Thread by @pptsapper

The more I study history, the more I'm convinced that the US Army officer corps is the biggest bunch of drama queens in the business

The literal fate of the country could hang in the balance and they're *still* arguing over rank, precedence, or who snubbed who

Thread, of course

Starting off at the very beginning, you got the ones who set the stage for 245 years of petty backstabbing: the Continental Army, where practically all the officers are intriguing against each other and G Washington is rubbing his temples like "I swear to fucking God, y'all"

This is the Army where little Lt James Wilkinson, a pure sonofabitch, manages to get MajGen Gates and BrigGen Arnold so FURIOUS with each other at Saratoga that Gates basically dismisses then arrests Arnold for FOLLOWING HIS OWN ORDERS. Arnold, of course, gonna do his own thang

Don't forget the LITERAL OFFICER UPRISING against Washington in 1783 in Newburgh, CT, as the war is LITERALLY OVER and jealous officers want to have their due

Thanks to GW's talking skillz, it's mitigated. But the stage is set. The US Army gonna stress about rank FOREVER

By the War of 1812 it's a nightmare, because no one's super duper defined rank precedence between Militia, Volunteers, & Regulars. And whoooo boy, that's gonna play out in upstate NY when three different commanders at the same spot are all going to try to invade Canada separately

That obviously doesn't play out well and there's poor Winfield Scott like "I just wanna fight the British" but the colonels and generals spend half their time fighting each other AND fighting with the US Navy who want Army protection for their base at Sackett's Harbor

Once again, who needs enemies when you have the US officer corps to fight each other, right?

Scott's gonna learn this lesson AGAIN in the War of 1846-48, where volunteer officers like Gideon Pillow are gonna be a major pain in his ass and also President Polk because.....

Polk is super worried that Scott's popularity with the troops will cause Scott to run against him in the election, so he withholds support for him. Pillow, meanwhile, is writing to Polk to tell him that HE is the great victor, not Scott. Scott gets tired of the insubordination..

And court martials Pillow WHEREUPON Polk nixes it because he likes taking the shit outta Scott.

Pillow, btw, is gonna go traitor and be one of the very few officers EVER to praise Braxton Bragg

Which BRINGS ME TO THE INTER WAR YEARS

Braxton Bragg is the perfect example of the petty bickering of the US Army from 1848-1861. Promotions were hard to come by in a tiny army, so everyone was watching their own back. Bragg was watching his back, his front, his imaginary friend's back, you name it

Bragg was so contentious that while the quartermaster of a small garrison that he was also the acting commander of, he literally DENIED HIS OWN request for supplies

His returning CO said "My God, Bragg, you've argued with every man in this Army & now you've argued with yourself"

And then... The Civil War. Oh the Civil War. You've got General in Chief Halleck conspiring against literally ALL of his subordinates. But the Army of the Potomac takes the cake. The Real Officers of the Army of the Potomac is a show I would 110% watch.

McClellan gets Winfield Scott pushed aside. Surrounds himself with friends, like poor Fitz John Porter, who ends up assigned to Pope's army in 1862, where Porter openly mocks Pope, who then court martials him in NOV for following Pope's own orders leading the defeat @ 2 Bull Run

This court martial is AFTER Antietam where Porter convinces McC not to commit his own corps & defeat Lee, & poor little LT James Wilson tries to convince a wounded Joe Hooker to take command of the Army from McC to drive Lee into the Potomac, just as McC had done to Scott

Hooker elects not to but then is all about scheming against McC after the battle where Lincoln sacks McC in favor of Burnside, who loses the faith of the whole AoP in about two months, & Hooker sees his chance, does some conniving & ends up taking command of the AoP himself BUT

...Loses it after Chancellorsville in '63 LARGELY BECAUSE OF THE TRADITION HE HIMSELF ESTABLISHED of going straight to POTUS and the War Dept to lobby about Army command

Just delicious

Poor George Meade, the least political guy of the bunch, has to take care of all these babies

Like Dan Sickles, III Corps Commander, who shot his wife's lover (Francis Scott Key's son) & got Ed Stanton to plead insanity for him. It worked. Dan lost his leg at Gettysburg but damn.

The War of 1898 is literally just political infighting. That's all it is. Some stuff happens in Cuba and the Philippines, mostly involving dying of disease. Everyone else is just chasing rank. Including ex-Confederates brought back to make the south feel a part of things

And then WWI... Hell. Marshall deserves the MoH for handling Pershing's ego, because Pershing's solution was just to fire division commanders that weren't attacking fast enough & to try to start wars with the French & British

Not limited to Pershing, tho. MajGen Clarence Edwards disliked Pershing so much & was so absolutely OVER dealing with the War Department that he sailed his 28,000 man NG division to France without telling anyone

That is a level of spite I aspire to

Then the interwar years, where the cavalry branch chiefs threatened anyone with court martial for saying that horses would not be used in the next war Mac and Patton curried favor with POTUS by attacking a camp of WWI veterans protesting the War Department & Congress

Speaking of Mac, and pettiness, he bounced from the Philippines in '42 to Australia, where he told his subordinates still there to attack and defeat the Japanese, despite being starving and outgunned. Then had the balls to try to block Wainwright's Medal of Honor after the war

He also refused to speak with or even acknowledge General Sharp, another of his subordinates who had surrendered on the Philippines in order to save as many lives as he could.

It's no wonder that he then got a god complex in Korea & openly shit talked POTUS, who fired him

So, uh, yeah. Not even gonna touch Vietnam and GWOT and the massive collection of finger pointing memoirs out there. Suffice to say, the US Army has a tried and true tradition of officers being drama llamas