Why didn't the CSA have any generals in the Western Theatre as good as Robert E. Lee?

Should they have sent Lee out to command the Army of Tennessee and whip Grant/Sherman out West to save Vicksburg and Atlanta?

Albert Sydney Johnston.

After he died, it was a shit show.

>>17848173 (OP)
no rebel generals are going to compare to Grant, Sherman, Thomas and Sheridan

>>17848173 (OP)
Patrick Cleburne would have made a good Army of Tennessee commander. Richard Taylor did a lot with very little after the trans Mississippi theater was cut off from the rest of the Confederacy. Could Forrest have handled a major army command? I can’t think of anyone else.

>>17848289
he unironically kind of sucked and died too early for us to know for sure

beauregard was good but had a breakdown and davis hated him.

>>17848173 (OP)
The issue is how much larger the west was, most of the fighting in the east was done in a tiny geographical area that would barely be visible on a map of the western theatre.

Any western commander was in a very difficult spot, if they tried to defend everywhere they would be spread too thin and easily defeated by a concentrated attack somewhere, if they left certain areas undefended that's territory and resources you are losing to the enemy. The west was also large enough that it was hard to mount a good defence without the enemy bypassing you and cutting your lines of communications

>>17848422
Forrest was good for cavalry but probably wouldn’t be great for army command

>>17849286
Any general who gets into a brawl with a subordinate and kills him probably isn’t suited for overall command. I forget the details but Forrest accused a young officer of cowardice, he did the “muh honor” thing and they both ended up badly wounded with Forrest surviving. Seems to be a CSA western theater cavalry thing, like Earl van Dorn getting domed by a jealous husband.

The ANV got all the best resources--officers, equipment, etc while the Western armies were left with scraps.

>>17848724
>he unironically kind of sucked and died too early for us to know for sure
Johnston was seen by many in 1861 as the best general on either side but he got pushed out of much of Kentucky and Tennessee while barely putting up a fight. His death at Shiloh was a demoralizing blow but the Confederate attack was spent by then and Union reinforcements were coming fast.

>>17849498
Same with Union forces in the west. Some of Grant’s men were carrying smoothbore muskets until they upgraded with captured Enfields after Vicksburg. The Army of the Gulf got a lot of shitty nine months regiments from the northeast who wilted in the Louisiana heat.

>>17849497
Didn’t Stuart duel too?

>>17849790
Seems like he would have. There was some Union general who got killed in a personal beef, forget the details, and Dan Sickles shooting his wife’s lover just before the war. It’s crazy that in the age of railroads and telegraphs, ruling class Americans were still engaged in ghetto shootouts.

>>17849790
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-murder-of-bull-nelson/
This was the Union general I was thinking of

>>17849502
why was he thought of so highly?

>>17849498
Sort of but actually the Army of Tennessee was the worst equipped major Confederate army they had a lot of smoothbore muskets into 1863 even '64. It didn't help that they never won a major battle aside from Chickamauga to be able to rearm themselves through battlefield pickups.

>>17849502
Johnson unfortunately was an aging cavalry regimental officer who didn't realize he was commanding more than just a regiment and he shouldn't have been out on the front lines.

>>17850568
>the Army of Tennessee was the worst equipped major Confederate army
that's saying something when they only had like two major armies

>>17848173 (OP)
Was Lee even that good? Seems to me his strategy was fairly simple and his victories came from the bad Union generals going full retard. Meade beat him at Gettysburg by just letting him fuck up and Meade wasn’t near as good as Grant and Sherman.

>Johnston
>Bragg
>Polk
>Cheatham
>S.D. Lee
>Hardee
>Buckner
>Breckinridge
>Hood

Holy shit lmao

Aside from meme generals like Forrest and Wheeler it seems like all the rebel generals in the west were retards

>>17850594
Kirby Smith's army in the trans Mississippi was equipped pretty well, they obtained Enfield rifles as Texas's ports were not blockaded until nearly the end of the war. Pemberton's army at Vicksburg also had plenty of Enfield rifles to the point where many Union soldiers rearmed themselves after the fall of the town.

>>17850620
>muh generals
The South was doomed from the start - the outcome of the war was potentially the best possible outcome for the South. Things are much larger than "muh great men"

>>17850620
The command situation in AoT was incredibly fucked up.

>prior to Chickamauga
>Hardee decides he's done with Bragg and asks to be reassigned
>he goes off to a command in Mississippi and is not present at the battle
>after Chickamauga Bragg sacks Polk and has him sent to Atlanta to "await further orders"
>Hardee comes back and commands his corps at Chattanooga
>after Bragg is fired them Polk comes back and serves until he's killed at Pine Mountain
>Hardee resigns later on out of disgust with Hood's tactics

>>17850998
I wonder how Lee would have handled things if he’d commanded the army.

>>17850620
Breckinridge was a good general, he just wasn'[t ever given much responsibility due to Bragg hating him.

>>17851252
did he win any battles?

>>17851675
He rarely was in overall command, but in 1862 led an inconclusive attack on Baton Rouge. His finest hour was at New Market, where his forces, including VMI cadets, drove a Union army from the field. He seemed to fare a lot better in the east.

>>17850998
The AOT had countless other problems such as the Western theater being split into a bunch of districts with independent commanders (this was a major issue during the invasion of KY in September 1862). There were also times when Bragg's troops were going hungry while the warehouses in Atlanta were full of food they weren't allowed to touch because it was earmarked for the ANV.

The Union armies in the West were also better led and not constrained by all the bullshit AOP had.

>>17850620
Hood really shouldn't have been above the level of a division commander also his battlefield injuries and morphine addiction meant that he'd lost a step or two by 1864. Unfortunately the Confederacy was running out of qualified army commanders by that point.

>>17850928
True. Their men deserted more often than Union troops too. They just didn't want to be there.

>>17850620
That commie again…

>>17853004
Qrd?

>>17853011
Hm?

>>17853035
he also owns a nazi costume doesn't he?

>>17853035
Isn't he closely associated with literal satanic cuckold lolbertarian fed-informant InRangeTV? They were working on a big project together to own MAGA iirc

>>17848173 (OP)
A mix of Jefferson Davis playing favorites and the western theater lacking a Robert E. Lee figure. Lee happened to have the ear of Davis, the respect of his subordinates and some skill as a battlefield commander. This all led to him being able to have sway on who was appointed in the east, wheras in the west there was no one to really push back on Davis' nepotism appointments. Albert Sidney Johnston was supposed to be that guy, but he just wasn't suited to command battles of the Civil War's scale which led to him getting himself killed leading troops from the front at Shiloh. It didn't help that Braxton Bragg, a man who feuded with half of the Confederate command and had a complete aversion towards competency, ended up becoming one of the top dogs in the west. I can't recall specific names, but Bragg personally talked Davis out of promoting multiple people who probably would have performed better than the ones they ended up with.
The most frustrating thing though, from a Confederate perspective at least, is that they had multiple competent officers like Joe Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard sitting around doing nothing during that vital spring/summer of 1863.
Placing John Pemberton in charge of Vicksburg's defense over one of them might have been the single most destructive decision to the Confederate War effort during the entire conflict.

>>17853062
>Isn't he closely associated with literal satanic cuckold lolbertarian fed-informant InRangeTV?
Yes, he's also close friends with the Knowing Better guy who I swear is a demoralization plant by Russia. China, or some other foreign entity.
Either way, Reddit leftie Union larpers are some of the most insufferable people in the history sphere, and I say this as somebody who is far more sympathetic to the Union than the South despite being of Confederate ancestry.
>>17850620
>it seems like all the rebel generals in the west were retards
The Southern military leadership suffered a lot from drama, corruption, and clientelism between those who were talented like Forrest and Wheeler and those with the right connections like Bragg and Beauregard.
Granted, the Union suffered a lot from this especially early on in the war, but they managed to get people like McLellan and Scott out of the way pretty early on while it wasn't until the very end of the war when it was a truly lost cause that the Confederates finally got over that.

>>17853104
What is Pemberton's story?

IIRC didn't he ignore an order/request from Joe Johnston and it got his troops trapped at Vicksburg or something?

>>17853104
>>17853158
why did bragg linger on if he was so incompetent?

>>17850928
The North had like 5 times the population + industry, realistically the only reason the South lasted as long as it did was northern generals being retards.

>>17853204
He was getting contradictory orders from Davis and Johnston. The smart thing to do was abandon Vicksburg and save his army, instead he retreated into the city and was left with no way out.

>>17853104
Pemberton was a good buddy of Davis's but he was a Northerner by birth and his officers and enlisted men always slightly distrusted him for that. After the war however he moved to Virginia and bought a farm there to demonstrate his loyalty to the South.

>>17853212
well that and the fact it still takes time to conquer that large an area. logistically-speaking, the war was always going to last at least 2-3 years.

>>17853210
>why did bragg linger on if he was so incompetent
Because Davis liked him and he stacked his command with yes-men. He was basically the Confederate Shoigu.

>>17853044
He hide one from basement.

>>17853212
>>17853158
>>17850928
Southern chance of winning: use Spaniard guerillas

>>17853270
what

The Army of the Potomac was fucked over by government meddling due to its close proximity to Washington D.C. and having a generally toxic culture.

>>17848173 (OP)

Lee was a one-in-a-million combination of excellent tactician, decent strategist, and excellent tard wrangler.

Also see >>17848289, Johnston was actually regarded as the Confederacy 's best general at the time of his death because Lee was still a relatively obscure nobody being mocked in Southern newspapers for building trenches around Richmond (that later proved essential during the Siege of Petersburg

>>17850928
>The South was doomed from the start

Bruh, the 13 Colonies managed to pull victory out of their ass despite starting out in an even more dysfunctional state.

>inb4 muh French aid

French aid to the Colonies wasn't particularly forthcoming until after Saratoga. Up to that point, Washington and Lafayette literally had to put up their own money to keep the Continental Army (barely) fed and clothed.

>>17853275
>Southern chance of winning: use Spaniard guerillas

*Vietnamese

>>17853837
If the south somehow won their independence what would they have done with 40% of their population being slaves? Realistically they would have to have abolished slavery eventually which would make the central issue of the civil war moot and they would rejoin the Union anyway.

>>17853897
>what would they have done with 40% of their population being slaves?
South Africa expansion pack DLC.
Also, they wanted to annex chunks of Mexico postwar that linked them up to the Pacific in return for helping the French with Maximilian, while they also wanted to expand into Cuba/Puerto Rico and form an alliance with local Mestizo and creole elites by bringing them into the plantation class aristocracy.
People think Confederate racial policy was somewhere between South Africa or Nazi Germany but in reality they just didn't like Blacks, while everyone from Jews to Creoles to Hispanics were considered honorary Whites.

>>17853897
>If the south somehow won their independence what would they have done with 40% of their population being slaves?

Realistically, it would have lost at least 40% of that 40% owing to Union soldiers raiding every plantation they could during their withdrawal and offering any slave who wanted to leave with them the opportunity to do so, and shooting any planter or overseer foolish enough to protest.

>>17853843
viet cong also had a superpower supporting them lol
that and the vc were wrecked during the tet offensive and replaced by nva regulars

>>17854519
>viet cong also had a superpower supporting them lol
Didn't stop them from beating the Japanese or French when they had no international backing at all.

D.H. Hill was one of the best Confederate generals who never got used to his full potential because he was way too acerbic and hard to work with.

>>17854519
>viet cong also had a superpower supporting them lol

So did the Spanish yah dingus