Saphroneth
Lt. Colonel
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2017
The fighting around Culpeper is worthy of analysis in and of itself.
I'm going to show the start positions here and elaborate on why I think the Culpeper fighting proved to be a problem for the Confederates.
So this is where everyone started off.
Now, the thing which should be clear is that the Union has a lot of strength quite a long way south. In terms of numerical strength at this point it's
Getty, Burns, Sturgis, Whipple total 18,000
1st Corps is 18,000
2nd Corps is 15,500
And the 5th and 6th between them are 45,000, while Sickles and Birney are 17,500 between them. (11th is not yet released.)
The Confederates didn't know the Union infantry was that far south, partly because this is a real historical scouting error.
Longstreet has 21,500 men at Culpeper, 7,000 men with Robertson and Ransom and 3,500 men at Gordonsville with Hood. There's 12,500 at Winchester, 8,000 with DH Hill at Front Royal and 10,000 with AP Hill.
The real scouting error led to the decision to try and hold Culpeper and link up with Jackson directly. This led to problems essentially because Longstreet's force was insufficient to hold out against the subsequent assault, and because Culpeper was not abandoned until far too late in the process - I've not done the maps for it yet but the flank march of 3rd Corps to encircle Culpeper was pretty meaningful, the Confederates were still trying to hold Culpeper when the situation map looked like this:
The Union commander (George A. Cardinal?) split his forces to do this with much of the Union army while the rest warded off Jackson. It's a good example of effective wing command because it splits the job - Franklin "kept Jackson busy" and allowed the rest of the Union force to apply crushing superiority to Longstreet.
That being said, if things had worked out better for the Confederates - or if they'd been willing to try and march via Little Washington to try and contact their supply route in the days beforehand - it could have gone quite differently.
This real historical situation (the November 1862 one) is one that's fascinating to me precisely because of how bad a situation the Confederates were in on an operational level.
I'm going to show the start positions here and elaborate on why I think the Culpeper fighting proved to be a problem for the Confederates.
So this is where everyone started off.
Now, the thing which should be clear is that the Union has a lot of strength quite a long way south. In terms of numerical strength at this point it's
Getty, Burns, Sturgis, Whipple total 18,000
1st Corps is 18,000
2nd Corps is 15,500
And the 5th and 6th between them are 45,000, while Sickles and Birney are 17,500 between them. (11th is not yet released.)
The Confederates didn't know the Union infantry was that far south, partly because this is a real historical scouting error.
Longstreet has 21,500 men at Culpeper, 7,000 men with Robertson and Ransom and 3,500 men at Gordonsville with Hood. There's 12,500 at Winchester, 8,000 with DH Hill at Front Royal and 10,000 with AP Hill.
The real scouting error led to the decision to try and hold Culpeper and link up with Jackson directly. This led to problems essentially because Longstreet's force was insufficient to hold out against the subsequent assault, and because Culpeper was not abandoned until far too late in the process - I've not done the maps for it yet but the flank march of 3rd Corps to encircle Culpeper was pretty meaningful, the Confederates were still trying to hold Culpeper when the situation map looked like this:
The Union commander (George A. Cardinal?) split his forces to do this with much of the Union army while the rest warded off Jackson. It's a good example of effective wing command because it splits the job - Franklin "kept Jackson busy" and allowed the rest of the Union force to apply crushing superiority to Longstreet.
That being said, if things had worked out better for the Confederates - or if they'd been willing to try and march via Little Washington to try and contact their supply route in the days beforehand - it could have gone quite differently.
This real historical situation (the November 1862 one) is one that's fascinating to me precisely because of how bad a situation the Confederates were in on an operational level.