GDG- RE: "Lee felt that his army was invincible"

[Chet Diestel]

 Esteemed GDG Member Tim Gennett Contributes:
    Surely the loss of middle-grade officers cut both ways, affecting the 
ANV and the AoP equally.  If you want to make the argument that Gettysburg 
occurred too soon after Chancellorsville for the ANV to recover from its 
C'Ville losses, don't you also have to recognize that the ranks of the AoP 
were similarly decimated at C'Ville, and the whole impact thing ends up 
being a wash?

   Regards, Tim

  In theory, the damage to the middle-level command structure of both armies 
following Chancellorsville and Gettysburg should have been "a wash," but the 
Northern armies with their greater manpower pool was able to better 
absorb --- and recover from -- the damage to its brigade and regimental 
officers than their Southern counterparts and allowed for the rise of such 
superb younger officers as Emory Upton, Ranald MacKenzie and the now fabled 
JLC in the 1864-65 campaigns to command positions.
  A similar situation existed with the Army of Tennessee in the West 
following Chickamauga and Chattanooga. That Confederate army was never 
really able to fully reconstitute the loses its middle-level command 
structure suffered during those two battles while the Union forces opposing 
it were able to do so in a most telling manner in the upcoming campaigns.
   The shortage of available manpower, which from the beginning put a severe 
strain on --- and in many ways handicapped --- the Confederate military 
effort in a continental war, applied not only to those who filled the ranks, 
but the quality of those who would command them as well, especially as the 
war progressed.
   With regards,
      Chet