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LACK OF PLANNIN 9 page

. EGO OVER SURVIVALone man’s ego had not gotten in the way of his good sense, there would be someone named Napoleon VIII or IX who at least held the title emperor of France. The mistake that prevented this from happening was made by Napoleon Bonaparte himself. And he made this mistake not during but after the Battle of Nations fought in October 1813 in and around the city of Leipzig.October 16, more than 175,000 soldiers from Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden had converged on the main French army consisting of about 160,000 soldiers. Napoleon had faced worse odds and won decisively, but something was different. This was after the massive losses incurred in the invasion of Russia, so the quality and training level of the French army was far below that of the Grande Armée before 1812. And if the French emperor’s weapon was inferior, his foes had gotten smarter. The allies had finally learned from the many times Napoleon had defeated them over the past two decades.had been doing well. In May, he defeated the main Prussian Army near Lützen, but a lack of cavalry meant he was unable to do more than drive them away. On May 20, 1813, he fought the Russians and gave them a beating as well. In fact, the French emperor was so successful that the allies all agreed to a truce that was mostly to the advantage of the French. This provided more time to train his new army and recruit new regiments. While the French trained, the allies concentrated their forces.truce was finally over on August 16, 1813, when Germany’s fanatically anti-Napoleon diplomat Metternich demanded terms he knew would be unacceptable to any Frenchman. The general opposing Bonaparte had found a winning strategy. If they could not beat Napoleon in a battle, they wouldn’t even try to. Instead, they would attack where he was not. Supply needs forced all armies of the period to separate a few days’ march apart. There were not enough rations or wagons to bring in food to an army of 100,000 men staying for any time in one location. So the Austrians, Prussians, and even the Swedes went after the French army’s dispersed corps., the former French marshal who had become the Swedish king and changed sides, Bernadotte, defeated Oudinot that August 23. Then General von Blucher and his Prussians beat the Napoleonic marshal MacDonald’s corps three days later. After that, Napoleon had no choice but to react to every move by any of the allied armies. For a while he held them all at bay, at the expense of exhausting his constantly marching soldiers. Marching as much as forty miles in a day, the French main army and Napoleon managed to reach Dresden, the capital of his Saxon ally, in time to drive off an Austrian attack. By October 15, Napoleon was preparing for yet another march, this time to meet von Blucher and his Prussian army, who were approaching Bonaparte’s base in Leipzig from the north. But just as that move started, word came that an even larger Austrian army was marching toward the French army’s position from the south. With far inferior numbers, Napoleon prepared to use a strategy he had successfully employed many times. He would defeat his enemies one at a time. This strategy at Leipzig, often called the Battle of Nations because just about every nation in Europe was involved, meant Napoleon had to first attack the Prussians in the north with the bulk of his army before the other forces approaching him could threaten the weak units facing them. If Napoleon could break through the Prussian line, scatter the army, and then turn south, he had a chance to roll up the allies’ armies one after another from north to south. But the Prussians would not cooperate. Even though outnumbered and taking significant casualties, they refused to retreat.that attack failed, Napoleon used his central position to shift his forces and attempted to break through the Austrians in the south. That 180,000-man army was almost as many men as were under Napoleon’s command. But the French had seen their emperor beat worse odds. Joachim Murat led 10,000 cavalry against the Austrians, and the horsemen tore through the line. But after the loss of horses in Russia there just weren’t enough horsemen left to exploit the breakthrough. Before the French infantry could follow up, the Austrian cavalry countercharged. The fresh riders drove the blown French horses back, restoring the line. Another cavalry charge might have broken through since the Austrian horses were blown, but there was simply no more French cavalry left. At the same time as the cavalry were fighting, von Blucher’s Prussians in the north pushed hard against the weak force left in front of them. Marshal Marmont and his soldiers fiercely defended their position. Around 9,000 soldiers from each side died that day fighting for the village of Mockern. The fighting ended when Marmont was seriously injured by the explosion of an ammunition wagon. Then the position being so stubbornly held by the badly outnumbered French infantry and gunners fell apart. But they had fought on until it was late in the day, too late for the Prussians to continue their attack.next day, both sides licked their wounds and waited for expected reinforcements. When the 6,000 men of the Saxon army changed sides and marched out to join the allies, French morale sagged. The Saxons had been the last ally fighting with them. When the Swedish army of more than 65,000 men also arrived to reinforce the allies, Napoleon decided on a fighting withdrawal. There were just too many allies for his tired and often poorly trained soldiers to stand off, much less attack. He was now outnumbered two to one. The first French units were able to pull out without any problem. Then the allies began to attack from all sides. In the end, none of the 30,000 men left as a rear guard made it out. Within a few days, Napoleon had barely 60,000 men in his retreating army, while the allies still had 300,000 soldiers on France’s borders and more coming.defeated army slowly retreated to France. Three weeks after Leipzig, on November 8, 1813, the allies offered the greatly outnumbered French emperor a peace settlement. France would have immediate peace and retain almost all of the land it had held in 1789. That was the year that the war had started. Napoleon would retain his throne, and everyone would agree not to attack one another anymore. Outnumbered more than five to one, his economy collapsing, with no more men available to call up and train, even his most devoted allies having changed sides, and all of Europe joining against him, Napoleon had a chance to retain his throne and end the killing. The offer showed how much the allies still feared him. The French emperor’s marshals urged him to accept the treaty. They felt that militarily there was no chance Napoleon could stop the inevitable. Bonaparte’s unquestionably brilliant campaign over the next few months showed they were correct. A string of amazing victories did little but slow the overwhelming number of armies invading France from all sides. Even the English and Spanish had crossed the Pyrenees and were marching up from the south.turning down this final peace offer, Napoleon made the one mistake that he could not correct. A mistake that cost him his throne, and by March 1814, Paris was under siege. He tried to return to power one more time, but that ended with the Battle of Waterloo. It was at Waterloo where another decision he made reverberated into defeat, sending the French emperor into an exile he would never return from.



. PUTTING THE WRONG MAN IN THE WRONG PLACEmany ways, the British victory at Waterloo was very much as the duke of Wellington described it in his report to Parliament: “a near run thing.” Until the last minutes, it could very well have been a French victory. When something is that close to succeeding, there are many things that could have been done differently that might have changed history. In the case of the Battle of Waterloo, perhaps the greatest factor was a personnel mistake made by Napoleon Bonaparte days earlier.returned from exile on Elba, Napoleon had just re-formed his Grande Armée, though more than ever this army was made up of newly trained recruits. On France’s border, every other nation in Europe was arming. Within days, the emperor would have to march out and defeat at least two armies as large as his. It was a time of decisions that would determine his future and that of France.leading the new Grande Armée north from Paris, Napoleon had to fill a number of command positions. The most important two positions were those of commander of his new army and who would control Paris, which was under martial law. Two men were considered to be commander of the French army under Napoleon. These were two experienced marshals: Michel Ney and Louis-Nicolas Davout. A comparison shows that these two soldiers were very different men:

• Courageous to a fault and often wounded. He was known as “the bravest of the brave.” He preferred to lead his men into the hottest part of the battle, often charging with his corps’ cavalry.

• Commanded a force that was sent to intercept Napoleon on his march toward Paris and instead joined his men to his emperor’s.

• Competent, but not intellectual. Impetuous and anxious to please. Not the best administrator.

• Loyal to Napoleon, reacting to situations rather than planning for them. But for a moment he had hesitated before changing sides from the king to Bonaparte, and this bothered him. Perhaps putting extra pressure on him to be a hero once again.

• Immensely popular with all of the soldiers.

• Brilliant, well organized, commanded the largest and best of Napoleon’s corps, the Third, for years.

• Loyal to Napoleon and equally so to France as a nation.

• A thinker and planner. The most competent administrator but not at all flamboyant.

• Commanded from the rear. Davout was very popular with his own men, but was not the common soldier’s hero that Ney was.’s decision was to put Davout in charge of Paris and have Ney command the army for him. When Davout protested, Napoleon explained that he needed his best man to hold the heart of France for him while he was away with the army. Davout responded that if he won battles, Paris was his, and if Napoleon lost battles, no one could save Paris.only chance the French emperor had to defeat the massive number of soldiers being rallied against him all over Europe was to defeat them one army at a time. Napoleon and the French army of the north first met the Prussians at Ligny on June 16, 1815. Napoleon proceeded to defeat the Prussians in a hard-fought battle and turned west to confront Wellington. To ensure he did not have to deal with the Prussians again, Napoleon sent a third of his army, more than 30,000 men commanded by Marshal Emmanuel, Marquis de Grouchy, to harass them and drive them back to Germany. His plan to defeat the more numerous allies in detail, taking on each force individually before they could unite, was off to a good start.Battle of Waterloo took place on June 18, two days after the Prussian defeat. Fighting began late in the morning due to wet ground. Cannon was less effective and cavalry at a disadvantage in soft mud. So the two armies sat and waited for the battlefield to dry. There was another difference in this battle from Napoleon’s victory at Ligny, beyond a slow start. Napoleon was ill. He had suffered from “piles,” a painful and debilitating illness for years, and it flared up the day of Waterloo. Thus he was forced to leave much of the actual commanding to Ney as his field commander. If he had not had this unexpected problem, Napoleon himself might have been more active on the battlefield and his selection of Ney would have had less effect.the midafternoon, the two equal-size armies fought and bled with no major effect. In a well-executed combined army attack, Ney captured La Haye Sainte, a fortified villa in the center of the battlefield. It was not until in the later afternoon that Wellington decided to march his infantry from their forward position to one behind a hill. This would protect them from the French artillery. As the day progressed, the ground had dried, allowing the round cannonballs to bounce and roll with deadly effect.was far behind the lines, and Ney, as usual, was close to the fighting. When he saw the British infantry begin to pull back and out of sight over the hill, he drew the conclusion that they were retreating. The best way to shatter an army that was beginning to retreat was to slash into them with a force they could not outrun, the cavalry. Without checking with Napoleon first, he saw a way to win the battle. Marshal Ney put himself at the head of more than 10,000 horsemen and charged. It was virtually all the riders still able to charge, and he led them after the “retreating” British foot.normal response by infantry of the day was to form a square of men who stood with their bayonets facing out on all four sides. This kept the cavalry at a distance, allowing others in the square to shoot at them. But the cavalry square was vulnerable to any infantry also attacking since it had only a quarter of its men facing in any one direction. A square of infantry is even more vulnerable to artillery fire, as the cannonballs and canister rounds wreaked havoc on the closely packed and motionless formation.there were not many unengaged infantry battalions nearby when Ney ordered the charge. Ney, impetuous as always, was more anxious to catch the fleeing British than to ensure a well-rounded attack. He did ask Napoleon to send infantry to follow up the attack, but there were few divisions left in reserve after the Prussians had appeared. So Napoleon had no infantry he could send to support Ney’s attack.’s lack of infantry support would not have been a problem if Wellington had actually been retreating. But the British were not running. They were just over the hilltop and quickly formed squares. Ney, his fighting spirit up, led charge after charge against those squares. French horse guns did come up and punish the British, but not enough to break them. There was no infantry to deliver a final blow. By the fifteenth or sixteenth charge, the French cavalry was so exhausted their horses walked up to the squares. Even without French infantry support, a few squares were broken and the soldiers in them slaughtered. Many of the British squares had as many wounded men sheltered in their centers as healthy ones who held the sides. It was recorded that some British units had lost so many men while facing the French cavalry that when they finally moved away, the location of the infantry square was marked clearly by the bodies left behind.was said to be furious when informed of the charge. With the Prussians approaching, he knew he had no infantry to support it. However, he and his guard were not ready to commit his last reserve. But there was no way to call back the attack and no way to stop Ney from charging time after time until the French horses were too blown to fight further.had pushed the Prussians from their rear, but was now tied up fighting a quarter of von Blucher’s Prussians with his third of the French army at Wavre. This left the rest of the Prussians to march toward Waterloo. When they appeared, Napoleon responded by sending his Young Guard to slow them. As the cavalry charges were ended due to the complete exhaustion of the horses, there still seemed a chance to at least drive off Wellington before enough Prussians arrived to guarantee defeat. So Napoleon Bonaparte turned to his last reserve. The Old Guard formed into massive columns and charged up the hill and toward the battered British and their Dutch allies.this point the Anglo-Dutch army was in bad shape. Some units were at less than half strength. Few British cavalry were capable of attacking, and the heart was gone from the Dutch units. It has to be remembered that less than two years before, these Dutch soldiers had been part of the Grande Armée, idolizing the French emperor they now fought. Wellington was quoted as saying all was lost unless they soon had the Prussians or sunset. Sunset was still a few hours away. He had no reserves left at all.Old Guard marched forward, hoping to smash through the punished British infantry. If they did, it was likely Wellington’s entire army would fall apart. Instead of breaking through, the guard’s massive columns were shot apart, and they were finally forced to retreat. When word spread that the Prussians had arrived and that the guard was retreating, it was Napoleon’s army of the north that dissolved. Victory or defeat had come down to the last fight between the French reserve and desperate British regiments.ill Napoleon had not been able to keep his impetuous second-in-command under control. Marshal Ney had ordered a charge with the last of the French uncommitted formation, its cavalry. Ignoring the fact that he was supposed to be commanding the entire French army, Ney charged over a hill and into the unknown. He expected to seal a victory and instead rode to defeat. If Napoleon had chosen the more competent and less impulsive Davout to lead his army, the Battle of Waterloo might well have ended as “a near run thing” that was a French victory. Had Napoleon Bonaparte won at Waterloo, he might well have been able to dictate a peace that could have kept him on the throne of France.

. INVITING IN THE ANGLOSMexican authorities allowed Anglo settlers into Texas in 1821, they believed it would be in their best interest. By letting outsiders develop land that the Spanish settlers did not want, the state would benefit from the cotton and cattle industries that were so prevalent in the southern areas of the United States. It seemed like an amicable arrangement, but Mexico got more than it bargained for.the most part, Mexico had a “no foreigners” policy, but they saw nothing wrong in allowing foreigners to populate remote areas. They adopted an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude toward the new settlers. This attitude was nothing new. In 1790, Anglo settlers moved to Spanish-owned Upper Louisiana. They were looking for a new life, and the Spanish were looking for people who could keep the Comanche and Kiowa at bay. There were three requirements for newcomers: They had to be Catholic, hardworking, and willing to become Spanish citizens. In 1821, when Mexico won its independence from Spain, the new government adopted the same policy.settlers came from all over the United States, enticed by cheap land and the promise of a better future. Back home, they had to pay dearly for land. The going rate in the United States was $1.25 per acre for a minimum of eighty acres. In Hispanic-owned Texas, settlers could purchase land for $0.04 per acre. In addition, the head of the family, whether man or woman, could claim 4,605 acres. The $184 needed to purchase the land could be paid over a six-year period.if this alone weren’t reason enough to lure settlers into Texas, there were others. Back in the United States, many settlers suffered foreclosures due to crop failures, or they were seriously in debt. Since there were no extradition laws between Mexico and the United States, people could escape their creditors by moving and settling in Mexican territory. Like the settlers on previously owned Spanish lands, new settlers in Texas had to become Catholic, and they had to take an oath of allegiance to Mexico. To most this seemed a small price to pay for a new life with a clean slate.man in particular, Moses Austin, saw great potential to make money by applying for an empresario grant, which involved bringing in new settlers. He planned on charging each settler $0.125 per acre and using the profit to restore his family’s finances. He received permission from the Spanish government to settle 300 families in Texas. Unfortunately, Austin died before he could even get the ball rolling on the venture. So, his son, Stephen F. Austin, inherited the contract.going through a great deal of bureaucratic red tape, the younger Austin finally received the go-ahead to bring families across the border. He encountered problems shortly after the colony settled. Texas had a shift in government. The Mexicans won independence from Spain in 1821. The former Spanish territory became Mexican owned. The settlers had a whole new government to deal with. The new government did not carry forward every policy.example, the African slave trade had been banned in Mexican-held lands. This posed problems for the white settlers in Texas who were used to making their profits off the backs of the African slaves. The settlers found a loophole. They were allowed to bring their family slaves into Texas, where they bought and sold them. This practice continued for years until it was finally banned. When the settlers heard rumors that the slaves might be emancipated altogether, they took the precaution of having their illiterate slaves sign ninety-year indenture contracts. They need not have worried. In 1829, when President Vicente Ramón Guerrero finally emancipated the slaves, Austin spoke to his politically savvy Mexican friends and got a government exemption for his settlers.’s payback for his attitude toward the slaves came in the form of a financial letdown. It turned out that empresarios did not own the land within their land grants and therefore were not allowed to make a profit from the land. So, the plan of charging settlers $0.125 per acre was foiled. He did find another way to make money. The perk of being an empresario came with the bonus of 23,000 acres per each 100 families that settled. By 1834, near the end of the empresario era, Austin settled 966 families and received 197,000 acres in bonus land. Since the bonus land legally belonged to him, he could sell it to the highest bidder.was not the only empresario in Texas. Many others came but were not willing to follow the restrictions laid down by Mexican authorities. You know the saying “Give them an inch and they take a mile”? Well, the white settlers took more than a mile. They treated the Mexican inhabitants as foreigners in their own land. They used any excuse they could to incite the Mexican government and cause trouble. However, credit must be given where due. Austin did send a militia group to help the Mexicans put down one rebellious empresario.Mexicans grew more and more nervous about the growing number of settlers coming into Texas. So, in 1830, the Mexican government passed a law prohibiting any further Anglo immigration. They also taxed the settlers heavily. This was likely to encourage as many as possible to leave again. All over Texas, settlers protested. Although Austin had usually sided with Mexico during these hostilities, he was arrested outside Mexico City. He had been petitioning the newly appointed general, Antonio López de Santa Anna, to reopen the borders to immigrants and lower the taxes. Austin spent almost a year in a Mexican prison for trying to incite insurrection.Anna proved to be a vindictive despot who antagonized just about everyone in Texas, regardless of race. When he arrived back in Texas in 1835, Stephen Austin found the state in near rebellion. Even though he had occasionally sided with the Mexican authorities, spending a year in prison established his credentials. Leading landholders held a convention and appointed Austin as their leader. After many battles against their Mexican overlords, the Anglo settlers finally won their independence at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836.lost a lucrative province when it lost Texas. They lost it because the majority of its residents had no loyalty to that country. Even in protest to Santa Anna’s restrictions on their liberties and high taxes, without the American settlers there would have been little chance the province would have separated. Perhaps instead of paying Anglos to settle Texas, they should have offered better incentives to their own people. It was a mistake that cost Mexico the territory of Texas and turned the United States’ gaze on that nation’s other northern territories. The world would be very different if everywhere from Texas to California were still part of Mexico.

. DO NOTHINGall of the mistakes in this book are actions. They tell about someone doing something wrong or having an accident that changed history. Along with commission there is also omission. Not doing something can be just as great a mistake as doing something very wrong.the decade before the American Civil War, the United States endured three presidents in a row who were simply not up to the job. The question of slavery, which was wrapped in the problem of states’ rights and federal jurisdiction, was the major issue of the 1850s. Yet despite the obvious importance of the problem, amazingly little was done to address it. Slavery was just not a topic that could be ignored or about which any agreement could easily be found. The United States was just about the last place in the modern world where slavery was still legal. Britain, France, and most of Europe had banned it. A look at the record of the three presidents who served from 1850 until Lincoln was elected demonstrates what a mistake it can be when you do nothing.Fillmore took office because Zachary Taylor made some stupid choices. On the Fourth of July 1850, President Taylor spent hours in the hot sun at the dedication of the Washington Memorial. He then went back to the White House and helped himself to a lot of cold water, a large bowl of cherries, and finally some iced milk. The problem with this was that Washington, D.C., was in the midst of a particularly virulent cholera epidemic. Cholera is transmitted through tainted water. Everyone had been warned not to drink the water, eat fruit washed in the city’s water, or have anything containing ice made from the city’s water. Taylor did all three and was dead four days later. This made his vice president head of the nation in one of its most troubling times. Fillmore was not as strong a leader or as decisive as his predecessor. Where Taylor had stopped the Clay Compromise, Fillmore saw it as a needed solution. This admitted California as a free state and tightened the laws in the north regarding the return of fugitive slaves. Since the Fugitive Slave Act was unenforceable in the abolitionist north, the south felt betrayed. The Clay Compromise ended up doing more harm than good. That was it. Fillmore did nothing else and was dropped by his party in 1852. More than two years were lost through inaction.Pierce was a last-minute candidate who first appeared on the thirty-fifth nomination vote at the Democratic Convention. That party was split between proslavery southern representatives and those who were just as vehemently abolitionists. Pierce was a doughface, a northerner who favored slavery. Pierce won the nomination and the presidency. But once in office, he proved totally ineffective in dealing with the slavery problem on any level.Pierce did more damage to what had been already worked out when he did try to act. When the issue of expansion of the United States into its western territories blew up over which would be free and which slave states, he helped Frederick Douglass destroy the Missouri Compromise. The citizens of Kansas and Nebraska were allowed to vote, slave or free. The resulting violence gave rise to the term “Bleeding Kansas,” and the split between north and south became greater. President Pierce was never again able to deal with the issue of slavery or much else. Mostly he went drinking and argued with his critics. By the end of his term, Pierce had proved himself abysmal at diplomacy and had a habit of substituting bluster for action. He alienated even his own party. In 1856 the motto of the Democratic Convention was “Anybody but Pierce.” When James Buchanan took office everyone forgot to get President Pierce to ride in the inaugural parade. He never did get to it. Because of Pierce, four more crucial years were lost, and the nation became more divided.Buchanan had been a really good trial lawyer and made a fortune at it. This was good as it gave him something to live on after being one of the worst U.S. presidents ever. He could not have come along at a worse time. When the problem of slavery had begun to overwhelm all other issues and split the nation, he proved to be a weak hand on the rudder of the ship of state. The former lawyer really got elected more for where he was during the election of 1856 than for who he was or what he stood for. While everyone else had gotten soiled over the violence resulting from the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Buchanan was ambassador to England. This made him just about the only generally popular and untarnished candidate the Democrats could field. The new Republican Party did well, but the Democratic machine managed to win just one more time. The problem then was that Buchanan had no idea what was going on. Once president, he was indecisive, and he fluctuated between proslavery and antislavery positions until he had alienated both sides. One is hard put to find any substantial accomplishments in any area by Buchanan, even at a time when the United States was tearing itself apart.a list of the worst presidents in history, all three from the 1850s make the top ten. Some argue James Buchanan was the worst while other historians hold out for Franklin Pierce. All three were totally ineffective at dealing with the most pressing problem of their day. By the time Abraham Lincoln replaced Buchanan as president, the nation was divided and was soon at war with itself. Three men who led the nation did nothing, and by doing nothing, they doomed the United States to a civil war and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

. STUBBORNthan 600,000 men on both sides died in the American Civil War. The war lasted nearly five years and devastated much of the southern United States. Had the Union won the first battle of the war, there is a good chance that the war might have ended within weeks when compromises were still possible. In the first battles of the Civil War, both sides struggled to understand command and maneuver. But one side was better armed than the other, and that helped make a difference.of the Union’s greater industrial capabilities, most people today are under the impression that the Union Army was always better equipped. This was certainly the case by 1862, but due to a mistake made by James Wolfe Ripley, as the chief of ordnance, this was not true at the start of the war.July 1861, Ripley took over the office that purchased all of the weapons and equipment used by the Union Army and Navy. He was sixty-seven years old at the time he was appointed chief. He had fought in the War of 1812, against the Creek and Seminole tribes under Andrew Jackson, and more recently in the Mexican War. He also had been working with ordnance and supply for more than thirty years before he became the top decision maker in that office. He was brought in because his predecessor was inefficient and unable to change with the times. Unfortunately for the Union armies, Ripley proved worse.as the war started and before the Battle of Bull Run (Manassas Creek), the British had completed changing over most of their army to using a new Enfield rifle. This left them with warehouses full of almost 100,000 perfectly usable rifled muskets. The British immediately contacted Ripley, as it was apparent that the U.S. government was going to need a lot of weapons quickly, and offered them to him. The mistake was that Ripley immediately and adamantly turned down the offer.were probably a number of reasons that the chief of ordnance did not take the British muskets. It cannot be forgotten that he had actually fought against the British in the War of 1812. Also, there was national pride. The stated reason that he turned down the weapons was “Buy American.” There is also the suspicion that Ripley stood to personally gain by limiting all purchases to American-made weapons. He held some ownership in a U.S.-based weapons company. But the real reason, his later actions showed, was that the man who determined for two years what the Union Army fought with was simply hidebound and opposed to any change.Ripley turned down the British weapons, they were quickly snatched up by the Confederacy. This meant that for the first months of the war, while Union units struggled with getting the right ammunition for a range of mismatched muskets, the Confederate troops were almost all armed with fairly modern muskets of the same caliber. They were, for those first months, better armed and more easily supplied than the Union soldiers they fought.Wolfe Ripley continued in his stubborn resistance to new ideas and weapons until removed from the top position in September 1863. In those two years, he resisted breech-loading weapons, refused to buy the Spencer or other repeating rifles, and kept the army from purchasing any substantial number of Gatling guns. Ripley did not cost the North a victory, but he made it harder to achieve by denying his side the most modern weapons and equipment. And it seemed he did this for no reason other than his own aversion to anything new or different. In a war that marked the beginning of modern technological warfare, Chief of Ordnance Ripley’s decisions slowed a Union victory more than the mistakes of any one general.


Date: 2015-02-16; view: 1020


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