Did Lee make the right choice after Chancellorsville?

[J_Man0507]

Yeah, 20/20 hindsight says that Lee's second invasion of the North was a mistake, but at the time, it didn't seem to be. Lee wanted to take the fight away from war ravaged Virginia and give the state some time to recover. Virginia had been decimated by the operation of opposing armies operating within its bounds. Let the farmers attempt to bring in some of the crops and recover a little bit, if only for a month or so. Also, if Lee had been able to successfully carry on a campaign in the North and threaten Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia (New York would probably have been a pipe dream), it would possibly have drawn attention away from Vicksburg. Now, looking back, we know that it wouldn't have drawn much from Vicksburg, because it would have fallen even if Lee had won at Gettysburg. But looking at it from a strategic perspective, it was pretty sound.

I really don't think it would have been smart to send any of the troops from the AoNV west to attempt to rescue Vicksburg. It would probably have been too little too late, and the Union Army of the Tennessee was equal if not better than the Army of Northern Virginia: good commanders and hard fighters. Also, it would have left Richmond open for attack, and Hooker, though disconcerted by Chancellorsville, would have had to have gone for Richmond. With one corps gone from the AoNV, that is between 20,000 and 25,000 men, leaving Lee with only about 50,000 to fight with. Not enough in Lee's view I'm sure. So while the invasion isn't sound in our eyes today, looking at it as Lee did, it is easy to understand why he did what he did.

[OpnDownfall]

There were fairly good reasons favoring the Pa. adventure, if it did not appear that the one of the main (if not only real) main motivation for the campaign was a ploy to keep Lee and his Army in Va. I know it is hard to prove, but his extreme attachment to Va., argues that Davis' nervousness concerning the course of the war in the West was such, that he actually contemplated sending a part of the ANV (if not Lee, himself) would certainly make Lee look for a likely alternative, no matter the strategic consequences.

[J_Man0507]

I do agree that keeping the AoNV in Virginia was a motivation of Lee to keep the army there. The thing with Davis is, he had an attachment to the west, having lived in Mississippi. And the Mississippi River was a vital link that losing it would be disastrous. But I think taking a good part of an army from a theater wouldn't be exactly sound. That was one of the problems with Davis. He wanted to have too much control of the military, and didn't focus enough on leading his "country" to be an effective president. Lincoln would try to motivate his generals, and would show his displeasure, but he never really made any strategy decisions, unless it was to force someone to move. He left the fighting to the generals and the armies. Though I don't think Lee could ever have had much success in a northern campaign, I think his invasion plan made a little more sense than sending men all the way to the Mississippi, separating a goodly portion of his men for atleast two weeks of travel, seeing as how poor the railways were in the south. Lee may have done well in the western theater if he had been sent, but I don't think it would have been good for the Confederate war effort if he had gone. There wasn't anybody else of Lee's calibre by this point in the CSA, and Richmond would have been lost I think if he and a portion of his men had gone west.

[OpnDownfall]

Agreed, yet in the context of this thread and consideration of the historical record, it can be plausibly argued that even at the time, the Pa. Campaign was a mistake.
Tn. And the Mississippi River were in the process of being lost to the confederacy, even as Lee and Davis consulted on what to do after Chancellorsville. In the event, Davis Did, in fact, separate a part of the ANV and sent them west. Can it be convincingly, argued that reinforcing Bragg several mo's earlier than was the case in reality, would have garnered a victory Less impressive than what actually did occur at Chickamauga?
The stated objectives of the Pa. invasion, were many and mixed, none of them particularly convincing, even then, except, perhaps, to those already committed to it as an alternative to reinforcing the West.
It has been noted by others (including me) that the south won battles in the East and lost the War in the West. The west was not the backwater of the CW, it was where the heartland of the south was being carved up and destroyed.
Neither Hooker Nor Meade, were any offensive threats to Lee or Richmond (the History Books are clear).
It is true that the main blame is on Davis, because he should have realized the importance of the West. That outside a lucky stroke, whatever gains in Pa. or Md. would be subsumed by disaster in the West. One can forgive Lee for being narrow focused on his own baliwick in Va., not so with Davis, who as leader of the whole south, should have seen the war in continental terms, not by states, like Lee.

[whitworth]

"Prior to the Gettysburg/Vicksburg results, the South is pretty much holding its own, effectively parrying Northern attacks...but even after Gettysburg/Vicksburg, its not NECESSARILY a lost war."


I think the above is the great lapse of historians. I would agree that most historians sold this line of thought. That before July, 1863, the Confederacy was doing fairly well. That they had held off the Yankees at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville in Virginia.

But I think most historians sold us a mirage. Even before Vicksburg permanently fell to the Union, the Mississippi River was lost by the Confederacy. Vickburg would fall because the Union had the logistics and the steamboats to keep pressuring this Confederate defensive position.

Much of the Confederacy was lost already. The Confederacy would never regain control over Kentucky, Missouri, western Virginia, Tennessee, and the New Mexico Territory of the United States, now the states of Arizona and New Mexico.

In retrospect, the mere act of secession by Virginia, meant about a third of that state was permanently lost to Virginia. Much of that area was lost long before the battle of Chancellorsville. Even Lee could devise no plan to win back that part of native Virginia soil. Lee could win at Chancellorsville in eastern Virginia, but the Confederacy had no way of taking control over the Kanawha Valley, Charleston and Wheeling.

[J_Man0507]

You make a good argument OD. The invasion was a mistake no matter how you look at it; going into enemy territory, extending both lines of supply and communications, and having invaded, the Union troops are going to fight harder and better, esp. the Pennsylvania boys. However, I still feel that Lee had recourse to send the men north and not west. Here are a couple of reasons.

1. He knew that it would be impossible for the Army of Northern Virginia to subsist much longer in Virginia itself. The state had been picked clean and the shoddy rationing system Richmond had in place wasn't doing his men any favors. Therefore, go where there is food and where supplies can be foraged. The whole south was practically the same at this point of the war, with large armies taking what was needed from the countryside, there wasn't enough for anyone.

2. He still expected that Hooker and his army were demoralized, and if he was able to draw them into a fight, he could probably best them once again. He had no respect for Hooker, and he knew that enlistments were soon to expire and that he may have a better chance at winning again. In the west, he would be going up against generals with whom he had never fought before and had a completely different fighting style. Lets assume he sends Longstreet west to go up against Grant. Longstreet can't help, having been put under Johnston, and Grant takes Vicksburg, turns and hits Johnston. No help there. He may have been able to help against Rosecrans, but Bragg was just as incapable commander. We see that Longstreet helped at Chickamauga, but that can only be credited as a lucky win for Bragg, because he didn't win it because he was a superior tactician. And having Longstreet didn't help at Lookout Mountain or Missionary Ridge. It would have been a waste of men to send them west, and I think Lee saw that.

3. He realized that weakening his force meant once more falling back to Richmond. He did not want to surrender the strategic initiative he had and submit to slowly rotting away in a seige. That could mean the war ends sooner rather than two years down the road. To Lee, sending any men west meant surrendering the initiative and he would not do that.

These are just a few examples. These you can find in Sears book (it was handy at the time), but these and more are probably in every study of that campaign that has been written. It was a mistake any way that you look at it, but I feel that Lee had his justifications, and that even sending men west would not have helped the war effort for the CSA

[OpnDownfall]

I too, believe that the cards were stacked against the south from the very beginning, but that does not mean the south by luck or genius could not have prevailed, historically, very little that happens was written in stone. to happened as it did.
Whitworth's comments are well taken, but they are also proof that continuing the war in the same old way, was not winning the war. Somehing needed to change if the south was to survive.
Defeating the AoP in the East, again, while the war continued to be lost in the west, was not working for the existing crisis.
Objectively, we know the Pa. invasion was a mistake. If it were, then what should have been done just after Chancellorsville?
Bragg was in the process of being driven out of Tn and into Ga. Vicksberg, the last toe hold of the confederacy on the Mississippi, was in the process being lost.
If nothing else, Longstreet in Tn (or even in Ga.) sooner would have revitalized the war in the West sooner and kept Grant in the West longer than, in fact, it did in real life.