Saturday, August 25, 2012

Wittenberg & Warren

Having an extremely poor opinion of historians who seek to be politically correct at the expense of objectivity, and after discovering what seems to be a lie on the first page of his book on Sheridan, I will have difficulty reading anything else by him. Maybe this is something like being down on Sheridan for saying the only good Indians are dead, but it doesn't feel the same. Perhaps someone would need both Wittenburg's book and Hutton's to be able to see what I've seen, but I did quote the salient parts and I would be very interested in reading a defense of the words I quoted from Wittenburg's first page -- by an admirer of Wittenburg.


As to Warren, Grant observed a pattern that he didn't like and warned Sheridan of it. Sheridan removed Warren when he didn't see Warren doing what he was told during battle. He didn't court-martial him, he removed him and put someone in his stead whom he had more confidence in. Warren asked for a court of inquiry claiming he didn't do anything wrong. In reading Grant's critique of Warren, one can see how Warren would hold that belief, and even Grant's words don't put it in those terms, i.e., that Warren does wrong things. Warren dithered over a multitude of "right things" which meant (1) that he wasn't always performing as quickly as his commanders would like and (2) his analysis of what other commanders ought to be doing was not his responsibility.

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