re: OTD in 1865, Gen. Lee gave his sword to Gen. Grant

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Longstreet was maybe the best Corps commander of either side

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Longstreet was great, probably the best defensive corp commander, but he couldn't hold a candle to Jackson or Forrest.

Both sides had good and bad military commanders (Bragg was indeed horrendous), but you're lying to yourself if you think Grant and Sherman and the rest were better than Lee, Jackson, Forrest, and Longstreet. Those four were the class of the war.

The fact that Lee and co. were so outnumbered and yet still inflicted defeat after defeat on their opponents for years is astounding. Yes, the South couldn't afford the casualties, but war (even successful war) costs lives. That just brings us back to the fact that logistically the South very likely couldn't win. That is what made Grant greater and more successful than his predecessors: he knew he didn't have to tactically beat Lee, he just had to continually push the envelope and let the logistics of his larger and more well-supplied army win.

Also, the moral high ground that so many try to stand on by saying it was a war "to free the Africans from oppressive slavery" is made hilarious upon even cursory inspection of the working conditions and environments the North was subjecting Irish, Italians, and even children to in their factories. They literally treated them like subhuman animals and were faaaaar worse than the planters were to their slaves, obviously because the planter had an investment in a bought and paid for slave. There were always more immigrant masses to take the dead's place in NYC and the like.

On the morning of April 9, 1865, Chamberlain learned of the desire by General Robert E. Lee to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia when a Confederate staff officer approached him under a flag of truce. "Sir," he reported to Chamberlain, "I am from General Gordon. General Lee desires a cessation of hostilities until he can hear from General Grant as to the proposed surrender." The next day, Chamberlain was summoned to Union headquarters where Maj. Gen. Charles Griffin informed him that he had been selected to preside over the parade of the Confederate infantry as part of their formal surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 12.

Thus Chamberlain was responsible for one of the most poignant scenes of the American Civil War. As the Confederate soldiers marched down the road to surrender their arms and colors, Chamberlain, on his own initiative, ordered his men to come to attention and "carry arms" as a show of respect. In memoirs written forty years after the event, Chamberlain described what happened next:

Gordon, at the head of the marching column, outdoes us in courtesy. He was riding with downcast eyes and more than pensive look; but at this clatter of arms he raises his eyes and instantly catching the significance, wheels his horse with that superb grace of which he is master, drops the point of his sword to his stirrup, gives a command, at which the great Confederate ensign following him is dipped and his decimated brigades, as they reach our right, respond to the 'carry.' All the while on our part not a sound of trumpet or drum, not a cheer, nor a word nor motion of man, but awful stillness as if it were the passing of the dead.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

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Chamberlain 

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Should be held in higher regard than anybody in the war outside of Grant.


And that would be a toss up.


Definitely more admirable as a leader and soldier and commander than Jackson.

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Definitely more admirable as a leader and soldier and commander than Jackson.

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I don't know what has caused your personal vendetta with Jackson, but literally any real military historian will tell you that he was one of the best in all facets of the art.

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How's the weather in Batun Rooge? I hear New Orluns is nice this time of year.

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It's Ruge.


And if you want to bring local dialects into the convo, Sumpter gets damn close.

Yep

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How's the weather in Batun Rooge? I hear New Orluns is nice this time of year.

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Not sure, I’m in La Fayette. A little overcast here.

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Forrest was a silver spoon with something to prove. He was the Alexander Hamilton of the civil war.

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Forrest wasn't born wealthy. His family didn't have much at all, but he was a go-getter, and was a millionaire when the war started, and a pauper when it ended.

Also the only man to begin the war as a private(of volunteers) and end it as a general.

Once Stonewall Jackson went down that was a huge blow to the Confederate Army. Stonewall died two months before Gettysburg. We will never know but if Stonewall doesn't go down after being shot at Chancellorsville does the South still lose at Gettysburg.