The Good The Bad & The Indifferent

[Canoerebel]

Your "East Tennessee to Virginia" recollection is for Longstreet's two divisions (Pickett's stayed in Virginia) following the Seige of Knoxville.

I'll leave the question open, in case anyone happens to know (no cheating: no looking it up).

[ushakov]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Hood's Tennessee campaign is a great analogy. But to complete the analogy, John would have to commit KB against a hardened target like Sydney or Townsville. There I have enough air power to make him pay.

My judgement is that he'll retire the way he came, probably refuel at Truk or Saipan, and rejoin KB around Iwo. I'm vectoring subs to the Truk and Marianas, but that's pretty much a crap shoot.

I wondered whether he might force the Torres Strait to join Mini KB, but the current course suggests not.

P.S. Does anyone here, without looking it up, have the slightest idea how Hood's Army of Tennessee ended up in North Carolina in April 1865 after being torn to pieces at Nashville five months earlier? I wondered about that eight or ten years ago, so researched it. Just one of those obscure chapters in history that never makes the history books or the books, so it was fun to dig and find out.

It's been some years since I last read about the specifics of this too, but if I recall correctly it was by no means the whole of Hood's Army of the Tennessee, but just a portion of perhaps a third of his 20,000 survivors (half of the original force) that was routed by rail from Tupelo, where they'd fetched up, through Alabama and still-Confederate Augusta, on to the Carolinas. A further third were sent to defend southern Alabama, and most of the rest melted away back to their families.

Another interesting point from this campaign, if we're being optimistic, is that Thomas was a cautious, methodical planner of offensives who spent a great deal of time refining his plans against Hood, and Lincoln and Grant, perhaps stung by their experiences with superficially similar commanders like McClellan, were considering his imminent removal before he declared himself ready and blasted Hood's army to pieces.

[Mike Dubost]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Your "East Tennessee to Virginia" recollection is for Longstreet's two divisions (Pickett's stayed in Virginia) following the Seige of Knoxville.

I'll leave the question open, in case anyone happens to know (no cheating: no looking it up).

Oh. Yeah, I guess it is good that I did not offer to bet more than 5 cents then. [:D]

[Canoerebel]

ushakov has it right.

Following Nashville, the pitiful remnant of the Army of Tennessee withdrew to Mississippi, where General Hood resigned. The Army of Tennessee (by name, with quite a few units detached or melting away, as ushakov noted) then moved east by rail. I think there were gaps in the rail line, specifically at Selma, Alabama, and where Sherman had marched through Georgia. But I think the route included Columbus, Macon and Augusta, GA. Joseph Johnson resumed command as the army moved into North Carolina for the final stages of the war, where it was joined by other fragments of units - I think including troops under D.H. Hill and perhaps William J. Hardee. That "army" surrendered at Bentonville.

[ushakov]

Woop! I should confess here that rather than having an encyclopedic knowledge of US Civil War troop matters I got lucky: I happened to finish a few weeks ago a reread of McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom (as a layman, the best single-volume history of the war that I've found), which included in its summation of the campaign centering around the Battle of Franklin a line to the effect of 'Hood's battered survivors fetched up in Tupelo, Mississippi', which in turn triggered a memory of some details I'd read years ago of the fate of the Army of Tennessee from that point onwards.

[paullus99]

No Army during the Civil War suffered so many reverses and operated under so many different commanders, yet ended up as one of the last intact Confederate formations at the end of the war.....

[Canoerebel]

Yup, from pillar to post, from commander to commander, from defeat to victory to defeat.

Who was it that said that after Chickamauga, the Army of Tennessee never again fought with such élan?

[Canoerebel]

I found it, this from Peter Cozzens, author of This Terrible Sound: "Contemplating Chickamauga two decades after the Civil War, Confederate corps commander Lt. Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill summarized the consequences of the battle from the Southern perspective. “'There was no more splendid fighting in ’61, when the flower of Southern youth was in the field, than was displayed in those bloody days of September ’63,'” wrote Hill. “'But it seems to me that the élan of the Southern soldier was never seen after Chickamauga – that brilliant dash which had distinguished him was gone forever … He fought stoutly to the last, but after Chickamauga, with the sullenness of despair and without the enthusiasm of hope. That barren victory sealed the fate of the Southern Confederacy.'”

[MakeeLearn]

[:D]Hood was getting away from the wrath of Forrest. Hood fouled what could have been a victory at Franklin.

I think there were gaps in the rail line, specifically at Selma, Alabama,

The lack of a rail across the south had a bad impact. Units were railed then moved by water along the gulf to the next rail. Louisiana Tigers had to take that trip.


what was the word for a "raid" that was for tearing up track, burning the ties and then heating and bending the rails around trees? It's been on the tip of my tongue for several days.[:'(]

[Braedonnal]

ORIGINAL: MakeeLearn

what was the word for a "raid" that was for tearing up track, burning the ties and then heating and bending the rails around trees? It's been on the tip of my tongue for several days.[:'(]

I know they called those 'Sherman's Neckties'. Not sure if that is what you are referring to.

[Canoerebel]

That's what he's referring to.

[MakeeLearn]

I know they called those 'Sherman's Neckties'. Not sure if that is what you are referring to.

That's what he's referring to.

Unfortunately no. "Sherman Neckties" , "Mrs Lincoln's Hairpins" describe the rails. This was a term for the raid itself. Like the term "foraging". It was in many books I read from the library when I worked there. I only have a few books on the civil war. Something on Mosby may have the term. Looked on the web for it the other night. AHHGGGG... I will find it!!


Thinking a "S" word..... but "Skedaddle" may be throwing a false scent on that trail.

[Lowpe]

Did you know that Mosby lived next to and communicated with a young George Patton?

[MakeeLearn]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Did you know that Mosby lived next to and communicated with a young George Patton?

Yes, and I believe it was horse stables that brought them together. And there was a British officer from India that was a regular there.

As a kid Patton would pack a lunch and go for a walk in the woods until he found a dead animal, then he would eat while looking at it. Preparing himself for the horrors of war.

[MakeeLearn]

a term used mostly in the civil war books written in late 1800s early 1900s. I had access to a large collection of such books.

[:'(]

[Lovejoy]

ORIGINAL: paullus99

No Army during the Civil War suffered so many reverses and operated under so many different commanders, yet ended up as one of the last intact Confederate formations at the end of the war.....

I agree with you, particularly that is stayed together after the battles at Franklin and Nashville (should be required reading for how not to handle an army). Though I do think that the Union's Army of the Potomac could give the Army of the Tennessee a run for its money in terms of different commanders and reverses, as at least for the first two years of the war it was worse off generally speaking (pun intended).

[jwolf]

... it was worse off generally speaking (pun intended).

That is a nasty one!

[paullus99]

My family used to live on a property which was a campsite for the Army of Tennessee right before the Battle of Nashville. Every once in a while, we'd find a mini-ball or some other detritus (though nothing of any real significance, unfortunately).

[MakeeLearn]

ORIGINAL: paullus99

My family used to live on a property which was a campsite for the Army of Tennessee right before the Battle of Nashville. Every once in a while, we'd find a mini-ball or some other detritus (though nothing of any real significance, unfortunately).

Kewl... I live near Shiloh. One of my favorite local stories is: A Yankee solider went to a nearby church during service. He walked in and sat down, moments later they shot him then took his body into the woods and buried him. A few hours later they went and dug him up..... they had forgotten to take his shoes... etc...etc.

[Canoerebel]

MakeeLearn apparently new about the kamikazes before I did.