Posts Tagged ‘Robert E. Lee’

Twilght of the Confederacy

by Mojambo ( 130 Comments › )
Filed under History at May 15th, 2014 - 12:00 pm

The 40 days (May 5 – June 12 ) 1864 Overland Campaign in Virginia – were unprecedented in American military history in terms of bloodshed. In my opinion Robert E. Lee did his best generalship of the entire war during 1864. General Lee was ill and in more danger of dying of a heart attack than by Yankee bullets (he did die 6 1/2 years later at the age 63). Lee was without Stonewall Jackson (died May 10, 1863) and without Lt. General James Longstreet (his finest corps commander, even surpassing Jackson) after his wounding on Day 2 of The Wilderness (Longstreet was wounded by his own men just like Jackson and after a successful flank attack too), added to the loss of so many experienced brigade and divisional commanders, Robert E. Lee more than ever carried the burden of command. Nevertheless, Lee anticipated and blocked just about every move Grant made. Lee was forced to fight on the defensive after The Wilderness and being a trained engineer with a keen eye for topography, he used the terrain perfectly. Eventually though Lee ran out of men and combined with Grant’s tenacity and strategic skill it was too much to overcome and the Army of Northern Virginia was literally starving at the end. Ironically the simultaneous campaign to Atlanta conducted by Major General William T. Sherman and his opponent (General Joseph E. Johnston until relieved by the ignorant Jefferson Davis) was one of maneuver and not a lot of “hammering”. Grant made one major mistake and that was ordering the attack to be made at Cold Harbor on June 3, 1864, otherwise his generalship was impressive and Robert E. Lee acknowledged it at the time when he told his staff officers who after Cold harbor criticized Grant as a butcher: “I think General Grant has managed his affairs remarkably well up to this point”.

by Mackubin Thomas Owens

This Civil War sesquicentennial has been very strange. Perhaps it’s a symptom of our preoccupation with current affairs and our general forgetfulness about our history, but, with rare exceptions, there has been little memorialization of this great and tragic conflict. Indeed, the only Civil War episode to merit any significant mention has been Gettysburg, as if that were the only important event of the war. Gettysburg was indeed the greatest battle ever fought in North America, but it did not end the war. There was much fighting and dying left to do after July 1863. A great deal of that took place during the spring and summer of 1864 during the Virginia Overland Campaign, which sapped the waning strength of the Confederacy but also, given the tremendous loss of life that it occasioned, almost caused the population of the North to turn against the war. Following his successes in the West at Vicksburg and Chattanooga, Major General Ulysses S. Grant was appointed by Abraham Lincoln as general in chief of the armies of the United States, and the Senate confirmed him as the first lieutenant general since George Washington. Grant believed that, up to that point, Union armies in different theaters had “acted independently and without concert, like a balky team, no two ever pulling together.”

Accordingly, his strategic plan for 1864 called for putting five Union armies into motion simultaneously against the Confederacy. While three smaller armies in peripheral theaters (Nathaniel Banks against Mobile, Franz Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley, and Ben Butler moving toward Richmond via the James River) tied down significant Confederate forces, preventing them from shifting troops from one theater to another, the two main armies, Meade’s Army of the Potomac and William Tecumseh Sherman’s army group at Chattanooga, would lock horns respectively with Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and Joe Johnson’s Army of Tennessee on the road to Atlanta. The simultaneous advance of several armies is called “concentration in time.”

As general in chief, Grant chose to accompany Meade as he took on Lee. For nearly 40 days, the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia were in nearly constant contact — at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, and Cold Harbor. The 1864 Virginia campaign has led some to dismiss Grant as a butcher, but the truth of the matter is far more complex. This campaign demonstrated that Grant, unlike his predecessors, understood what it would take to defeat the Confederacy. As Grant wrote to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton after the war had ended, he believed that peace would come only when “the military power of the rebellion was entirely broken. . . . I therefore determined . . . to hammer continuously against the armed forces of the enemy and his resources, until by mere attrition, if in no other way, there should be nothing left to him but an equal submission with the loyal section of our common country to the constitution and laws of the land.”

The Wilderness

Although the Union Army of the Potomac had forced Lee to retreat after Gettysburg, it was nearly as badly damaged as the Army of Northern Virginia, validating the Duke of Wellington’s observation that “nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.” […….]

But on May 4, 1864, a year after the bloodletting at Chancellorsville, the Army of the Potomac once again plunged into the Wilderness, a series of bramble-choked thickets made up of — in the words of one Union soldier — “mean jumbles of jack pines, chinquapins, and oak trees, few of them thicker than a man’s arm, across a forest floor carpeted with dry leaves, infested with briars, and riddled with vines.” The army’s hope was that the forest would screen its advance, and also that it could get through the forest before Lee could react. Grant and Meade assumed that Lee would withdraw to his strong position along Mine Run or move toward the North Anna River. But while Lee was weakened by the absence of Longstreet, whose corps had been detached to Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee in September 1863 (and was in the process of returning to the Army of Northern Virginia after subsequent independent operations in East Tennessee), he once again failed to act in a predictable way.

As the Army of the Potomac moved southeast through the Wilderness on the Germanna Plank Road, Lee swiftly moved his army from the west along two parallel roads, the Orange and Fredericksburg Pike to the north and the Orange Plank Road to the south, threatening to split the Federal force in two places. But on May 5, Meade managed to strike first. The Confederates repulsed the attack, but Meade renewed the assault at dawn the next day. The massive Union offensive broke the Confederate line along the Orange Pike Road and threatened Lee’s rear.

The Union attack routed A. P. Hill’s corps, but Longstreet, who had been some 40 miles away at the beginning of the battle (and who had been on the march for 35 of the previous 40 hours), arrived to blunt the Federal assault and reestablish the Confederate lines. The first unit of Longstreet’s corps to reach the battlefield was Gregg’s Texas Brigade. Lee, who had tried unsuccessfully to rally Hill’s fleeing troops, now attempted to join the Texans’ counterattack. Some soldiers shouted “Go back, General Lee.” Others grabbed the reins of his mount, Traveller. When it was clear to Lee that the brigade would not advance if he persisted in his attempt to join the attack, he relented and the 800 men of the Texas Brigade slammed into the advancing Union force. Only 250 of them returned unharmed.

Seeking to seize the initiative, Lee, as he had the previous year during the battle of Chancellorsville, launched a daring attack against the Union left, which turned what had seemed to be an imminent Federal triumph five hours earlier into defeat — indeed a rout. But just as the Confederates were on the cusp of victory, Longstreet suffered the same fate Stonewall Jackson had a year earlier, mistakenly wounded by his own troops as he and his staff attempted to organize a follow-on attack.

Had Longstreet died that day on the Orange Plank Road, he would have been enshrined along with Lee and Jackson in the pantheon of great Confederate generals. Instead he had the misfortune to survive his wounds and, after the war, commit three sins that were unpardonable in the eyes of Southerners: He became a Republican, he renewed his friendship with Grant, who was elected president in 1868, and — most unforgivably — he dared to criticize Lee. Jubal Early and the Virginia-dominated Southern Historical Society unjustly made him the scapegoat for the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg and accused him of all manner of failure as a general.

But this is nonsense. Lee called Longstreet “my War Horse” and never hesitated to give him the most difficult assignments. Longstreet had an uncanny ability to find and exploit the gap in his adversary’s line, as he did on the second day at Gettysburg and when he broke the Union position at Chickamauga in September 1863, routing Major General William Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland.

In any event, Lee’s assault against the Union left bogged down after Longstreet was wounded. Lee now turned his attention to the north, where Brigadier General John B. Gordon struck the exposed Union right flank north of the Orange and Fredericksburg Pike. Again initial success ended in stalemate.

The two days of fighting in the Wilderness were vicious. The horror of the battle was made worse by raging fires, ignited by musket and artillery flashes, which burned to death many wounded soldiers trapped in the thick undergrowth. Nonetheless Lee had inflicted a tactical defeat and nearly 18,000 casualties on the Army of the Potomac. But the problem for Lee was that he would not be able to replace the 11,000 casualties he suffered.

As terrible as the battle of the Wilderness was, it was only the opening act of a bloody campaign that would essentially destroy two great armies. Under previous generals, the tactically defeated Army of the Potomac would have withdrawn north to lick its wounds and prepare for another encounter. Instead, on the evening of May 7, the Army of the Potomac abandoned its lines and, sidestepping Lee, headed south toward Spotsylvania Court House. This new approach reflected Grant’s military philosophy. “The art of war,” he maintained, “is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on.”

Spotsylvania Court House

The Confederates were also headed south along a parallel road, and due to a fortunate turn of events, were able to reach a position on the Brock Road at Spindle Farm near Spotsylvania Court House only moments ahead of the Yankees. Both sides reinforced their positions on May 8 and dug in. On May 9, Grant and Meade sent two divisions of Warren’s V Corps across the Po River in an attempt to turn the Confederate left, but they were turned back by Henry Heth’s division on May 10. On May 11, the Federals launched a series of uncoordinated, piecemeal, and ultimately fruitless attacks against the Rebels on Laurel Hill and the salient that came to be known as the “Muleshoe.”

At dusk, an enterprising Union officer, Brevet Colonel Emory Upton, who had graduated from West Point only three years earlier, launched a surprise assault with twelve regiments that penetrated the left part of the Muleshoe salient, but the attack was not properly supported, and the attackers eventually fell back. However, Grant and Meade decided to reprise Upton’s tactics on a larger scale, concentrating on the apex of the Muleshoe, which was ever after known as the “Bloody Angle.” The initial assault crashed into the Confederate entrenchments at 5 a.m. on May 12, capturing some 3,000 Rebels, including two generals.

[……]

On May 14, the Federals abandoned their lines along the salient and began to shift their forces to the east. Lee responded by shifting his own forces in that direction as well. Thinking that Lee had probably stripped his old lines to confront the shift to the east, Grant and Meade sent II and VI Corps doubling back to attack the base of the Muleshoe again. But the attack was stopped by devastating artillery fire and Grant soon abandoned the plan.

[……]

In two weeks of vicious battle, the Union had now suffered some 35,000 casualties, the Confederacy around 23,000. Now the two armies raced toward the North Anna River.

North Anna and Cold Harbor

Lee arrived at the North Anna River on May 22 in an attempt to prevent the Army of the Potomac from crossing. Meade and Grant attacked on May 23 and seized Telegraph Bridge. Repulsing a vicious attack by A. P. Hill’s Corps, other Federal troops crossed the North Anna farther to the east at Jericho Mills.

But Lee sensed that the Army of the Potomac was walking into a trap. The disposition of the Army of the Potomac provided Lee with an opportunity to defeat the Union wings in detail. Accordingly, he organized his army into an inverted V-shaped line that prevented Meade from uniting the two wings of his army. But because of his own illness and, more important, his lack of confidence in the ability of his corps commanders (Hill, Ewell, and R. H. Anderson, who had replaced Longstreet after he was wounded at the Wilderness) to execute such a complex plan, Lee never sprang the trap. Lee most certainly missed Longstreet, his most reliable and competent corps commander.

Suffering heavy casualties at Ox Ford on May 24 in a failed attempt to unite their lines, the Federals once again moved southeast, slipping across the Pamunkey River at Hanovertown, only a few miles northeast of Richmond. Divining that Grant and Meade would then move west against the Richmond rail lines, Lee took up a defensive position along Totopotomoy Creek.

On June 1, Union cavalry under Phil Sheridan seized the crossroads at Cold Harbor, and both armies converged on the location. The Confederates spent all of June 2 constructing a strong defensive position, which served them well when Grant and Meade launched a series of frontal assaults the next day. The result was a slaughter, with the Army of the Potomac suffering some 7,000 casualties in only a few hours. Sensing the hopelessness of the upcoming assault, Union solders sewed bits of cloth with their names onto the back of their tunics.

[…….]

The human cost of the Virginia Campaign of May-June 1864 was staggering. Lee lost a third of his senior leadership, 33,000 of his best — and irreplaceable — troops, and most of his offensive capability. Meade suffered 55,000 casualties in addition to the loss of thousands of veteran troops whose three-year enlistments came to an end. As one historian has remarked, “in short, both armies emerged from the campaign as shadows of their former selves.”

Following the Cold Harbor debacle, both armies dug in and Grant, concluding that there was no opening on his immediate front that would permit him to move directly on Richmond, decided to change his line of operation by shifting his forces to the south, crossing the James River, and seizing Petersburg, the critical railroad hub linking Richmond with the lower South. The operation would be a difficult one. Grant and Meade would have to break contact with Lee, move south around the right flank of the Army of Northern Virginia, cross both the Chickahominy and James rivers, and take Petersburg before Lee could react.

Lee was indeed surprised. Boldly executing a bold plan, the Army of the Potomac soon was in position to seize the Petersburg lines, which were only weakly defended by elements of a small force under P. G. T. Beauregard. But while the early assaults on the Confederate positions were successful, the Union commander on the ground, perhaps still stunned by the carnage at Cold Harbor, did not follow up the attack. Both sides settled in for a nine-month siege, which ended only when Lee, advising Confederate president Jefferson Davis that he could no longer hold the Petersburg lines, attempted a breakout to the west that ended with his surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.

Grant’s strategic success was necessary to defeat the South but it did not impress the Northern public. War weariness, exploited by the so-called Peace Democrats or Copperheads, placed Lincoln’s hope for reelection in jeopardy. Not until Farragut’s victory at Mobile Bay, Sherman’s capture of Atlanta, and Phil Sheridan’s success in driving the Confederates from the Shenandoah Valley in the late summer and fall of 1864 did hostility toward the war in the North recede enough to ensure that the president would be returned to office and see the War of Rebellion through to its successful conclusion.

Read the rest – Twilight of the Confederacy

Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, George Gordon Meade, Mackubin Thomas Owens, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant
Posted in History | 130 Comments »

The great battle of Gettysburg; and the “goddamned old goggle-eyed snapping turtle” Major General George G. Meade – the battle’s real hero

by Mojambo ( 203 Comments › )
Filed under History at July 1st, 2013 - 3:00 pm

In my opinion Lee never really had the possibility of obtaining a great strategic victory in Pennsylvania. No doubt he might have won another tactical victory (as he did two months earlier at Chancellorsville or before that at Fredericksburg and Mansassas) but there was no way that he could effectively destroy the Army of the Potomac. Frankly, Civil War armies lacked the ability to destroy each other. The two sides would come together, butt heads, inflict hideous casualties on each other, limp away, regroup and fight again. Even had the Pickett-Ptttigrew-Trimble assault on July 3, 1863 broken through, there was no where for them to go and they would all eventually become rounded up or destroyed. The Confederate assaults of July 1, 2, 3 were heroic and on July 2 they came close several times to shattering the Union lines, but the attacks were made in echelon by brigades and were uncoordinated and the great Union tactical leadership (particularly by Major General Winfield Scott Hancock the II Corps commander) was able to eventually blunt all threats. For example late in the afternoon of July 2 a Georgia brigade under Brigadier General Ambrose R. Wright of Richard Anderson’s division (A.P. Hill’s III Corps) actually broke through the Union center but being unsupported it was beaten back. That largely was the story of the Confederate effort. The day after the battle ended, Vicsksburg on the Mississippi River surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant.

That Gettysburg was fought at all was due to the force of one man’s will. Robert E. Lee wanted to invade the North and fight an epic and conclusive battle there. His superiors in the Confederate government were skeptical and thought it might be wiser to husband resources in the East and fight in the West, where Vicksburg was hanging by a thread. Lose the West, they believed, and the cause was doomed. Lee convinced them otherwise. His stature was such—especially after his splendid, if costly, victory at Chancellorsville—that his will could not be resisted, even by the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis.

But if Lee’s will was strong enough to force the battle, he could not impose that will upon his own subordinates. Not, at least, with enough urgency to make them accomplish his aims and win what he, and many historians, believe might have been his final and finest victory. The question has been posed in most accounts of the battle: “Why did the South lose?”

Several explanations have been proposed. Lee himself believed that if he’d had Stonewall Jackson with him, things would have gone the other way. In the end, George Pickett may have come up with the best answer: “I always thought,” he said, “that the Yankees had something to do with it.”

by Geoffrey Norman

A Great Battlefield

Gettysburg: an epic tale of not quite enough and just in time

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/great-battlefield_738049.html

by Mackubin Thomas Owens

Robert E. Lee’s smashing victory against Major General Joseph Hooker’s Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville in May 1863 provided the Confederacy with three strategic options: shift resources from Virginia to Mississippi in order to revive Vicksburg, the Rebel redoubt on the Mississippi River; reinforce Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee, enabling him to reprise his 1862 invasion of Kentucky and maneuver the Union Army of the Cumberland under William Rosecrans out of its position in central Tennessee; or invade Pennsylvania.

But after Chancellorsville, it was probably too late to affect the outcome at Vicksburg, because the siege was already under way. (Vicksburg would fall on the Fourth of July.) And it didn’t make sense to detach forces from the Confederacy’s only successful field army, the Army of Northern Virginia, under its only successful general, Lee, and send them to other generals whose competence was questionable. In the end, Lee effectively made the case to Confederate president Jefferson Davis that the best use of limited Confederate resources was to invade Pennsylvania. As he had done in the fall of 1862, Lee intended to effect a strategic turning movement, draw the Yankees out of Virginia, and annihilate a Federal army on Union soil, forcing Lincoln to sue for peace.

After the Seven Days’ Battles on the Virginia Peninsula in June 1862, Lee had organized his Army of Northern Virginia into two corps, the first commanded by General James Longstreet and the second by General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson. After Jackson’s death at Chancellorsville, Lee reorganized the army into three corps: I Corps under Longstreet, II Corps under James Ewell, and III Corps under Ambrose Powell Hill. The latter two had been excellent division commanders. However, their elevation to corps command was an example of the “Peter Principle” at work: promotion to a level above one’s competence. Lee would sorely miss Jackson in Pennsylvania.

The Campaign Begins

On June 3, Lee slipped out of his base at Fredericksburg and headed west into the Valley of Virginia. Ewell led the way, with Hill and Longstreet in trace. Unsure of Lee’s intentions, General Joseph Hooker, commanding the Union Army of the Potomac, ordered his cavalry commander, General Alfred Pleasonton, to conduct a reconnaissance across the Rappahannock. On June 9, Pleasonton’s cavalry surprised Jeb Stuart at Brandy Station. The ensuing battle was the largest all-cavalry engagement of the war. Although the Yankees were eventually driven from the field, the battle embarrassed Stuart. It also illustrated the strides made in the quality of Union cavalry under Hooker. But perhaps most important, it alerted Hooker to Lee’s movement north.

On June 13, Hooker began to move north in an attempt to keep his army between Lee and the Federal capital. The next day, Ewell routed a Federal force at Winchester, and on June 15, Lee crossed the Potomac. […….]

From the beginning of the campaign, Lee was unsure of the precise location and disposition of Hooker’s army. Stuart’s cavalry was supposed to provide such information, screening Lee’s advance into Pennsylvania, operating east of Blue Ridge between Lee and Hooker, and finally reuniting with Lee around York, Pa. Unfortunately for Lee, the encampment of the Army of the Potomac lay astride the route Stuart was to follow, forcing the latter to swing farther to the east, thereby placing Hooker between Lee and Stuart’s cavalry, which could not provide Lee with the location of the Union army.

For the next week, Stuart was unable to “turn the corner” because the Army of the Potomac was moving much faster than it had in the past. The main reason for this was that Hooker had reduced its baggage train.

On June 28, Hooker threatened to resign if his demand to assume control of the Harpers Ferry garrison was rejected. The general in chief, Henry Halleck, accepted Hooker’s resignation, much to the latter’s surprise, and replaced him with George Meade, a Pennsylvanian who had formerly commanded the Union V Corps.

All Roads Lead to Gettysburg

A glance at a map of south-central Pennsylvania reveals that “all roads lead” to Gettysburg. The town resembles the hub of a wheel with spokes converging from all directions: from the southwest, the Hagerstown Road; from the northwest, the Cashtown Pike; from the north-northwest, the Mummasburg Road; from the north, the Carlisle Road; from the northeast, the Harrisburg Road; from the east, the Bonaughtown Road and the York Pike; and from the south, the Emmitsburg Road, Taneytown Road, and Baltimore Pike.

Each of the two armies was operating in ignorance of the other’s location, but on June 30, Lee ordered Ewell to move south from Carlisle, and Hill to move east from Cashtown.

Meade’s plan was to assume a defensive position behind Pipe Creek in Maryland, just south of the Pennsylvania line. But Major General John Reynolds, commanding the Army of the Potomac’s I Corps, ignored the “Pipe Creek Circular” and moved northeast to occupy Gettysburg. The earliest Reynolds could do so was mid-morning of July 1, so on the evening of June 30, John Buford’s cavalry division moved into position on the high ground west of town to hold on until Reynolds’s arrival.

Stuart’s absence was a severe handicap for Lee. He discovered the proximity of the Union army only because of information provided by a spy that Longstreet had hired. But once he got a sense of the enemy’s location, Lee adopted a characteristically aggressive concept of operations. […….]

Still, Lee wished to avoid a general engagement until he had concentrated his army. Although two of his corps were converging on Gettysburg from the north and the west, Longstreet would not be up until late the next day. But as Napoleon is reputed to have remarked, “A dogfight can initiate a battle.” At 5:30 a.m. on the morning of July 1, the lead element of Hill’s corps (Henry Heth’s division), approaching from the west on the Cashtown Pike, clashed with Buford’s cavalry on McPherson’s Ridge west of town.

The Battle of Gettysburg was on. Meade now had no choice but to abandon his Pipe Creek defensive plan and push the Army of the Potomac north toward Gettysburg.

Heth’s division deployed from column into line and advanced against Buford’s dismounted troopers on McPherson’s Ridge. Despite being outnumbered, the cavalrymen, armed with repeating carbines, were able to deliver a high volume of fire and gave ground only grudgingly. Heth nonetheless pushed forward to McPherson’s Ridge, where he encountered Reynolds’s I Corps, which checked his advance. Around 10:30 a.m., Reynolds was killed by a Confederate sniper, and command of I Corps fell to Abner Doubleday. There followed a lull in the battle as I Corps redeployed to Seminary Ridge and both sides awaited reinforcements.

At about noon, Major General O. O. Howard’s XI Corps arrived and deployed to Doubleday’s right, facing north to deal with the approach of Ewell’s corps from Carlisle. Lee also reached the field about this time. Without intelligence from Stuart, Lee still did not know the full disposition of the Federal army. [……]

At about 2:00 p.m., Rodes’s division of Ewell’s corps, joined by Heth, struck the right of the Federal I Corps. About an hour later, Jubal Early’s division of Ewell’s corps attacked down the Harrisburg Road, smashing the exposed right of the XI Corps, a repeat of that unfortunate corps’ experience two months earlier at Chancellorsville when Jackson’s attack had routed the corps and rolled up the entire Union line. The routed Federals retreated through Gettysburg to Cemetery and Culp’s Hills, the high ground south of the town. Meanwhile the Federal I Corps on Seminary Ridge also gave way before Hill’s assault.

Lee ordered Ewell to press the attack against the new Union position “if practicable.” Proving he was no Stonewall Jackson, Ewell declined. Meanwhile Major General Winfield Scott Hancock arrived on the field in advance of his approaching II Corps. [……..] Howard accepted the slight and worked with Hancock to strengthen the Union position while Hancock pressed Meade to bring up the rest of the Army of the Potomac as quickly as possible.

During the first day of battle, Lee had shattered two Union corps, inflicting 9,000 casualties, including 3,000 captured, while suffering 6,500 of his own. The Union I Corps alone lost some 5,700 soldiers, including 1,500 captured. Some units bore the brunt of the battle: for instance, the 24th Michigan, a regiment of the famed “Iron Brigade,” the only all-western brigade in the Army of the Potomac, lost 399 of its 496 soldiers. Although the Union position on Cemetery and Culp’s Hills was strong, the soldiers of the I and XI Corps were demoralized. Had Ewell proven to be as aggressive as Jackson, it is likely that the Confederates would have carried the Federal position on the evening of July 1.

Lee and Longstreet: On the Cusp of Victory

Both armies were reinforced during the evening of July 1. Longstreet arrived with two of his three divisions (George Pickett’s division was still a day’s march away), and three more Union corps reached the battlefield. (It should be noted that Union corps were about half the size of Confederate corps at that time.) The Union position began to assume the shape of a fishhook, with the barb and bend running west from Culp’s Hill to Cemetery Hill, and the shank running south along Cemetery Ridge toward two rises, Little Round Top and Round Top.

Encouraged by his success on the first day, Lee resolved to renew the attack on July 2. An early-morning reconnaissance revealed that the Union line extended about halfway down Cemetery Ridge, short of the high ground of Little Round Top. Lee ordered Longstreet to take his two present divisions under major generals John Bell Hood and Lafayette McLaws and attack the Union left.

While Ewell demonstrated against the Union right on Culp’s and Cemetery Hills, Longstreet, supported by a division of Hill’s corps on his left, was to deliver a flank attack on the Union line. However, Lee was informed that the Union line on Cemetery Ridge had been extended south, so he modified his original plan and directed Longstreet to attack en echelon from south to north.

While it seems to violate the principle of mass by attacking piecemeal, an echelon attack is designed to force the defender into mistakes by getting him to create gaps in his line while trying to plug others. Thus Longstreet was to take advantage of any opportunities to unhinge the entire Union position on Cemetery Ridge.

It took Longstreet some time to reach his line of departure. Accordingly, his attack did not begin until about 4:00 p.m. Just as Longstreet was about to initiate his assault, Hood informed him that the way was open to the Union rear if he could swing his division farther to the south. […….] Longstreet now initiated his echelon attack by releasing his rightmost division under Hood against the Union left. Major General George Sykes’s V Corps was just now arriving on the battlefield, and a brigade was rushed forward to occupy Little Round Top and a jumble of rocks known as Devil’s Den in order to secure the Union left. The leftmost regiment of the brigade was Colonel Joshua Chamberlain’s 20th Maine, whose desperate defense of Little Round Top is immortalized in Michael Shaara’s historical novel Killer Angels and in the film Gettysburg, which is based on the novel.

While Hood was attacking Little Round Top and wresting Devil’s Den from the Yankees, Longstreet launched the second phase of his echelon attack by releasing the right wing of McLaws’s division. As McLaws’s brigades advanced toward Cemetery Ridge, they encountered Major General Daniel “Democrat Dan” Sickles’s III Corps in a wheat field and peach orchard just east of the Emmitsburg Road. Earlier in the day, Sickles, dissatisfied with his position at the base of Cemetery Ridge, had advanced without orders to this location. In so doing, he not only formed a salient but also created a gap between his right and Hancock’s II Corps to his north. […….]

The fighting was brutal, but McLaws’s attack eventually unhinged the Union salient by sweeping the peach orchard and the wheat field. Meade and Hancock tried to stem the Confederate tide by feeding troops into the gap created by the destruction of Sickles’s corps, but they created weaknesses elsewhere in the Union line. The echelon attack was on the cusp of success when it broke down, just as Major General William Pender’s division from Hill’s corps was to take it up. For some reason, his rightmost brigade refused the order to advance. Despite what Longstreet called “the best three hours’ fighting done by any troops on any battlefield,” the attack ground to a halt.

One episode stands out on the second day at Gettysburg. At the height of the fighting, Cadmus Wilcox’s fresh Alabama brigade of 1,500 men, pursuing the shattered remnants of Sickles’s corps, was on the verge of penetrating the Union defenses on Cemetery Ridge. Union commanders including Hancock rushed reinforcements forward to plug the gap, but at a critical juncture, the only available troops were eight companies — 262 men — of the First Minnesota Volunteers. Pointing to the Alabamans’ battle flags, Hancock shouted to the regiment’s colonel, “Do you see those colors? Take them.”

[…….]

The Minnesotans did not capture the colors of the Alabama brigade, but the shock of their attack broke the Confederates’ momentum and bought critical time — at the cost of 215 killed and wounded, including the colonel and all but three of his officers. The position was held, but in short order the First Minnesota ceased to exist, suffering a casualty rate of 82 percent, the highest of the war for any Union regiment in a single engagement. All told, some 9,000 troops on each side became casualties on July 2.

That evening, Meade called his corps commanders to his headquarters and polled them regarding a possible pull back to the Pipe Creek line. Meade seems to have preferred withdrawal but most of his commanders favored standing and fighting. “Let us have no more retreats,” advised Hancock.

The Third Day: “Pickett’s Charge”

In 1877, a former Confederate colonel in the Army of Northern Virginia, Armistead Lindsay Long, wrote that “the attack of Pickett’s division on the third [of July] has been more criticized, and is still less understood, than any other act of the Gettysburg drama.” What was true then remains true today. Why did Lee launch an attack that today seems to be nothing short of a senseless waste of life?

First, Lee had a great deal of confidence in the offensive power and élan of the Army of Northern Virginia. As Napoleon observed, “In war, moral considerations account for three-quarters, the balance of actual forces only for the other quarter.” And as Henry Heth, the only officer in the army whom Lee addressed by his surname, later wrote, “The fact is, General Lee believed the Army of Northern Virginia, as it then existed, could accomplish anything.”

Critics then and now have contended that Lee failed to recognize the power of the defense. But in fact, the relationship between the offense and the defense depends a great deal on the élan and striking power of the attackers. Hooker, who as both a corps commander and an army commander had experienced the offensive prowess of the Army of Northern Virginia, remarked that Lee’s army did not merely attack but struck with “blows.” [……..]

[………]

Finally, Lee believed he had inflicted a great deal of damage on the Army of the Potomac. Indeed he had. He had shattered three Union corps — Doubleday’s I, Sickles’s III, and Howard’s XI — and mauled many other regiments. On July 2, his forces had penetrated the Union line at several points. As Scott Bowden and Bill Ward observe in their excellent treatment of Gettysburg, Last Chance for Victory: Robert E. Lee and the Gettysburg Campaign — a book that has greatly influenced my understanding of Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania –“only a breakdown in the [July 2] echelon attack’s execution had spared Meade a disastrous nighttime retreat and defeat.”

In addition, Lee had received fresh troops during the evening of July 2: Pickett’s division of Longstreet’s corps had arrived, and Jeb Stuart’s cavalry had finally been able to rejoin the army. Lee believed that Meade had weakened his center to reinforce his flanks. Under the circumstances, Lee believed, not unreasonably, that a concerted infantry attack, led by his ablest corps commander, and preceded by a massive artillery bombardment, could crack the Union center on Cemetery Ridge. Lee had seen his soldiers accomplish such a feat — without artillery support — during the Seven Days’ Battles of June 1862, when the Confederates cracked a strong Union position at Gaines’s Mill.

[……….]

Two events created problems for Lee. First, Meade preempted Lee’s attack just before dawn on July 3 by launching an attack to dislodge those elements of Ewell’s corps that had gained a foothold on Culp’s Hill. Second, Longstreet had planned a maneuver that did not conform to Lee’s orders to him concerning the plan of attack on July 3. Longstreet was planning to “pass around [Round Top] and to gain [the Federal position] by flank and reverse attack.” But two brigades of Sedgwick’s VI Corps were already in position across the Taneytown Road to prevent just such a maneuver.

This was part of Longstreet’s grand vision for the Pennsylvania invasion. Indeed, Longstreet had proposed that, once in Pennsylvania, Lee should maneuver his army in order to find and occupy a strong defensive position that would require Meade to attack Lee. But this was never a serious option. While Lee knew northern Virginia like the back of his hand, he was unfamiliar with the military geography of Pennsylvania. He had to avoid cutting himself off from the Cumberland Valley, which constituted his only line of communication and supply back to Virginia.

Although it has gone down in history as “Pickett’s Charge,” the attackers on July 3 included elements of two divisions from Hill’s corps — those of Major General Isaac Trimble and of Brigadier General J. J. Pettigrew, who had replaced the wounded Henry Heth. Indeed, Pickett’s Virginians provided only three of the nine brigades that made the assault. The attackers would have to cross nearly 2,000 yards under enemy fire. They would have to climb over a rail fence along the Emmitsburg Road, an obstacle that would break the momentum of the attack. From that point, depending on where they crossed the Emmitsburg Road, the attacking Confederates would have to advance another 200 to 500 yards to reach the Union position. As they advanced, their ranks would be ripped apart by musket fire and artillery.

As we know, the attack failed. As had been the case the previous day, Ewell was effectively AWOL. A weak cavalry demonstration against the Union rear was beaten back. And the main attack on Cemetery Ridge was repulsed, with staggering losses for the Confederates. Nonetheless, a small number of Rebels led by one of Pickett’s brigade commanders, Lewis Armistead, penetrated the Union line. By this time, the attack had lost momentum and lacked any support, so the survivors withdrew, leaving behind the mortally wounded Armistead. Nearly 5,600 of the 12,000 attackers became casualties.

Gettysburg remains the greatest battle ever to occur on the North American continent. Meade suffered some 23,000 casualties over the course of the battle, while Lee lost between 20,000 and 25,000 of his irreplaceable soldiers. On July 5, Lee moved south. Meade did not pursue the Rebels, much to the consternation of President Lincoln. But Meade was in no condition to pursue. The Army of the Potomac was only in marginally better shape than the Army of Northern Virginia. As the Duke of Wellington observed, “The only thing worse than a battle won is a battle lost.”

Read the rest – The Great Battle of Gettysburg

George Gordon Meade (1818 72) was the real hero of Gettysburg. he took command of the Army of the Potomac only three days before the battle began and showed great courage, common sense, and tactical skill in fighting the battle. However Meade never rose to great heights in the public’s affection. A large part was due to the fact that he had a nasty temper ” He was referred to as a “goddamned old goggle-eyed snapping turtle” probably due to his many physical ailments (he was very near sighted and suffered from “dyspepsia” or chronic indigestion), and the fact that he was not flamboyant or physically impressive. However Meade was a cautious, careful, well prepared commander (experienced as a Brigade, Division, and Corps commander) who would never be brilliant but was competent and would never make a rash mistake. The superiority of the North’s resources allowed it to only need a competent commander in order to obtain a victory. Meade had competence in abundance 9as well as courage in a crisis) and frankly he out generaled Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg. Was he a better general overall than Lee? No, but he did not need to be.

By the way I diasree with Peters that Meade is the most under appreciated general in U.S. military history. I would say that fellow Civil War commander Major General George Henry Thomas (a Virginian who remained loyal to the Union) and Korean War commander Matthew B. Ridgeway are the two most underrated.

Robert E. Lee, George Meade

by Ralph Peters

One hundred and fifty years ago tomorrow morning, two great armies slammed into each other outside a crossroads town in Pennsylvania. Neither army’s commander intended to fight at Gettysburg, but the battle took on a life of its own as reinforcements rushed to the sound of the guns. Soldiers in blue and gray would fight for three days, leaving almost 7,000 Americans dead and 30,000 wounded.

At the close of the battle on July 3, 1863, the Army of the Potomac, led by Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade — the most underrated soldier in our history — had won the Union’s first indisputable victory in the east. With Gettysburg’s strategic effect compounded by news of Grant’s capture of Vicksburg, Miss., on July 4, the Confederacy was left with no realistic chance of winning the war militarily (although the South’s valiant, stubborn troops would fight on for two more years). The secessionist government in Richmond could only hope to conjure a political settlement.

Revisionist historians question Gettysburg’s decisiveness, given that the war continued. They fail to note the consequences, had General Robert E. Lee and his boys in gray won: In less than a week, Lee’s ferocious ragamuffins would have marched down Broad Street in Philadelphia; the North would have been pressured to sue for peace; and England and France would have found the excuse their social elites longed for to intervene on the South’s behalf.

Gen. Meade and his soldiers in blue saved our Union on those blood-soaked fields.

UNDERDOGS

The North had the greater population, wealth and industrial might at the war’s beginning in 1861, yet poor generalship and poisonous politics led to one humbling Union defeat after another — especially in Virginia, where Lee took command in 1862 and scored astonishing victories.

[…….]

As Lee’s army’s rampaged through southern Pennsylvania and threatened Harrisburg, a frustrated President Lincoln sacked Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker (who had failed miserably at Chancellorsville). Lincoln ordered the relatively junior Meade to take command.

Awakened in the middle of the night three days before the first shots at Gettysburg, Meade initially thought he was being arrested because of a spat with Hooker. Instead, he learned that he was to take the reins of a dispersed, defeated army and stop Robert E. Lee.

It was one of those instances of the right man in the right place at the right time. A West Point-trained engineer and personally courageous, Meade promptly set about concentrating his forces, inspecting the terrain for the best fighting ground and pushing out his cavalry to find Lee. Thanks to his slovenly predecessor, he didn’t even have a map of southern Pennsylvania.

Called upon as the president’s last resort, George Gordon Meade would become the first Union general to defeat Lee in a fair fight on open fields. Southerners and jealous Northerners alike would never forgive him.

AN OVERCONFIDENT ARMY

Robert E. Lee had begun his invasion of Pennsylvania by making one mistake after another. His string of resounding victories had led him to believe that his Army of Northern Virginia was invincible and, over-confident, he allowed his dashing cavalry commander, Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, to take most of his horsemen off on a useless raid, leaving Lee blind to his opponent’s whereabouts and actions. Lee also permitted the dispersal of his three mighty corps over hundreds of square miles, leaving his army divided by South Mountain and its narrow passes.

As a result, when one of his corps’ forward elements marched down a country road toward Gettysburg from the west on the morning of July 1 — under stern orders not to become “decisively engaged” — its officers thought they only faced ill-trained militia. Instead, they blundered into Brig. Gen. John Buford’s seasoned cavalrymen — who knew how to take advantage of the terrain when fighting dismounted. And Buford had reported diligently on the Confederates’ locations before the fighting commenced.

Meade force-marched his nearest corps to Buford’s support. Still unsure of whether Gettysburg was the right place to give battle, Meade further tightened his grip on his forces. At the same time, he resisted the temptation to hurry to the battlefield himself. He had the professionalism to grasp that, as an army-level commander, he had to maintain control of his entire force and not become enmeshed in actions best left to subordinates. Until he was sure that Gettysburg’s situation favored his army, he meant to remain flexible.

Lee did the opposite. Rushing to the sound of the guns, he found a failing chain of command launching piecemeal attacks. Throughout the battle, Lee would discover too late that subordinates had ignored or amended his orders — with fateful consequences. Much of the fault lay in Lee’s gentlemanly habit of couching orders almost as suggestions. […….]

Meade, by contrast, insisted on disciplined staff work, prioritization and teamwork: By Gettysburg, the Army of the Potomac was on the verge of becoming the first truly modern military organization. In so many ways, this war was a struggle between a romanticized past and a modernizing world. In retrospect, the outcome seems inevitable.

VICTORY, DEFEAT, STALEMATE

Despite the death of one of the North’s most-admired officers, Maj. Gen. John Reynolds, the men in blue had badly stung the Confederate all morning, devastating proud regiments. The battle expanded from the west to the north of town, as the Union I Corps filled in on the left and the XI Corps curved over the fields on the Union right. The “meeting engagement” appeared headed toward a Union victory.

Then tragedy struck.

Brig. Gen. Francis Channing Barlow, Harvard valedictorian of the Class of 1855 and kin to New England’s “best” families, was a rising star who would go on to become the Union’s most-savage division commander of the war. But at Gettysburg, Frank Barlow would have his worst day of the conflict.

When Barlow, newly appointed to division command, arrived on the Union’s right flank, he didn’t like his assigned position. Without notifying his superiors, he moved his men forward a half-mile to what he believed was better terrain. Promoted too swiftly, he failed to grasp how his division’s mission supported the overall plan.

Barlow’s blunder opened two wide holes in the Union line — just as Confederate reinforcements poured in on that flank. The result was a collapse of the Northern defense. [……..]Instead, the scapegoats were the German immigrants in the XI Corps, even though Southern memoirs describe them as fighting harder than Yankees had ever done.

As the Union right disintegrated, Rebel blows directed by Lee against the Yankee left punched through that flank, too. Soon, Union troops were retreating madly through Gettysburg’s streets, with hundreds captured by advancing Confederates. It appeared that Gettysburg would be another one-day victory for Lee.

Beyond the town, the key position was a hilltop cemetery and the ridge running southward from it — the last, best defensible terrain. As the afternoon smoldered into evening, Lee directed his left-flank corps commander to seize Cemetery Hill and finish things.

Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell ignored the order. And Union reinforcements raced to the high ground. [……..]

THE SECOND DAY

Arriving on the field after midnight to inspect the ground himself, Meade decided that Gettysburg was a promising place to fight. Now it was a race to see which army could concentrate first. Meade believed he could win it.

As for Lee, his pride was up, deepened by anger over missed opportunities. But his intelligence was poor; he never gathered all of his subordinates together to issue clear orders (Meade did); and his staff officers let him down repeatedly. On top of all that, he was ill and cranky, dismissing the concerns of his senior corps commander, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet. Lee believed valor could overcome any obstacle.

It almost did. Despite more blundering and a late start to Lee’s key attack, the Rebels came close to shattering Meade’s defense, fighting deep into the evening. The combat was close and vicious at such now-famed sites as Little Round Top, Devil’s Den, the Wheatfield and Culp’s Hill. As each side piled on more men, the day’s outcome veered back and forth.

In the dying light, Meade faced a crisis. After his plan had been all but wrecked by the incompetence of Maj. Gen. Dan Sickles — a Tammany Hall politician who’d wangled a corps command — Meade had shifted troops brilliantly, plugging one gap after another, parrying each Rebel thrust. Now he was out of men and anxiously awaiting the arrival of his last reinforcements. He found himself on horseback in mid-battlefield with just four aides and couriers beside him.

A full Rebel brigade emerged from the smoke, heading straight for Meade and the stripped-bare Union center. Instead of running, Meade drew his sword, ready to charge that entire brigade and die fighting. Just as he was about to give the order to gallop forward, Union banners crested the darkening ridge behind him. And the last Confederate hope for the day was crushed.

[……..]

PICKETT’S CHARGE

July 2 should have taught Lee the limits of valor, but his pride swelled into arrogance: He was not going to be defeated by upstart George Meade. In one of his worst decisions of the war, he ordered over 12,000 of his soldiers to attack across a mile of open fields against the Union center. Accustomed to defeating the men in blue, he convinced himself that one more blow would bring him victory.

Meade sensed what was coming and reorganized his lines to face the blow. Then he waited. Shortly after noon on July 3, the Rebels began a deafening bombardment — answered in careful measure by the Yankees. When the guns fell silent and the smoke thinned, long lines of men in gray and brown emerged from the trees, flags flying.

Doomed from the beginning, what should rightly be called the Pickett-Pettigrew Charge became a much-romanticized disaster: A handful of brave Confederates survived the crossfire of massed Union guns and the rifle volleys to reach the Union lines. But they were too few.

Tears in his eyes, Lee rode out into the field to greet the retreating survivors. Along the Union line the troops began cheering: […….]

AFTERMATH

After Meade failed to oblige him with an equally doomed counterattack, Lee retreated back toward Virginia. Terrified just days before, Washington responded to Meade’s stunning victory by criticizing him for not destroying Lee’s army — an army with plenty of fight left in it, as the next two years would show. The gratitude of politicians was as slight then as it is now.

Meade organized a pursuit of Lee as quickly as he could, slowed by his own severe losses, the tens of thousands of wounded left on the field, and troops who were out of food and ammunition. He had just done the impossible and was damned for not doing the impossible twice in a row.

Still, Meade would be the only commander of the Army of the Potomac never dismissed. He would serve until the last victory. Those who mattered knew his worth.

Perversely, after the war it was Lee who’d be lionized. Meade died only a half-dozen years after the peace, while his arch-detractors, North and South, lived into the 20 century — not least Dan Sickles, who had almost lost the battle for the North.

Sickles spent decades belittling Meade and claiming that he was Gettysburg’s real hero. Worst of all, Meade never pandered to the press — and suffered the consequences.

But the man ordered to take command of a defeated army three days before the war’s decisive battle had done his country an immeasurable service — outfighting the South’s greatest soldier when it counted most. […….] But the truly amazing thing is that, on this 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, this great American is slighted when not forgotten.

Read the rest – The Hero of Gettysburg

Tags: Civil War, George Gordon Meade, Gettysburg, Ralph Peters. Mackubin Thomas Owens, Robert E. Lee
Posted in History | 203 Comments »

One hundred fifty years ago today – America’s bloodiest day, the Battle of Antietam

by Mojambo ( 247 Comments › )
Filed under History at September 17th, 2012 - 7:00 pm

The bloodiest day in American history (September 17, 1862) at Antietam Creek (next to the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland), is a battle that symbolized the futility of just about all Civil War battles. Two armies coming together, butting heads, inflicting horrific losses on each other, limping away, regrouping and coming back later to fight again (two months later at Fredericksburg) to inflict more bloodshed. Civil War armies lacked that ability to annihilate each other, the ability to inflict their will totally on the other side to make them cease fighting (until late in 1864). Although a tactical draw, Antietam turned out to be a strategic victory for the Federals (note that I say “Federals” and not “Union”. That’s because they were not called “Union soldiers” during the war. They were called “Federal” or “U.S. troops” during the Civil War, the use of the term “Union soldiers” was more post-war) since it put a monkey wrench in any hope of the Confederacy receiving foreign recognition.

From the Civil War Trust – Antietam

23,000 casualties

Watch this video on YouTube.

Antietam

Sharpsburg

September 16 – 18, 1862

Washington County, Maryland

Gen. George McClellan

On September 16, 1862, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan and his Union Army of the Potomac confronted Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Sharpsburg, Maryland. At dawn on September 17, Maj. General Joseph Hooker’s Union corps mounted a powerful assault on Lee’s left flank that began the Battle of Antietam, and the single bloodiest day in American military history. Repeated Union attacks, and equally vicious Confederate counterattacks, swept back and forth across Miller’s cornfield and the West Woods. Despite the great Union numerical advantage, Stonewall Jackson’s forces near the Dunker Church would hold their ground this bloody morning. Meanwhile, towards the center of the battlefield, Union assaults against the Sunken Road would pierce the Confederate center after a terrible struggle for this key defensive position. Unfortunately for the Union army this temporal advantage in the center was not followed up with further advances.

Late in the day, Maj. General Ambrose Burnside’s corps pushed across a bullet-strewn stone bridge over Antietam Creek and with some difficulty managed to imperil the Confederate right. At a crucial moment, A.P. Hill’s division arrived from Harpers Ferry, and counterattacked, driving back Burnside and saving the day for the Army of Northern Virginia. Despite being outnumbered two-to-one, Lee committed his entire force at the Battle of Antietam, while McClellan sent in less than three-quarters of his Federal force. McClellan’s piecemeal approach to the battle failed to fully leverage his superior numbers and allowed Lee to shift forces from threat to threat. During the night, both armies tended to their wounded and consolidated their lines. In spite of crippling casualties, Lee continued to skirmish with McClellan on the 18th, while removing his wounded south of the Potomac. McClellan, much to the chagrin of Abraham Lincoln, did not vigorously pursue the wounded Confederate army. While the Battle of Antietam is considered a draw from a military point of view, Abraham Lincoln and the Union claimed victory. This hard-fought battle, which drove Lee’s forces from Maryland, Antietam Bridge

would give Lincoln the “victory” that he needed before delivering the Emancipation Proclamation — a document that would forever change the geopolitical course of the American Civil War.

The Maryland Campaign of 1862

By D. Scott Hartwig

Robert E. Lee (Library of Congress)

September 1862 was a momentous month, a period of crisis for the United States and exciting opportunity for the Confederate States of America. The bright hopes of Northerners that the rebellion could be crushed that summer had wilted like the leaves of fall. In July, the grand campaign of Major General George B. McClellan’s magnificent Army of the Potomac to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond ended in defeat. Then, at the end of August, Major General John Pope’s Army of Virginia, with heavy reinforcements from the Army of the Potomac, was soundly thrashed in the Second Battle of Manassas. The Union armies stumbled back to Washington seeking shelter within the capital’s fortifications. In the western theater, two Confederate armies mounted an offensive that carried into Kentucky. Disgust and discouragement prevailed across the North. Inside the nation’s capital one Union soldier, reflecting the mood of many in the army, wrote: “The whole army is disgusted . . . you need not be surprised if success falls to the rebels with astonishing rapidity.”

The architect of the Confederate victories in the east, General Robert E. Lee, sought to exploit the opportunity his victory at Second Manassas offered. Lee understood from the beginning of the war that the Confederacy’s best hope for independence rested upon the morale of the Northern people. If they believed the war could not be won, or could only be won at too high a cost, then Southern independence became a real possibility. Confederate military successes were the means to erode morale and create this political climate. The fall elections in the North were approaching. England and France stood on the sidelines watching closely, carefully weighing whether they should recognize the Confederacy. Lee sensed a great opportunity was at hand. He believed the Union army was disorganized and demoralized. He also knew that it was receiving many reinforcements in the form of newly raised regiments in answer to President Lincoln’s July call for 300,000 volunteers. Only one move would force the Federals to place their army in the field before they had reorganized and offered the best chance to do further damage to Northern morale: Invade the border state of Maryland.

“The army is not properly equipped for an invasion of an enemy’s territory,” Lee wrote Confederate President Jefferson Davis, but he nevertheless understood that this was his best move. He determined to enter Maryland east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and advance to Frederick, Maryland. Here his army would threaten Baltimore and Washington, as well as Pennsylvania. The Federals would have no choice but to leave the Washington fortifications to confront him. When they did, he planned to march west from Frederick, crossing the Catoctin Mountains and South Mountain, to Hagerstown. The idea was to draw the Union army far from its supply depots and fortifications, where they might be dealt a more decisive blow. By September 3 Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia numbered some 70,000 troops of all arms, but logistically the army was in possibly the worst condition it would be in during the entire war. The troops were poorly fed and uniformed, which contributed to long sick lists. Lax discipline combined with the chronically short and poor rations issued to the men encouraged massive straggling, and the army would leak thousands of stragglers as it moved across Maryland.

On September 4, advance elements of the army crossed the Potomac into Maryland near Leesburg, Virginia. Over the next three days the main body of the army forded the river and advanced without opposition to Frederick.

In Washington, news that the Confederates were pouring into Maryland in large numbers created a crisis for President Lincoln. The defeat at Manassas had resulted in ugly accusations and finger pointing. Pope claimed that McClellan and the Army of the Potomac had not sustained him as they should have, and he even levied charges against several key officers. Lincoln understood that the army had lost confidence in Pope and he needed to go, but he hoped to have some breathing space to select a new field commander. As a temporary measure he placed McClellan in command of all the troops within the capital’s fortifications. Feelings against McClellan were so strong among members of Lincoln’s cabinet, that several of them presented a declaration for the President stating that they did not believe it was safe to entrust McClellan with the command of “any of the armies of the United States.” But Lee gave Lincoln no respite and the Confederate invasion of Maryland forced him to place an army in the field. Given the pace of events, Lincoln had no choice but to place McClellan in command. McClellan had the army’s confidence. As one of his soldiers put it, “the effect of this man’s presence upon the Army of the Potomac – in sunshine or rain, in darkness or in daylight, in victory or defeat – was electrical.”

Major General George B. McClellan (National Archives)

There was great irony in Lincoln’s decision for he hoped that McClellan and the army would serve as a tool to not only turn back the Confederate tide, but to provide the opportunity for a war-changing measure. Sensing that the time had come that he might up the ante in the war, Lincoln had prepared an Emancipation Proclamation, a document presaging profound change by adding emancipation to the North’s heretofore single objective of preserving the Union. Lincoln knew that many Northern soldiers and civilians opposed emancipation, on grounds of race, or because of their ambivalence towards slavery or the belief that introducing such an objective would only encourage Southerners to fight more desperately. The Democrats were firmly in this camp and one of the staunchest supporters of this viewpoint was McClellan. Earlier in the war, he expressed his opinion, “I am fighting to preserve the integrity of the Union and the power of the Govt – on no other issue. To gain that end we cannot afford to mix up the negro question – it must be incidental and subsidiary.” But the issue of slavery was hardly incidental or subsidiary. It entangled itself with nearly everything about this war. Slaves formed the economic backbone of the Confederacy. Slaves enabled the Confederacy to mobilize more of its young white men for military service. Even setting the emotional issue of slavery aside, an attack upon slavery struck at the underpinnings of the Southern economy and the Confederates’ ability to wage war. But Lincoln needed to issue his proclamation from a position of strength, or else risk having his measure look like a desperate act of a sinking administration. He needed a battlefield victory and he counted on McClellan and the Army of the Potomac to deliver it.

When the Army of Northern Virginia occupied Frederick, Lee expected the Union garrisons at Harper’s Ferry and Martinsburg would be withdrawn, clearing the way for him to establish communications through the Shenandoah Valley. But Union General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck ordered the garrisons to remain, leaving them both isolated but astride Lee’s intended line of communications. Confident that the Army of the Potomac would advance slowly from Washington, Lee conceived a bold plan to destroy or capture these garrisons. The plan called for three columns to converge upon them. Walker’s division would re-cross the Potomac and capture Loudoun Heights, overlooking Harper’s Ferry south of the junction of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. Lafayette McLaws with his own and Richard Anderson’s division was tasked with capturing Maryland Heights, the key to the possession of Harper’s Ferry. Major General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson commanded the strongest column, consisting of three divisions. Their mission was to march west from Frederick, cross the Potomac, capture or smash the Martinsburg garrison, or drive it back upon Harper’s Ferry, then complete the capture or destruction of the Harper’s Ferry garrison by sealing off its escape routes to the west. The balance of the army would march to Boonsboro, a village nestled against the western side of South Mountain. The army marched on September 10. Lee expected the operation could be wrapped up by September 12.

As the Confederate columns made their way across western Maryland, the Army of the Potomac advanced slowly out of Washington. McClellan assembled a force of some 80,000 men of all arms, although nearly 20,000 of his infantry were raw recruits, most of whom had little training. Later in the campaign reinforcements would raise his strength to around 85,000. The army moved out from Washington between September 4 and 6 in three columns along a line of advance designed to screen both Baltimore and Washington. On September 12 advance elements of the army entered Frederick. McClellan possessed a plenitude of reports about Confederate activity but they left him utterly baffled as to Lee’s intentions. “From all I can gather secesh is skedadelling,” he concluded in a letter to his wife. But on September 13 several non-commissioned officers of the 27th Indiana discovered a copy of Lee’s orders for the Harper’s Ferry operation, Special Orders no. 191, lying on the ground wrapped around three cigars in a recently abandoned Confederate camp. The discovery of the orders cleared much of the fog from the operational picture. Harper’s Ferry was in grave danger, but Lee’s army was divided and ripe for defeat in detail. McClellan drew up a plan up for a two-pronged offensive on September 14. Some 19,000 men from the Sixth Corps and Fourth Corps, under Major General William B. Franklin would spearhead the effort to relieve Harper’s Ferry, by smashing their way through Crampton’s Gap in South Mountain and attacking McLaws’s rear. The rest of the army, the First, Second, Ninth, and Twelfth Corps, and George Sykes’s Fifth Corps division – nearly 60,000 men – would cross South Mountain at Turner’s Gap, descend to Boonsboro and interpose themselves between Lee’s forces at Boonsboro and the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia. The plan had merit but it presumed that Turner’s Gap, which was only some two miles from Boonsboro, could be easily secured, and Franklin’s force was light considering the importance of its mission.

Unknown to McClellan, Lee was even more vulnerable than Special Orders no. 191 suggested. The Confederate had further divided his army after leaving Frederick, marching to Hagerstown with Major General James Longstreet’s command of two divisions and leaving Major General D. H. Hill’s division alone at Boonsboro. And, the Harper’s Ferry operation had not met its timetable. Although the Confederates managed to bottle up both Union garrisons at Harper’s Ferry, and held all the key positions around that place by September 13, the Federals continued to hold out. That same day Lee learned that elements of the Army of the Potomac were advancing toward South Mountain. He dispatched a warning to Jackson and McLaws to hasten the capture of Harper’s Ferry and he ordered D. H. Hill to defend Turner’s Gap. He also decided to take the added precaution of marching Longstreet’s command back to Boonsboro the next morning.

D.H. Hill

On the morning of the September 14, advance elements of the Army of the Potomac attempting to clear Turner’s Gap encountered part of D. H. Hill’s division. A confusing and sharp action developed, in the rough mountain terrain of South Mountain, and although Longstreet reinforced Hill in the afternoon, by nightfall the Union First and Ninth Corps had captured the key positions that rendered the Confederates’ position untenable. Five miles to the south, at Crampton’s Gap, the Sixth Corps overcame fierce resistance by a small Confederate force, and smashed their way through Crampton’s Gap into Pleasant Valley on the west side. Union losses for the day were 2,346. The Confederates lost more than 4,100 men. That night as Lee assessed the situation he decided his campaign had failed and he made plans to withdraw Longstreet and D. H. Hill to Virginia by way of Sharpsburg and to break off the Harper’s Ferry operation, which he knew still had not concluded.

McLaws ignored Lee’s orders to retreat to Virginia and during the early morning hours of September 15 he assembled a defensive line across Pleasant Valley, facing Franklin’s Sixth Corps. Even before he received Lee’s orders to break off the operations against Harper’s Ferry, Jackson had sent a courier speeding through the night with news that the surrender of the Union garrison was imminent. When Lee received Jackson’s report on the morning of the 15th, he had already modified his plan to withdraw Longstreet and D. H. Hill to Virginia immediately, and ordered both commands to halt behind Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg. Here he would wait to see how McClellan responded to his success at South Mountain. If he pressed hard, Longstreet and Hill could still withdraw to Virginia. But if he moved cautiously, Lee might be able to concentrate his army and offer battle in Maryland. The reasons and the wisdom of Lee’s decision to try and make a stand in Maryland have been debated ever since. He never fully explained his reasons but by remaining in Maryland and hazarding a battle he kept alive the possibilities the Maryland invasion had promised. If he could check McClellan and the Federals withdrew, then operations could be maintained on the Confederate frontier north of the Potomac and pressure continued on the North. If he withdrew to Virginia those opportunities were lost.

The early morning of September 15 at Harpers Ferry opened with a heavy artillery bombardment. By 8 a.m. the Union garrison of some 13,000 men, out of long-range ammunition for their artillery, were forced to surrender. At a cost of perhaps 400 casualties Stonewall Jackson won one of the most complete victories of the war for the Confederates. Meanwhile, McClellan learned that Lee had retreated from South Mountain, and reports from the front led him to believe that the Rebels had been badly thrashed and were in rapid retreat for Virginia. He commenced an immediate pursuit of what he presumed was a fleeing enemy. But his euphoria was dashed that afternoon when reports came in of an enemy line of battle forming behind Antietam Creek, and Franklin reported a strong Confederate force standing defiantly across the approach to Harper’s Ferry.

Severe straggling had reduced Longstreet’s command and Hill’s division to about 11,000 men, but Lee and Longstreet skillfully deployed them on the undulating terrain around Sharpsburg so that the Federals who observed them estimated their strength at four times that. All day on September 15 the Army of the Potomac poured over South Mountain and massed around Keedysville. Lee watched and waited anxiously. It was now a matter of time. Could his scattered divisions reunite before McClellan struck?

Within hours of arranging for the surrender of the garrison at Harper’s Ferry, Jackson set out with two of his three divisions, leaving A. P. Hill’s division behind to carry out the details of the surrender. Walker’s division followed Jackson, and McLaws withdrew his two divisions unmolested by Franklin from Pleasant Valley to Harper’s Ferry.

McClellan spent the morning of September 16 waiting for a fog to lift, and then when it did, he busied himself with reconnaissance of the Confederate positions. While the hours ticked by Jackson’s two divisions and Walker’s division joined Lee at Sharpsburg. Straggling had reduced their strength by thousands, but they raised Lee’s manpower to about 21,000. McClellan had about 60,000 effectives on hand. The odds were still long and Lee sent urgent messages to McLaws to hurry to Sharpsburg. The Georgian, whose men were desperately short of rations, marched through the night, losing perhaps one-third of his strength to straggling, but he reached Sharpsburg before daylight on the 17th. With McLaws and Anderson up, Lee had about 35,000 men. His army held a strong position with one flank anchored on the Potomac and the other on Antietam Creek.

Lee knew he would be attacked on the 17th. On the afternoon of September 16 McClellan at last set his army in motion, sending Major General Joseph Hooker’s 1st Corps across Antietam Creek to find Lee’s left flank. Just at dusk Hooker bumped into Hood’s division and the two forces skirmished until dark. The night was pitch dark with a slight drizzle. “I shall not, however, soon forget that night,” wrote Union General Alpheus Williams, “so dark, so obscure, so mysterious, so uncertain.”

Historian Garry Adelman holds up a historic Civil War photo at the place of its capture – the Hagerstown Pike (Robert Shenk)

The Battle of Antietam commenced at first light on the 17th. Because McClellan fed his army corps into the battle piecemeal the battle developed into three distinct phases. All shared one common characteristic. It was the bloodiest and most shocking battle any of the combatants had yet seen. “The roar of the infantry was beyond anything conceivable to the uninitiated,” wrote General Williams. The action opened on Lee’s left, where the battle raged from first light to about 10 a.m., then the main action shifted to the center until early afternoon, when it moved to the Confederate right. Lee came perilously close to defeat several times, but McClellan’s uncoordinated attacks enabled him to parry blows by shifting troops from quiet sectors to threatened points. The battle ended in high drama, when Lee’s right flank began to crumble under an attack by the Union Ninth Corps. A. P. Hill’s division arrived from Harper’s Ferry at this critical moment, counterattacked the Federals and restored the line. By sunset, 2,108 Union soldiers were dead, 9,549 wounded and 753 missing. Incomplete Confederate figures gave their losses at 10,291. Some 23,000 men were casualties; most of them killed or wounded, in a single day. The battlefield, wrote one Union officer, was “indescribably horrible.” No other day of the war would surpass Antietam in carnage.

During the night thousands of stragglers rejoined Lee, nearly making good his losses of the 17th. Lee decided to stand his ground again on the 18th. He had little to gain by doing so. McClellan also received reinforcements, but he chose not to renew the battle, a decision endorsed by nearly all his generals. Lee ordered a retreat on the night of the September 18 and by the next morning the Confederates were across the Potomac and in Virginia. McClellan ordered a cautious pursuit and on September 20, elements of the Fifth Corps crossed the Potomac near Shepherdstown. Lee reacted vigorously and sent A. P. Hill to drive them back, which he did, inflicting 363 casualties.

The Maryland Campaign was over. Although the Confederates could celebrate a brilliant victory at Harper’s Ferry, the campaign had failed. At a cost of thousands of battle and non-battle casualties, no real damage had been done to Northern morale and the odds of European recognition grew dimmer. For the Union, despite the Harper’s Ferry disaster and the indecisive nature of Antietam, the campaign and battle proved a crucial strategic victory. The Confederate invasion was turned back and Antietam seemed enough of a success that Lincoln felt confident to issue his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22. Antietam marked a watershed in American history. Lincoln’s proclamation sounded the trumpets that after this bloody battle the country would never be the same again. It would be a revolution now, a grim war to the finish. Either the Confederacy would prevail or they would be conquered and slavery destroyed. Any chance for a negotiated settlement that preserved slavery had gone up in the smoke and flame of Antietam.

Tags: Antietam, Civil War, Geroge B. McClellan, Robert E. Lee
Posted in History | 247 Comments »

Seven bloody days outside of Richmond in 1862

by Mojambo ( 163 Comments › )
Filed under History at July 12th, 2012 - 7:00 pm

The Seven Days Battles (June 25 – July 1, 1862) which ended at the Battle of Malvern Hill (July 1, 1862, 150 years ago this month) where Robert E. Lee ordered a frontal assault on the Federal position costing him 5, 560 men with Federal losses at 2,100 (anticipating almost a year to the day – July 3,1863 – when he would do the same at Gettysburg at the Federal position on Cemetery Ridge – “Pickett’s Charge”) showed bravery in the ranks of both Federal (notice that I refer to them as Federal and not Union soldiers. That is because they were rarely referred to as Union soldier’s during the war. They were called “Federal soldiers” or “United States soldiers”) and Confederate soldiers as well as massive blundering by the two commanders: Major General George B. McClellan and General Robert E. Lee and his newly arrived corps commander from the Shenandoah Valley, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. General McClellan was a terrific administrator and organizer but he was promoted too soon to the high command. If there was one Federal hero of the Seven Days it was V Corps commander Major General Fitz-John Porter who was a rock throughout the seven sanguinary days outside of Richmond (and would later be rewarded with a court martial and cashiering from the U.S. Army for political reasons, his court martial would later be overturned in 1886). As for General Lee he was new to the command and was unfamiliar with a lot of his subordinates, but his aggressiveness although the South paid heavily for it in terms of blood, saved Richmond. Ironically even though the Confederacy only won one of the Seven Days Battles (at Gaines’s Mill on June 27 – Gaines’s Mill is right next door to Cold Harbor where Ulysses S. Grant two years later would order his men forward into a bloody failed frontal attack), McClellan would pull back after every battle. It is unfortunate that the various battlefields of the Seven Days (also referred to as “the Peninsula Campaign”) are only partially preserved as the Richmond urban landscape has sprawled all over them. I had the honor to visit them in the summer of 1992 and as the author states you pretty much can visit them and have them to yourself.

Total casualties for the Seven Days battles:

Federals – 15, 8955

Confederate – 20,204

Had Lincoln put in a more aggressive commander, the Federal Army might have bulldozed its way into Richmond. The Army of the Potomac would not get that close to Richmond again until June 1864.

Watch this video on YouTube.

by Geoffrey Norman

Richmond, Va.
It doesn’t take long to walk the Malvern Hill battlefield. Less than an hour. And there is not much to see. There are a few cannons at the top of the hill, where they were on July 1, 1862, firing remorselessly into the lines of assaulting Confederate infantry that never came close to reaching them and took appalling casualties in the effort. Alongside a trail that meanders through the mature hardwood trees at the base of the hill, there are some shallow depressions in the ground that a plaque describes as hasty graves where some of the Confederate dead had been buried. There is one structure at the top of the hill that looks, more or less, the way it did on the day of the battle. Some split rail fences for verisimilitude. And that is about it.

General George McClellan

Measured against, say, the 4,000 acres of Shiloh or Gettysburg with its 1,300 monuments, Malvern Hill is decidedly minor league as Civil War battlefields go. And sparsely visited in comparison to the other, better known and better tended sites. When I walked Malvern Hill on a hot morning three weeks before the 150th anniversary of the battle, I had the place entirely to myself.

But the battle was no minor affair. Neither in terms of what was called, in those days, “the butcher’s bill,” nor in military and historical consequences. Malvern Hill was the last of what came to be known as the “Seven Days Battles,” a running series of fights that resulted in casualties to both sides of 36,059 killed, wounded, and missing. More than had been lost a couple of months earlier at Shiloh, a battle whose casualties matched those of the entire Revolutionary War and put both sides in the Civil War on notice.

In spite of the slaughter, Seven Days was, as so many of the great Civil War battles were, depressingly inconclusive. At least in the sense that when the battle was over, the war went on. But in almost no other engagement of the entire war did both sides miss such an opportunity to finish the whole thing in a stroke. As Major-General J. F. C. Fuller writes in his magisterial A Military History of the Western World: “The importance of the Seven Days Battle [sic] lies in what it did not accomplish.”

Each army, Fuller writes, “might easily” have destroyed its opponent had it not been for “blunderings.” But neither army could accomplish the coup de grâce, and so “the political importance of [the Seven Days] is that, instead of shortening the war it prolonged it by nearly three years.”

The Seven Days is, in this regard, analogous to the Battle of the Marne in the First World War: Confused, inconclusive, and a tragically missed opportunity for both sides, after which the war would not merely go on, but take over and become a force beyond human control.

The story of the Seven Days and the Peninsula Campaign that preceded it is, in large part, a tale of one man’s hubris.

General George McClellan liked to think of himself as a kind of American Napoleon, and in at least one regard there was a similarity. Both men were short.

Napoleon, though, was a master of war. He loved war and thrived on its challenges, and he was a gambler. It could have been said of him, as it was of a general who became McClellan’s adversary in the Seven Days, “his name might be Audacity.”

McClellan was quite the other thing. He was a master of military organization and an exceedingly adroit player in the political contests that result in promotion. But he did not much like war, and he made a point of avoiding both battle and the battlefield. The carnage was repellent to him.

But he was supreme on the parade ground, and after the Union army had been defeated at the First Manassas he came to Washington and built a magnificent army, by far the largest in the nation’s history. He made the right political allies and was, himself, a political force. He loved the attention, and his self-confidence was nearly sublime. “I find myself in a new and strange position here,” he wrote to his wife, “President, cabinet, Gen. Scott, and all deferring to me. By some strange operation of magic I seem to have become the power of the land.”

When cautioned by President Lincoln that he might be taking on too much responsibility, he replied, “I can do it all.”

He was insubordinate in his treatment of President Lincoln and referred to him as “the original gorilla.” Lincoln, whose self-confidence rested on a sturdier foundation, seemed willing to tolerate it so long as McClellan would deliver victories.

[…….]

McClellan did, eventually, use the army, moving it by water to the peninsula between the James and York rivers, hence the name of the campaign that followed. It was militarily sound enough. The Union navy could secure the flanks while the army advanced up the peninsula to Richmond, its waterborne line of supply secure. If the Confederate army came out to fight, McClellan would destroy it in an American Waterloo. If not, he would take the Confederate capital by siege. Either way, he would win the war and, at the very least, immortality.

The movement of the army by water was a vast undertaking and done handsomely. But once they were ashore, McClellan’s forces moved not just slowly, but ponderously. In part, this was because of the weather, the poor condition of the roads, and the difficulty of the terrain. But these are the ordinary givens of war and would not have hampered, say, Stonewall Jackson. The variable that in this case accounted for the hesitancy of the army’s advance was its commander’s “caution,” to use the kindest possible term.

McClellan imagined that he was outnumbered and not just marginally so. He believed at one point in the campaign that his opponent had more than 200,000 men in the field against his meager 120,000. In truth, Confederate forces never numbered much more than 85,000, and often fewer than that. During the entire campaign, McClellan always enjoyed superior numbers on the ground.

In his mind, however, it was a different story.

So he moved slowly, when he moved at all, and pestered Washington for reinforcements. When they did not come, he sulked and indulged in episodes of self-pity which bordered on paranoia. His political enemies in Washington, he hinted, wished his defeat, and by withholding from him the men that he needed, they were, he seemed to believe, conspiring to engineer his disgrace.

Lincoln attempted to reassure his petulant general of his support and to urge him to action:

And once more let me tell you, it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. . . . I beg to assure you that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can; but you must act.

McClellan was not the sort of man to be consoled by a few kind words. He continued to move slowly, when he moved at all.

The Confederates, meanwhile, retreated ahead of him. Their backs were to their own capital, and they would be incapable of resisting a siege if they allowed McClellan to get that close. In what was called at the time “a battle of posts,” they would inevitably lose.

So after more than a month of steady withdrawals, punctuated by a few skirmishes, they attacked. The Confederate army was, at this time, commanded by Joseph E. Johnston. He was a capable soldier but a difficult man. He was touchy and secretive and his relations with Jefferson Davis, his civilian chief, were not much better than -McClellan’s were with Lincoln.

His plan of attack was sound. With the bulk of his army, he attacked a smaller portion of McClellan’s that was relatively isolated by its position on the south bank of a small, swampy river called the Chickahominy, which bisected the peninsula and required the extensive construction of bridges and corduroy roads by McClellan’s engineers. The river played a crucial role in what the Federals called the Battle of Fair Oaks and in every engagement for the rest of the campaign.

The battle itself was disorganized, bloody, and inconclusive. Late in the action, Johnston was severely wounded. In his place, Jefferson Davis appointed Robert E. Lee who, thus far in the war, had been a disappointment to those who had expected great things of him.

McClellan, for his part, considered Lee a lightweight: “I prefer Lee to Johnston,” he said when he heard the news. “The former is too cautious and weak under grave responsibility. Personally brave and energetic to a fault, he yet is wanting in moral firmness when pressed by heavy responsibility, and is likely to be timid and irresolute in action.”

One can almost hear the voice of some modern wise guy saying, after hearing those last phrases, “Hey, man, project much?”

[…….]
It was some three weeks before the truth of these words was demonstrated. First, Lee strengthened his lines and firmed up his defenses in front of Richmond. He also sent for Stonewall Jackson, who had been busy in the Shenandoah Valley, keeping Washington so much on edge that Lincoln had continued withholding from McClellan the additional men he claimed so urgently to need. Lee sent his cavalry to scout the Union positions north of the Chickahominy, and Jeb Stuart responded by riding completely around McClellan’s lines. He reported back to Lee that the Union’s northern flank was “in the air.”

Lee determined to attack there with the bulk of his army, keeping a token force on the south side of the river, thus leaving Richmond exposed and vulner-able should McClellan move aggressively.

McClellan did move, and his army won the Battle of Oak Grove. After which he sent a message informing Washington, “The rebel force is stated at 200,000. . . . I regret my inferiority in numbers but feel that I am in no way responsible for it. . . . I will do all that a general can do with the splendid army I have the honor to command, and if it is destroyed by overwhelming numbers, can at least die with it and share its fate. But if the result of the action which will probably occur tomorrow, or within a short time, is a disaster, the responsibility cannot be thrown on my shoulders, it must rest where it belongs.” Lee had not yet attacked, but McClellan was a beaten man.

Lee did attack, the next day, on the other side of the river. The Union won that battle, too. And while McClellan’s forces on the opposite bank were merely four miles from Richmond, which was wide open to attack, he made the decision to retreat.

He was, he said, changing his base.

Lee, on the other hand, pressed his attack. The third of the Seven Days Battles, Gaines’s Mill, was the bloodiest and Lee’s first victory. It turned on an assault by Texans under the command of General John B. Hood, who was found after the battle sitting on a cracker barrel, weeping. And Hood was a hard man who would go on to lose the use of his arm at Gettysburg and have a leg amputated after a wound at Chickamauga.

After Gaines’s Mill, the Union army was in full retreat. A battle at Savage’s Station on the south bank of the river bought time. Enough to destroy vast stores of supplies but not enough to evacuate some 2,500 wounded men who were taken by the advancing Confederate armies.

During the morning I made my solitary walk around Malvern Hill, I went looking for the Savage’s Station battlefield. There is no park. The actual site of the battle is, today, partially covered by the cloverleaf interchange of I-295 and I-64 and commemorated by one of those cast iron plaques on the shoulder of a nearby two-lane blacktop.

[……]

There is nothing in any of the accounts of the Seven Days to prove one side or the other superior in bravery or fortitude or willingness to suffer and die.

When one compares generalship, however, the story is different, and vastly so.

McClellan continued his retreat. Lee pursued. Relentlessly. Intent on a battle of annihilation. And he might have had it at a battle known by various names, the most commonly used of which are Frayser’s Farm and Glendale. This was Lee’s best chance to cut the retreating Union forces off from the James River and the protection of navy gunboats. His generals—to include, conspicuously, Stonewall Jackson—failed him. The Union army escaped to the safety of Malvern Hill, where Confederate troops marched into the teeth of a powerful defensive position. It was his last chance, and his audacity became recklessness. The assaults failed.

The Union victory was so complete that some of McClellan’s subordinates urged a resumption of the offensive with the objective of taking Richmond. McClellan, who had spent most of the previous two days aboard a Federal gunboat on the James River, could not be persuaded. One of his generals, Philip Kearney, protested “against this order to retreat. We ought, instead of retreating, to follow up the enemy and take Richmond; and in full view of the responsibility of such a declaration, I say . . . such an order can only be prompted by cowardice or treason.”

[……]

By “failing to win,” he had made inevitable many other battles, to include Antietam, where he also failed. One feels a sense of profound sadness when visiting any of the Civil War battlefields, but there is something different about the patchwork of small sites and solitary plaques that mark and commemorate the Seven Days. A sense, perhaps, of failure compounded by futility and the eternally high price of human vanity

Read the rest – Seven bloody days

Tags: Civil War, Geoffrey Norman, George McClellan, Robert E. Lee
Posted in History | 163 Comments »

Posts Tagged ‘Robert E. Lee’

Twilght of the Confederacy

The great battle of Gettysburg; and the “goddamned old goggle-eyed snapping turtle” Major General George G. Meade – the battle’s real hero

One hundred fifty years ago today – America’s bloodiest day, the Battle of Antietam

Antietam

The Maryland Campaign of 1862

By D. Scott Hartwig

Seven bloody days outside of Richmond in 1862

Login

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Cast of Characters

The Diary of Daedalus

Blogroll