SSVilla
First Sergeant
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2024
- Location
- Virginia, USA
I have to share this find. In some inexplicable search around one of those rabbit holes of curiosity I get myself into sometimes I came across this book written in 1925 titled, Robert E. Lee, the soldier by, as it turned out, a British Major General, Sir Frederick Maurice.
I approached it with caution for a couple of reasons. First, the subject was Lee, and second the year 1925. Now I will be very upfront here because there's no sense hiding it and I mean no offense, because I think I have proper respect and appreciation for Lee as a historical figure, yet to me he is vomit inducing. Therefore for me to browse this book, written as it was in 1925, and specially admiring him as a soldier, I was expecting something that would have me nauseous.
If I dislike Lee so intensely, Why should I read this book you ask? And why do I cite it with a lead about Cold Harbor?
Well, it was cited in an annotated diary of Edward Bates, Attorney General of the U.S. for a brief discussion about Lincoln and his difficulties in exercising the power of a General in Chief when he removed McClellan. Now you can understand perhaps my interest. Why or how in the world is a book on Lee, as a soldier, entering into a couple of pages of discussion about Lincoln as General in Chief?
I was a little baffled … not because of my Lee aversion this time, but because the aforementioned discussion on Lincoln proceeded to highlight Lincoln's admirable progression from a problematic position in regards to the military to the proper relationship of a modern statesman to the General in Chief in the U.S., eventually in 1864. The author then disappointingly failed to examine Lincoln really and analyze how and what caused him to micromanage first versus later, and failed to examine the command situation for the federals throughout the war… and gave no credit to Grant there for being the subordinate General to political authority he was throughout. Anyways as the book was about Lee, the author went immediately from praising Lincoln to praising Lee as if they were on the same side.
Well, I decided I must see what this major general in 1925 was writing about Grant after all, and did a search. I was surprised to find he had a fair assessment when he did refer to him, perhaps because he was British and didn't have the ironic antipathy towards Grant of the Dunning School or the Lost Causers of that era.
Anyways, here is the promised reference to Cold Harbor:
"If we consider Grant's performance in the light of recent experience, we will, I think, view it with more kindly eyes than have some of the critics who wrote before the Great War. Cold Harbour was a costly blunder, but it was a blunder in execution as well as in conception, and for the execution Meade, the actual commander of the attacking troops, must take a great share of the responsibility. Despite that blunder, Grant's campaign had brought the war appreciably nearer its end, and that justifies his policy of fighting hard and often. The suggestion that he could have reached Petersburg without losing a man comes from that wisdom after the event, which it is often easy but rarely useful to apply to war. If he had followed McClellan's example and gone round by sea, he would have found before him a very different army from that which in the event held the defences of Petersburg and Richmond.
The situation in the middle of June, 1864, was curiously like that on the Western front in November, 1916, at the end of the Battle of the Somme. I have not been able to find any reliable evidence that there was after Cold Harbour more than such a temporary depression in the Army of the Potomac as would naturally follow a reverse. Certainly Grant had not lost confidence either in himself or in his men. But the heavy tale of casualties had shaken public opinion in the North, and had alarmed many of the politicians in Washington; just as the casualties of the Somme had made the people of Great Britain realise, as they had not realised before, the terrible nature of modern war, and had convinced certain of the statesmen in Downing Street that that battle had been a ghastly and costly failure. Fortunately for the North, they had at Washington a man who had the courage to look beyond lists of casualties, and the imagination to picture the effect of Grant's methods of exhaustion on the South. Lincoln refused to withdraw his support and so made victory possible in 1865. Had the Allies possessed the Lincoln of 1864 in 1916, it is well within the bounds of possibility that they could have ended the war victoriously in the following year."
Excerpt From Robert E. Lee, the Soldier, Sir Frederick Maurice
I found interesting the reference to the strategy of exhaustion which I personally first encountered in a lecture from Prof. Gary Gallagher.
The book is interesting in its proper context and easy to read. I am not a Lee fan so its not for me, but I figured some folks here might find it curious and entertaining…
I approached it with caution for a couple of reasons. First, the subject was Lee, and second the year 1925. Now I will be very upfront here because there's no sense hiding it and I mean no offense, because I think I have proper respect and appreciation for Lee as a historical figure, yet to me he is vomit inducing. Therefore for me to browse this book, written as it was in 1925, and specially admiring him as a soldier, I was expecting something that would have me nauseous.
If I dislike Lee so intensely, Why should I read this book you ask? And why do I cite it with a lead about Cold Harbor?
Well, it was cited in an annotated diary of Edward Bates, Attorney General of the U.S. for a brief discussion about Lincoln and his difficulties in exercising the power of a General in Chief when he removed McClellan. Now you can understand perhaps my interest. Why or how in the world is a book on Lee, as a soldier, entering into a couple of pages of discussion about Lincoln as General in Chief?
I was a little baffled … not because of my Lee aversion this time, but because the aforementioned discussion on Lincoln proceeded to highlight Lincoln's admirable progression from a problematic position in regards to the military to the proper relationship of a modern statesman to the General in Chief in the U.S., eventually in 1864. The author then disappointingly failed to examine Lincoln really and analyze how and what caused him to micromanage first versus later, and failed to examine the command situation for the federals throughout the war… and gave no credit to Grant there for being the subordinate General to political authority he was throughout. Anyways as the book was about Lee, the author went immediately from praising Lincoln to praising Lee as if they were on the same side.
Well, I decided I must see what this major general in 1925 was writing about Grant after all, and did a search. I was surprised to find he had a fair assessment when he did refer to him, perhaps because he was British and didn't have the ironic antipathy towards Grant of the Dunning School or the Lost Causers of that era.
Anyways, here is the promised reference to Cold Harbor:
"If we consider Grant's performance in the light of recent experience, we will, I think, view it with more kindly eyes than have some of the critics who wrote before the Great War. Cold Harbour was a costly blunder, but it was a blunder in execution as well as in conception, and for the execution Meade, the actual commander of the attacking troops, must take a great share of the responsibility. Despite that blunder, Grant's campaign had brought the war appreciably nearer its end, and that justifies his policy of fighting hard and often. The suggestion that he could have reached Petersburg without losing a man comes from that wisdom after the event, which it is often easy but rarely useful to apply to war. If he had followed McClellan's example and gone round by sea, he would have found before him a very different army from that which in the event held the defences of Petersburg and Richmond.
The situation in the middle of June, 1864, was curiously like that on the Western front in November, 1916, at the end of the Battle of the Somme. I have not been able to find any reliable evidence that there was after Cold Harbour more than such a temporary depression in the Army of the Potomac as would naturally follow a reverse. Certainly Grant had not lost confidence either in himself or in his men. But the heavy tale of casualties had shaken public opinion in the North, and had alarmed many of the politicians in Washington; just as the casualties of the Somme had made the people of Great Britain realise, as they had not realised before, the terrible nature of modern war, and had convinced certain of the statesmen in Downing Street that that battle had been a ghastly and costly failure. Fortunately for the North, they had at Washington a man who had the courage to look beyond lists of casualties, and the imagination to picture the effect of Grant's methods of exhaustion on the South. Lincoln refused to withdraw his support and so made victory possible in 1865. Had the Allies possessed the Lincoln of 1864 in 1916, it is well within the bounds of possibility that they could have ended the war victoriously in the following year."
Excerpt From Robert E. Lee, the Soldier, Sir Frederick Maurice
I found interesting the reference to the strategy of exhaustion which I personally first encountered in a lecture from Prof. Gary Gallagher.
The book is interesting in its proper context and easy to read. I am not a Lee fan so its not for me, but I figured some folks here might find it curious and entertaining…
Robert E. Lee, the Soldier
books.google.com
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