WillieBrennan
03-17-2010, 06:56 PM
01/31/03
by Phil Andrade
This is how Shelby Foote, pre-eminent among historians of the American Civil War, describes Lee’s insistence on committing his Army of Northern Virginia to the infantry assault forever after known as “Pickett’s Charge”. Foote elaborates “...And that was the mistake he made, the mistake of all mistakes....and there was scarcely a trained soldier who didn’t know it was a mistake at the time, except possibly Pickett himself...”
Gettysburg, Foote surmises, was the price the South paid for having R.E.Lee.
Even more uncompromising is the account of James Longstreet. Writing his memoirs years after the war, he recalls his attempt to dissaude Lee from embarking on the assault of July 3rd “...I have been a soldier, I may say, from the ranks up to the position I now hold.I have been in pretty much all kinds of skirmishes, from those of two or three soldiers up to those of an army corps, and I think I can safely say there never was a body of fifteeen thousand men who could make that attack successfully...”
Alongside the bloody repulses of Fredericksburg, Cold Harbor and Franklin, this is the action that is cited as an assault that should never have been made, doomed to failure ..... a sanguinary testimony of the prevalence of firepower over gallantry.
The purpose of this essay is to contend that Lee had greater justification for his belief that the assault might succeed than is generally allowed, and that the popular perception of that notorious action should be re-assessed in a light more favourable to Lee’s judgement . Given the comments cited above, it takes some hardihood to attempt this. On the other hand, bearing in mind the offensive prowess of Lee’s soldiers as demonstrated on previous occassions, and, indeed, at Gettysburg itself during the previous two days of combat, the attempt to break the Union Centre by a massive infantry assault, well supported by artillery, cannot be dismissed as the result of recklesness or wishful thinking on the part of Lee.
As for the Battle of Gettysburg itself, this can only be properly understood if the strategic situation of the war as a whole is taken into consideration.The Confederacy faced a serious crisis in April/May 1863, the fundamental weakness of its position being due to failure in the West.
The threat to Vicksburg was the principal danger. Grant had successfully moved down the West bank of the Mississippi, below the rebel fortress, crossed to the opposite bank, and was now in a position to attack from the South.Control of the Mississippi was vital to the Confederacy, and this was now in jeopardy. The earlier part of the war in the Western theatres had seen the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee River, the capture of New Orleans, and failure to stem the Union tide at the bloody Battle of Shiloh. The track record of Confederate command in the West was as dismal as its counterpart in the East was brilliant.General Johnston and President Davis hated each other, General Bragg and his subordinates were locked in antagonism and there was a chronic display of jealousy and suspicion between the commanders of the various Western departments. These defects, bad enough in themselves, were compounded by logistical problems. The yankees were able to exploit the advantage of river communications as they won success in the West, while the Rebels were faced with desperately vulnerable and deteriorating railroad systems that denied their outnumbered forces food and supplies, let alone reinforcements.
Confederate soldiers at Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro and other Western battles proved themselves as brave and effective fighters, but they were let down by bickering commanders.
If the Confederacy was to be ruined in the West, it might be saved in the East.
As a proponent of an offensive in the East, Lee was not ignoring the importance of the West. Far from it.....he realised only too well that time was running out, and that an attempt to reinforce Johnston in Mississippi or Bragg in Tennessee would entail painfully slow transport of troops and supplies, and that their eventual deployment might yet fail to surmount the political and personal problems that existed between Bragg and his subordinates, and between Johnston and Davis. Events several months later at Chickamauga were to prove how right Lee was.
A successful foray into Maryland and/or Pennsylvania provided the most effective and timely riposte that the Confedracy could aspire to in the crisis of May 1863. Here, in the Eastern Theatre where the rival Capitals of Richmond and Washington were so close, was where success for the South had already been proven, and where a necessarily risky initiative might prevail. This was the propitious moment...consider the criteria - an abundance of desperately needed food for rebel soldiers and forage for the horses available in Pennsylvania, shorter distances to travel, a numerical disparity between the opposing armies that was at its lowest since July 1862, and, above all, an army that was in “the habit of victory”. This was also regarded as the “Cockpit”of the war. A major Confederate success in the East, particularly on Northern soil, might yet attain the longed for foreign recognition. At this point, after the Northern debacle at Chancellorsville, another significant reverse for the Union must increase the chances of Anglo- French support for the Confederacy.Imagine the effect of such a defeat in political, let alone military, terms. After he received news of Hooker’s defeat , Lincoln is reported to have groaned “..My God! What will the Country say?”
This rather sketchy resume of the strategic crisis that faced the Confederacy in the early Summer of 1863 should dispel the notion that Gettysburg was the “High Water Mark” of the Confederacy. It was not. That title more properly belongs to the September and October of 1862, when Southern Armies invaded Union soil almost simultaneously in Maryland and Kentucky, and another offensive was mounted in Mississippi. In this respect Antietam, Perryville, Iuka and Corinth represented the true Confederate High Water Mark.
The Gettysburg campaign might be compared with Nazi Germany’s 1943 offensive against the Soviet Union, codenamed “Operation Citadel”, which, almost exactly eighty years to the day after Gettysburg, brought on the Battle of Kursk. In this case, Adolf Hitler recognised that the ring was closing around Germany....collapse in North Africa and Allied invasion of Sicily making it imperative that some additional mighty blow be struck against the main enemy - the Soviet Union - before it was too late. This analogy between Kursk and Gettysburg should be viewed with circumspection, but it is compelling all the same!
These strategic criteria were enough to convince Lee, and Davis and his entourage, that an invasion of the North, however hazardous, was less risky than remaining on the defensive. Chancellorsville had been a crushing victory, but , in stategic terms, a defensive one. Time was running out. What was required was another victory, within striking distance of Washington, Baltimore or even New York. Moreover, this victory must be overwhelming, smashing and decisive, enough in itself to convince people in North America and Europe that the South could win, and deserved to win, its independence. Earlier in the war the Confederacy could afford to remain on the defensive...it had been enough to repulse the Yankee invaders. The stakes were too high for that now. The Emancipation Proclomation had changed the direction and tempo of the conflict - it was now a war to the death. Battles such as Chancellorsville, a superb Southern victory, were not enough to end the conflict. They were, however, extremely costly in lives (especially when a leader of Stonewall Jackson’s calibre perished), the Confederacy could not afford this attrition for very long,and the best chance the South had was for Lee to win in the East before Johnston, Pemberton and Bragg lost it in the West.
And who better than Lee and his heroes could undertake this epic? Outnumbered, starved and sometimes barefoot, the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia had fought superbly and triumphed on every occassion save one....and even then, at Antietam, they had fought double their numbers to a standstill, and then offered battle the following day before withdrawing into Virginia.
All these considerations must have impinged on Lee’s conscious and subconscious mind during his invasion of Pennsylvania. Apart from explaining the strategic impetus of his Generalship in that campaign, they motivated him to fight a battle of epic proportions, which may fairly be described as perhaps the closest fought of modern times.
Should anyone be in doubt as to the closeness of the outcome of this engagement, a survey of the casualty statistics will suffice to convince. While Confederate losses, as officially reported, were very incomplete, a meticulous investigation of the regimental losses of the Army of Northern Virginia, based on the individual service records of the soldiers themselves, has indicated that the Southern casualty total at Gettysburg was astonishingly close to that of the Federal army. The Army of the Potomac’s Gettysburg casualties were officially recorded as 23,049, of whom 3,155 were posted as killed in action, 14,529 wounded and 5,365 missing. A thourough research of the muster rolls susequently revealed that the actual number of fatalities rose to 5,291, as more than 2,000 of the wounded died, three quarters of them within a week of the battle. The Confederate losses,using estimates based on extrapolation from the most reliable and complete reports, may be reckoned at a total of about 24,500, of whom an estimated 19,000 were killed or wounded.The names of 5,425 unwounded Confederate prisoners were recorded by their Federal captors. Assessed in terms of bloodshed, it is apparent from these statistics that 93 Northerners were killed or wounded for every 100 Southerners.
This no doubt reveals that, proportionately , the South suffered more heavily. In general terms, Lee lost a third of his army, while Meade lost a quarter of his. Apparently the Army of Northern Virginia engaged somewhere between seventy and seventy five thousand men, against Federal forces that numbered rather more than ninety thousand . To put this in perspective, however, it should be noted that, with the exception of the Seven Days Battles which had been fought almost exactly a year before, this was the smallest disparity in numbers that Lee ever had to contend with. While Lee was probably unaware of the smallness of his numerical disadvantage, the numbers as cited should help to dispel the view that Lee was excessively audacious in this battle - indeed, the risks he took here pale beside those he took at Second Mannassas, Sharpsburg or Chancellorsville. Another aspect of the statistical record of Gettysburg should be considered.....the casualty reports indicate that the burden of loss was distributed fairly evenly throughout Lee’s army, Longstreet’s, Ewell’s and Hill’s corps suffering approximately 8,000, 7,000 and 9,000 casualties respectively. This shows that Lee made good use of all the men he had on the field. In the Union army the loss was borne unequally - the First Corps suffered almost 50% casualties, and the Second, Third and Eleventh about 40%, the Fifth about 20%, the Twelfth about 11% and the Sixth less than 2%. This might not be a valid criterion to use as a basis for comparing the relative tactical skills of the opposing commanders. The Union Twelfth Corps, for example, suffered relatively low casualties, and yet played an extremely effective role in the fighting. Be that as it may, it is apparent that Lee fought his army to the utmost, an achievement in its own right.
Read the rest of the essay here. (http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/gettysburg/articles/mistakeofallmistakes.aspx)
by Phil Andrade
This is how Shelby Foote, pre-eminent among historians of the American Civil War, describes Lee’s insistence on committing his Army of Northern Virginia to the infantry assault forever after known as “Pickett’s Charge”. Foote elaborates “...And that was the mistake he made, the mistake of all mistakes....and there was scarcely a trained soldier who didn’t know it was a mistake at the time, except possibly Pickett himself...”
Gettysburg, Foote surmises, was the price the South paid for having R.E.Lee.
Even more uncompromising is the account of James Longstreet. Writing his memoirs years after the war, he recalls his attempt to dissaude Lee from embarking on the assault of July 3rd “...I have been a soldier, I may say, from the ranks up to the position I now hold.I have been in pretty much all kinds of skirmishes, from those of two or three soldiers up to those of an army corps, and I think I can safely say there never was a body of fifteeen thousand men who could make that attack successfully...”
Alongside the bloody repulses of Fredericksburg, Cold Harbor and Franklin, this is the action that is cited as an assault that should never have been made, doomed to failure ..... a sanguinary testimony of the prevalence of firepower over gallantry.
The purpose of this essay is to contend that Lee had greater justification for his belief that the assault might succeed than is generally allowed, and that the popular perception of that notorious action should be re-assessed in a light more favourable to Lee’s judgement . Given the comments cited above, it takes some hardihood to attempt this. On the other hand, bearing in mind the offensive prowess of Lee’s soldiers as demonstrated on previous occassions, and, indeed, at Gettysburg itself during the previous two days of combat, the attempt to break the Union Centre by a massive infantry assault, well supported by artillery, cannot be dismissed as the result of recklesness or wishful thinking on the part of Lee.
As for the Battle of Gettysburg itself, this can only be properly understood if the strategic situation of the war as a whole is taken into consideration.The Confederacy faced a serious crisis in April/May 1863, the fundamental weakness of its position being due to failure in the West.
The threat to Vicksburg was the principal danger. Grant had successfully moved down the West bank of the Mississippi, below the rebel fortress, crossed to the opposite bank, and was now in a position to attack from the South.Control of the Mississippi was vital to the Confederacy, and this was now in jeopardy. The earlier part of the war in the Western theatres had seen the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee River, the capture of New Orleans, and failure to stem the Union tide at the bloody Battle of Shiloh. The track record of Confederate command in the West was as dismal as its counterpart in the East was brilliant.General Johnston and President Davis hated each other, General Bragg and his subordinates were locked in antagonism and there was a chronic display of jealousy and suspicion between the commanders of the various Western departments. These defects, bad enough in themselves, were compounded by logistical problems. The yankees were able to exploit the advantage of river communications as they won success in the West, while the Rebels were faced with desperately vulnerable and deteriorating railroad systems that denied their outnumbered forces food and supplies, let alone reinforcements.
Confederate soldiers at Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro and other Western battles proved themselves as brave and effective fighters, but they were let down by bickering commanders.
If the Confederacy was to be ruined in the West, it might be saved in the East.
As a proponent of an offensive in the East, Lee was not ignoring the importance of the West. Far from it.....he realised only too well that time was running out, and that an attempt to reinforce Johnston in Mississippi or Bragg in Tennessee would entail painfully slow transport of troops and supplies, and that their eventual deployment might yet fail to surmount the political and personal problems that existed between Bragg and his subordinates, and between Johnston and Davis. Events several months later at Chickamauga were to prove how right Lee was.
A successful foray into Maryland and/or Pennsylvania provided the most effective and timely riposte that the Confedracy could aspire to in the crisis of May 1863. Here, in the Eastern Theatre where the rival Capitals of Richmond and Washington were so close, was where success for the South had already been proven, and where a necessarily risky initiative might prevail. This was the propitious moment...consider the criteria - an abundance of desperately needed food for rebel soldiers and forage for the horses available in Pennsylvania, shorter distances to travel, a numerical disparity between the opposing armies that was at its lowest since July 1862, and, above all, an army that was in “the habit of victory”. This was also regarded as the “Cockpit”of the war. A major Confederate success in the East, particularly on Northern soil, might yet attain the longed for foreign recognition. At this point, after the Northern debacle at Chancellorsville, another significant reverse for the Union must increase the chances of Anglo- French support for the Confederacy.Imagine the effect of such a defeat in political, let alone military, terms. After he received news of Hooker’s defeat , Lincoln is reported to have groaned “..My God! What will the Country say?”
This rather sketchy resume of the strategic crisis that faced the Confederacy in the early Summer of 1863 should dispel the notion that Gettysburg was the “High Water Mark” of the Confederacy. It was not. That title more properly belongs to the September and October of 1862, when Southern Armies invaded Union soil almost simultaneously in Maryland and Kentucky, and another offensive was mounted in Mississippi. In this respect Antietam, Perryville, Iuka and Corinth represented the true Confederate High Water Mark.
The Gettysburg campaign might be compared with Nazi Germany’s 1943 offensive against the Soviet Union, codenamed “Operation Citadel”, which, almost exactly eighty years to the day after Gettysburg, brought on the Battle of Kursk. In this case, Adolf Hitler recognised that the ring was closing around Germany....collapse in North Africa and Allied invasion of Sicily making it imperative that some additional mighty blow be struck against the main enemy - the Soviet Union - before it was too late. This analogy between Kursk and Gettysburg should be viewed with circumspection, but it is compelling all the same!
These strategic criteria were enough to convince Lee, and Davis and his entourage, that an invasion of the North, however hazardous, was less risky than remaining on the defensive. Chancellorsville had been a crushing victory, but , in stategic terms, a defensive one. Time was running out. What was required was another victory, within striking distance of Washington, Baltimore or even New York. Moreover, this victory must be overwhelming, smashing and decisive, enough in itself to convince people in North America and Europe that the South could win, and deserved to win, its independence. Earlier in the war the Confederacy could afford to remain on the defensive...it had been enough to repulse the Yankee invaders. The stakes were too high for that now. The Emancipation Proclomation had changed the direction and tempo of the conflict - it was now a war to the death. Battles such as Chancellorsville, a superb Southern victory, were not enough to end the conflict. They were, however, extremely costly in lives (especially when a leader of Stonewall Jackson’s calibre perished), the Confederacy could not afford this attrition for very long,and the best chance the South had was for Lee to win in the East before Johnston, Pemberton and Bragg lost it in the West.
And who better than Lee and his heroes could undertake this epic? Outnumbered, starved and sometimes barefoot, the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia had fought superbly and triumphed on every occassion save one....and even then, at Antietam, they had fought double their numbers to a standstill, and then offered battle the following day before withdrawing into Virginia.
All these considerations must have impinged on Lee’s conscious and subconscious mind during his invasion of Pennsylvania. Apart from explaining the strategic impetus of his Generalship in that campaign, they motivated him to fight a battle of epic proportions, which may fairly be described as perhaps the closest fought of modern times.
Should anyone be in doubt as to the closeness of the outcome of this engagement, a survey of the casualty statistics will suffice to convince. While Confederate losses, as officially reported, were very incomplete, a meticulous investigation of the regimental losses of the Army of Northern Virginia, based on the individual service records of the soldiers themselves, has indicated that the Southern casualty total at Gettysburg was astonishingly close to that of the Federal army. The Army of the Potomac’s Gettysburg casualties were officially recorded as 23,049, of whom 3,155 were posted as killed in action, 14,529 wounded and 5,365 missing. A thourough research of the muster rolls susequently revealed that the actual number of fatalities rose to 5,291, as more than 2,000 of the wounded died, three quarters of them within a week of the battle. The Confederate losses,using estimates based on extrapolation from the most reliable and complete reports, may be reckoned at a total of about 24,500, of whom an estimated 19,000 were killed or wounded.The names of 5,425 unwounded Confederate prisoners were recorded by their Federal captors. Assessed in terms of bloodshed, it is apparent from these statistics that 93 Northerners were killed or wounded for every 100 Southerners.
This no doubt reveals that, proportionately , the South suffered more heavily. In general terms, Lee lost a third of his army, while Meade lost a quarter of his. Apparently the Army of Northern Virginia engaged somewhere between seventy and seventy five thousand men, against Federal forces that numbered rather more than ninety thousand . To put this in perspective, however, it should be noted that, with the exception of the Seven Days Battles which had been fought almost exactly a year before, this was the smallest disparity in numbers that Lee ever had to contend with. While Lee was probably unaware of the smallness of his numerical disadvantage, the numbers as cited should help to dispel the view that Lee was excessively audacious in this battle - indeed, the risks he took here pale beside those he took at Second Mannassas, Sharpsburg or Chancellorsville. Another aspect of the statistical record of Gettysburg should be considered.....the casualty reports indicate that the burden of loss was distributed fairly evenly throughout Lee’s army, Longstreet’s, Ewell’s and Hill’s corps suffering approximately 8,000, 7,000 and 9,000 casualties respectively. This shows that Lee made good use of all the men he had on the field. In the Union army the loss was borne unequally - the First Corps suffered almost 50% casualties, and the Second, Third and Eleventh about 40%, the Fifth about 20%, the Twelfth about 11% and the Sixth less than 2%. This might not be a valid criterion to use as a basis for comparing the relative tactical skills of the opposing commanders. The Union Twelfth Corps, for example, suffered relatively low casualties, and yet played an extremely effective role in the fighting. Be that as it may, it is apparent that Lee fought his army to the utmost, an achievement in its own right.
Read the rest of the essay here. (http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/gettysburg/articles/mistakeofallmistakes.aspx)