General Officers in The Confederate States Army - Legacy

Legacy

The CSA lost more general officers killed in combat than the Union Army did throughout the war, in the ratio of about 5-to-1 for the South compared to roughly 12-to-1 in the North. The most famous of whom is General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, probably the most well-known Confederate commander after General Robert E. Lee. Jackson's death was the result of a friendly fire incident at Chancellorsville on the night of May 2, 1863. Replacing these fallen generals was an ongoing problem during the war, often having men promoted beyond their abilities (a common criticism of officers such as John Bell Hood and George E. Pickett, but an issue for both armies), or gravely wounded in combat but needed, such as Richard S. Ewell. The problem was made more difficult by the South's depleting manpower, especially near the war's end.

The last Confederate general in the field, Stand Watie, surrendered on June 23, 1865, and the war's last surviving general, Edmund Kirby Smith, died on March 28, 1893. James Longstreet died on January 2, 1904, and was considered "the last of the high command of the Confederacy."

The Confederate Army's system of using four grades of general officers is currently the same rank structure used by the U.S. Army (in use since shortly after the Civil War), and is also the system used by the U.S. Marine Corps (in use since World War II.)