Originally aired on October 03, 1997 - In part 162 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson says that we sometimes employ extreme judgments in our estimation of winners and losers on the battlefield.
#162 – Losers
Southerners are often asked why they hold onto the Civil War so passionately. Among the reasons is a simple one, winners forget – losers never do. A modern correlation may exist do we continue to agonize over what happened in Vietnam because it is so recent or because we Americans did not win the war?
The phrase winner takes all has meaning. In battle the successful general receives all the attention. The losing general usually gets no historical credit for making a good attempt or fighting nobly or losing impressively. His side has staked everything on his winning. If he does not fulfill that expectation the losing commander sinks into oblivion. For every winner there is a loser.
One could question the fairness of such extreme judgments. For example, did the winning general gain success through his own strategic wisdom and tactical boldness or did he win because his opponent made enough mistakes to lose? In the case of the defeated commander, were his blunders the cause of defeat or were there negative factors over which he had little or no control?
Posterity usually sorts out generals by use of an elementary logic called over-simplified summary judgment. The reasoning goes like this: if a campaign failed the losing general must be incompetent; therefore, the campaign failed because the general was incompetent. We live now in an age of historical revisionism a by-product of seeing things in a new light has been attention to losers in Civil War history.
Two books published earlier this year have sought to explain the failures of several field commanders of the 1860s. In some cases efforts have been made at total resurrection. That kind of white-washing we do not need as much as we do an explanation for failures.
It is well to say that Confederate generals Braxton Bragg and Leonidas Polk did not belong at the head of armies. They belonged instead in an insane asylum. However, lunatics did not appoint such men to high command. Bragg and Polk at some point must have displayed positive qualities even though they squandered opportunities and collected defeats.
A traditional pattern in defending unsuccessful generals is to pass the buck. Often we are told that the reasons for a general’s failure lay with his superiors, his subordinates or with circumstances beyond his control. That may be the case in some instances. Certainly Confederate General Sidney Johnston was hampered in Tennessee in 1862, by being assigned too much territory and too few men to defend it. Certainly Union General George McClellan often waged a two-sided war with Confederate soldiers in his front and Northern politicians in his rear.
For some officers of strong potential in 1861, the Civil War became a complex struggle beyond their grasp. Confederate Generals Huger and John C. Pemberton had high reputations in staff work and administration, placed in the front line of battle neither officer could achieve a passing grade.
No such thing as limited revisionism exists – black becomes white – white becomes black. Instead of recent white-washing of Union Generals Burnside, Hooker and Polk, as well as, Confederate Generals Loring, Mosby, and Joseph Johnston, it would be helpful if not enlightening if more historians sought to find the middle ground – the path on which most individuals walk.
How and why men of high qualifications failed at critical moments is the way to study history. Using a century’s hindsight to pass judgment is both unfair and inaccurate. As one military historian recently admitted: “We must remind ourselves that the protagonists in the great dramas we study face situations of immense complexity in which there might well be only a single solution that would bring victory, but dozens of potential errors that could produce disaster.” No one ever said that studying history was simple.