US Civil War Generals

General Sherman devastated Georgia. He was very determined to get to Savannah. In order to do this, he would need to travel across the entire state to get to the port town. The capitol, one of the first cities he encountered, was Atlanta. Soldiers in Confederate regiments evacuated the town, and layed low trying to fight back the Union corps under Sherman. For thirty days, Sherman kept fire on the town. He put it under siege. Finally after clearly losing control, the confederates pulled out of the town. In their tracks, there was intense fire. They did not want a thing of good to come the Sherman, or the union corps in which he commanded. He still was able to claim the town, but there wasn't a thing left for them to take. So Atlanta, thanks to Sherman's relentless siege, was destroyed. He then travelled on through smaller towns (many more than I care to mention) burning, and destroying them after his men had foraged and gotten so useful supplies. Finally, after as many as five months, he reached his target, Savannah. There was nearly no force opposing him, and he and his corps marched right through the gates of the town. He did not do much to the town except for taking supplies. he wired President Lincoln that he had captured the town. In his wire, he said " President Lincoln, it is my honor to present you a Christmas present; the town of Savannah. This is everything Sherman and his part of the Federal army did on their sixty mile march from Atlanta to the sea.

US General William Sherman learned of the new commander of the Southern Army of Tennessee, John Hood and expected a tough campaign on his way to Atlanta. Despite Sherman's good judgment, he met little resistance from Confederate forces. As the end of July, 1864 approached, he gave thought that the Confederate forces were to evacuate Atlanta without a fight.

The Battle of Shiloh, Tennessee (or Pittsburgh Landing) April 6th to April 7th, 1862. However, General Albert Sidney Johnson was killed in the first day of the battle, so Major General Ulysses S. Grant was fighting P.G.T. Beauregard's Army of Tennessee on April 7th, 1862.

On September 24, following the Battle of Antietam, took steps to minimize opposition to members of the Northern peace movement. Many of these individuals were also Southern sympathizers. On September 23, Lincoln had released his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Perhaps an even more controversial act the following day, Lincoln suspended the habeas corpus section of the Bill of Rights. He ordered military trials for people who were discouraging voluntary army enlistments and other acts of disloyalty. The suspension of habeas corpus combined with the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, caused McClellan to formulate plans to resist these new developments.

Because it would have taken the fighting out of Virginia, and let the south go on to invade the north and where they could pillage and commandeer supplies without harming/annoying confederate citizens. Plus, it would have shown the north that the south serious about their independence and would fight the Yankees on their own ground about it.

FURTHER MOTIVATION

The Confederacy firmly hoped that a decisive victory at Gettysburg would led itself to be recognized as an independent State by France and Great Britain.

Braxton Bragg was born to Thomas Bragg and Margaret Crosland Bragg March 22, 1817 in Warrenton North Carolina.

General Sherman and his superior General Grant believed it was necessary to destroy civilian property that may have been used to supply Confederate troops. In this way, it would weaken the Southern armies.

Major General Henry W. Halleck and his subordinate, General Don Carlos Buell failed to grasp the the military importance of Chattanooga, Tennessee. This was compounded by Buell's failure to clear eastern Tennessee and push his forces to the Cumberland Gap. Both objectives were within reach. General Mitchel could have taken Chattanooga in April of 1862. And, Union General George Thomas believed that with proper support, he could have taken eastern Tennessee in October of 1861. The combined failures of more than just General Halleck had the opportunity for the Union ending the war sooner than it did.

Union General in Chief Winfield Scott was perhaps the first person to predict that a major conflict between the North and South would cause unacceptable casualties on both sides. His "Ananconda Plan" drew many critics because they believed the plan would extend the Rebel rebellion for too many months. This was a misunderstanding of Scott's plan.Scott wanted to avoid the tremendous losses he was sure a major war with the Confederates would cause. He believed that the blockading of Southern ports combined with a limited military invasion would end the rebellion quickly. His largest land invasion had merit. In combination with the blockades he urged a limited but powerful army incursion into the South.

What is often overlooked was Scott's plan to march 60,000 well trained troops down the Mississippi River from St. Louis. These troops would be supported by a large fleet of gunboats. Combined, the army and navy would easily capture New Orleans. He was sure that this strategy would bring the Southern leaders to their senses and end their war for independence.

Scott believed that there was an untapped mass of Unionist loyalists in the South. Like Robert E. Lee, they did not want to secede. Scott saw any major invasion because it would provide unwanted impetus to anti-Union sentiment.

As the commanding officer of the Union army, General Grant was expected to mange Union military operations in Virginia. Because the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of Robert E. Lee was the foremost army of the Confederacy, Grant was expected by the government, the newspapers and the public, to challenge Lee in Virginia. He was not looking forward to this for a number of reasons. One was that he expected no warm welcome from the Army of the Potomac. To the officers in that army, Grant was an outsider. He later wrote that in the West, he knew the terrain, the generals, and his total resources available to him. He knew the capabilities of the generals he commanded in the West.

General John C. Floyd abandoned Fort Donelson leaving Brigadier General Buckner in charge. Floyd believed that because he once served as the US Secretary of War, he would be captured and not released on parole.

General Grant was carrying on the siege of Petersburg and at the same time his efforts to reach and interrupt the vital railway net which supplied the Confederate front of Richmond - Petersburg.

On July, 30th 1864 the Union offensive called "Battle of the Crater", aiming to break through Petersburg's front failed. The stalemate continued.

General Sherman was carrying on his efforts to conquest Atlanta but the progress was slow and not decisive so that it seemed that even on this front it had reached a stalemate.

After many delays, Union General Rosencrans finally began to move his army southwards. He distracted Rebel General Braxton Bragg with a feint move to the west. However, with that said, Rosencrans carried all his supplies with him and marched his entire army to Bragg's right side. Bragg could either attack to protect his own now threatened communications lines or as he did, retreat to protect them. Bragg's army then settled in to the south bank of the Tennessee River, near Chattanooga.

The inhabitant of Atlanta were forced to evacuate the city and sheltered behind the Confederate lines.

He was called Little Mac and the Young Napoleon. Part of the reason for this was that McClellan was a student of the Napoleonic wars, and that his intellect was high as was Napoleon's.

He was called Little Mac and the Young Napoleon by the Union side in the war. He was known in the south as "The Virginia Creeper" after his performance during the Peninsula Campaign.

As the day unfolded that began the Second Battle of Bull Run, Pope decided to assault the forces of Stonewall Jackson. Pope failed to recognize that Confederate General James Longstreet was moving toward a position on Pope's left flank. Pope sent his troops to attack Stonewall Jackson, and this failed. Meantime, Longstreet's army of 25- to 35,000 troops remained a serious threat on Pope's left flank. Union General Porter warned Pope of the danger that Longstreet presented. As for Pope, he mistrusted anyone who was a general under George B. McClellan and Pope did not believe how close Longstreet's troops were. With this in mind, Pope prepared for anther day of frontal assaults on Jackson. He also wired Washington DC that he had already won a major victory. This had no base in evidence at all.

History has been kind to Confederate General Joseph Johnston, however, his outright refusal to aid Vicksburg brought out a new wave of contemporary criticisms. A good number of political leaders, the Southern press and some military officers were harsh when analyzing Johnston's faults. He was seen as a general who refused to stand and fight. This resulted in yielding large amounts of territory to the North, and without a struggle. He was critiqued for retreating without a battle from Manassas Junction in the Spring of 1862. He also yielded the entire peninsula leading to Richmond and allowing Union General George B. McClellan's army to completely occupy it until Johnston had to attack at the Battle of Seven Pines ( where he was wounded ).

He was also charged with falling back from Chattanooga in the Spring of 1864 when not engaging the enemy.

When the war ended, the Southern press had allot of criticism for General Johnston. He was charged in the press with a "continued retrograde movement" from Dalton to Atlanta in 1864. This was the subject of plenty of bad press for Johnston. Apparently the press altered Souther public opinion on the merits of Johnston's repeated retreats.

As for the retreat away from Manassas in the Spring of 1862, lower ranking Confederate officers believed that Johnston's tactics were not reaching the "mark".

Much of the post war criticism was unfair.

In May of 1864, US Grant had sent General George Meade to cross the Rapidan River in Virginia to engage Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. At that time the major advantage of Meade was that his troop strength was 118,000 against Lee's 61,000 troops. Even when fighting in enemy territory, this advantage of Meade cannot be overlooked.As an aside, based on all the battles in Virginia, the use of the term enemy territory is a misnomer, as the area of Northern Virginia, US forces was very familiar to the Union.

In June of 1861, General George B. McClellan rose to national prominence by his actions in western Virginia. He commanded a small force of Union soldiers that ousted Confederates there and the South could never regain that pro-Unionist section of Virginia which eventually became the state of West Virginia. This was great news in the North and McClellan's name became known in Northern newspapers.

Probably because Pinkerton had experience in policing and detective work.

Pinkerton was the first police detective in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. In 1850, formed the North-Western Police Agency, which later became Pinkerton & Co, and finally Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Pinkerton's agency solved a series of train robberies during the 1850s, and was through these that Pinkerton came into contact with George McClellan, who was the Chief Engineer and Vice President of the Illinois Central Railroad.

General George B. McClellan was a superb organizer, transformed inexperienced recruits into an army of trained soldiers prepared for battle. He has been criticized as a poor field general, by many historians and during the war, President Lincoln also believed the same thing.

He earned his famous nickname at the first battle of Bull Run when Confederate general Barnard Bee's said: "Look, men, there is Jackson standing like a stone wall!"

Custer was a Union cavalry general in the Civil War, the youngest at the time. Brave and aggressive, he led successful assaults at Gettsburgh, where they held Stuart's forces to a draw. Later killed at the battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876 by Sioux and Cheyenne forces.

Yes - but that was about the only conventional aspect of his military career.

After a good Mexican War, he testified against the Commander-in-Chief (Scott) at a court martial, and probably for this reason, was not even allowed to re-join the Army at the outbreak of the Civil War.

After a personal appeal to Lincoln, he eventually got a commission, but managed to quarrel both with the President and every General her served under. (He was, however, popular with the rank-and-file, whose conditions he greatly improved.)

When it came to replacing the virtuous but ineffectual Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac, Lincoln selected Hooker for his fighting qualities, and the choice appeared to be a wise one.

Then at Chancellorsville, he was wrong-footed by the Lee/Jackson team and his tactics became muddled. Too badly wounded to direct the battle, he refused to hand over to his second-in-command, and it ended in humiliating defeat. He was replaced just before Gettysburg.