The American Civil War was fought by some of the most famous military strategists of all time,
but not all of them had any business being in charge. Whether because of cowardice,
foolishness, or drunkenness, these are the generals who failed their troops.
Before the Civil War, Union Major General Benjamin Butler had served in both houses
of the Massachusetts State Legislature and was a longtime member of the state
militia. A born politician, he was better at negotiating in
the halls of Congress than he was at commanding troops on the battlefield.
Butler's main claim to fame was taking over as the military governor after the
successful capture of New Orleans. But then he earned the nickname "Beast Butler" after
instituting a law that practically legalized the abuse of Southern women by Union troops.
Butler's remaining action as commander included failures during the Bermuda Hundred campaign
and at Fort Fisher. During the former, he didn't maximize the potential advantage of a practically
undefended Petersburg and instead led a series of uncoordinated attacks that lost the city.
Then he was all but relieved from duty after a failed naval bombardment on Fisher in 1864.
Union Major General George McClellan has a controversial reputation among Civil War
historians. While he certainly gets credit for some early victories and for deftly organizing
the Army of the Potomac, his actual command on the battlefield left a lot to be desired.
One of McClellan's most infamous blunders happened early in the war,
when he had the Confederates outnumbered by 75,000 men, yet he still refused to attack.
He overestimated the enemy's strength and was fooled by fallen tree trunks
painted as guns. He was often too timid to actually push his troops into battle.
At one point, McClellan was even given a captured copy of Confederate General Robert
E. Lee's battle plans. But his failure to quickly send in his troops allowed
Lee to save his army from complete destruction at Antietam. Afterwards,
President Abraham Lincoln relieved McClellan of his command for good.
"General McClellan has been outthought and outfought."
Union Major General Ambrose Burnside's ability to style his sideburns was much
greater than his skill in commanding soldiers. When the Civil War broke out,
he quickly rose through the ranks to become a colonel. Yet he twice refused command of the
Army of the Potomac, acknowledging his own lack of experience, before finally accepting in 1862.
Maybe Burnside's superiors should've listened to him. He delayed attacking Confederate forces
during the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, before leading his troops into carnage at the
Battle of Fredericksburg a few months later. That led to nearly 13,000 Union casualties,
many of them due to reckless frontal assaults on Burnside's orders.
Burnside's later conduct during the Vallandigham Affair was also controversial after he ordered the
arrest and suspension of habeas corpus against Ohio antiwar Democrat Clement L. Vallandigham.
And while Burnside successfully liberated East Tennessee, his actions during the Battle
of the Crater that left his soldiers as sitting ducks led to his final departure from the army.
A commissioned officer of the Union Army, Confederate Major General John Bell Hood
resigned when the war began. He preferred to join the Confederacy, even though he was from Kentucky,
a state that was split but remained officially loyal to the Union. Hood performed exceptionally
well during the early part of the war, but he later lost the use of his arm and
had his leg amputated, and the remainder of his career was marked by ineptitude.
After pressuring Confederate officials, Hood was given command of the Army of Tennessee.
But then in Atlanta, he lost more than 30,000 men after four separate assaults on William
Tecumseh Sherman's troops were all repelled in brutal fashion. Then in Tennessee in 1864,
he led "Pickett's Charge of the West," during which he foolishly tried to have his troops
overrun a strong Union position, leading to an incredible loss of Confederate life.
Hood's army disintegrated after the Battle of Nashville,
when he oversaw another 6,000 casualties after failing to repel a Union assault.
He was then relieved of duty and transferred to Mississippi to report on military affairs.
"I do this under protest."
Confederate Brigadier General Gideon Pillow was both a lawyer and a veteran before the
Civil War broke out, and he stayed loyal to his native state of Tennessee and the
Confederacy. He initially performed well early in the war, but the wheels quickly fell off.
Pillow's commands at Fort Donelson and during the Battle of Stones River were
historically inept. At the former, his inexplicable decision to retreat
following a hard-fought victory against Union troops completely undid all of the
Confederate gains. Furthermore, when the defenses of the fort collapsed,
Pillow decided to abandon most of the men and flee rather than stand with them and be taken prisoner.
But that pales in comparison to what happened during Stones River,
when Pillow reportedly took cover behind a tree during the fighting,
once again essentially abandoning the men under his command. Unsurprisingly,
this was the last time that Pillow was given command of a Confederate field unit.
Union Major General Franz Sigel was perhaps the most unique general on either side of
the Civil War. A native of the Grand Duchy of Baden in what is now Germany,
he received his education at a German military academy. He came to the United States following
the 1848 German revolutions, setting up a school and joining the New York Militia.
Soon after the Civil War broke out, Sigel became a brigadier general in the Union
Army after showing bravery at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in the summer of 1861. However,
some of his fellow officers disputed his actions and considered him incompetent. He
continued to have a decent, if unspectacular, career until the Battle of New Market in 1864.
Even though he had more men and they were more experienced, Sigel's troops suffered
over 800 casualties. He was never able to escape the humiliation of losing to
a smaller army supplemented with teenagers. He was removed from command for almost the entire
last year of the war, and he resigned his commission just as the fighting was ending.
A native of North Carolina, a graduate of West Point, and a slave owner, Braxton Bragg
fit right in as major general in the Confederate Army. He performed well at the Battle of Shiloh,
and he was also exceptional at organizing and drilling his troops into fighting form.
However, Bragg's men detested his rancorous style of leadership,
and at one point they even tried to assassinate him. He was known for being salty and arrogant,
and he controversially ordered the execution of a teenage soldier.
"His personality was such that he couldn't get along with people."
The biggest negative marks on Bragg's record were his inability to follow up
on his victories. For example, during the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863,
he decided to retreat instead of pursuing the fleeing Union soldiers. This led to his
subordinates petitioning the Confederate president for Bragg's removal, though he stayed in command.
In the Civil War, there were two kinds of generals: military generals and political
generals. The latter earned their commissions based on their political reputations and were
often less than ideal at actually commanding troops on the battlefield. One such political
Union general was the former governor of Massachusetts, Major General Nathaniel Banks.
After gaining his commission, Banks immediately ran into trouble against Stonewall Jackson during
the Shenandoah Valley campaign, as the Confederates were able to steal massive
amounts of his troops' supplies from the field. At the Battle of Cedar Mountain,
Jackson once again defeated Banks, as the latter refused to retreat against a force three
times his size. Shortly thereafter, Banks was relieved from command and sent to do recruiting.
His final command was during the Red River Campaign, which was a complete
failure that left Louisiana in Confederate hands for the remainder of the war. He
also brought along political backers of his so that they could procure cotton,
making some believe that he was turning a military operation into a personal escapade.
Confederate Major General George Pickett is probably best known for the disastrous
"Pickett's Charge" during the Battle of Gettysburg, which resulted in thousands
of Confederate casualties in just a few hours. Pickett actually doesn't necessarily deserve as
much of the blame as his superiors, but his name is still synonymous with the failure.
Pickett fought well early in the war but was also known for leaving his troops to spend time
with the woman who would eventually become his wife. He was later responsible for the execution
of over 20 Confederate-turned-Union soldiers who were prisoners of war,
a clear and obvious war crime, though he escaped punishment.
Then during the Battle of Five Forks, Pickett abandoned his troops to eat
lunch and possibly drink whiskey, leaving them out of position and unable to receive
his instructions. That partly led to the final destruction of the Confederate Army,
hastening the end of the war. His widow later rehabilitated his image,
inaccurately painting him as a hero and making him a symbol of the "Lost Cause of the South" myth.
"George, can you take that ridge?"
While Union Major General John Pope may have had some early successes in the war,
his tenure later became so disastrous that he was removed from the fight entirely. His
background was that of a West Point graduate and Mexican-American War
veteran. Then during the Civil War, he was aggressive in operations in Mississippi,
as he captured thousands of prisoners, which led to his command of the Army of Virginia in 1862.
But Pope was always squabbling with his fellow commanders, and he was considered
arrogant by his soldiers and officers. Before the Second Battle of Bull Run,
Stonewall Jackson's troops managed to get behind Pope's men and capture the Union supply depot,
taking away precious supplies before destroying it. Later in the battle, Pope ordered multiple
doomed assaults, all of which were pushed back, and he eventually had to retreat.
At Bull Run, Pope lost nearly double the amount of troops as the Confederates did,
and his failure to contain Robert E. Lee led to the Confederate invasion
of Maryland at Antietam a few weeks later. This would be Pope's last Civil War command.
Even before the Civil War broke out, eventual Confederate Brigadier General John B. Floyd
had a tumultuous reputation. A former governor of Virginia and a slave owner,
he became the secretary of war for the United States in James Buchanan's administration. It
was during this time that he became a widely controversial figure. Accused by his critics
as corrupt and nepotistic, he resigned in 1860 under a cloud of suspicion for
potentially giving the Confederacy mounds of Union guns and supplies.
Floyd soon joined the Confederate Army as a political general. After being sent west,
his first command was at Fort Donelson, but he performed about as poorly as possible.
Outmanned and outgunned by Union troops, he made the cowardly decision to abandon the majority of
his troops and escape out the back door, leaving Brigadier General Gideon Pillow to take the fall.
This would prove to be the breaking point for Floyd as a commander.
Confederate President Jefferson Davis removed him from command
over his fecklessness in Donelson, and he died just a few months later.
Out of all the Union generals who served during the Civil War, there's a pretty good case to be
made that Brigadier General James H. Ledlie was the absolute worst. More of a political
general than a military general, his tenure was disastrous pretty much right from the start.
At first, Congress refused to even confirm Ledlie's initial promotion to brigadier general,
which could've been related to allegations that he'd accidentally fired upon his own
troops during the Battle of White Hall. His middling leadership continued through
the Battle of North Anna, where he may have even been drunk. But his ultimate failure
was at the Battle of the Crater in 1864. While his troops trudged to their deaths,
his cowardice got the best of him, and he ended up abandoning his men to get drunk in a bunker.
At this point, Ledlie's superiors had had enough of him. Put on sick
leave for several months, he resigned before ever being given another command.