GDG- Re: more CS supply

[Biggsk at aol.com]

Jack again writes:


But  the troops were so skinny nthe corpses would not even  bloat.

And where were these skinny corpses in the Atlanta Campaign or the  
Trans-Mississippi?????
 
Joe Johnston had an excellent system of food supply for the AOT in 1864,  
albeit somewhat boring.  He worked with Gov. Joe Brown to get the Western  & 
Atlantic to its best shape of the war and running on a 24 hour a day  schedule for 
the first time ever and his troops were very well supplied during  the entire 
campaign.  Johnston understood logistics - Hood did not.
 
I have studied the Atlanta Campaign for over 20 years and do not recall  
seeing letters from CS soldier complaining about lack of food, shoes or anything  
else along those lines.
 
 


>>>>Sure. Until New Orleans fell, they bwere making  money trading. But the 
military could not supply their own  forces.>>>>
If that was the case then how on Earth did the war last for nearly 5  
years??????





>>>>Well, you previously said they were leaders in engine  production anf 
making 
their own rails.  Could it be that they just  did not have the technology>>>>
You completely confuse technology for capacity and they are two different  
things.  Add in the economic factors of cost per unit, which is why they  
stopped making these engines, and you get the real reasons.  
 
It was not lack of technology, as I have said here time and again.
 
 


>>>I agree . Davis was no where near Lincoln class. We get  a post every day 
about what lincoln said or did that day. Can you do the  same for old sour 
apple tree?>>>
I am not a fan of Jeff Davis and so would not do what is being done here  for 
Lincoln.  I( have stated here time and again that I have studied the  
Confederate supply system and its nuts and bolts for years and once you get into  it 
at that level you simply cannot, if you are intellectually honest, have much  
good to say about Davis as a president or war manager.



>>>>Greg, the South did not have the wherwithal to press  this war, once 
Lincoln decided to press the war to victoty.  Lincol had  what the South did not , 
a moral imperative.

To telll you the truth, I  enjoy it when you post because you talk about thev 
real factors that decided the  war. Down deep, I think you recognize that at 
the end of the day, it was the  guys in combat support and combat servivice 
support that drove the victory or  defeat. When the armies came together these 
folks, not the 
generals,  predetermined the outcome, decieving as that could be.  The 
movement of  troop formations was the last, and often most irrelevant, thing that 
occurrred  on the battlefield. Look at Gettysburg.

Talk about logistics sometime,  and what they enabled Meade and Lee to do or 
not do, not about mythical cultures  that were 12 feet tall. We went through  
that with the Russians in the cold  war. It was eleven six of smoke.>>>>>>
 
Morality does not win wars all the time - the side with the biggest  
battalions, best leadership and supply system usually does.  Where was the  moral 
imperative in the Russian Revolution/civil war for the side that  won?  And a 
democracy at war has one severe weakness - and that is the will  of its people to 
sustain that war as it grows longer and longer.  We won  World War 2 but the 
American people were exhausted on several levels and we came  nowhere near 
losing the manpower that the Soviets did.
 
And I believe I have a better understanding of logistics than you seem to  
think I have with years of study in not only the Civil War but other wars of  
history.  I have been one of the very few here on this list that champions  
logistics as why armies win or lose most often.  But I am not making up  some 12 
foot tall Confederate gorilla at all - and I would bet my house that I  know a 
lot more about Confederate logistics than you do - its successes and  failures 
- the good points and the bad - and it comes down to this simple  fact;  
while they did not win the war they were able to put together a very  competent 
war machine that was pretty
well equipped to make war and while they had some tinkering to do and  
shortages to deal with, were able to keep in the fight for nearly 5 years!   That is 
nothing short of a miracle when you really understand what it took to  raise 
that machine, equip it, keep it in the field, etc. and until you have read  
the books that I have suggested here several times, I would submit that you do  
not fully understand those facts.
 
If it was as bad as you seem to think this war would have been over in  1861, 
plain and simple.  It was not as bad and the war lasted as long as it  did, 
for several reasons, but one of them was they were indeed able to make and  
keep their war machine in the field by showing great flexibility, rolling with  
the Union punches and were fortunate enough for their side to have certain  
leaders in the right bureaus that were able to pull it off.  They also  failed to 
fire those leaders that did not do their jobs and that buck stops at  Davis' 
desk.



While we are on the topic of CW logistics, I do not understand at all why  
there is such a shortage of books on the Union side of this coin when there  
clearly needs to be a much fuller understanding of this.  Much more has  been 
written on the Confederate side. 
 
To add to the latter, the papers of Caleb Huse (under another name  
actually), the Confederate purchasing agent in Europe, are being purchased as we  speak 
(I am not at liberty to say by whom - but it is an institution) and these  
contain all of his invoices for arms and other purchases from Europe during the  
war.  I have looked at a few of these documents and must state here that  
when this finally is completed, historians will finally be able to fully  
comprehend the massive extent of Confederate purchasing in Europe for the war as  
never before.
 
Greg Biggs



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