Johnston understood that only Confederate armies in the field could win the war. Sieges were a mug's game for the Confederates, who would inevitably end up outgunned, outmanned, and undersupplied, with little hope of relief. Losing the guns, and especially the men, in Pemberton's army was awful.
As you say, the fault lies with Davis. He replaced Johnston with Hood for doing the right thing.
In addition, it showed how stupid Lee was for the Gettysburg campaign when he could have sent a corps or two west to prolong things.
Longstreet going west for one campaign nearly destroyed Rosecrans, and would have allowed real offensive action by the Confederates.
Correct. The “western concentration block” of the CS military was always right, and they were constantly ignored.
Bragg was an awful commander of soldiers in the field and all his subordinates hated him so he was doomed to long term failure, but his ability to mass troops quickly and effectively for short term campaigns was pretty impressive. The entire Kentucky raid is a railway mobilization marvel.
TBH for all that Bragg was a pitiful commander whose real enemies were his own corps and division commanders he won Chickamauga and outfought Rosecrans at Stones River. That he 'lost' was because he, like Rosecrans, had no follow up idea. It's a disturbing point but.....
The only real competition Lee had as a general was Bragg, who kept the Western war out of Georgia for a year and managed its only meaningful strategic reversals twice in two years. In that statement you see exactly why the Confederacy lost.
Correspondingly Rosecrans can't be so great if Braxton Bragg beat his ass in the biggest army-scale defeat of the Union War. Either Bragg wasn't *that* bad, or Rosecrans wasn't *that* good.
Lee’s inability to see the bigger picture with respect to Western Concentration and his influence on Davis is discussed in this book bsky.app/profile/olen...
Davis’ weird dislike of Johnston was one of the best weapons the Union had.
Joe Johnston understood that in hindsight 20 years later when he was writing his memoirs and when he was giving excuse after excuse not to use his armies to actually fight with them. The Joe Johnston during the war and the one after it seldom agreed on what Joe Johnston wanted to do.
On what basis from his actual field campaigns in Virginia and Georgia should he be believed that he would have fought Grant with Pemberton instead of retreating all the way to Florida, unfought, and giving the USA full access to the Mississippi unchallenged?
The fact that his aggressive actions at Bull Run were vital to winning the battle, and the fact that he lost command of the ANV leading an attack at Seven Pines? Johnston was willing to be aggressive when he had sufficient manpower or no better choice. He just rarely did.
So in other words when he'd brought the US Army to the very gates of Richmond, after endless promises that he'd for real for sure truly fight only to wimp out and withdraw without a shot fired? He was the one man capable of winning McClellan a war.
As I will continue to note the Cassville/Adairsville incident does not coexist with the Joe Johnston Joe Johnston said existed. If he really wanted to fight he would have found ways to force the issue. Hood and Bragg could make the AoT fight. If he didn't, it was because he didn't want to.
Hood got the AoT to fight at Peach Tree Creek. Fighting for the sake of fighting doesn't turn out great. But picking your battles, like Kennesaw Mountain and New Hope Church?
Yes, and Hood held Atlanta for a month in spite of marching the AoT to its destruction. Joe Johnston would have abandoned it and retreated with his intact army all the way to Mobile and surrendered there without a shot fired. He'd made plenty of fine promises of equal quality before, what happened?
He was sacked for retreating across most of northern Georgia with minimal fights and playing number games where Sherman lost heavily in one campaign and was back to full strength five minutes later. As harsh as it is, Bragg was a better army commander.
"Minimal fights" The Union commanders would disagree with this. The Union commanders would also have loved if Johnston had put his army at risk taking offensive action in northern Georgia, where it could be destroyed. Trying to force Sherman to make mistakes was the move. It almost worked.
And yet, at the end of the day, when he retreated to Atlanta with minimal bloodshed he recreated the same situation he did in Virginia in 1862 for the same reasons. Lee did better with the army he made than he did. Hood did worse because he faced Sherman, not Buell or Rosecrans.