Author Kerby’s first “impression” is quoted verbatim:

“One fundamental flaw in Confederate grand strategy, a flaw which effectively condemned to failure the South’s attempts to hold the Mississippi and to preserve the integrity of the Confederate States, was the naïve and fatal assumption that the River constituted a natural boundary to divide military departments. Unlike the Federals, who appreciated that the River itself was the proper focus for operations in the Mississippi Basin and the central terrain features around which military jurisdictions should be constructed—and who, therefore, permitted Banks and Grant to exercise command on both sides of the water—the Rebels separated responsibilities for the supervision of the eastern and western banks. While Union generals easily shifted their own forces from one shore to the other as required, efforts to transfer Confederate troops, prior to the capitulation of Vicksburg, first required extensive coordination between distant and semiautonomous departmental headquarters, none of which were normally inclined to dispatch their own soldiers elsewhere. Ultimate responsibility for such transfers was lodged in Richmond’s War Department, a situation which, considering the quality of Confederacy’s communications, was absurd. The Confederates immeasurably increased the vulnerably of the entire trans-Appalachian South by casually drawing a dotted line down the Mississippi River. Once Vicksburg fell, of course, the issue was moot.”

Was General Kirby Smith responsible for this critical flaw also? I think not.