Beauregard

[Brochgale]

I was reading some online history stuff and read that Beauregard wanted to invade Marland and attack Washington after Bull Run 1 but was forbidden from doing so by Davis much to Bearegards chagrin?

What I am looking for is corroborating material that supports this as I have not been able to find anything in my own collection that backs this up and I have lost the original link where I read this historical point of interest to me!

I had always read that the CSA was unable to follow up its victory at Bull Run 1? Now I have read something that suggests that Davis had to clip Beauregards wings?

[Bo Rearguard]

I've seen this subject covered in the first book of Shelby Foote's excellent Civil War trilogy: Fort Sumter to Perryville. (page 121) In the weeks after Bull Run, General Beauregard wanted to make a sudden thrust across the Potomac and divide the Union, east and west, by seizing the territory between Pittsburgh and Lake Erie. When the Yankees came out from the entrenchments around Washington he would administer the blow that would complete the disintegration of the Federal Army begun at Bull Run. The odds were long he admitted, but they were shorter than they would be anytime in the future when enemy had time to gather strength and confidence.

Davis heard him out in a meeting at Fairfax Courthouse near the Bull Run battlefield, but nixed the plan when Beauregard declared he needed 50,000 men for the move. (General Johnston was also at this meeting and held out for 60,000) In 1861 with ominous Federal amphibious movements wherever Davis looked, he would have had to strip one area for removal of troops to another exchanging possible success for probable disaster. The manpower at the time just wasn't in the cards.

Interesting idea...sort of a reverse Anaconda Plan.

[Colonel Dreux]

Interesting stuff. I had never heard about this, and I'm a big P.G.T. Beauregard fan, being from Louisiana and all.

Bum rushing D.C. after Bull Run, in hindsight, probably would not have been a bad idea. Woo the bulk of the forces out of D.C. and then hit them with a sledgehammer.

Sustaining any kind of drive into Western Pennsylvania would have been logistically difficult though.

Beauregard was a much more competent defender than attacker though, at least as far as the Civil War goes.

[Brochgale]

Bo Rearguard

Thanks for the info. I will follow it up. I always wondered at the Political dimension between CSA Generals and thier relationship or lack of one with Davis - especially in 1861 when it seemed to me the CSA made so many mistakes.

[Bo Rearguard]

Luckily for the South, Davis didn't spar much with Robert E. Lee

It seems it didn't take much to get on Jefferson Davis' bad side. It only took a newspaper article in which Beauregard suggested that the Confederate army would be in Washington already if his original plan of attack before the Bull Run battle had been adopted. At that point the letters from Davis became rather frigid in tone and Beauregard's star began to fall. Quite a contrast to Lincoln who perhaps indulged prima donnas too much.

Jeff Davis' puzzling attachment to the mercurial General Bragg is another mystery.

[Jim-NC]

Luckily for the South, Davis didn't spar much with Robert E. Lee

It seems it didn't take much to get on Jefferson Davis' bad side. It only took a newspaper article in which Beauregard suggested that the Confederate army would be in Washington already if his original plan of attack before the Bull Run battle had been adopted. At that point the letters from Davis became rather frigid in tone and Beauregard's star began to fall. Quite a contrast to Lincoln who perhaps indulged prima donnas too much.

Jeff Davis' puzzling attachment to the mercurial General Bragg is another mystery.

Bragg probably had incriminating pictures. Or maybe some video Davis didn't want aired about that bachelor party.

[Colonel Dreux]

Luckily for the South, Davis didn't spar much with Robert E. Lee

It seems it didn't take much to get on Jefferson Davis' bad side. It only took a newspaper article in which Beauregard suggested that the Confederate army would be in Washington already if his original plan of attack before the Bull Run battle had been adopted. At that point the letters from Davis became rather frigid in tone and Beauregard's star began to fall. Quite a contrast to Lincoln who perhaps indulged prima donnas too much.

Jeff Davis' puzzling attachment to the mercurial General Bragg is another mystery.

Jefferson Davis gets a bit of a bad rap I think. He had served in the Mexican War (which is probably where his attachment to Bragg came from), he wasn't a fire-eater, and he had been the United States' Secretary of War. He probably knew what he was doing more so than Lincoln, at least when it came to fighting a war.

He also was smart enough to not appoint R.E. Lee as overall commander in the East and gave him the task of organizing the army and finding officers. He did a pretty good job with that, I think.