From: whale@leland.Stanford.EDU (Stephen Schmidt)
Subject: Re: Grant in the East (was Jackson at the Seven Days)
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 92 00:11:24 GMT

In article <tecump.724370535@sulu> tecump@sulu.ucsb.edu (Dominic J. Dal bello) writes:
>whale@leland.Stanford.EDU (Stephen Schmidt) writes:

>um, i dont think so, although politically correct.  when meade first
>took over the Army of the Potomac, he was not the senior general.  Meade had
>only been a division commander 6 months before, a corps commander at 
>Chancellorsville, and then army com'd'r at G-burg.

He was, nonetheless, the second-ranking corps commander. Turnover in the
Army of the Potomac high command was exceedingly high, largely because
many officers (Couch, Franklin) refused to serve under Hooker and were
transferred.
The ranking corps commander was John Reynolds: the command was first
offered to him and he declined it. See below.

> There are several 
>instances in which the "senior officer" did not command.  I.e., at
>Chickamauga, Longstreet was senior to Bragg, but Bragg commanded the army.
>it is interesting to not that the confederacy used "temporary" ranks 
>sometimes for their army commanders.  

First, this point is right but the example is wrong: Bragg was a full
general while Longstreet was only a lieutenant general. (See R.H. Zimmerman
"Unit Organizations of the ACW" for a complete OOB at Chickamauga.) A
better example is the case where Reynolds agreed to serve under Meade as
corps commander in AotP, or a similar but not identical example at
Chancellorsville where Rodes agreed to turn 2nd Corps over to Stuart.
In all such cases the ranking general had to give permission to be placed
in a subordinate role. I don't know if Burnside would have accepted this
possibility, but I somewhat doubt it.
>
>feel he was up to it, but if he was called, he would go.  The command of
>the army is appointed by the President, and Meade wouldve commanded 
>anyway.

The command of THE army is appointed by the President but the command of
a field army (ie, AotP, Army of the Cumberland, etc.) is not. It falls
to the senior general assigned to that field army. You can always pull
shenanigans here: for example, for 2nd Bull Run, most of AotP had been
sent to Pope but McClellan had not been ordered to proceed there, if he
had the battle would have been under his command and the (badly deluded)
administration wanted Pope to command. So they just sent all McClellan's
units to him :) but didn't send Little Mac along.

>"best".   besides, Lincoln couldve predated Meades commision.

You _can_ but it's a very touchy thing to do. See what happened when Jeff
Davis and Joe Johnston began bickering over the relative seniority of
Johnston's commission. (Not the exact same case, but the point is the same.)

>an interesting bit of trivia:  
>at Wilsons Creek, the Federals had 1 general (Lyon) who
>was killed.  command of the army went to Major Schofield(?), not to any
>of the colonels in command of the various regts.
>
Hm, I ought to look this up. I have a suspicion this is due to Schofield's
commission being in the Regular Army rather than in the volunteers, but I'm not
familar with the battle at all...
-- 
Steve Schmidt			<><		   whale@leland.stanford.edu
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist
indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist
conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa