well sire,
I can't speak for the rest of them dead blue bellies, but, I suspect it had something to do with that AIRHEAD General Burnside who commanded the Union Forces at Fredericksburg when he sent regiment after regiment up an open sloped, clear field of sight called Marye's Heights and the troops were just mercilessly slaughtered by the Alabama boys behind the stone wall along the sunken road.
29 regiments went up there and almost all left the field with over 50 % casualties eventually.
The Gray soldiers at Gettysburg almost won that fight and easily could have were it not for poor Generalship, something that was not seen in battles before.
Lee's EGO got in the way. He believed his men were invincible and could carry the battle in spite of overwhelming odds against them.
Had he listened to Longstreet and allowed him to follow through with his suggestion to scout the left flank of the union army at night and then move stealthily to where the Yanks were not, they could have swept the entire line called the fishhook.
It was a slaughter at Fredericksburg and at Gettysburg both.
Cold Harbor was another slaughter pen that the confederacy laid on the Blue outside of Richmond.
15,000 dead and wounded BLuecoats in less than 30 minutes.. Grant should have been fired and relieved of command at that point.
He thought that because he had twice as many soldiers, he could just keep sending fresh bodies into an enclosed rectangularfield that was buttressed on three sides with breastworks and several Reb regiments behind each wall firing at will on the yankee army. Grant just kept sending them in.....
I have walked these battlefields several times now... Each time it sends chills down my spine realizing the noise, the smoke, the knowledge that anyone entering these killing fields was not likely to survive or be maimed for the remainder of their life.
Terrible things that should not have happened....
At Gettysburg, Bobby Lee did not extend an invitation to Meade for TEA. I think that might have been it. Of course Jubal Early failed to drive off the union troops from Cemetary Hill when he arrived and had clear numerical superiority. He could have taken the defensive line and scattered that whole army....
ME?
I personally LOVE southern hospitality!
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