BCOF Preparations of War

I’ve never really thought about what it takes to go to war—the supplies needed and where those supplies are going to come from. I mean, supplies to make uniforms, guns and artillery, as well as the machines to repair them. I found the chapters from BCOF that dealt with the early days of the war quite fascinating. The North hadn’t decided on a color for a uniform, so there were many different colors. Even the flags had to be changed so they didn’t look so much alike. McPherson writes about many of the details that I have never even thought of. He writes, “The United States has usually prepared for its wars after getting into them. Never was this more true than in the Civil War” (p. 312). But I ask the question, how does one truly prepare for war? You can prepare for what you think will happen, but you never really know what your opposition is up to. I guess it’s like a chess game—you always try to be one step ahead of your opponent. The appointed leaders seemed to be a little unprepared for the war, too. President Lincoln appoints George McClellan to take over the retiring Scott, and he is very optimistic of how the war will be won. After the reality of was sets in, he seems to become a bit of a coward, not willing to make decisions. When things go awry, he blames others. I had to smile about him calling President Lincoln “a well meaning baboon” and thought about what would have happened to him in today’s world. General Stanley McChrystal has just recently resigned from his post in the Afghanistan War because of voicing what he felt about President Obama’s handling of the war. We live in different times. Jefferson Davis even had problems with some of his leaders. They all had their own ideas of how the war should be fought. I guess that all of the leaders on both sides finally agreed on one thing—the war was going to last a lot longer than anyone expected.