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Due to the overwhelming demographic, industrial, and economic advantages that the North possessed. A better question would be: Why did it take the North so long to win?
To me, a memorial is a memorial, I find it a bit hard to see one that was raised by e.g. the inhabitants of a Southern town in 1879 to be seen as acceptable, and one that was raised in 1916 by The Daughters of The Confederacy to be seen as a tribute purely to those who wished to perpetuate slavery.
Clearly you don't grasp the smallness of the Stiletto Simps.
Due to the overwhelming demographic, industrial, and economic advantages that the North possessed.
A better question would be: Why did it take the North so long to win?
Generalship mostly... and a degree of early punch pulling
before "taking the gloves off" to get the nasty jobs done.
Due to the overwhelming demographic, industrial, and economic advantages that the North possessed. A better question would be: Why did it take the North so long to win?
Time was needed for the Union to mobilize its manpower and industry, as the U.S. had not invested much in its army prior to the war. Lincoln also had difficulty in identifying competent commanders in the East. McClellan, Burnside, and Hooker were very inadequate commanders. Except for massive incompetence on the part of McClellan and Burnside, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia would have been destroyed at Antietam.
Apart from McClellan's failure to coordinate the Union attack and to commit the massive Union reserves at Antietam, the failure of Burnside to get his corps across Antietam Creek, and then to press the attack despite a very superior force, doomed the Union's best chance to defeat the Army of Northern Virginia in detail early in the war.
Measured by experience and competence, George Thomas likely was the best Union commander at the beginning of the war, and perhaps still the best at the end of the war. As a Virginian, he was never afforded the command that his excellence warranted, even though he did destroy a Confederate army at Nashville. I often think that the odds were high that Thomas would have ended the war in 1862 if then given the chance to command the Army of the Potomac.
A better question would be: Why did it take the North so long to win?
Couple of reasons come to mind...
At first, nobody, north or south, thought that the war would last more than 3 or 6 months, so northern effort didn't' start out at 100%. Even by the end of the war, some (like Shelby Foote) thought that the Union was only going at 50%.
Early in the war, the Union generals in the east weren't up to the caliber of their Confederate counterparts.
The Confederates had "home field advantage", while by comparison Union armies had to march across, conquer, and hold a lot more real estate.
True coordination between Union army groups separated by the Appalachian Mountains into an eastern and western theater wasn't established until U.S Grant was elevated to general-in-chief of the Union army. Up until then, the Confederate army could occasionally shift forces between the two theaters of war to meet Union challenges.
Technical advances later in the war, especially a better method of supply via railroads, made Union forces more effective.
The Confederate forces finally ran out of replacements for their causalities and desertions.
True coordination between Union army groups separated by the Appalachian Mountains into an eastern and western theater wasn't established until U.S Grant was elevated to general-in-chief of the Union army. Up until then, the Confederate army could occasionally shift forces between the two theaters of war to meet Union challenges.
When necessary, there was Union coordination between the eastern and western theaters BEFORE Grant was appointed in March 1864 commanding general of the entire Union army.
What I meant by lack of coordination was that the Union campaigns in the two different theaters were not coordinated, not that troops weren't transferred between theaters. That's the point that Grant himself made in his memoirs.
What I meant by lack of coordination was that the Union campaigns in the two different theaters were not coordinated, not that troops weren't transferred between theaters. That's the point that Grant himself made in his memoirs.
Due to the overwhelming demographic, industrial, and economic advantages that the North possessed. A better question would be: Why did it take the North so long to win?
A couple of reasons. One is the American propensity to start wars off slowly and minimally. McClellan was a weak general and was not given the resources he needed. Another was the fact that we were fighting on hostile turf, with Gettysburg being a notable exception. Yet another, as Mike from back east pointed out, is that the south generally lacked good roads and railroads, making travel slower.
McClellan was a weak general and was not given the resources he needed.
General McClellan had the resources he needed, it was just that he believed that no matter how much he had, it was never enough. He was a superb organizer and deserves great credit for building the Army of the Potomac, but he so loved his creation that he was terrified of risking it with sufficiently aggressive tactics. He was always instantly willing to believe any report which inflated the enemy numbers, and in this he was ill served by Allen Pinkerton who was an excellent private detective, but not a competent army intelligence officer.
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