Quick tour

• Click on the commanders' names for salient facts about them.
• click on battle names for a summary.
• click on biographies for more information.

1. Robert Anderson, hero of Ft. Sumter and Kentucky as well. He started in Kentucky without a single soldier, but he recruited the right man (Thomas) and put him in the right place (Camp Dick Robinson). See short biography.

2. William T. Sherman owed his position to the political power of his relatives. He was commander of the AotC for only one month before requesting to be removed. In that short period he made some poor decisions based on gross overestimates of the strength of the Confederate forces in Kentucky.  See short biography.

3. Don Carlos Buell was a methodical organizer and a poor politician. He turned the tide at Shiloh and saved Kentucky for the Union at Perryville. He was then hauled before a politically motivated court of inquiry which ended his military career. See short biography.

4. William S. Rosecrans was a brilliant tactician and a rather poor politician. He did good work at Iuka and Corinth, held on at Murfreesboro, and was the architect of the military masterpiece Tullahoma which effectively took Tennessee out of the Confederacy. His subsequent flanking movement pushed the Army of Tennessee into Georgia and established Union control over the crucial East-West railroad. However, he overreached himself at Chickamauga. See short biography.

5. George H. Thomas, an astute non-politician, won every one of his engagements starting with Mill Springs which was the first major Union victory of the Civil War. He is known as the Rock of Chickamauga where he saved the Union army, but he was equally solid beforehand under Rosecrans, and afterward during the Dalton to Atlanta and Atlanta campaigns. He was at his most creative at Chattanooga and Nashville. Finally, Thomas planned the largest cavalry raid of the war which took Selma and captured Davis. See short biography. Available also the complete 1882 biography Life of Major General George H. Thomas by Van Horne.

6. Joseph Hooker, an honorary member of this group. He came from the east with the 20th Corps to reinforce Thomas at Chattanooga and provided the intelligence and drive which allowed Thomas to carry out his original plan of attacking the Confederate right at Rossville Gap. This succeeded in the face of mismanagement on the part of Grant and Sherman's failure on the left.

7. Braxton Bragg, the determined opponent of Buell, Rosecrans, and Thomas.

8. Ulysses S. Grant, the determined opponent of anyone who could possibly get between himself and high command.