>>12261027>tried to fight defensively - shouldn't haveIt's not that they shouldn't of fought defensively, they just shouldn't of fought defensively in the way they did. Joe Johnston was honestly the only one in the Confederate army that knew what should of been done strategically. Lee was way to aggressive and the commanders out west were all retarded for the most part, especially A.S. Johnston who managed to, in his extremely short time in charge of the Army of Tennessee managed to lose multiple vital forts, get kicked out of Kentucky, and BTFO'd at Shiloh. Bragg was actually decent all thing considered but every single fucking time he was doing decently his subordinates (primarily Polk) would start chimping out and ruin everything.
West still would of been a complete shitshow anyways even if the majority of the senior staff wasn't eating glue the entire war because it's the exact opposite of the Eastern theatre in terrain. In Virginia the rivers flow straight out to the sea, the Appalachian mountains are your western flank, the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay are your eastern flank, which means the only way to advance into Virginia is straight through a tiny choke point, round the Shennadoah and through the mountains, or by sea like McClellan tried. Compare this to Tennessee and the western theatre. Every river (roughly) flows north-south, you only have some of Appalachia as your eastern flank and the Mississippi to the west is more of a hinderance than anything since the Union can just sail down it at will. Then Tennessee itself and northern Mississippi & Alabama are all mostly flat and easy to march through, so any defense of the western theatre was going to be a mess and any attack northward would of just left them open to being cut off.
>>12261029>Muh Stonewalll!!!!! Jackson was a great general but the Eastern Theatre was only half of the war. If Jackson had survived Chancellorsville than at most the war would of lasted until mid-1866.
