General Officers in The Confederate States Army - General (Full General)

General (Full General)

Originally five officers in the South were appointed to the rank of general, and only two more would follow. These generals occupied the senior posts in the Confederate Army, mostly entire army or military department commanders, and advisers to Jefferson Davis. This rank is equivalent to general in the modern U.S. Army, and the grade is often referred to in modern writings as "full general" to help differentiate it from the generic term "general" meaning simply "general officer".

All Confederate generals were enrolled in the ACSA to ensure that they outranked all militia officers, except for Edmund Kirby Smith, who was appointed general late in the war and into the PACS. P.G.T. Beauregard, had also initially been appointed a PACS general but was elevated to ACSA two months later with the same date of rank. These generals outranked all other grades of generals, as well as all lesser officers in the Confederate States Army.

The first group of officers appointed to general were Samuel Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and P.G.T. Beauregard, with their seniority in that order. This ordering caused Cooper, a staff officer who would not see combat, to be the senior general officer in the CSA. That seniority strained the relationship between Joseph E. Johnston and Jefferson Davis. Johnston had been the only general officer in the U.S. Army who left for the South, so he considered himself the senior officer in the Confederate States Army and resented the ranks that Davis had authorized. However, his position in the U.S. Army was staff, not line, which was evidently a criterion for Davis regarding seniority and rank in the Confederate Army.

On February 17, 1864, legislation was passed to allow Davis to appoint an officer to command the Trans-Mississippi Department, with the rank of general in the PACS. Edmund Kirby Smith was the only officer appointed to this position. Braxton Bragg was appointed a general in the ACSA with a date of rank of April 6, 1862, the day his commanding officer Albert Sidney Johnston died in combat.

The Congress passed legislation in May 1864 to allow for "temporary" general officers in the PACS, to be appointed by Davis and confirmed by the Senate, and given a non-permanent command by Davis. John Bell Hood was appointed a "temporary" general on July 18, 1864, the date he took command of the Army of Tennessee in the Atlanta Campaign, but this appointment was not confirmed by the Congress, and he reverted to his rank of lieutenant general in January 1865. In March 1865, Hood's status was spelled out by the Confederate Senate, which stated:

Resolved, That General J. B. Hood, having been appointed General, with temporary rank and command, and having been relieved from duty as Commander of the Army of Tennessee, and not having been reappointed to any other command appropriate to the rank of General, he has lost the rank of General, and therefore cannot be confirmed as such.