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Post by American hist on Jan 31, 2022 21:31:19 GMT
Which southern politician would have done a better job as president of the confederate states of America other than Jefferson Davis? Jefferson Davis had his fair share of bad decision-making, such as picking favorites, but not every lousy move was because of Jefferson Davis. Davis didn't have the leadership skills that abe lincoln had in the north, so who, in your opinion, might have been the most likely president had Davis not become the CSA president?
Not all of Davis's appointees for government posts were incompetent or necessarily bad choices, but some of his generals, diplomats, and other leaders could have been put in places of better authority to suit their talent such as PGBT Beaugard being placed as the commander of New Orleans or placed to defend the south coastal defenses permanently is one example. Judea benjamin would have been a good pick for CSA ambassador to France. Historian Mead belives he should have been sent to eroupe acting as a confederate European delegation to Europe to win recognition and support abroad
who should have the south picked in these various missions instead of the failed diplomacy abroad who would have done a better job representing the CSA in Europe and in Mexico and if the south desired who would have been good representatives for the south in nations such as Brazil,Russia,Prussia,the far east, etc other then the diplomats they had in reality or of course didn't have representatives to began with.
Who in your opinion should have been placed as confederate command of the Transmissipii department and placed on minor command out west? if the had confederates desired and had the opportunity should be the csa diplomat to the Mormon religion of to Brigham young urging him to call for secession.
The south did also have good leaders within her ranks of course to name one Josiah Gorgas head of the ordinance department. Robert e lee while his talent has been overstated was successful at winning the south battles. Who in your opinion should have been placed general in chief of the confederate army which in my opinion should have been joseph e Johnston is long if he isn't made battle commander like general lee.
Which strategy and policy should the south have conducted instead during the American civil war in your opopon?
I of course don't think the south should have attacked fort Sumter, but what moves should the south have mad in your opinion?
what different policy could have changed the circumstances of a campaign or allowed new war inventions to be used or perfected earlier? one example being if the southern invented of the coal torpedo was offered a bounty for inventing weapons in preparation that the north would invade the south
what goals and focuses do you think the south should have done during the American civil war?
Please no moral arguments whether you like or hate the south and the CSA please avoid baises as much as possible in this discussion
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Post by Otto Kretschmer on Jan 31, 2022 23:06:19 GMT
Stonewall Jackson could easily replace Lee as the commander of the ANV
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Post by American hist on Jun 13, 2022 16:19:13 GMT
a great book I recommend anyone reading for alternative history Clopton's Short History of the Confederate States of America, 1861-1925 The book had many great ideas. I think Robert Toombs would have made a good vice president and the president who would have the best led the CSA would be Robert toombs.
If someone would like to telegram me for clarification and edits please do so for I have learning disabilities so I don't always see sentences too clearly, but that's just how God made me.
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Post by American hist on Sept 14, 2022 16:24:54 GMT
I will also ask another question what could the south have done differently to increase the chances for the CSA to win the American civil war? www.historyonthenet.com/could-the-south-have-won-the-civil-war In what ways could alternative southern leadership have prevented the great mistakes that still there to feed or could’ve allowed to prepare the CSA in a much more fashionable order? What invention realistically could change the course of the American Civil War for the confederates? One of the biggest mistakes in my opinion for the CSA was to attack fort sumpter had they didn't so public opinion and time is rewarded to the CSA. However The debate of whether or not the south should’ve attacked fort Sumter is almost a separate discussion in its own right. However I think the south should have focused on convoy‘s for the confederate blockade runners. www.warhistoryonline.com/american-civil-war/civil-war.html/amp Different presidential leadership can change military decisions through the appointment of different generals and focus on different campaigns and strategy’s www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2019/6/9/how-could-the-confederate-south-have-won-the-us-civil-war#.YyINCvdOmEc= |
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miletus12
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Post by miletus12 on Sept 14, 2022 20:58:12 GMT
Stonewall Jackson could easily replace Lee as the commander of the ANV The short answer is "no". The Long Answer is that you do not want a man who thinks Gustavus Asolphus' pike infantry tactics are viable against the likes of Sherman and Grant to be in charge of anything except a latrine digging detail. |
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miletus12
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Post by miletus12 on Sept 14, 2022 21:29:39 GMT
1. Howell Cobb should have been punished for his war-crimes, chief of which was Andersonville.
2. Robert Toombs was a drunk and mentally unstable.
3. Jefferson Davis ... well read the Jefferson Davis thread. Short version was he thought he was a genius, while those who knew him regarded him as a poltroon.
4. Alexander Stephens was so anti-democratic that even Jeff Davis thought he was a dangerous lunatic.
5. Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter (Not the Grateful Dead guy, M.), aside from pointing out Jefferson Davis' obvious shortcomings as a politician and a human being, was a gladhander who was of no merit of his own as to his personal ability to lead, follow or get out of the way.
6. Henry A. Wise was not wise, competent or truthful. Best phrase that describes him is; "Looks good until you get a good smell of him."
If this batch of losers is the selection pool, since I am Union Forever, then my pick is Robert Toombs, followed by Jefferson Davis. The rest of them just might luck up to drag the war out until 1866. Or Lincoln could listen to Scott and NOT appoint McClellan and waste two years.
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Post by American hist on Sept 14, 2022 23:25:52 GMT
1. Howell Cobb should have been punished for his war-crimes, chief of which was Andersonville. 2. Robert Toombs was a drunk and mentally unstable. 3. Jefferson Davis ... well read the Jefferson Davis thread. Short version was he thought he was a genius, while those who knew him regarded him as a poltroon. 4. Alexander Stephens was so anti-democratic that even Jeff Davis thought he was a dangerous lunatic. 5. Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter (Not the Grateful Dead guy, M.), aside from pointing out Jefferson Davis' obvious shortcomings as a politician and a human being, was a gladhander who was of no merit of his own as to his personal ability to lead, follow or get out of the way. 6. Henry A. Wise was not wise, competent or truthful. Best phrase that describes him is; "Looks good until you get a good smell of him." If this batch of losers is the selection pool, since I am Union Forever, then my pick is Robert Toombs, followed by Jefferson Davis. The rest of them just might luck up to drag the war out until 1866. Or Lincoln could listen to Scott and NOT appoint McClellan and waste two years. Excuse me ,but this isn’t about treason or war crimes this is about leadership,luck and inventions you are derailing the topic at least a bit and your unnecessarily being divisive |
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oscssw
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Post by oscssw on Sept 14, 2022 23:27:27 GMT
My choice for POTC after Davis is Judah P. Benjamin served as the Attorney General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State for the Confederacy. The first Jewish-American to serve on an executive cabinet in American history, he has received the title “brains of the Confederacy” by scholars for his apparent position as Jefferson Davis’ right hand. Benjamin was active in the Whig party. In 1842, he was nominated, and eventually elected, for a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives. Benjamin continued his career as a state congressman until 1853, when he was sworn in as a U.S. Senator from the state of Louisiana. During his tenure, Benjamin met then Senator Jefferson Davis. Following a confrontation during which Benjamin relentless questioned Davis on a military bill, Davis insulted the Louisiana Senator. In response, Benjamin challenged Jefferson Davis to a duel, Davis apologized and the challenge was revoked.
Following the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Benjamin began to speak in favor of secession. As the tide began to turn towards secession in the South, Benjamin delivered a farewell address to the U.S. Senate on December 31, 1860.
Seems like the best man for the job to me.
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Post by brennan on Sept 14, 2022 23:40:24 GMT
It would probably be hard to find a replacement for Jefferson Davis. He wasn't known as the Cicero of the South for nothing. However, while he was a good politician, he was not nearly as good as Lincoln. Davis was one of the best the South had to offer.
The South definitely could have used a different tactic than what they tried. Lee kept on trying to attack and win significant battles. If he wanted to win, all he really had to do was sit back and let the Union attack. He didn't need to do anything beyond slow down the Union. If Lee would have followed this strategy, the South may have won because the Union may not have had nearly as many victories as it needed to boost public morale enough to see the war to completion.
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oscssw
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Post by oscssw on Sept 15, 2022 10:49:57 GMT
If this batch of losers is the selection pool, since I am Union Forever, then my pick is Robert Toombs, followed by Jefferson Davis. The rest of them just might luck up to drag the war out until 1866. Or Lincoln could listen to Scott and NOT appoint McClellan and waste two years. miletus12 What do you think of my choice of Judah Benjamin? I obviously think he would be excellent for the job. I have serious doubts a Christian South of the 1860s, despite the fact a Jewish Judah was voted in as a State and Fed Rep and a Fed Senator would be acceptable to the slave owning elite who really ran the confederacy and many of the common folk. I think Davis was really punching way over his weight intelectually when he appointed him to those senior positions.
Your statement about Scott opposing the selection of Little Mac is news to me. I had no idea Scott was against him but from the little I know of him he was a very shrewd judge of men. Did Scott advise Lincoln to hire Lee for the Commander of the AOP?
What do you think of the latest of my Bismarck/NC ATL? I did save your life!  |
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miletus12
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Post by miletus12 on Sept 15, 2022 12:37:59 GMT
1. Howell Cobb should have been punished for his war-crimes, chief of which was Andersonville. 2. Robert Toombs was a drunk and mentally unstable. 3. Jefferson Davis ... well read the Jefferson Davis thread. Short version was he thought he was a genius, while those who knew him regarded him as a poltroon. 4. Alexander Stephens was so anti-democratic that even Jeff Davis thought he was a dangerous lunatic. 5. Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter (Not the Grateful Dead guy, M.), aside from pointing out Jefferson Davis' obvious shortcomings as a politician and a human being, was a gladhander who was of no merit of his own as to his personal ability to lead, follow or get out of the way. 6. Henry A. Wise was not wise, competent or truthful. Best phrase that describes him is; "Looks good until you get a good smell of him." If this batch of losers is the selection pool, since I am Union Forever, then my pick is Robert Toombs, followed by Jefferson Davis. The rest of them just might luck up to drag the war out until 1866. Or Lincoln could listen to Scott and NOT appoint McClellan and waste two years. Excuse me ,but this isn’t about treason or war crimes this is about leadership,luck and inventions you are derailing the topic at least a bit and your unnecessarily being divisive Leadership is about competence, AH. 300,000 dead, 600,000 maimed and about 2.7 TRILLION 2021 dollars of destruction in the American South due to an insane desire to cling to a pinnacle of class privilege based on a dying economic model and social order that made no sense to anybody even among their ersatz class is at issue. These "persons" broke their oaths to their fellow Americans, especially the southern ones they mislead into rebellion, as to their true motives, and then they struggled and some of their descendants still struggle down to the present to lie about their true motives. 40.00 on. We have the documentation. One of the chief perpetrators of the BIG LIE as we know it today was one Woodrow Wilson. If you have read what I wrote about Woodrow Wilson, you will soon realize that he was exactly like these incompetents above. When it comes to the other Lost Cause excuse makers, it will take us at least another hundred years to repair the damage these "people" caused to us. War crimes, military ineptitude, lack of acumen in foreign policy and their general inability to overcome the internal contradictions and illogic of their own political and social beliefs are exactly why: Leadership? The Confederates had little competent leadership. Joe Johnston and Joe Wheeler were their best generals and Jeff and his crew kept hamstringing those guys. One of those other persons culpable was the paragon of Confederate leadership, Robert E. Lee, whose strategic incompetence cost the Confederacy Tennessee and Texas and Louisiana and Georgia and then the Confederacy. Lee learned nothing from Winfield Scott. The counter to the Anaconda Plan was to hold the Mississippi River Basin, not attack into Pennsylvania where a good corps commander sitting on a convenient hill ridge line could slaughter the Army of Northern Virginia. Luck? Enormous quantities of it, which they squandered. The North was politically split fifteen ways with Copperheads and Confederate sympathizers everywhere and yet Lincoln held it all together. How did old Jeff do with Georgia? The state, large parts of it, was in actual open rebellion to the Confederacy when Sherman marched through it. Inventions? Submarine, armored ram, naval and land mines? Intelligent Whale, Monitor, and the explosive nightmares from the minds of Ambrose Burnside, Richard Gatling, and one Montgomery Meigs for starters. Those were "Inventions" by inventors. The Confederates "copied" or mimicked those in much poorer form. |
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miletus12
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Post by miletus12 on Sept 15, 2022 13:16:21 GMT
If this batch of losers is the selection pool, since I am Union Forever, then my pick is Robert Toombs, followed by Jefferson Davis. The rest of them just might luck up to drag the war out until 1866. Or Lincoln could listen to Scott and NOT appoint McClellan and waste two years. miletus12 What do you think of my choice of Judah Benjamin? I obviously think he would be excellent for the job. I have serious doubts a Christian South of the 1860s, despite the fact a Jewish Judah was voted in as a State and Fed Rep and a Fed Senator would be acceptable to the slave owning elite who really ran the confederacy and many of the common folk. I think Davis was really punching way over his weight intelectually when he appointed him to those senior positions.
Your statement about Scott opposing the selection of Little Mac is news to me. I had no idea Scott was against him but from the little I know of him he was a very shrewd judge of men. Did Scott advise Lincoln to hire Lee for the Commander of the AOP?
What do you think of the latest of my Bismarck/NC ATL? I did save your life! Good one for what he argued. He kept trying to tell his fellow slavocrats that they had to play the numbers and the long game. As I remarked earlier, there was a large block of Northern sympathizers with the South especially in my state of New York and surprisingly Indiana and Ohio. You know what trouble Clement Vallandigham caused and how Oliver P. Morton handled it in Indiana and Kentucky? Benjamin was aware and active in trying to support this Northern disunity. He reluctantly acquiesced to the Maryland and Pennsylvania campaigns as operations in that he could see that if they locally succeeded, then the Northern disunity would become so great that even Lincoln and his supporters, like Morton, could not martial law it back together, though Morton did kind of Bismarck the American Midwest from Indianapolis. Closest thing to a military dictatorship the US ever had, was Morton's Indiana. Yes, but ONLY for the Army of the Potomac. He was looking for a general officer with a big picture mind to replace himself and knew that Lee was not it. Scott knew he, Scott, was too old and ill to finish the job he started. McClellan was an upstart political darling do-little who popped into public notice because he lucked out against a pair of quarreling Confederate ninnies in soon to be West Virgina. One of those ninnies is on our current list of Jeff Davis replacements. Anyhow, Scott knew McClellan was a capable staff officer and a competent brigade level tactician by the lights of the era, but he lacked the feel for ground of a Thomas, or the relentless push of a Sherman or the overall Big Picture vision of a Grant. Scott had to settle for McClellan as the second-best choice of the moment to organize an army, for political reasons. He hoped McClellan, with experience, could grow into the job. McClellan did not. I have to catch the thread up. I've been busy enough that I have had time to putter with the Filipino American War and the ancillary lessons thread. Thanks for keeping me around. I will look at it in toto and give you an opinion probably by Saturday. But the short version is that once Showboat gets her mechanicals sorted and her crew trained, she would be a fair plug-in for USS Massachusetts. I always thought that if Tirpitz had come out to play, that Big Mamie would have spanked that bucket of bolts and mistakes hard and sent her back to Raeder crying "Mama, schau mal, was das bedeutet, dass die alte amerikanische Mama mit mir gemacht hat!" |
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Post by American hist on Sept 15, 2022 14:06:10 GMT
Excuse me ,but this isn’t about treason or war crimes this is about leadership,luck and inventions you are derailing the topic at least a bit and your unnecessarily being divisive Leadership is about competence, AH. 300,000 dead, 600,000 maimed and about 2.7 TRILLION 2021 dollars of destruction in the American South due to an insane desire to cling to a pinnacle of class privilege based on a dying economic model and social order that made no sense to anybody even among their ersatz class is at issue. These "persons" broke their oaths to their fellow Americans, especially the southern ones they mislead into rebellion, as to their true motives, and then they struggled and some of their descendants still struggle down to the present to lie about their true motives. 40.00 on. We have the documentation. One of the chief perpetrators of the BIG LIE as we know it today was one Woodrow Wilson. If you have read what I wrote about Woodrow Wilson, you will soon realize that he was exactly like these incompetents above. When it comes to the other Lost Cause excuse makers, it will take us at least another hundred years to repair the damage these "people" caused to us. War crimes, military ineptitude, lack of acumen in foreign policy and their general inability to overcome the internal contradictions and illogic of their own political and social beliefs are exactly why: Leadership? The Confederates had little competent leadership. Joe Johnston and Joe Wheeler were their best generals and Jeff and his crew kept hamstringing those guys. One of those other persons culpable was the paragon of Confederate leadership, Robert E. Lee, whose strategic incompetence cost the Confederacy Tennessee and Texas and Louisiana and Georgia and then the Confederacy. Lee learned nothing from Winfield Scott. The counter to the Anaconda Plan was to hold the Mississippi River Basin, not attack into Pennsylvania where a good corps commander sitting on a convenient hill ridge line could slaughter the Army of Northern Virginia. Luck? Enormous quantities of it, which they squandered. The North was politically split fifteen ways with Copperheads and Confederate sympathizers everywhere and yet Lincoln held it all together. How did old Jeff do with Georgia? The state, large parts of it, was in actual open rebellion to the Confederacy when Sherman marched through it. Inventions? Submarine, armored ram, naval, and land mines? Intelligent Whale, Monitor, and the explosive nightmares from the minds of Ambrose Burnside, Richard Gatling, and one Montgomery Meigs, for starters. Those were "Inventions" by inventors. The Confederates "copied" or mimicked those in much poorer form. Look, if you are going to get add a checkmate Lincolnnight video, then please have a historian fact-check and Contributing such as Volloging through history. As for Howell Cobb and Andersonville, those war crimes charges do not mean he couldn't have made a good president. The confederacy was always short of resources, including food, so if they had difficulty feeding CSA troops, then think how difficult it would be feeding POWS. There Were many Prison camps In the North for Confederacy's soldiers, And the Rebels did starve to Death despite There being more food in the Union than southern states And could’ve been a possibility of being adequately fed or at least better Of then captured Union troops . If anyone should have been charged with war crimes, it should have been the north, but it's the victories who write the history books, and of course charge others for war crimes. You may dislike Robert e Lee ,but historians still continue to regard him as a good general he just isn’t nearly as good as some people exaggerate his capabilities. The problem was Robert E Lee’s lack of strategy Robert E Lee was primarily good for winning battles and while you like To be little all CSA military and political leaders because it presents a possibility of the southern system could have lasted longer it dosen't prevent Stonewall Jackson being the most Competent confederate general or his accomplishments. It is incredible how long the south lasted in some respects, given such incompetence, but in some respects as there where some very competent people In the CSA. To name a few Josiah Goerges chief of ordnance, Patrick Clemens, Stonewall Jackson,James Longstreet and The postmaster of the confederacy at least ran on surplus. Nearly all Civil War generals had made mistakes however perhaps it is human to make mistakes. In my opinion I think Robert Toombs still has some leadership potential, but it would have to be as a vice president given a more active role. Judah Benjamin of course isn’t possible to be president because he’s Jewish, but I think he could have had more of a leadership positions Vs actual history |
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miletus12
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Post by miletus12 on Sept 15, 2022 14:57:37 GMT
Leadership is about competence, AH. 300,000 dead, 600,000 maimed and about 2.7 TRILLION 2021 dollars of destruction in the American South due to an insane desire to cling to a pinnacle of class privilege based on a dying economic model and social order that made no sense to anybody even among their ersatz class is at issue. These "persons" broke their oaths to their fellow Americans, especially the southern ones they mislead into rebellion, as to their true motives, and then they struggled and some of their descendants still struggle down to the present to lie about their true motives. 40.00 on. We have the documentation. One of the chief perpetrators of the BIG LIE as we know it today was one Woodrow Wilson. If you have read what I wrote about Woodrow Wilson, you will soon realize that he was exactly like these incompetents above. When it comes to the other Lost Cause excuse makers, it will take us at least another hundred years to repair the damage these "people" caused to us. War crimes, military ineptitude, lack of acumen in foreign policy and their general inability to overcome the internal contradictions and illogic of their own political and social beliefs are exactly why: Leadership? The Confederates had little competent leadership. Joe Johnston and Joe Wheeler were their best generals and Jeff and his crew kept hamstringing those guys. One of those other persons culpable was the paragon of Confederate leadership, Robert E. Lee, whose strategic incompetence cost the Confederacy Tennessee and Texas and Louisiana and Georgia and then the Confederacy. Lee learned nothing from Winfield Scott. The counter to the Anaconda Plan was to hold the Mississippi River Basin, not attack into Pennsylvania where a good corps commander sitting on a convenient hill ridge line could slaughter the Army of Northern Virginia. Luck? Enormous quantities of it, which they squandered. The North was politically split fifteen ways with Copperheads and Confederate sympathizers everywhere and yet Lincoln held it all together. How did old Jeff do with Georgia? The state, large parts of it, was in actual open rebellion to the Confederacy when Sherman marched through it. Inventions? Submarine, armored ram, naval and land mines? Intelligent Whale, Monitor, and the explosive nightmares from the minds of Ambrose Burnside, Richard Gatling, and one Montgomery Meigs for starters. Those were "Inventions" by inventors. The Confederates "copied" or mimicked those in much poorer form. Look if you are going to get add a checkmate Lincolnnight video then please have a historian fact checking and contributing. As for Howell Cobb and Andersonville, those war crimes charges do not mean he couldn't have made a good president. The confederacy was always short of resources, including food, so if they had difficulty feeding CSA troops, then think how difficult it would be feeding POWS. There were many present camps in the north for confederacy soldiers and the rebel starve to death despite there could’ve been definite possibility of the people being adequately fed. You may dislike Robert e Lee ,but historians still continue to regard him as a good general he just isn’t nearly as good as we exaggerate his capabilities. When she problem was Robert E Lee’s lack of strategy Robert E Lee was primarily good for winning battles and why are you like to be little Stonewall Jackson because he’s a confederate it doesn’t start date him for being the most competent confederate officer and his accomplishments were clearly shown. General Stonewall Jackson didn’t do well during seven Pines because he was exhausted . youtu.be/oGry_aCT. In my opinion I think Robert Toombs still has some leadership potential, but it would have to be as a vice president given a more active role. Judah Benjamin of course isn’t possible to be president because he’s Jewish but I think you could have more leadership positions or better ones or They are They are taking more responsibility. You can point out the errors if you find any. He cites names and dates and sources. Your interpretation might differ, but his documentation exists. And as for that documentation... the point of view I have starts here. Except for the colorized texts in this document, it is an almost verbatim repetition of the concepts and ideas in the very constitution these oath-breakers and traitors rejected and for which they murdered 700,000 + Americans to try to implement this substitute duplicate non-original copy-paste with some edits added to ensure they could keep slaves document of their own. Furthermore, permanently maiming 1 in 9 Southern males and 1 in 18 Northern males: as in artificial arms and legs required of that generation, not to mention permanent blindings, horrible burn scarrings and infested lifelong ulcerations and so forth... was their gift to our Republic to carry forward as a huge human burden into the 20th Century, just so these reprobates and expletive deleteds could own people whose skin was some shade darker in tone from their own. I do not understand why any people think it would be a good idea to suggest that this horrible aberration of what we were taught as Americans^1 should be the subject of "improvement" to make it last longer. If you started a thread on how to improve the Union's chances to extirpate this idiocy quickly and prevent the actual historical national holocaust and its obvious detrimental attendant effects down to the present, then I could probably not "derail" it as you think I do this thread. But as long as someone proposes to "improve" the Confederacy, that to me, is tantamount to: "How do we bury this outrage into the dustbin of history more quickly and efficiently?" Replace Robert E. Lee with John Bell Hood and bring on the Nashville campaign result, except as the Overland Campaign two years earlier. That would be an improvement. ^1 For "men" modernize that to "human being". |
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oscssw
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Post by oscssw on Sept 15, 2022 15:36:27 GMT
miletus12 What do you think of my choice of Judah Benjamin? I obviously think he would be excellent for the job. I have serious doubts a Christian South of the 1860s, despite the fact a Jewish Judah was voted in as a State and Fed Rep and a Fed Senator would be acceptable to the slave owning elite who really ran the confederacy and many of the common folk. I think Davis was really punching way over his weight intelectually when he appointed him to those senior positions.
Your statement about Scott opposing the selection of Little Mac is news to me. I had no idea Scott was against him but from the little I know of him he was a very shrewd judge of men. Did Scott advise Lincoln to hire Lee for the Commander of the AOP?
What do you think of the latest of my Bismarck/NC ATL? I did save your life! Good one for what he argued. He kept trying to tell his fellow slavocrats that they had to play the numbers and the long game. As I remarked earlier, there was a large block of Northern sympathizers with the South especially in my state of New York and surprisingly Indiana and Ohio. You know what trouble Clement Vallandigham caused and how Oliver P. Morton handled it in Indiana and Kentucky? Benjamin was aware and active in trying to support this Northern disunity. He reluctantly acquiesced to the Maryland and Pennsylvania campaigns as operations in that he could see that if they locally succeeded, then the Northern disunity would become so great that even Lincoln and his supporters, like Morton, could not martial law it back together, though Morton did kind of Bismarck the American Midwest from Indianapolis. Closest thing to a military dictatorship the US ever had, was Morton's Indiana. Yes, but ONLY for the Army of the Potomac. He was looking for a general officer with a big picture mind to replace himself and knew that Lee was not it. Scott knew he, Scott, was too old and ill to finish the job he started. McClellan was an upstart political darling do-little who popped into public notice because he lucked out against a pair of quarreling Confederate ninnies in soon to be West Virgina. One of those ninnies is on our current list of Jeff Davis replacements. Anyhow, Scott knew McClellan was a capable staff officer and a competent brigade level tactician by the lights of the era, but he lacked the feel for ground of a Thomas, or the relentless push of a Sherman or the overall Big Picture vision of a Grant. Scott had to settle for McClellan as the second-best choice of the moment to organize an army, for political reasons. He hoped McClellan, with experience, could grow into the job. McClellan did not. I have to catch the thread up. I've been busy enough that I have had time to putter with the Filipino American War and the ancillary lessons thread. Thanks for keeping me around. I will look at it in toto and give you an opinion probably by Saturday. But the short version is that once Showboat gets her mechanicals sorted and her crew trained, she would be a fair plug-in for USS Massachusetts. I always thought that if Tirpitz had come out to play, that Big Mamie would have spanked that bucket of bolts and mistakes hard and sent her back to Raeder crying "Mama, schau mal, was das bedeutet, dass die alte amerikanische Mama mit mir gemacht hat!"
RE "Mama, schau mal, was das bedeutet, dass die alte amerikanische Mama mit mir gemacht hat!" 
Got to agree "Joe Johnston and Joe Wheeler were their best generals." I also think Grant and Sherman were an excellent combo but I always pay the Devil his due. IMO, Mac forged the weapon those two used to win the war. I also think Little Mac truly loved his troops and knew, after seeing the blood bath in the Crimea, that the defense was far superior to the Offense and hIS AOP would suffer terrible losses in it's offensive Ops. He was unwilling to murder those kids wholesale. The opinion of an E-8 who lacks the strategic knowledge that is way beyond my pay grade.
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