[lit-ideas] General John Bell Hood's competency
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2012 00:39:19 -0700
Hood was never given enough troops to enable him to fight on an equal
footing with his Northern enemies. The Southern Draft never worked properly
and at some point no more troops were forthcoming. So a ?draw? for Hood was
not the same as a ?draw? for Sherman?s generals. Sherman could replace his
troops. Hood could not. Had Hood been able to replace his troops as Thomas
or Schofield did, he would certainly have fared better.
I don?t believe that everything has been said about the Civil War. It is a
historian?s stock in trade to find overlooked matters to write about. Wiley
Sword took a strongly anti-Hood stance in his Confederacy?s Last Hurrah,
Spring Hill, Franklin, & Nashville, but Sword generalizes about Hood based
on his performance at a time when he couldn?t get adequate support. His
fiancé Sally Preston preyed that he wouldn?t be put in charge of the Western
army because it was widely believed in Richmond that the Southern cause was
lost and that the best the Confederate armies could do at that point was
fight with honor and delay the end. The Confederate states by that time
refused to support the war. That is, no state was sending more than token
new recruits to the army and large numbers of soldiers were deserting and
return to their home states.
To evaluate Hood?s overall performance one needs to look at his whole
history and not just the period when he with one leg, one arm and an
inadequate number of troops was drinking the last dregs of a losing cause.
The reason he advanced so quickly in his career was that he was very good at
his job. He kept winning. He was a ?fighting? general in the midst of too
much (according to the historians as well as Southern Leaders) caution.
Lincoln you will recall dismissed his earlier generals because they were too
cautious. He finally settled upon Grant because he was willing to fight.
Lincoln probably would have loved Hood.
As to what the Civil War generals learned at West Point, Grady McWhiney and
Perry Jamieson go into that in some detail, looking at the Civil War
manuals, those written by Scott, Hardee & others. The tactics of Jomini had
not been significantly improved upon. The bayonet was still the favored
weapon. Running out of ammunition was no excuse for not charging the enemy.
When the rifled barrel replaced the smooth all that did for tactics was to
urge that the attacking forces moved slightly faster so they could more
quickly get in bayonet range. And the preferred weapon of the cavalry was
the sabre.
From our vantage point we think a bayonet charge against an entrenched
position suicide, but everyone who fought in the Mexican War (which includes
some of the biggest names in the Civil War) believed that tactic the only
one that assured success. It wasn?t that Hood?s tactics were faulty when he
sent his troops against entrenched positions at Franklin and Nashville. It
was that he hadn?t been given enough men by Richmond to fight those battles.
We might try to fault Hood for fighting at Franklin and Nashville with
inadequate forces but he had no reason to think he was going to fail. His
opponent, Thomas, was fearful he might succeed. In the typical battle
between the North and South, the North far outnumbered the South, sometimes
as much as two to one, and the North didn?t always win. Thomas ?retreated?
before Hood when Thomas?s troops were no more numerous than Hoods, but as
Thomas retreated he got more and more reinforcements. Lincoln and Grant were
critical of Thomas for his retreats and Hood can be excused, perhaps, for
thinking Thomas was afraid of him, but by the time Thomas reached Nashville
he had overwhelming numbers and before Thomas? replacement (he was being
fired by Grant for not attacking Hood) reached him he attacked Hood and
defeated him.
In pitting Sherman against Hood in one?s imagination, one shouldn?t forget
that Sherman never won a major battle whereas Hood did. Sherman?s success
came later when he conducted campaigns and commanded generals who won
battles.
Lawrence
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