Was the Petersburg Siege the Work of Genius

[whitworth]

We know Lee surrendered in 1865. But could Grant have ended the siege with the capture of Richmond in 1864 with more aggressive attacks and many more losses.

Perhaps, but Grant had nothing to win then. Georgia was still viable, along with Alabama. Much of South Carolina, North Carolina and eastern Virginia remained in Confederate hands.
Grant delayed his push until after Sherman marched through Georgia and South Carolina. Savannah, Charleston, Wilmington had to fall and Wilson was starting to roll through the Alabama defenses.
Grant didn't really start to squeeze Lee's front, until there was little of the Confederacy left.
With Sherman's army in North Carolina, there was little left of a Confederate army to matter. Grant had to attack a much smaller army and a logistically withered army. Many Confederates were so unfit for battle, that many dropped out of formation, on the retreat from Petersburg to Appomattox. It was an army destroyed by attrition and desertion.

[trice]

Originally Posted by whitworth

We know Lee surrendered in 1865. But could Grant have ended the siege with the capture of Richmond in 1864 with more aggressive attacks and many more losses.

Perhaps, but Grant had nothing to win then. Georgia was still viable, along with Alabama. Much of South Carolina, North Carolina and eastern Virginia remained in Confederate hands.
Grant delayed his push until after Sherman marched through Georgia and South Carolina. Savannah, Charleston, Wilmington had to fall and Wilson was starting to roll through the Alabama defenses.
Grant didn't really start to squeeze Lee's front, until there was little of the Confederacy left.
With Sherman's army in North Carolina, there was little left of a Confederate army to matter. Grant had to attack a much smaller army and a logistically withered army. Many Confederates were so unfit for battle, that many dropped out of formation, on the retreat from Petersburg to Appomattox. It was an army destroyed by attrition and desertion.

Grant stopped his attacks when he was halted before Petersburg because his Army was exhausted by the campaign. This is in June, after the Overland Campaign (sometimes called "The Forty Days") where Grant's forces had taken some 60,000 battle casualties. That is almost twice what Sherman took from May to September in the Atlanta Campaign.

At that point, weariness and disruption was making the AoP an unresponsive organization. If it wasn't, Petersburg would surely have fallen in mid-June (2nd Battle of Petersburg, June 15-18) when Smith and Hancock closed on it.

Shortly after that, Grant had to dispatch Sheridan, 2 cavalry divisions, and VI Corps to Washington and the Valley to counter Early. In August, September, and October those forces were tied down in the campaign that crushed Early's Army and removed the Shenandoah as a supply source for the Confederacy.

Throughout 1864, Grant actively sought to improve his situation at Petersburg-Richmond. As the siege progressed, battle after battle was fought. At no point did Grant simply sit and wait for actions elsewhere, although he was clearly aware of them and relied on them as part of his plan. He was, after all, the one directing all those operations.

Here is a list of some of the battles around Petersburg-Richmond while you say Grant was delaying:
Battle of Jerusalem Plank Road (June 21 – June 24)
Wilson-Kautz Raid, June 22 – June 30
--Battle of Staunton River Bridge (June 25)
--Battle of Sappony Church (June 28)
First Battle of Ream's Station (June 29)
First Battle of Deep Bottom (July 27 – July 29)
Battle of the Crater (July 30)
Second Battle of Deep Bottom (August 13 – August 20)
Siege of Petersburg, capture of the Weldon Railroad, August 18-19
Battle of Globe Tavern (August 18 – August 21)
Second Battle of Ream's Station (August 25)
Battle of Chaffin's Farm or New Market Heights (September 29 – September 30)
Battle of Peebles' Farm (September 30 – October 2)
Battle of Darbytown and New Market Roads (October 7)
Battle of Darbytown Road (October 13)
Battle of Fair Oaks and Darbytown Road (October 27 – October 28)
Battle of Boydton Plank Road (October 27 – October 28)
Battle of Hatcher's Run (February 5 – February 7, 1865)

While the scenario you are painting is true (other Union armies gnawing into Confederate vitals eventually making Lee's position untenable), it is not all that was going on.

If Grant can succeed at Petersburg-Richmond (probably by getting around Lee's right and cutting his LOC), then no position in the state is viable for the Confederacy. That is what Grant's efforts here are about.

If Virginia falls, then the entire Confederate East Coast will fall. With a Union presence in Petersburg-Richmond, Grant can drive South down the coast as easily as Sherman could drive north, because the loss of the Petersburg-Richmond complex unhinges the Confederate defense. Wilmington and Charleston and Savannah will all fall, the only difference being that Grant/Meade will take them instead of Sherman.

This had always been the case. It was part of McClellan's plan in early 1862: take Richmond, then move down the coast taking the Confederate seaports. The only real difference is that Mac didn't seem to see the importance of Petersburg until after the Seven Days -- and that Grant was focused on destroying Lee's Army as he went about his other business.

Lee will be forced to retreat to North Carolina, where he will face a two-pronged Union advance, overland and by sea. The details of that will vary, but essentially Grant will now have 100,000 extra men to devote to taking those states. If the Confederates concentrate on the coast, they will be isolated by thrusts inland; if they pull back from the coast (as they did when Sherman came), then Charleston and Wilmington and Savannah will fall.

In Virginia, the only possible Confederate position after the fall of Petersburg-Richmond is off near Lynchburg. Lynchburg threatens nothing and protects little. If Lee goes there, Grant can largely ignore him and let his army rot away.

What all that means is I agree with you only in part. I see what happened and how it atrophied Lee's army. However, if Atlanta had held and Petersburg had fallen, the same thing would have happened from the other end, ripping out the vitals of the Confederacy. Grant really didn't care which it was. He simply kept applying the pressure, knowing that sooner or later the Confederate defense would crack, the Blue would pour through, and the whole structure would collapse like a house of cards. As it turned out, Lee was good enough to stave Grant off, and Sherman benefited as a result.

Tim

[gary]

A siege was almost inevitable since Davis told Lee that Richmond needed to be defended. Lee would have done a Johnston maneuver and sought for battle in open ground instead of entrenching himself. Lee knew the loss of mobility would entrap him like it did to Pemberton at Vicksburg. Grant knew that once Lee hunkered down, it would only be a matter of time before Lee could be starved out.

Fortunately for Lee, the railroads were not cut off until the very end.

[trice]

Originally Posted by gary

A siege was almost inevitable since Davis told Lee that Richmond needed to be defended.

Certainly true, as I am sure Whitworth would agree. The Confederacy needed to defend Richmond for a number of reasons.

Early in the war, the Confederacy quite literally might not have survived without the Tredegar works. By 1864 enough war production had been developed that Tredegar was not quite so important, but losing the complex around Richmond would still have been a heavy blow.

Strategic concerns also made it important as a defensive position. As long as the Confederates held Richmond, they had the cork in the bottle for any north-to-south Union offensive along the East Coast. Lose it, and suddenly the Carolinas are wide open and the seaport towns (Wilmington-Charleston-Savannah) will be cut off by the inland movement. Then their garrisons must withdraw (as Savannah and Charleston did when Sherman moved south-to-north) or cut off and taken by storm.

Then, of course, there was the political/morale/psychological importance of the place. Years of war had made it important; losing it would now be a major blow.

Originally Posted by gary

Lee would have done a Johnston maneuver and sought for battle in open ground instead of entrenching himself. Lee knew the loss of mobility would entrap him like it did to Pemberton at Vicksburg. Grant knew that once Lee hunkered down, it would only be a matter of time before Lee could be starved out.

I agree. Lee and Johnston both knew this from the beginning of the war. While Lee did an excellent job holding until 1865, he surely knew that being gripped there played into Union hands. A siege favors the side with more resources. The weaker side will be ground to powder in the end if the stronger side has the will to continue.

What Whitworth is pointing out in this thread makes a lot of sense if we view the situation of the South in 1864-65 as a siege.

The opening campaigns are equivalent to driving the defenders back inside the walls of their fortress. Neither Lee nor Johnston wanted to be trapped inside the lines, tied to defending a city. Lee made his attempt to avoid that at Wilderness, then tried to bleed Grant white at every opportunity, and finally gambled on distracting Grant by another Valley Campaign. Johnston made plans to attack and never carried them through; finally forced back to the lines at Atlanta, he was relieved and Hood tried the offensive, and failed to win the room needed.

Once they are in those lines, the situation is grim for each.

In Virginia, the Confederacy has no way to relieve the pressure, and sooner or later Union superiority (numbers of men, logistical support, engineering and artillery, etc.) will eventually triumph.

At Atlanta, the situation is different but similar. There the Confederacy has the opportunity to do something, but not the resources. There no attack the Johnston/Hood force makes is likely to drive Sherman away. But Sherman's LOC is highly vulnerable, and the solution in military terms is simple: put together a strong enough force, seperate from the force at Atlanta, and attack his lifeline. Cut the RR between Chattanooga and Sherman for a substantial period of time and Sherman will have to abandon the siege. But the Confederacy never put that force together and never made a serious threat to do so.

Once both Atlanta and Richmond-Petersburg are under siege, the situation grows desperate for the Confederates. In August, the walls of the Confederacy are creaking under the pressure and begin to break. Farragut wins at Mobile Bay. In September, Atlanta falls. Then Sheridan starts thrashing Early in the Shenandoah. By October the Confederate citadel has been breached and the triumphant assaults are starting to pour through.

Everything from that point on goes pretty much as Whitworth says: the Union is tightening the lines, choking the Confederacy off, rampaging through the interior and squeezing the defenders tighter and tighter. Raids (like Forrest's and Wheeler's and Hood's) become merely gallant last gasps and forlorn hopes. Victory for the Union here is inevitable as long as they continue to pursue it.

Originally Posted by gary

Fortunately for Lee, the railroads were not cut off until the very end.

Yes. Even when a break was made, it only required a 20-mile detour by wagon to continue the supply to Richmond-Petersburg.

But throughout that Winter, Lee would have known the situation would become desperate in the Spring. Sherman was coming closer. After the Hood disaster in TN, Grant started transferring troops from Thomas to the East Coast, which is how Schofield ends up in NC to meet Sherman. With his army wasting away (desertion and disease and lack of supply), Lee knew that a reinforced and built up Union Army would move on him as soon as the weather cleared (I toured Petersburg in March after a snowstorm; the mud there seems to have an incredibly slick and slimy character).

As it turned out, I think the break came a little earlier than Lee thought. He seems to have been outraged by Pickett's disaster at Five Forks -- but he was already signalling to Davis that the situation was going to be bad before that date. Maybe he expected Grant to wait until closer to May before moving, for better weather. Grant seems to have wanted the AoP to win this before Sherman came up.

It is also worth noting that Grant/Meade had a major supply crisis at City Point in the Winter of 1864-65. The contracts for feed for the animals of the Army had been let out almost entirely to farms in the Hudson Valley. The Winter was darn cold, and the Hudson River froze too solid for boats to use. Suddenly, feed for animals along the Richmond-Petersburg front was desperately short.

Extreme measures were instituted until this was corrected. Most draft animals were withdrawn from the Corps and pulled back to central locations to make the logistics easier. Once the problem was resolved, more time was required to build up their strength and health before returning them, and then adequate supplies needed to be accumulated for operations. In the meantime, the Union army around Richmond-Petersburg would have been incapable of any serious movement, so nothing other than a local tactical operation would have been tried.

Tim

[trice]

Originally Posted by whitworth

Was the Petersburg Siege the Work of Genius?

I want to thank you for asking this question. You made me think through a lot of issues that revolve around it.

I don't think the siege itself -- if we focus on just the 60 miles of trenches around Richmond-Petersburg -- was the work of genius. What I see there is largely very solid professional work in logistics and engineering, supported by brave and capable soldiers manning the lines. The operational actions are often good, but not spectacular. Mistakes and triumphs occur, but they all look like simply the work of soldiers trying their best in combat, or men stretched to their limits giving way.

Grant's genius seemed to be in his focus on beating the enemy, and his constant exertions to that end. If there is one talent he had that Lee did not, it would be his far-ranging vision of how to fight the war. Where Lee's focus seemed so clearly confined to Virginia, Grant's focus was always beyond his immediate front.

When Grant takes Donelson, he immediately wants to pursue other operations and rushes for Nashville. Surviving the criticism from that (Buell was ticked), Grant wants to rush down the Tennessee and take Corinth. After bloody Shiloh, he wants to pursue as quickly as possible and is restrained by a cautious Halleck. After Corinth falls, Grant wants to pursue and crush Beauregard; Halleck doesn't. Grant then wants to move massively against a single objective, Halleck splits the force up. After taking Vicksburg, Grant immediately wants to move on Mobile. All through this, Grant wants all forces available to act in co-ordination (such as Rosecrans, who drags his feet in Middle TN).

Once in Supreme command, Grant wants all the parts of the Union effort working together. He sees every operation across the width to the war as part of the whole. So to him, every campaign from Texas to Virginia was part of his overall campaign. If there was genius in what he did in 1864-65, that was it.

Joe Johnston could not do that. Davis couldn't. Lee generally did not do it outside his own command, although I think he might have been capable of it. McClellan couldn't. Halleck thought of it, but wasn't the man to execute it. Lincoln could see it, but wasn't able to enforce it through his generals. Only Grant actually made it work, and maybe that is his genius.

Tim

[timewalker]

Some nice analysis, Tim.

I, too, see Grant's strength in his strategic vision. He was always thinking beyond his own command at how all the parts could work together.

I do see some brilliant work in the siege at Petersburg. Grant did not simply sit in the trenches waiting out Lee, but continually feinted to the right, then hit on the left to extend the lines while trying for a breakthrough to cut off Lee's supply lines. While I do not think that Grant prolonged the siege in order to gain strategic advantage, that certainly is how it worked. Good, solid work by a man who is too often wrongfully characterized as the military equivalent of a bull in a china shop.

[trice]

Originally Posted by timewalker

Some nice analysis, Tim.

I, too, see Grant's strength in his strategic vision. He was always thinking beyond his own command at how all the parts could work together.

I do see some brilliant work in the siege at Petersburg. Grant did not simply sit in the trenches waiting out Lee, but continually feinted to the right, then hit on the left to extend the lines while trying for a breakthrough to cut off Lee's supply lines. While I do not think that Grant prolonged the siege in order to gain strategic advantage, that certainly is how it worked. Good, solid work by a man who is too often wrongfully characterized as the military equivalent of a bull in a china shop.

When Grant came to the East, the staff was amazed at how quickly he made decisions and issued orders, disposing of mountains of paperwork and reports at a blazing pace. One of them finally worked up his courage and asked Grant how he could possibly do it, how did he know what the right choice was? Grant responded that the important thing was to act, and that if his choice was the wrong one they'd soon discover it and make a correction.

I'm sure there was more to it than that; Grant's mind came up with many good decisions. But I can also tell you that modern-day West Point and the Army trains their officers that way. You can never know everything you need to know to make the perfect decision in combat. The key is to find out enough to make the decision and then act -- because acting will change the situation.

Naturally, that risks making the wrong decision based on incomplete intelligence. The technique is designed to avoid "paralysis-by-analysis".

People like McClellan are examples of that: they see too much, worry too much, about what the enemy might be doing. This is what Sherman meant in his oft-quoted comment about Grant: "He don't care a **** for what the enemy does out of his sight, but it scares me like hell!"

Essentially, Grant had the confidence in himself to make decisions and act on them -- relying on himself and his troops to absorb and counter any surprises along the way. By acting, he could impose his will on the situation and get the enemy reacting to what he did. This is the very definition of the initiative in war, and it is what we will always find Grant doing in combat.

Lee was much the same. He always wanted to act, to learn as much as possible and then strike hard and quick.

This is also why the 1864 campaign in Virginia looks so bloody and indecisive. The problem is that two great soldiers are fighting it out, thrusting and parrying, neither able to put the other away with a single blow or combination. So we see no great single victory, no knockout blow. But the struggle is on many levels, and if we dig down into the details it is pretty fascinating stuff.

Tim

[Baggage Handler #2]

Good stuff. Thanks trice!

[Jamieva]

Grant knew he had Lee, and why take a major risk by bringing on a major engagement right away. Lee in that position is unable to send forces to help other Confederate armies.

Grant had already seen what throwing his forces head long into well built Lee defenses had produced already in the Overland campaign.

[5fish]

The siege at Petersburg, was it planned by Grant or did it evolve from the failed attempted to take Petersburg. I think the latter for Grant wanted to fight Lee in open battle but was unable to achieve it.

At Petersburg, he(Grant) had burned up his army's moral during the Overland Campaign and its desire to charge entrenched troops. The word among the union soldiers was if the rebels are given eight hours to dig in then any assault them was pointless.

At Petersburg, Grant knew his army was still getting bigger and stronger and Lee's army was weakening as each day passes. He knew if he kept up the pressure on Lee and extend the lines Lee's army would break.

One could say it was genious, even thou Peterburg siege was not planned. Once it began Grant saw an opportunity to keep the initiative and keep Lee on his heels...