Don Wildman

There's all the normal sounds of night.

Crickets, cicadas, frogs, an owl hoots in the trees.

And then there's that hissing under the captain's cot.

He bolts upright, dives into the night a split second before a 12-pound artillery shell detonates, shredding his tent with shrapnel.

Enemy attack?

Hardly.

In fact, one of his own men had planted the explosive with intention to harm, if not kill.

How awful do you have to be at leading men for one of your own to try and murder you?

And how does such a dreadful officer live to lead another day, only to be finally named general?

General.

Hey, it's American History Hit.

Thanks for listening.

I'm Don Wildman.

Across the span of America's wars, in which so many citizen soldiers have courageously fought and died, the leaders of those wars, the generals, are so often brilliant at executing strategy, supply, and even political maneuvers.

Today's episode isn't about them.

Instead, it's about the blunderers, the overreachers, the outmatched and outsmarted, the disastrous decision-makers who put their forces and their nation into harm's way with what proved to be, well, general ineptitude.

Who were America's worst generals?

Today, we look at a few outstanding examples of those who, if history is our guide, had no business calling the shots.

And we'll proudly do it with a returning voice in such matters, Professor Cecily Zander of the University of Wyoming, author of a new book just out there on the horizon entitled Abraham Lincoln and the American West coming out at the end of this summer.

as well as Army Under Fire, Anti-Militarism in the Civil War.