Fredericksburg was just another instance of Napoleonic tactics being employed against men with long range rifles in entrenched fortifications. To me, the more amazing question is why did Lee direct Pickett to assault Cemetery Ridge, an exact reversal of the situation at Fredericksburg? Lee used the same exact tactics - an ultimately ineffective artillery barrage, followed by a grand charge against entrenched rifleman. In fact, as the remnants of Picket's division withdrew from the field, the Union soldiers chanted "Fredericksburg!" "Fredericksburg!”

Lincoln had no intellectual foundation for recognizing military genius. His two closest advisors, Halleck and Stanton, were pompous asses who also lacked that ability, and both schemed against any other general who might threaten their personal power bases. They wanted men who they believed they could control, while Lincoln wanted someone who fought aggressively. The result was the pushing of men like Hooker and Burnside to the forefront. Who the heck can figure Burnside? About as inept commander as this country will ever see. But he, like all of these other early generals, were probably intelligent men who were expertly schooled in the Napoleonic tactics of their time, and were able to present what appeared to be sound strategic plans to Lincoln.

The Union military hierarchy simply did not recognize the nature of warfare had changed to where the long range rifle now gave the defense the military advantage, and that mobility was the key to offense - your forces had to arrive before your enemy had a chance to entrench. The result was unimaginable slaughter, because the opponents of these men, Lee and Jackson, not only recognized these two new paramounts, they were absolute geniuses at executing them effectively and switching from one foot - defensive entrenchment, to the other foot- brilliant maneuver, when the situation called for it. The Yankees simply had a one tool toolbox, march up to the enemy and exchange shots with them.

Lee's ultimate failing was that his thinking was not totally revolutionized, he still saw Napoleonic tactics as useful - as I stated above Lee's ultimate contribution to military theory was the refinement of Napoleonic tactics into trench warfare. In the end he simply met his match in a man who had come to recognize the same ideas - Grant. Grant, was a master at logistics who had unlimited supplies of war at his disposal. He simply knew that if he got more supplies and soldiers to the front, and was willing to expend more lives, he would ultimately defeat Lee by brute force. Coupled with a willingness to constantly engage the enemy, Lincoln finally found what he was looking for.

In terms of military theory, Sherman was the great genius of the Civil War - we are conditioned from school days to think this judgment is a toss up between Lee and Grant, but Sherman was the person whose seminal theories of warfare continue to have to this day the most direct impact on our lives. The evolution of warfare is really quite simple - war was initially prosecuted as armies destroying cities, from there to armies destroying opposing armies, to today, where the primary job of an army is to destroy economies. We now face our own transition - war not against economies, but war against stateless networks. Lets hope we find a new Grant or Lee.

Each of these transitions has one of these transitional cusps - Napoleon sat at the cusp of the world where the obsolete primary military thinking of his enemies became his advantage - he recognized that as they wandered about Europe with their siege oriented armies weighted down with the heavy baggage of siege warfare, they were easy pickings for an army that only carried with it what was necessary to destroy an opposing army, and all movements of his army must be focused on that one objective - the destruction of that opposing army. Then the cities of his enemies would then be open for the taking.

Grant sat at the cusp of the next transition. He recognized that if his strategy was to overwhelm his enemy logistically, than denying his enemy supplies in the first place, as well as outlasting the enemies supplies, achieved the same end, and so gave Sherman free rein to practice his new theory of economic warfare wrought by a highly mobil army that stole what it needed and destroyed the rest. Like Napolean, he shed the baggage of the older obsolete theory, but this time the baggage was the army designed for Napoleonic warfare, and he created the greatest military machine ever used for prosecuting war on this continent. It had battalions of engineers in addition to soldiers so that rivers could be crossed and roads could be built, so the army could move as rapidly as possible. He implemented new technolgy, like lever action rifles, and new tactics like patrolling his perimeters with mobile squads instead of stationary pickets. As I have said, he fought WWII.

Sherman's theories bore great fruit, the armies Grant faced simply withered on the vine as Sherman's economic devastation in the hinterlands starved them for war material. After seeing this success, Grant ordered Sheridan to do the same in the Shenandoah. Modern warfare had emerged.

You stated you have read some of Sherman's works. His autobiography gives a good account of why he thought his method of war was humane. He is an entertaining read, and his wrting style is as unique as everything else was about the man. He writes a few paragraphs in which he describes the situation, and as he does so he inserts copies of dispatches, orders and personal letters and offical correspondene. One reviewer said reading it is like talking to a man with a sheaf of papers, who makes claims and then pulls something from the stack saying - "here, read this" to make his point. He would have loved the Internet.

He did not regret the destruction of Atlanta. He could not permenently occupy it, and it was the center of war production for the South. To keep its factories and cotton infrastructure from being restarted after his departure, he leveled the place. To keep the surrounding farms from supplying the two large Confederate Armies he was sandwiched between, he wrecked them. None of this had any kind of malicious component on his part. When I hear the rancor of some on this board against Sherman's activities, I am left to wonder why they can't see that the modernized version of this in Iraq is creating the same rancor in the Iraqis as they themselves feel against Sherman today. Effective total economic war has a side effect of longterm generational hatred in the vanquished. It is a truth- we will reap this in Iraq as we have done in Georgia. Sherman states himself that a good leader must weigh this in as one of the negative costs before implementation of these tactics.

Sherman was a soldier's soldier, and his primary duty was to their safety - probably the only general of the Civil War who thought in those terms. His tactics grew out of a desire to protect his men from senseless slaughter - the same reasons he gave for doing what he did are the same reasons we give today - economic targets are destroyed so the products of that target cannot be used against our army later when the military finally faces the opposition's military. It is now an accepted fact of war that civilians caught up in those efforts are unfortunate but legitimate targets. He said the only destruction he regretted was Charleston, S.C., the center of secession that was destroyed in what even he admitted was an orgy of hatred committed by an army of men who viewed the city as the cause of the war. The pictures of it are like the trench pictures of Petersburg you cannot discern from WWI pictures - Charleston's photos would disappear into phots of Stalingrad.

Personally, I can't blame him. In New England, due to a project carried on by the GAR at the end of the 19th century, every town has a Civil War statue in the center of the town commons. They are spires usually topped with a bronze statue of a common soldier. On the sides of the statue are the names of the men of the town who gave their lives in the Civil War. There are not one or two names on these statues, and I know of no town that does not have one.

I don't know if I agree. The darkest stain upon ourselves and on mankind in many ways, is our history of slavery from 1776 until 1865. The myth of the Old South, the myth of the altruism of our Founding Father cult-figures wither in front of the evidence of their support of human slavery. The men who first came here came to exploit the land, and they were moved by a greed so deep and so corrupting that they forever cast into to doubt their own principles. They were all men of the Enlighment, steeped in the works of all of the world's greatest philosphers, who left themselves an out for the purpose of their own greed. They knew what they were doing was immoral. It is one of the greatest tragedies of human failure in history. I looked back to see if I used the term "liars" in relation to the founding fathers, but could not find the context you refer to - these men were the last men I would call liars, but they certainly were among the worlds greatest hypocrites. In addition, their thoughts were not all that revolutionary - Parliament ruled England at the time, much of what we said of the "tyrant king" was propaganda - representative democracy was in the cards either way and was already being extensively practiced in America. Given that slavery was outlawed in the British Empire in 1805, we might have been better off if we stayed.

Lincoln's quote about sums up anything I have to say about the slaveholders of the Old South. In many ways, they are among history's greatest villians. The profitability of cotton had reached the point that paid labor was economically feasible after 1850, in fact we have grown and shipped plenty since 1865. Despite all the protestations of "states rights" etc, there was never much more than the same soul-deep greed I described above at work in the Old South. Theirs was the seminal fascist state, with a Master Race, with the worship of the Military Class, with forced labor camps, with the basic idea that one class of humans could be tortured, raped or murdered by another class of humans under color of law, there was absolutely nothing to be proud of by anybody, and Sherman should be thanked for burning it to the ground. The only thing that would have come out of a slave empire to our South would be a country so montrously evil that it would only be worthy of contempt. It is obvious whose side they would have fought on in World War II, making all of our fates to be that of slaves if we had allowed it to happen.

Kirk, you seem quite knowledgeable regarding American history, and I read your comments on Civil War strategy with interest. I have often thought that what is needed in our war on terror is a modern-day Sherman. But such a commander would not be allowed to prosecute the war as he saw fit, not just yet anyway. It took almost a year for the reality of the Civil War to sink in on both north and south, and I think in many ways the reality of the war on terror has yet to sink in on America in general. It may well take a nuclear or biological strike in which tens, hundreds of thousands, or more, people die, before a clear majority of Americans will be prepared for the measures necessary. I don't know that we can win the war the way we are going; there is not will to do more than we are doing, and the less we do, the more vulnerable we become.
But I digress. I notice one general you did not mention was McClellan. In my mind, McClellan was largely responsible for the Civil War lasting as long as it did. On several different occasions he could have crushed the Confederate army, but instead made excuses for not doing it. As one of his officers suggested, he seemed to be motivated by either cowardice or treason. That or he was easily fooled by the enemy, but he seems to have been smarter than that. He was a brilliant organizer, and he did much to build the Army of the Potomac into a proper army, but he seemed ill-fit to lead, perhaps because of his rapid promotion and resulting egocentric nature.
Clearly, combat tactics and strategery are in continuous development. Find a way to outdo your opponent or you stand a good chance of defeat. Right now I believe that our military and policing agencies are in the process of revamping itself to better deal with terrorist threats. It is taking time, and perhaps longer than it should, but I believe it is happening. It is now clear that our years of planning for fighting Communist Russia left us unprepared to fight the current terrorist.

__________________
Once and future king:
'64 Ford Fairlane w/approx 238,000 - looks rough, but amazingly reliable if you know how to look after it; I will soon begin work to totally restore and modernize it.
Family vehicles that I lay some claim to:
'78 300D w/approx 350,000 original, '62 Ford F100 4x4, '90 Ford E150 w/171,000 original

Slavery being the worst possible thing that can happen, I understand why you believe any action taken, even against civilians, is justified.

This is the argument of Al Queda, against the west. Once Din laden defined the ultimate evil as being the USA, then he can justify any lesser behavior perpetrated against the ultimate as being worth it.


I am not, in any way, comparing you with Bin Laden. I am comparing the arguments. To me, that is a huge distinction. Do you agree that they are separable?

B

Well you can apply that model to anything. Hitler said Jews were the ultimate evil, so it was ok to kill them.

In my view there should be a distinction between injuring/killing people and destroying their property. Killing civilians is out of bounds, but burning the cities and looting the valuables can be placed under the category of "draining the South's ability to wage war or reconsitute power after the war". It was necessary to bury the South so that it could not challenge the central government any time soon after the war. Clearly the basic ideals were the maintained after the war, so really if the South was left unscathed with its ability to regain economic power intact, what was to stop it from attempting again to rebel?

Kirk
The "liar" comment came from your stating that slavery made all our ideals into a lie.
The problem with ALL wars that the generals are taught to fight the previous war. It takes rare genous to go beyond the traditional thinking and be creative.
McClellan failed by falling into the trap as quoted in the movie Gettysburg. I do not know if the quote is genuine, but the thinking is right--[to be a sucessful general] you have to love the army, but you must not be afraid to use the thing you love; you must risk losing the thing you love... or something close.
McClellan could not bring himself to fully commit. Even when he outnumbered Lee's troops by double, he thought he was outnumbered---he probably was. Even when he had Lee's campaign plans and faced a divided army, McClellan couldn't commit.
Union troops were "led" by some of the worst lot ever. I think Dan Sickles must top that list as the most irresposible Union commander, but there are many in the running.
I think the biggest shock that confronted Confederate troops would have been at the close of the Wilderness, when, having defeated the latest drive on Richmond by the AOP, under this newcomer, Grant, instead of his retreating ti Washington to lick his wounds, he kept marching to their right. As you said, he knew he had more of everything, while Lee's supplies of everything was diminishing; it became simply a war of atrician.

I find it odd that you and I agree so closely on these aspects of the American Civil War, and are so far apart on more modern issues. Its not that I fully support the effort in Iraq; I am luke-warm at best. But how can we disengage now? " How can I ask this army to retreat in the face of the enemy? The enemy is there, and I will attack him there." ( REL July 2, 1863)

I come by the Civil War gig honestly - my maternal grandfather was an antique dealer who was one of the top experts on Civil War artifacts in New Hampshire. Not only was his house a veritible Civil War museum, but the passerbys and visitors were men of the Boston academic circle and wealthy Brahmin collectors, and many a day when I was a boy was passed listening and participating in spirited discussion with very learned men on the subject. In addition my grandfather took a great personal interest in educating my brother, cousins and I on whatever facet of the Civil War we were personally interested in, and each new artifact he acquired garnered our rapt attention as he told us the story of a sword or rifle he acquired. Of such stuff, young boys dreams are built. He spawned a family of expertise in the subject - all of us have had life long hobbies in the area that we share amongst each other. I inherited his book collection, consisting of first hand account books printed right after the war, some letters and a lifetime of historical works on the subject.

I do not personally believe my grandfather was aware the 20th Century had occured. To the very day he passed in the early '80s, he was truly a 19th century man. Portions of his personal collection of Civil War letters have been the subjects of books (if you ever see a copy of "Letters from a Berdan Sharpshooter", that is a picture of my still living grandmother on the back cover) and several other works were dedicated to him. His most remarkable find was a scrimshaw powder horn he picked up a garage sale for $6. The scrimshaw carvings turned out to be a soldiers way of recording what he witnessed at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1776, and he traced it to its original owner. It was on display at the Harvard Museum until a few years ago, when my grandmother sold it, for a much tidier sum than $6.

In any case, I think Little Mac was good and bad. He was the human display of the fact that some men rise to high places because they become very learned on a particular subject, but at the same time are a disappointment because they lack any original thinking that would allow them to act on that knowledge in a way we would call genius. He knew drill, discipline and spit and polish to the last dotted i. As such, at the beginning of the war he achieved success over the rag tag enemy he faced, and rose rapidly to the top as a result. But he did not rise because of brillaint tactics, he rose because his men had been trained to fight Napoleonically very well, and could therefore deliver organized and sustained firepower better than the barefoot southerns he first faced. IN the end, this became the good, because as General Commanding of the Army of the Potomac, he took a totally undisciplined and unorganized draftee and immigrant enlistee army, and drilled and trained them into a formidable fighting machine, albeit one that would subsequently become poorly used.

Like many men of limited intelligence, and well exemplified by our current president, when he rose to high office while simultaneously being adulated and worshipped by those around him, he became infected with hubris and arrogance to the point it affected his mind, however with McClellan it also came with a little voice deep down inside that told him to fear and exaggerate the unknown. His unknown was Robert E. Lee's army, which he was convinced was twice as large as his. But his fear was not that of a coward, I believe it was the fear of a man who will not drive a beautiful car because he was afraid he might scratch it, to the point he is afraid to walk out of the house. In a way you have to sympathize with him - he started with a mob of insubordinate louts who took off running at 1st Bull Run, and turned them into this superbly drilled and uniformed fighting machine - it is said he spent days at a time simply watching them march, gazing in wonderment at his own great handiwork. So for years he pulled his punches in battle so his car would stay pretty. When he finally did fully committ himself, at Antietam, he almost ended the Civil War, but once again hestitation and indecision ruined the day. Maybe he might of matured in the job, but I doubt it.

Your observation on us entering a new age is agreed to by me. The new war paradigm is war carried on by clandestine means on a very personal basis, which is why I have always felt the Bush war of occupation was not only stupid, but betrayed an ulterior motive to his actions. In this day and age, a European Cold War style conflict is a ridiculous idea. Terrorists don't flock to some country to get killed - they are mobile and trans-national, and they are wired. They metastisize like cancer - their overall plan is complex and known only to them, and is achieved by sinking small tenticles and roots into the society they wish to inflict themselves on. Their meticulous planning is geared to achieve enormous results for efforts that may take years. Like any octupus, the cure for being strangled by the tenticles is to hunt down and destroy the head, which is why I am outraged we did not spend every conceivable effort to hunt this man down.

We need to convert about 500,000 of our military personal to Special Forces units, and send them out into the world to develop our own complex networks to counter these guys. It requires a total rethinking of how to train a soldier - we need soldiers who are not trained to carry 150lbs of gear, but instead are trained in how to speak Arabic or Farsi, and how to melt into a foriegn culture. We don't need big tanks, we need small remote controlled computer devices that can run face recognition patterns , tap databases and direct drone airplanes to identify and kill the enemy. Sherman would have understood.

The ethics of warfare is a pretty well known body of work that goes back to St. Augustine. The justifications I have given are found in there - you seem to think I have an ideological justification mentality like some fanatic. Civilians should only be killed in war if it is for a legimate, justifiable use of war, and is a totally unavoidable part of protecting ones troops. Killing people on purely ideological grounds is the mark of a fanatic. Bin Laden is such. If we declared war on Iran, it would be for the purpose of stopping in its tracks a group of men who mean to kill me and my kids. No justification on ideology, no definition of anyone as evil, simple law of the jungle. Under international law, a nation has a right to respond to unprovoked attack, and a nation has a right to defend themselves from those that mean them harm. But we cannot simply claim these conditions exist, or we are no better than Hitler. Once the facts have been established, as Lincoln would say, the truth becomes self-evident, and action obvious.

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/j/justwar.htm

will help you understand where people like myself are coming from.

I understand your argument. Our armed forces have destroyed whole city populations. But we have also prosecuted soldiers for individual acts against civilians and against private property. In fact, soldiers are allowed to destroy things but are never allowed to loot. Why is that? Its partly to keep "freebooters" (guess what that means?) out of the military.

In point of fact, the south did not rebel, they seceded. Recall that the former colonies originally entered union as sovereign states. Some of them specifically wrote that if the union failed, they reserved teh right to secede and nobody disputed that assertion of rights. In fact, in the early years of teh 19th century several New England states threatened secession but were dissuaded by arguments from southern states!

Its certainly a moot point now (no law necessary when military defeat rules), but it would have been interesting for Lincoln to have chosen to pursue his aims through the courts rather than the barrel of a gun.

There is no right to secede under the US Constitution. Elaborate articles are dedicated on how to get into the Union, while there is not one single one on how to get out. There are also specific rules on how the Federal Government could respond to rebellion, which means the founders forsaw circumstances where rebellion could occur against the Federal Government and not the separate states.

States have always had a path to legally secede. In order for a state to legally secede, it would require a constitutional amendment allowing it to do so, in other words the assent of three quarters of the other states. This is a simple fact. Any state that wishes to secede may do so legally, if they can overcome this hurdle. A state that cannot and secedes anyway, is rebelling against the law of the land.

In addition the states gave up enormous rights and ceased to be soveriegn states when they entered the Union. Originally, under the Articles of Confederation they entered as soveriegn states, and it was a disaster. Under the Constitution, they entered under a limited soveriegnty arrangement.

In 1861, South Carolina passed an act of the legislature, signed by the governor proclaiming unilateral secession, as noted above something not provided for by the Constitution, which is the official legal contract between the states. Prior attempts at succession mostly were just disguntled talk. SC committed an overt act of secession, and were the first to do so.

There is distinction between rebelling and secession. The South attempted secession, and failed. By shooting at federal troops, they rebelled. As far as Lincoln goes, as Commander in Chief he had unlimited power under the Constitution in a war zone or in any state in rebellion. The South became his personal fiefdom.

I take it you were opposed to the actions by previous administrations that prohibited our intelligence operatives from using " bad guys". That was a naive proposition and may have contributed to dire consequences. Or was it a calculated, planned proposition to diminish our ability to gather intelligence?
( I hope not)

We had a lot of over-reactions in the intelligence realm due to the abuses in the 60's. A lot of these need to go away. We have to give the CIA and Special Forces descretionary powers in the use of assasination outside of the US. If this is the new war, and they are soldiers, then it is their job to kill the enemy. I would consider waging war as the Israelis do against Hamas to be the model. If our guys have to associate with Mafia hit men or Russian mobsters to get the job done, so be it. To me, if our intelligence people pick up a phone conversation of two foriegn nationals plotting our doom and some minimal amount of follow up survelliance determines they are up to no good in the jugdement of someone we have empowered to act for us, those people should be killed. As I stated, this would require a new type of soldier, one who is much better paid and educated and who has been psychologically evaluated and conditioned for stress. Given what we waste on enormous bombers and such, that would not be all that impossible.

We would probably need some pretty sophisticated oversight and verification tools, but I can't help but think this is the new model of war and we will have to accept it as it is fought, the same way we have to accept that we sometimes have to kill innocent women and children to wipe out a government that threatens our own citizens. It may not be pleasant at first, I am sure there will be some abuses, but it will make the world a much harder place for terrorists to operate and recruit in. This current Iraq "flypaper" theory is ridiculous - waging war in a reactive mode, telling our soldiers to stand around Iraq and wait to get shot while we hope the "terrorists" come there. I, and Sen. Kerry by the way is too, am proposing a proactive approach to terrorism rather than this reactive fantasy of Bush's.

Rebellion and secession are different (in theory). According to secession proponents of the day, the Framer's accepted the conditional joining of several states in order to create a stronger union. Recall that the Framers sought to have the union formed of free states, freely entering in to union. If it was compelled, then it was conquest and the Framers didn't want that and no state at that time would have stood for it.

Therefore, the states still being freely joined in union could freely choose to dissolve those bonds.

You are of course, correct that there is no provision for secession. The point was made and driven home with the tip of a saber, not with a compelling legal argument. Sabers win every time.

B

Kind of schizophrenic carrying-on two very interesting lines of inquiry on a single thread.

Though I agree with the new type of war paradigm, and I agree that we need military, intelligence, and clandestine services tailored to that threat, I also fear the evolving sophistication.

Isn't it Z who frequently posts reminders of "1984's" use of war to deprive people of liberty? I think that is a danger. Its like that damnable USA Patriot Act. Yes, its been useful for law enforement. I believe that when liberal Demo senatros can find no fault with its implementation that it really has not been abused. But its a damned dangerous precedent and I hate it.

So I recognize a new warfare and the need for protection and confrontation. But I fear we may give away too much liberty in pursuit of the unattainable--perfect security.

B