physically brave and aggressive but his performance on the field (as enumerated earlier) shows that he really struggled making the transition from a front-line officer at the sub-regimental level (which was the nature of all his pre-Civil-War service) up to the level of brigade and division commander. It is common that he goes forward and starts ordering movements that are more the business of, at most, a colonel, and on more than one occasion this disrupts the maintenance of the battle line.

But this is also a problem more generally. In a long-term large army, the process of rising through the ranks means that officers get a chance to be tried out at each successive level, which both means that the real no-hopers can be weeded out and also means that a merely average officer has time to learn how to operate and command at that level, so that when they rise up a level they're not overwhelmed. The modern US army actually explicitly tests and evaluates officers so that those who can't do that have their careers dead-end at Major or similar - every general in the modern US army underwent that evaluation a decade or more ago. They have had time to pick up the skills.

The US army in the ACW doesn't have time to do that. The best it can really do is to pick people who seem promising, and this is why a lot of the early CCs and army commanders struggle.

Being overwhelmed and reverting, or focusing on a smaller and more manageable, more visible problem, is common. Reynolds does it at Fredericksburg. Meade at Gettysburg. All the responsible Union officers at Gaines Mill seem to get sucked in to managing the situation in the centre and right, leaving nobody above brigade level to manage the left.

 

[67th Tigers]

Yes, Kearny entered as a 2Lt, but in June 1836 the Corps of Dragoons were divided into the 1st and 2nd Dragoons. Normally an officer would have remain a brevet 2Lt for years, and promotion to 1Lt was around 10-12 years service. Kearny made it in less than 2.5 years (8th March '37 -> 22nd July '39).

An oddity of the U.S. system is that when a new regiment was formed, Congress was completely free to appoint anyone in any rank, and hence the Maj of the new 2nd Dragoons was a politician parachuted in with essentially no military experience. In fact, aside from the Col and Lt Col, virtually all the officers were political appointments.

With a new regiment formed, there were a bunch of vacancies. They would be filled in summer '37 when a new USMA class graduated, and so the well-connected lobbied for appointment before this. Kearny got a direct appointment in his uncle's 1st Dragoons, skipping the cadet and bvt 2Lt stage, and jumping straight in as a relatively senior 2Lt.

 

[Cavalier]

All of you have a lot more information then I have so I'll bow to your superior knowledge.

However all this being the case why would Scott have referred to Kearny as "the perfect soldier and the bravest man I ever knew", (I believe that's the correct quote), ? Scott did know the guy.

I get the bravest part, but as to the perfect soldier part of the quote, that seems pretty complimentary to me. I'm asking out of curiosity, not sarcasm.

John

 

[Saphroneth]

However all this being the case why would Scott have referred to Kearny as "the perfect soldier and the bravest man I ever knew", (I believe that's the correct quote), ? Scott did know the guy.

I get the bravest part, but as to the perfect soldier part of the quote, that seems pretty complimentary to me. I'm asking out of curiosity, not sarcasm.

There's a number of possible explanations. One of them is that it was customary at the time to emphasize the positive and downplay the negative, but in addition Scott's experience with Kearny largely doesn't include any of the time Kearny is in command of large bodies of men. Kearny as Scott knew him was at company command level, and at that level bravery and willingness to charge can be what's focused on.

I think the most likely one though is that would be the whole "accentuate the positive" thing. I can't source the quote but given the past tense it's quite possible this is when Kearny is dead and so under those circumstances Scott would hardly say of a man he knew well "he was very brave, but quite frankly he got hundreds of his men killed"

 

[67th Tigers]

That quote first appears in de Peyster's biography, and Kearny is mentioned in a long discussion about Lt Watts, Scott's ADC in the War of 1812, who was Kearny's uncle.* It's de Peyster's recollection of a conversation he had with Scott in 1865.

* Kearny served as a peacetime ADC to Scott. In Mexico, when Kearny turned up with a newly recruited cavalry coy, they were made Scott's bodyguard escort. He certain was brave, charging the gates at Churobusco, ignoring the bugle signals to withdraw (although apparently he simply didn't know them), and having his company destroyed by artillery whilst he lost his arm.

 

[neyankee61]

Kearny lobbied for an all New Jersey division for his to command. He wanted the 1st NJ Brigade (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th NJ) combined with the 2nd NJ Brigade (5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th) to form it.

 

[Saphroneth]

Kearny lobbied for an all New Jersey division for his to command. He wanted the 1st NJ Brigade (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th NJ) combined with the 2nd NJ Brigade (5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th) to form it.

Which is... untenable, really. By that point all AoP divisions were triangular but there's only two NJ bdes, and so he's asking to get an undersized and weak division produced by breaking up two other divisions (neither of which is missing a commander, since he's looking to get the NJ bde from Hooker's division).

Possibly that might have been workable under different conditions, but the context of the offer to take over Sumner's division (the first time that there's open division slots in a while, and when Kearny gets and refuses the offer) everything is moving quickly because the departure date for Urbana is in less than ten days.

An interesting point is that Kearny isn't even the senior officer in the 1st NJ bde when he joins (Montgomery ranks him). That said, if he hadn't been very sick in tthe last quarter of 1861 he... might have got a division, though probably not (he was junior to all the DCs except Baldy Smith).

Though I do have to wonder whether his desire for the 2nd NJ bde is because the 2nd NJ bde is in Hooker's division, and Hooker and Kearny had a seniority dispute. (Kearny was erroneously transposed with Hooker when seniority was frozen.)

 

[tony_gunter]

The knock on Rosecrans was that he focused too long on preparation and avoided being urged into action, two things that got McClellan canned. Not sure Rosecrans would have been a great fit in the east with the increased scrutiny incumbent on the position.

 

[Saphroneth]

The knock on Rosecrans was that he focused too long on preparation and avoided being urged into action, two things that got McClellan canned. Not sure Rosecrans would have been a great fit in the east with the increased scrutiny incumbent on the position.

I think this is a big deal, yeah, whoever is in charge in the East is under intense scrutiny. Personally I think there's a sort of moving dynamic in the East which is that you have the expectations of the Press (which influences public opinion and thus the opinion of the President on how bad things are), and you have Lincoln's own operational and strategic preferences, and you have the relative force balance.

The press opinion clearly creates a far more amenable environment for generals in the East as time goes on - in 1861-2 the press expects one big battle with few casualties which will win the war in weeks, while by 1864 they're ready for it to take a long time and involve much struggle.
The relative force balance also moves in the favour of the Union over time, though this one doesn't move monotonically - but in mid-1862 the Confederates can concentrate a force which, without casualties, would be upwards of 125,000 PFD around Richmond if they want to. By 1864 that's been reduced, while the Union army that assails Richmond in 1864 has about 200,000 men PFD in it - over 50% more than the comparable 1862 figure. So roughly speaking the relative force balance has by 1864 moved in the Union's favour by about a factor of two, plus of course the Union army has simply got better at logistics and operations through garnering more experience.

Lincoln's own operational and strategic preferences also mean that he's inclined to prefer an overland route to Richmond and to prefer frontal attacks as part of that. The thing is that the relative force balance (and other operational factors) mean that that's not really workable, while the press opinion on the result would be extremely negative.

Fundamentally speaking the Union is in a position of relative weakness in the historical late 1861 and early 1862. The Confederates are as strong as they'll ever be and they also control all the logistics routes to Richmond, and generally speaking they can make it so that any attempt to take those routes means making frontal attacks into strong Confederate positions - or, in some cases, the slow work of a formal siege. Meanwhile the Union has a relatively small mobilization at that point and it doesn't have the sheer numerical advantage required to try to run the Confederates out of sons faster than the Union runs out of sons through frontal assaults.

Arguably the ideal situation would be to have someone whose job it was to stay back home in Washington and make sure that the political leadership (chiefly Lincoln) understood the military limitations, but I suspect Stanton would just fire them.