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Seems like an interesting blog. There is just soooo much stuff out there.
That book keeps getting positives – my only concern is whether your theory about the Virtginia Theater means there will be no salute to the Boys in Blue who battled Rebs and Rain in central Tennessee 150 years ago next week –
Just finished Civil War in the East, great read. Also read the review by Dehler, couldn’t agree with him more regarding Gettysburg. Super review. Keep up the good work and snatch a little serenity when you can.
Bummer.
I’d love to take undeserved credit for that excellent book but I’d guess that my posting privileges here would quickly disappear.
I haven’t finished reading this book.
Sorry, haven’t read the book yet, but my question would be who gets the CG’s post in the Army of the Potomac if it stays on the Peninsula?
My favorite candidate is JKF Mansfield, given his combination of organizational experience and ability and his willingness to fight, but he was a BG in the summer of ’62…
Pope had come east, but given the conglomeration of units in the departments of the Rappahanock, Shenandoah, Mountain/West Virginia, the Washington defences, etc., something corresponding to the Army of Virginia headquarters was needed, and Pope was presumably the best available for that command – given that his corps commanders were (eventually) Banks, Sigel, and McDowell, I don’t see any options there; replacements should have been found for Banks and Sigel, certainly.
Of the corps commanders on the Peninsula (Sumner, Heintzelman, Keyes, Porter, Franklin) Sumner was an MG and overall the most senior – I think he has a reputation as having blinders on at times in a tactical sense (Williamsburg and Antietam), but his decision to cross the Chickahominy at Seven Pines was the right one, and as an army-level commander (Grand Division) during the Fredericksburg Campaign, he displayed a lot more celerity than anyone else in the senior commands.
Give him a really solid chief of staff (replace Marcy with AA Humphreys, for example) and Sumner presumably wouldn’t have done any worse than McClellan on the Peninsula and, arguably, may have done better – he certainly would have “put in all his men” and seems closer to the capabillties of Grant than anyone else on the scene in 1862.
So here’s my WAG in a “McClellan Relieved for certain” scenario:
Army of Virginia – Pope (consolidate what he had historically with the IX Corps and re-organize to two strong 3-division corps each, plus a 3-brigade cavalry division (Bayard?)
I Army Corps – McDowell (this is the AoV’s historical III Corps, which had been the AoP I Corps
IX Army Corps – Burnside
Army of the Potomac – Sumner (consolidate what he had historically into three strong 3-division corps, plus the V Corps as a combined arms force with two infantry and one cavalry division))
II Army Corps – Mansfield
III Army Corps – Heintzelman
IV Army Corps – Franklin
V Army Corps – Porter (includes cavalry division – Emory?)
AoTP drives on Richmond, in an 1862 version of the 1864-65 campagn, with the V Corps as the strategic reserve; AoV covers Washington and the upper Shenandoah by closing on the eastern end of the upper Valley; Whipple’s command defends the city/district fortifications). Banks and Sigel are off recruiting; Keyes (or Cooke?) can get the Northwest command that Pope ended up with historically and deals with the Sioux.
Best,
Or perhaps move forward by a few months what may have been in the works later that year – I emphasize “may” based on an alleged October, 1862 comment by Lincoln – Israel B. Richardson. Solid record as a fighting division commander and excellent/powerful Michigan Republican connections. Some of those you name would IMHO have been doomed by their close ties to McClellan and others just flat out were not qualified for army command. I think Sumner was a really limited officer and too old (although the book Unfurl Those Colors makes a good case that his actions at Antietam were not the incompetent debacle which Catton, et al. have portrayed).
That’s intriguing, but I really can’t see a division commander leapfrogging corps command to the army level in 1862 or later…
McClellan commanded what amounted to a corps in the field and a theater in West Virginia before he got the AoTP; Pope had a corps-level command in Missouri before he got the AoV; Burnside, Hooker, and Meade were all corps commanders before they got the AoTP.
In the west, Grant and Buell were both department/theater/corps-level commanders beofre they received their army-level commands in 1862, and I think all their sucessors – Sherman, Rosecrans, Thomas, etc. – all commanded at the corps level before getting a army command in 1862-65.
Richardson might have been in line for the II Corps, since that was where he made his mark as a division commander, but I can’t see him being jumped over multiple senior officers to the army-level.
Best,
Those are valid points. The comment was reportedly made by Lincoln to Richardson when he was convalescing from his Antietam wound before taking a turn for the worse. Ordinarily I’d completely discount it for the reasons you list but he was extremely well-connected with the Michigan GOP, notably including Chandler, and had a lot of ‘old Army” support. By October, 1862, of course, Lincoln also may have been more susceptible to a startling move in order to give the army to a successful “fighter” and to pressure from the Radicals.
Maybe so by October, but I think my points still stand in the spring/summer of ’62…
Fair to say that Sumner had some pretty respectable divisional commanders in the II Corps – Richardson and Sedgwick were high quality, and Blenker and French seem reasonble enough at the time they were each promoted to the divisional level.
If McClellan had left the corps organization as three divisions each, and Blenker had gone south withthe II Corps rather than going to West Virginia, I think he would have been better off…replace Keyes with Porter and he still would have had a “pet” corps to work with.
Best,
Just ordered mine!
I got the book for Christmas last year, and enjoyed it greatly. I think Brooks is aware that I have a very high opinion of him as a scholar, but I would like to echo TFSmith’s question: Who was available, as a practical matter, to replace McClellan in the summer of 1862?
Locally available in summer of 1862 were any of the corps commanders then in the theater. Burnside is the most logical option at the time, as was the case in the fall as well.
Why, exactly?
Burnside’s operations in the Carolinas were sucessful, but not any more or less than those of – say – Sumner, Porter, and Franklin had been on the Peninsula, for example.
And he was junior to all of the corps commanders in the AoTP, and – perhaps most significantly – was very new to corps command (IX) in the summer of 1862.
Seems to me that Burnside’s North Carolina operations were clearly more successful than what Sumner, Porter or Franklin had achieved. He had been commander of a corps/department or equivalent since December 1861, so he wasn’t “very new” to higher command. And you are simply incorrect — he was senior to all of the AotP Corps commanders of the AotP on the Peninsula.
But really my point in bringing him up was that the US high command viewed him as a logical option since allegedly he was offered the job at the time.
If you are arguing by date of rank, maybe, but the distinction between RA, USV, full rank, and/or brevet presumably apply…
More to the point in terms of who would be the best choice at the time (which I think our host is suggesting as the summer of 1862, roughly when the Army of Virginia was created and prior to 2nd Bull Run, so June-July), and from within the theater. I don’t see Burnside being the likely choice for the AoTP, sitting on the Peninsula.
Burnside was a division commander in 1861; he still only had brigades beneath him in North Cariolina until the IX Corps was formed for action in Virginia on July 22, 1862, at which time it had a grand total of 5,000 men, I believe. Burnside got his second star March 18, but as a USV; Sumner had been a brigadier general (full rank and RA) since 1861, when Burnside was, I believe, a USV colonel.
Sumner was a division commander in 1861, and got the II Corps March 3, 1862; he also had actually fought the confederates in the Peninsula – seems like a much more likely choice in the summer of 1862 (which again, is our host’s posited time frame for his “leave the Army of the Potomac on the Peninsula, I think) then Burnside would have been.
Burnside got two stars as a USV (full rank) on March 18, 1862; Sumner was a fulkl rank and RA BG at thetime, and got his second star (again, RA and full rank) in ’64 (tombstone, but still); Burnside was not promoted after 1862…
Best,
You say you dont see Burnside being the likely choice for the AoTP, sitting on the Peninsula. Yet Lincoln offered him the job at the time. Was he the best choice? No. But was he the likely choice? Yes. He had seniority, experience and was the choice of Lincoln.
Apply all the distinctions you want but in the command structure of a civil war army a full MG USV was senior to a BG RA; and dates indicated seniority among those of equal rank.
Burnside’s Department of North Carolina had a present for duty in January 62 of 12,000; in April he reorganized it into 3 divisions with a present for duty of 14,000; when he answered the call in July to come to Virginia and aid McCellan he brought half of his command him, which would form part of the 9th Corps, and the other half of his command was left in North Carolina under Foster.
The time frame is the key point, I think, and since our host has not defined it, I’ll go with your intepretation – but if Burnside is the default, that doesn’t say much for the liklihood of success of an autumnal campiagn on the Peninsula, does it? I suppose you could argue he would have more experience working with the Navy than McClellan did, but I’m not certain a combined operation in 1862 would have delivered much; more likely a “SHINGLE” rather than “CHROMITE,” I think.
I suppose the question is could the US have done better than McClellan or Burnside if the AoTP remained on the Peninsula in the summer of 1862, if our host’s concept was followed….
I’d suggest that Sumner, with a solid chief of staff (Humphreys as opposed to Marcy, for example), would have been a better choice – god knows he was faster off the mark for the Fredericksburg campaign than anyone else in the AoTP, including Burnside.
Best,
Man, I just don’t see Old Bull as a guy who could maneuver an entire army around operationally, regardless of who he had as CofS. I don’t think anybody else did, either – which would have been a problem in itself. Nice reaction at Fair Oaks/Seven Pines and yes, he was “aggressive” – chomping at the bit at Savage’s Station (which, of course, would have been foolhardy given that the operational horse had already left that corral) – but he was from another, much smaller army with a limited perspective.
Okay, but who wearing “US” on their buttons could in 1861-62? McClellan? He certainly did not demonstrate any significant ability to coordinate multiple corps on the Peninsula OR during Antietam; IIRC, he ended up organizing army-sized “wings” on the fly for Antietam (giving them to Sumner, Burnside, and Hooker, respectively) because he recognized that anything more than about three corps was too much for any single general officer to handle (to be charitable).
Burnside took a stab at reorganizing the AoTP for maneuver with the “grand divisions” (one of which went to Sumner, the other two to Hooker and Franklin) and – if you believe Stackpole’s history re Fredericksburg – Sumner moved his along with a route march speed that would have been credible during WW I, much less 55 years earlier.
I mean, all things considered, could Sumner have done any WORSE than McClellan, Pope, Burnside, and Hooker in 1862-63?
One of the things that Sumner brings to the table in 1861-63, to my way of thinking, is absolute authority in the “Old Army” sense – give him an objective, and he’d stick to it, hell or high water, and without any tolerance of politicking – which is more than any of the actual CGs of the AoTP demonstrated during this period, until Meade took command. Likewise, given the need to develop the standards and practices of headquarters and staff equal to managing an organization the size of the AoTP, I think Sumner, as both a regular AND a professional (not the same thing), would have been that much farther ahead at that point of the war than the USV officers – who had been away from the army for years, even decades, in some cases, by 1861…
Was Sumner’s perspective limited? Undoubtedly,but no one else in the east demonstrated a particularly expansive or particularly modern perspective on theater-type operations, much less at the army level, in 1861-62 – north OR south. What is interesting in this light is that the senior section staff of the AoTP – Van Vliet, or Ingalls, for example – were all regulars…
McClellan had the benefit of the Crimean War observer tour under his belt, and was young and fit – but Sumner, Mansfield, and their generation of regulars (and their sucessors) had lived and breathed the American way of war – including both regulars, volunteers, and militia – for four decades in North America, from Florida to Mexico to Bleeding Kansas….my guess is that a number of them (CF Smith and AJ Smith also come to mind) would have done well as army commanders, if given a chance – as Thomas did, when finally given his.
We’ll never know, but consider this – in terms of education and experience, who among the loyal members of the officer corps in 1861 came closest to RE Lee’s background?
Sure as hell was not GB McClellan, Ambrose Burnside, or any other AoTP commanders…I’d suggest the loyal officers closest to Lee in terms of military experience in 1861-62 would have been Sumner or Mansfield.
Best,
We could probably make reasonable points and counterpoints about this all day. I hear what you’re saying, although Lee’s “Old Army” career was much more promising and highly regarded than Sumner’s (estimable service on Scot’s staff in Mexico, for example). McClellan, by the way, is a good example of why I don’t think that a Richardson-style appointment would have been complete fantasy (even if not likely) – especially, to repeat, given his excellent political connections and reputation. Of course, we’ll never know how these options might have worked out, which is why this is so interesting.
I read the book in airports over the course of a week of travel, so I may not have the best memory of the material, but I don’t remember him claiming that McClellan should have been replaced at a specific point in time only that the administration should have planned things out a bit better and the army should have been left on the peninsula. I also don’t remember Brooks pointing out that McClellan specifically warned the administration that having a force approach from the north while the AotP was sitting near Richmond would allow both forces to be defeated in detail, but I may have missed that as well.
The only thing I remember raising my eyebrow was the assertion that the eastern theater was the most important of the war simply because contemporaries considered it to be so. That seems to fly in the face of the fact that it was the steady string of victories in the west that eventually crippled the morale and fighting ability of Lee’s army and in fact vaulted Grant into command of the forces advancing on Richmond after Vicksburg and Chattanooga.
In the same vein, it seems a bit odd to put a picture of Grant looking at a map of Vicksburg on the cover of a book about the war in the East.
Sometimes authors have little control over these items. I did not have prior approval in this case. I demanded it (because of this) with the publisher of the paperback (coming this spring).
I assumed it wasn’t your choice.
Sometimes it is, and I’ve liked the covers where I’ve had something to say. I’m a little more ambivalent in other cases. So much depends on the publisher’s willingness to be open on these matters as well as the author’s sense of restraint.
Maybe Grant is longingly staring at the map of Vicksburg, wistfully recalling a time when he had the discretion to use a little strategic finesse, rather than having a bumbling Commander-in-Chief staring over his shoulder telling him that Lee’s army was his main objective.
Maybe our host can explain his thoughts; gi9ven his record on the Peninsula, I’m not sure what else the AoTP would have accomplshed with McClellan in command.
There’s an awful lot of Achilles sulking in his tent to MacClellan’s actions after the Seven Days.
Best,
“Bumbling” hardly seems apt for the CinC who actually won the war, but I’m sure you have your reasons…
John – Replying down here because the width of the thread.
Fair points – my only thought in this sort of discussion is to bring forward the “you may suggest anybody, but I need somebody” question…and I think it is a fair summary that whatever the talents that McClellan, Pope, Halleck, Burnside, and Hooker demonstrated in 1861-63, the reality is given the results, I think it is a safe statement to say the United States needed someone else in the positions of General-in-Chief of the Armies and Commanding General of the Army of the Potomac (and Virginia).
Were those persons Mansfield and Sumner? I don’t know, and we never will for certain, but I’d guess that the Inspector General of the Army and the acting CG in the Department of Kansas in the 1850s presumably might have brought something worthwhile to the table that the West Pointers turned railroadmen and businessmen did not…
Best,
Those also are valid points. I hate to suggest another factor that might be “illegal” today, but both of those guys were pretty “long in the tooth” and my guess is that Lincoln might have taken that into account.He was saddled with Scott and may not have been looking to add more “age” issues to the mix. And if you’ve read any of my comments on other posts you know that i’m a confirmed “McClellanphobe”.
Oh, totally understood re the age issues.
Which is actually sort of funny, given that both of them were very active throughout 1861-62; hell, even Scott managed the European tour in 1862, which sort of belies the “unfit for field service” theme…
Mansfield was KIA at Antietam, and Sumner was in harness through and including Fredericksburg, so it seems like they each had a couple of good years left – get sort of the same feeling with CF Smith.
Agree re McClellan in 1862. He should have spent another year at corps level, I think. He could have made a pretty good GHQ-level chief of staff for someone like Mansfield as GinC, I think, as long as he understood who was in command. Give Sumner the AoTP with Humphreys as his CoS, and the US would have been better served in 1862 then it was historically.
Along those lines, CF Smith as CG, with Halleck as his CoS in the West (both sides of the Mississippi) and presumably things would have gone well there, as well.
Nashville, Vicksburg, New Orleans, and Richmond under the Stars and Stripes in 1862, you think?
Best,
Smith is an interesting case. He seems to be one of those “under the radar” officers who gets the benefit of the doubt from a lot of us because he died before his capacity in higher command could ever be tested. Kind of like a top NHL draft pick with lots of potential whose career is derailed by injury (Eric Lindros????) One thing I’ve thought about is that many of us freely slot Humphreys in as CofStaff in order to bolster the resume of our other choices.. Why not cut to the chase and give him the army command?
Too junior, I think, re Humphreys. If the “alternative” to McClellan and the rest of the West Pointers-turned-businessmen are the regulars, hard to justify that seniority would fall by the wayside – which is why I think, if someone was looking for an RA relief for Scott in 1861, the eye can’t help but fall on Sumner and Mansfield, who were BG and IG, respectively.
From what I can tell, the Topographical Engineers and the IG’s staff was the place for all the fast burners in the 1850s, and probably came the closest to requiring the synthesis of field and administrative experience that was needed to be able to step up to running a corps or army in the 1860s…
AJ Smith is another one who comes to mind as a pretty effective “old army” type who was able to step up to the Civil War army; of course, there were plenty of McKinstry types as well.
You are obviously very impressed with Mansfield. Yet he seemed to have been kept on the sidelines until mid 1862 when he resorted to begging Halleck for a field command. Why do you think this was so?
I dunno; not politically connected?
The profile in Generals in Blue suggests he was intially assigned to the Washington defenses and was well-regarded for his work there; then he had the Suffolk Division in the Department of Virginia/VII Corps – he gets some criticism over the Norfolk occupation in Catton, but then he is very positively sketched in the volume that deals with Antietam. The man was IG under Scott, which strikes me as a pretty responsible post.
Any idea? Is there a biography of Mansfield out there somewhere?
He may have been difficult to work with. According to Chase’s diary Mansfield dropped by (which suggests he was politically connected) to chat in early September 1862 and griped to Chase about how Scott had wronged him by putting McDowell in command of the field army the summer before and how Wool had treated him badly and how he had been stuck in an insignificant post. In his testimony to the JCCW, McDowell described Mansfield as uncooperative because he felt hurt by the command arrangement.
Interesting. Thanks.
Chase and McDowell had their own perspectives, of course, and JKFM was dead.
Be interesting to see what there is in the Scott and Wool papers; in JSD Eisenhower’s “Agent of Destiny” he writes that in 1861, Scott “would have preferred giving the field command (i.e, the Department of Northern Virginia) to Colonel Joseph Mansfield, but that officer, like Scott, was too old for field duty.”
Which seems belied by JKFM’s assignments in 1862…
Best,
“If the “alternative” to McClellan and the rest of the West Pointers-turned-businessmen are the regulars, hard to justify that seniority would fall by the wayside – which is why I think, if someone was looking for an RA relief for Scott in 1861 ….”
Then what about Wool? He was the next senior officer.
That’s a fair point – Wool certainly seems to have had a much clearer idea of what Magruder et al actually had available on the Peninsula in 1862 than McClellan did, from what I have read in Gallagher and elsewhere.
Wool was a generation older than Mansfield, however, and I don;t know that he had the sort of administrative experience that JKFM had – similar point re Sumner and his experience in Kansas, which seems to be the closest to a civil war that any of the RA types wuld have experienced prior to 1861.
I expect the majority of the RA types were Democrats, which is why Hunter’s Republican ties undoubtedly stood him in good stead; that may have been it for Mansfield, although it certainly didn’t disqualify McClellan early on…
Wool had also been IG (several decades earlier than Mansfield ) and had been commander of Department of the East and Department of the Pacific So he had more administrative experience than JKFM. I expect many of the RA types had been Whigs.
I wonder what the split was in terms of Whigs turned Democrats vs Whigs turned Republicans in 1856 and 1860 among the RA officer corps; might be good fodder for a social history thesis.
I guess I’d give it to Mansfield over Wool (who, like Scott, was in his 70s) because of his more recent experience as IG; Wool and Scott were both born in the 18th Century, (Wool, born in 1784, was actually older than Scott, born 1786) whereas Mansfield (born 1803) was still in his 50s when the war began. Sumner (1797) was actually in his 60s, but seems like he was pretty healthy in 1861-62.
Best,
Having started this discussion, I have avoided it due to pressing holiday obligations. My thoughts:
The only practical options (IMO) were the AotP corps commanders plus Burnside. Of the corps commanders, none had worked out very well except Porter, who would probably have refused to replace Mac. Burnside had the best actual record, but a confidence problem, and he did not work out too well when he got the job. My point was that there really were not a lot of options to replace Mac, so the suggestion of keeping the army on the Peninsula and reliving the commander is not as good an idea as might be thought.
And it may not have been up to Porter to refuse. I’m skeptical that a guy who participated in ongoing dialogue with Manton Marble and clearly was a McClellan fave would have been on Lincoln’s/Stanton’s long list, let alone the short list. That would have been seen as the equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
There is that, although the 1860s analogue presumably would have been the SS Arctic.
JF – They brought Halleck and Pope in from the west, however; not that either would have been my choice for the AoTP, but it does show that Lincoln et al were willing to look around.
Best,
But the only western options were poor ones: Grant was under a cloud from Shiloh (still), Sherman was considered unstable, and Thomas was a Virginian and therefore untrusted.
True enough, which I guess sort of goes back to my point that the AoTP corps commanders and other seniors in the Virginia/Maryland theater(s) would have provided the pool.
Which is why I like Mansfield as GinC and Sumner as CG, AoTP – they were both on the scene, boh had experience that would seem – at least on paper – to be very applicable, and after the challenges inherent in assigning a USV like McClellan to the top commands, the availability of the pair may have suggested that going with the RA types was a road worth considering.
There was a boomlet for EA Hitchcock in this period, IIRC, and while he had left the service in the 1850s, he probably fits within the RA “group” more appropriately then anywhere else. Scott lobbied for him, which sort of seems the sine qua non of being considered RA.