Talk:William H. C. Whiting

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Military history: Biography / North America / United States / American Civil War

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In December 1861, Whiting apparently pissed off President Davis, who ordered him reduced to Major and sent to serve as an engineer under Jackson in the Valley. (OR, volume 5, page 1011.) But in February 1862, Johnston refers to a report from General Whiting. (v 5, p 1075.) Does anyone know what happened in the meantime? There is no reference in the OR to Davis reversing his decision. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.160.250.253 (talk) 19:12, 8 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

--Whiting did indeed piss off Davis, contriving to land a letter on the President's desk in which Whiting describes Davis' desire to brigade regiments by state as, "a policy as suicidal as foolish," and refusing to accept command of an all-Mississippi brigade. Whiting's letter never made it into the OR, but D.S. Freeman quotes the letter, citing the Southern Historical Society Papers, v. 26, p. 151.

It is possible that Whiting was a Brigadier and a Major at the same time; for most of the war the Confederates had two parallel organizations, the Confederate Regular Army and the Provisional Army of the Confederate States. The PACS offered higher levels of promotion, which appears to have been Whiting's primary interest, while the ACSA was effectively a shadow command structure used to ensure that full generals like Robert E. Lee would always outrank militia generals. Davis' response to Whiting's letter, conveyed through Judah Benjamin, may have been a not-so-subtle reminder that the President could easily "demote" Whiting by assigning him back to engineering duties under his ACSA rank.

Whiting himself, being a highly ambitious martinet, repeatedly attempted to pull rank over his equals by erroneously asserting that graduating first in his class at West Point put him ahead of all other generals of equal rank. After being attached to Jackson's force just prior to the Peninsular battles, Whiting reputedly lectured Jackson endlessly, feeling entitled to do so because he had graduated West Point a year earlier than Jackson and first in his class. Rumors of jealousy, insubordination, drunkenness, and timidity earned Whiting a quick transfer to North Carolina, where potentially talented but malcontented generals such as himself and Harvey Hill were put out to pasture for much of the war. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.62.151.65 (talk) 18:41, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]