welty@algol.crd.ge.com (richard welty) (06/30/89)
From: welty@algol.crd.ge.com (richard welty) _Two Great Rebel Armies: An Essay in Confederate Military History_, by Richard M. McMurry, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1989 McMurray set out to write a history of The Army of Tennessee, and discovered that much of the necessary background had never been dealt with. After many false steps, he finally decided to publish this monograph, as a sort of prologue to the history he plans to complete someday. _Two Great Rebel Armies_ is an booklength essay comparing The Army of Tennessee and The Army of Northern Virginia. McMurry's goal is to expose the reasons why the one army was such a disaster and the other such a success. Ultimately his conclusion is that the difference comes down to leadership -- one army had Robert E. Lee, and the other did not. (There was more too it than that, of course. Lee had only to defend a small front, whereas the western army had a vast geographic space to defend. Lee had defensible terrain, whereas the west was almost totally exposed. Lee had interior lines, whereas the west had awful transportation. Everyone paid close attention to the East, but ignored the West. The best of the Federal generals rose to prominence in the West, whereas the worst bubbled up in the East. The list goes on, but the incompetence of the Confederate leadership in the West was very pronounced, and McMurry zeroes in on it.) A very good book -- if you find a copy, and are interested in the War of the Rebellion, pick it up. richard -- richard welty welty@lewis.crd.ge.com 518-387-6346, GE R&D, K1-5C39, Niskayuna, New York