GDG- Re: troops from the West

[Biggsk at aol.com]

Chet writes:

>>>>Would  it not have profited the South more if in  June it had done what 
it had to do in September --- detach Longstreet's Corps  and send it to the 
West along with troops taken from the Carolinas and Georgia  and the Army of 
Tennessee and form a force at Jackson, Miss. under Joe  Johnston which Grant could 
not have ignored and thus perhaps force a lifting  of the Vicksburg siege.>>>>



I have posted already that historian Richard Goff thinks the Gettybsurg  
Campaign was a sheer Confederate supply folly of the highest order - and I can  
agree with that.  The South simply had enough to fight very limited  offensives 
and plenty of defensives.  After that, they were  risking  more than they 
could handle.
 
As for Vicksburg, once Grant crossed the river, the city was no longer of  
importance - and that would remain so until Grant could be defeated.   Pemberton 
was told by Johnston to come out and abandon the city; Jeff Davis told  him 
to stay and hold it.  Davis, in retrospect, was wrong and he lost a  major 
field army.  It is always better to lose the city and maybe get it  back than lose 
the army defending it.  See Stalingrad for more  details.
 
Bragg had to send large reinforcements to Mississippi in late 1862 and  again 
in the Spring of 1863.  The first detachment (Carter Stevenson's 9000  men), 
came right before Stones River -  and of Bragg had those men in that  battle 
Rosecrans, who hung on by sheer determination - barely - would have been  
crushed most likely.  Then, right before the Tullahoma Campaign,  Breckinridge's 
division was sent to Mississippi as was the late Earl Van Dorn's  6000 man 
cavalry corps.  This stripped Bragg's army greatly and Rosecrans  was able to take 
advantage of that.
 
Richard McMurry in one of his essays asks the question about reinforcing  the 
West from Lee's army and answers it with this:  it is OK to do that so  long 
as Lee comes with them to command.  So long as Lee was not willing to  go 
west, then he doubts that such reinforcements would have mattered.   Bragg failed 
to follow-up the big with at Chickamauga at all and with Bishop  Polk being 
his senior corps commander, who had proven time and memorial that he  considered 
orders from Bragg as a waste of his time, such a follow-up might not  have 
been possible.
 
Bragg actually had a grand opportunity in the Tullahoma Campaign to strike  
Rosecrans right by moving Polk back through Guy's Gap and then turning east to  
move against Rosecrans' flank.  It was a great move and his left would have  
been secured by Forrest's arriving cavalry - but Polk bent over backwards to  
talk him out of the move.
 
Lee simply would have had to come along with those troops for a real  
difference to have been made.
 
Greg Biggs