Loyalty to the state

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BQ78
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In reply to Rabid Cougar • 11:24a, 6/26/18
AG
Thomas came very close to going with Virginia, really the deciding factor for him was he married a Yankee, Frances Kellogg.

On the Confederate side, John C. Pemberton was a Yankee but he married a southern woman and her influence sent him south. Much like the Yankee soldiers who lamented on the march that Ellen McClellan had not married AP Hill, a good Confederate should have lamented that Martha married John.
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Stive
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In reply to BQ78 • 4:53p, 6/26/18
AG
Can you explain that last bit for us?
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JABQ04
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In reply to Stive • 5:20p, 6/26/18
AG
AP Hill was rumored to have fought fiercer and more determined against McClellan due to Little Mac's wife being Hills ex - fianc (I think). Much to his troops (who did the actual fighting) joy.

Honestly never knew that until yesterday when I was lookin something else up and clicked on AP Hills name and read that.
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BQ78
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In reply to Stive • 10:36a, 6/27/18
AG
JAB covered the McClellan/Hill part.

John C. Pemberton the guy who surrendered Vicksburg was from Philadelphia but he married a Norfolk belle, Martha Thompson before the war. She influenced his decision to join the Confederacy.

Another Yankee Confederate was Archibald Gracie III who died during the Petersburg Campaign. The NYC mayor's home is the old Gracie Mansion, yes that Gracie is the family of a Confederate general from New York City.
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huisachel
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10:48a, 6/27/18
Re Lincoln dissing Thomas: Abe was a horrible war president as this illustrates. The two greatest union victories were led by generals he wanted to replace: Thomas and Meade. Thomas destroyed Hood and Meade won at Gettysburg.
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JABQ04
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In reply to BQ78 • 1:03p, 6/27/18
AG
Never knew that about Gracie III but recognized the name and sure enough his son Archibald Gracie IV survived the Titanic to die in Dec of 1912 of complications from being in the water for so long.
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Sapper Redux
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In reply to huisachel • 2:10p, 6/27/18
huisachel said:
Re Lincoln dissing Thomas: Abe was a horrible war president as this illustrates. The two greatest union victories were led by generals he wanted to replace: Thomas and Meade. Thomas destroyed Hood and Meade won at Gettysburg.


The greatest Union victory was Vicksburg. And Lincoln stuck by Grant very early on despite strong pressure from Halleck, McClernan, and McClellan to replace him.
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huisachel
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5:33p, 6/27/18
Grant got so many people killed they had to lie about casualties. Grant is the answer to the question "what if Hood had an inexhaustible supply of cannons and cannon fodder".

He did find a way to end the war though
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JABQ04
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5:44p, 6/27/18
AG
I'm not sure when they lied about the casualties from Grant. Mary Lincoln did call him a butcher during the overland campaign, but Lincoln said he couldn't spare him he fights. Grant is exactly what the Union needed to win. He had the tenacity to attack and attack, take a beating and keep coming. He knew could replace 20K men asap and knew Lee couldn't. Grant knew how many men he had and how many the ANV had and as cold as it sounds, that he could take the casualties during the fighting. Kind of ironic for a man who used to feel faint at the sight of blood. I don't think Grant was the butcher that people make him out to be though. He cried after the disaster of Cold Harbor, but then got his **** together and came on again. Fast forward 80 years to WWII. How would we have viewed Eisenhower if D-Day failed? Similar circumstances of having the men and material against a weakening enemy. Have to gamble and commit the men.
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JABQ04
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5:52p, 6/27/18
AG
As far as Hood goes he was in over his head at anything beyond division level. Not saying he was a maniac but warfare at Army level was not his forte. His aggression didn't translate well to that high of a command. I'm inclined to believe his success at lower echelons was having someone (Longstreet) to reign him in or to know exactly how to let loose his juggernaut on the battlefield. But then again the men who brought him the most accolades chose to have his name attached to their brigade for the rest of the war and after.
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Sapper Redux
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In reply to huisachel • 6:17p, 6/27/18
huisachel said:
Grant got so many people killed they had to lie about casualties. Grant is the answer to the question "what if Hood had an inexhaustible supply of cannons and cannon fodder".

He did find a way to end the war though


BS. Vicksburg was almost a perfectly run campaign with no unnecessary waste of lives on Grant's part. He was economical with his men in every campaign before the Overland Campaign. Geographical limitations and the failures of independent commanders to follow their assignments made that campaign bloody.
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Smokedraw01
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In reply to Rabid Cougar • 9:17a, 6/28/18
Rabid Cougar said:
Rabid Cougar said:
Quote:
However, there were numerous officers from the South that chose to stay.
There were 33 Northern born Confederate Generals. There were 35 Southern born Federal generals that served during the Civil War.

There were 11 Southern born Federal generals that were in the old army before the war began and refused to leave the army in which they had served their entire adult lives. The rest had either were born in the south but were raised in the north or disagreed with slavery and session and moved north as grown men.

The 11 were:
Philip St. George Cooke (Virginia, father of Confederate General John R. Cooke and father-in-law of Confederate General Jeb Stuart)
John W. Davidson (Virginia)
Alexander B. Dyer (Virginia)
Alvan C. Gillem (Tennessee)
Andrew J. Hamilton (Alabama)
William S. Harney (Tennessee)
John Newton (Virginia)
George D. Ramsey (Virginia)
Winfield Scott (Virginia)
William R. Terrill (Virginia. His brother James B. Terrill became a general in the Confederate Army),

George Henry Thomas (Virginia) Thomas was an actual slave owner. His sister disowned him and refused food relief from him after the war saying she did not have a brother. JEB Stuart, one of his students from West Point called him a traitor and should be hung for treason. Lincoln refused to appoint him the overall commanding general of the western theater saying "Let the Virginian wait"

Source "Tim Kents Civil War Tales" July 12 2011.




Do you have any numbers regarding how many of that 33 and 35 owned slaves?
"If you run into an ******* in the morning, you ran into an *******. If you run into *******s all day, you're the *******." – Raylan Givens, "Justified."
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BQ78
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In reply to JABQ04 • 9:47a, 6/28/18
AG
Hood's biggest problem was going from the functional ANV to the dysfunctional leadership of the AoT. Think about it, both Longstreet and Hood, who were competent commanders in Virginia go to the AoT and immediately get caught up in the politics and wrangling of that army and fail miserably.

I think Hood gets lambasted way too much these days. His strategic plan for the Tennessee Campaign of 1864 was sound (what the hell else could he do?). Like Lee he knew the army could not sit back and take blows they had to try to seize the initiative and that is what he did.

Due to logistical issues he had problems getting across the Tennessee River but once across, he brilliantly maneuvered his men around Columbia and masked a flanking movement to get behind the Army of the Ohio, not unlike Grant stealing a march on Lee when he crossed the James or Jackson at Chancellorsville. He had his army set up to decimate Schofield at Spring Hill but he was severely let down by his subordinates (although he probably should not have gone to bed that night and made sure the mostly weak officers of his army executed the plan). Yes, Franklin he let his emotions get the better of him but he had Schofield with his back to the river and he thought he was getting away, so his attack was hasty and not supported by artillery. Hood is an idiot for Franklin but Lee is still the master soldier, despite doing a similar thing twice at Malvern Hill and Gettysburg.
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et98
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In reply to Smokedraw01 • 11:39a, 6/28/18
AG
Smokedraw01 said:
One statement I hear often is that people in the South, before the war, were more loyal to their state than Federal government. It's something that I've stated numerous times myself but I've never seen it substantiated except with REL.

What is the basis for this belief?

Thanks in advance.

Everybody on this thread keeps talking about Constitutions, generals, and politicians; but I don't think any of that matters. The question in the OP was about the people, and most people couldn't read, had no idea what was in their constitution, and didn't care what generals or politicians thought.

Common sense tells me that they had more loyalty to their state than the nation. There was no internet, no TV, no radio, and even news papers weren't much more than outlets for local news & gossip in most rural areas. National news stories were extremely rare compared to local news.

There was almost no connection to the federal government in a person's daily life compared to today. There was no standing military, no federal tax, no entitlement programs, very few people could actually vote, etc. Federal government played almost no role whatsoever in the lives of people.

Washington DC would have been as foreign to a poor homesteader in the south as Paris or London would have been. It's human nature to be loyal to those closer to you and those you have more in common with. The farther you are away from someone else & the less you interact with them, the less trusting you are & more independent you feel (and wish you were). Employees in satellite offices feel this way toward the home office/HQ, and rural regional districts & outlying territories of all kinds of organizations feel this way toward their central leadership.

To believe that people would have had more loyalty to the nation than to their state just seems irrational to me.
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JABQ04
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In reply to et98 • 12:19p, 6/28/18
AG
Definitely was a standing Federal Army. We were less. than 20 years removed from Mexican-American War in 1861, many of our senior officers both North and Sourh cut their teeth either in Mexico or on the plains or deserts fighting Indians. We sent observers to the Crimea in the 1850s, McClellan among them. In that regard I'd say their was a definite sense of national pride as a member of the military.

Now granted they're were tons of local militias and many volunteers for Mexico and Indian fighting, but we had a professional army, navy and marine corps, just smaller
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huisachel
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2:39p, 6/28/18
one of the grievances against the federal government was that they had not provided the protection from the Comanches which was promised and expected. Frontier forts were decent for protecting people and goods heading west via El Paso but not very effective in dealing with the Comanche menace on the frontier.

People were aware of the federal government, they just thought it ineffectual.

Also, I would disagree with the poster who suggested most of the people were ignorant re national issues.

Newspapers were passed around until they fell apart and politicians talked up the issues at length to anyone who would come out and listen as they made their rounds,. And lots of people turned out for the election gabfests. Lincoln and others honed their skills talking to large numbers of small gatherings, be it in Illinois in his case or Texas in others.

Issues such as the tariff were understood and discussed ad nauseum among those who were effected by them-----which was everybody involved in agriculture, which was everybody.

Abolitionism was followed feverishly because all recognized what a threat it was to cotton agriculture.

Another issue, almost forgotten now but huge then, was the route for the first continental railroad. Jefferson Davis had found the cheapest route was the southern route because it was easier and cheaper to build because the mountains could be skirted and there would not be as much snow. The southerners could not get it passed and the northern route was adopted as soon as that railroad lawyer got elected president. While Johnny Reb and Billy Yank were getting splattered the president's friends were hard at work building the northern route railroad. The average Joe Farmer in Texas was up on the issue because it meant that he could ship his product by rail to the west coast. Which was potentially huge.

The country was not yet tied together by rail or by highways and so the states were much more distinct units then than now.
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Rabid Cougar
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In reply to huisachel • 3:10p, 6/28/18
AG
huisachel said:


Another issue, almost forgotten now but huge then, was the route for the first continental railroad. Jefferson Davis had found the cheapest route was the southern route because it was easier and cheaper to build because the mountains could be skirted and there would not be as much snow. The southerners could not get it passed and the northern route was adopted as soon as that railroad lawyer got elected president. While Johnny Reb and Billy Yank were getting splattered the president's friends were hard at work building the northern route railroad. The average Joe Farmer in Texas was up on the issue because it meant that he could ship his product by rail to the west coast. Which was potentially huge.

The country was not yet tied together by rail or by highways and so the states were much more distinct units then than now.
When the U.S. Army left Texas in 1861 in opened a new can of old worms for Texas. Average Joe Farmer in Texas on the frontier (just west of I-35 and the Balcones Escarpment) was more worried about surviving the Comanche than the possibility of trains to the west coast. The Confederates had more than their hands full containing the natives during this time.
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BQ78
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In reply to huisachel • 9:22a, 6/29/18
AG
Absolutely, the 19th Century folks, even those who could not read, were better informed of events and politics than our FaceBook culture is today. They followed and understood the issues much better than the average Joe today.
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Pro Sandy
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In reply to Nagler • 3:40a, 7/4/18
AG
Nagler said:
I read/saw a comment somewhere in the past that said something along the lines of "Before the war it was refered to a 'These United States' versus after the was it became 'The United States'."

I believe that's a good reflection on how the whole situation was looked at.

These are states first that are united together in common interested. After, the US is the main body and the states are simply minor divisions.

As stated above, the fact that secession was voted on by the populace and the amount of US army officers that left shows where the loyalty lies.

2013 State of the Union address, President Obama ended with "God bless these United States of America." The transcript says "the," but the audio is clearly "these." Don't know if he just misspoke, but found it interesting he said that as I too has heard it went out of vogue after the civil war.
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