Best Generals in US History?

[Bill Richter]

Just for the heck of it, I will also nominate William S Rosecrans. He suffers because he and US Grant got into an argument over Iuka, Miss, that plagued him after Chickamauga, but from a theoretical viewpoint, using the theories of the Baron Jomini, allegedly the real theorist behind Civil War Generals through his analysis of the Campaigns of Napoleon I, Rosecrans maneuvered Bragg out of Middle Tennessee to below Chattanooga in the 1863 Tullahoma campaign without hardly firing a shot. That was the essence of a good textbook Civil War general and why most generals were like McClellan. As Lincoln put it, they all "had the slows." It is also why we remember Grant, Lee, Jackson, Forrest, and the real fighters--they were really rare, especially early in the war. It also speaks to the fact that the Germans never feared any British or American general but Patton--he was daring and fought in a true blitzkrieg style. As for Scott, he was brilliant in every war from 1812 to 1848, as evidenced in the Duke of Wellington's praise for his campaign on Mexico City, and smarter than Lincoln and McClellan would have liked to admit in 1861.