Quote Originally Posted by Ardri View Post
Hood was an outstanding division commander (corps as well I believe), but my civil war history is not nearly as sharp as it use to be.

I will say that when you have the Texas Brigade in your division it is easy for a division commander to look good! Haha, maybe a little bias to my state.
Hood is a classic example of the Peter Principle: "In any given hierarchical structure, a person will rise to his/her highest level of incompetence and stay there." In other words, a person who does well at a job will be promoted, until they get to a job that he/she doesn't do well, and then he/she will cease being promoted, but will not be demoted, and will just continue to do his/her new job incompetently. That's Hood in a nutshell. He was outstanding with smaller detachments, but as he rose through his promotional ranks, he became less and less effective. He still did well enough to be promoted to replace a cautious Johnston in the Atlanta campaign, and proceeded to agressively play into Sherman's numerical advantage by directly attacking the Union forces, thereby destroying his own. (Shades of Varro and Paulus, anyone?)