Was Lee wrong

[atlantis]

Lee was of the opinion that if confined to defensive trench warfare the confederacy would ultimately lose, was he wrong.
I say yes. The confederacy had less men and the only way to influence northern public opinion was to pile up union bodies until the north gave up.
Using interior lines, terrain and field works would allow confederates to achieve victory.
What do you say.

 

[Andy Cardinal]

As soon as Lee's army was forced to be stationary on the defensive, the war was over. Just a matter of time.

 

[Piedone]

I'd say "defensive trench warfare" in 1864 was quite different from defensive trench warfare in 1916.
In 1864 the defender enjoyed some advantages - but they were limited in my opinion (with muzzle-loading rifles and without machine guns an entrenched position wasn't that unassailable as in WWI (look at the Bloody Angle…)

And without sufficient manpower the ANV couldn't efficiently man those trenches if they got too extended.
In WW I the trenches stretched over about 650 miles and the german defenders had about 2.3 million soldiers to defend them.
The ANV had a medium effective strength of maybe 70.000 men….how should trench warfare work with a force of such limited size?

 

[SWS]

Lee's policy was "offensive-defensive," although the offensive was always preferable "if practicable". The beleaguered South (its armies plagued by absenteeism and desertion especially) simply could not afford its much superior enemy time and space to augment its virtually inexhaustible strength and perfect its organization and planning. The Confederates must be the ones to dictate the terms of operations and battle if they hoped to survive for long, which Lee largely succeeded in doing for close to 30 months, I'd wager. Probably the only reason the "siege" of Richmond-Petersburg lasted as long as it did was because of Early's success in keeping the Federal VI Corps detained in the Valley until winter, as well as the Confederacy's material and psychological needs in keeping its fortress capital when they had already suffered fatal reverses in the West. Had the Confederacy still possessed portions of Tennessee and Atlanta when it became apparent Early could do no more, a premature evacuation of Richmond might have been palatable to the government and people.

As for Lee's trenches, Freeman contends that they "served both a strategical and tactical object. They were strategical in that they made it possible for him to detach troops for manoeuvre; they were tactical in that they enabled him successfully to resist a superior force with a steadily diminishing army."

 

[Stryker65]

Agree with @Piedone -- it worked in WWI because the entirety of a country's border could be defended by millions of men. When an army was restricted to defending one point in trenches, it gave up all surrounding territory to the attackers. Siege of Suffolk for instance: Longstreet had two divisions besieging the Union 7th Corps in trenches at Suffolk, while his third division was thereby free to ravage the countryside for supplies.

 

[bankerpapaw]

Lee was of the opinion that if confined to defensive trench warfare the confederacy would ultimately lose, was he wrong.
I say yes. The confederacy had less men and the only way to influence northern public opinion was to pile up union bodies until the north gave up.
Using interior lines, terrain and field works would allow confederates to achieve victory.
What do you say.

Longstreet wanted trenches and field works.

 

[JeffBrooks]

Longstreet wanted trenches and field works.

Sometimes, but not always. In late 1863/early 1864, Longstreet was advocating for a strategic offensive into Kentucky.

 

[gary]

As soon as Lee's army was forced to be stationary on the defensive, the war was over. Just a matter of time.

Concur. Lee knew it would become a matter of attrition and the North had resources and manpower that the South didn't.

 

[JeffBrooks]

Concur. Lee knew it would become a matter of attrition and the North had resources and manpower that the South didn't.

From a military point of view, yes. But wars are decided by economic and political factors as well as military ones.

 

[Kearny The Magnificent]

Lee was correct. He knew what getting bottled up would lead to and it ultimately happened.

We know, sitting here 160+ years after the fact, what Grant did to Lee once the war became static. Once both sides settled on Petersburg as the place, Grant eventually cut every supply line and destroyed all the surrounding transportation infrastructure Lee could use. This came at great cost and required coordinated actions far away from Lee's control in the Shenandoah Valley, eastern North Carolina, and on a smaller scale the raids from east Tennessee into southwest Virginia/west to central North Carolina. Even Sherman moving from Georgia through the Carolinas had the possible end goal of helping destroy Lee if necessary. Lee's army was starved and demoralized deserters melted away by Grant's design. The remnants had nowhere worthwhile to go, no Confederate nation left to defend, so Lee surrendered.

Lee only held out as long as he did because things like interior lines, terrain and field works. But those things aren't everything. Grant repeatedly and deliberately threw blow after blow at Lee and met a stubborn defense from his opponent each time. But he also destroyed Lee's ability to make war and killed the desire to make more war from the lowly deserting privates up to Lee himself in the end when he finally gave up.

 

[kGs]

That's a much cooler idea than gorilla war, I'm interested if there's a good argument trench would've been better but my gut says gorilla, Lee used to say in the mountains he could fight for 20 years.

 

[Andy Cardinal]

That's a much cooler idea than gorilla war, I'm interested if there's a good argument trench would've been better but my gut says gorilla, Lee used to say in the mountains he could fight for 20 years.

But when the time came he chose not to go that route, which is surely one of the kost important moments in American history.

 

[atlantis]

We know northern will took a beating as causality figures came back. What was going to force the hand of Lincoln, it wasn't incursions like Sharpsburg/Gettysburg.
Lee kept looking for that knockout blow, but I would argue body count would be the way to pressure Lincoln.

 

[gary]

From a military point of view, yes. But wars are decided by economic and political factors as well as military ones.

And the nawth had a stronger economy and the politics, well, no foreign nation wanted to support slavery. That was the brilliance of the Emancipation Proclaimation. Both were not in the South's favor.

Unless Lee magically had AK-47s, WW II artillery with Time-on-target and radio communications, he wasn't going to win.

 

[jackt62]

Lee famously remarked before Petersburg that once the conflict became a "war of posts," the ANV and the Confederacy were doomed. Which is exactly what happened. Interesting to note that before Petersburg, the Confederacy relied on heavy concentrations of fortified positions and entrenchments, notably around Vicksburg, Richmond, Atlanta, and Nashville. In none of those circumstances did the reliance on fixed lines succeed. Northern strategy and tactical methods throughout were heavily dependent on maneuver and movement, one of the major contributors to Union victory.

 

[Krieger]

An entrenched army is a stuck army just begging to be besieged.

I'm of the opinion that the only chance was to emulate Washington and Greene, fight when strong and evade when weak, drag it out as long as possible and don't allow the Union any decisive and morale-boosting victories like Vicksburg. Then you can potentially win even with fewer bodies.

 

[Piedone]

Lee was correct. He knew what getting bottled up would lead to and it ultimately happened.

We know, sitting here 160+ years after the fact, what Grant did to Lee once the war became static. Once both sides settled on Petersburg as the place, Grant eventually cut every supply line and destroyed all the surrounding transportation infrastructure Lee could use. This came at great cost and required coordinated actions far away from Lee's control in the Shenandoah Valley, eastern North Carolina, and on a smaller scale the raids from east Tennessee into southwest Virginia/west to central North Carolina. Even Sherman moving from Georgia through the Carolinas had the possible end goal of helping destroy Lee if necessary. Lee's army was starved and demoralized deserters melted away by Grant's design. The remnants had nowhere worthwhile to go, no Confederate nation left to defend, so Lee surrendered.

Lee only held out as long as he did because things like interior lines, terrain and field works. But those things aren't everything. Grant repeatedly and deliberately threw blow after blow at Lee and met a stubborn defense from his opponent each time. But he also destroyed Lee's ability to make war and killed the desire to make more war from the lowly deserting privates up to Lee himself in the end when he finally gave up.

But isn't it quite exceptional how much of an effort was necessary to finally defeat the ANV?

 

[Reconstructed Rebel]

But isn't it quite exceptional how much of an effort was necessary to finally defeat the ANV?

I've always interpreted that along the lines of the famous Shelby Foote quote about the Federals fighting the war with one hand behind their backs.

They started out hoping their errant brothers would just come home, but by 1864, after the blood, death, and horror had hardened them, their other hand came out in the form of the harshness that was embraced to end the conflict. Sherman, Sheridan, and Grant made fairly quick work of it then.

 

[atlantis]

I've always interpreted that along the lines of the famous Shelby Foote quote about the Federals fighting the war with one hand behind their backs.

They started out hoping their errant brothers would just come home, but by 1864, after the blood, death, and horror had hardened them, their other hand came out in the form of the harshness that was embraced to end the conflict. Sherman, Sheridan, and Grant made fairly quick work of it then.

By 1864 Sherman, Sheridan and Grant faced a weakened foe.

 

[leftyhunter]

An entrenched army is a stuck army just begging to be besieged.

I'm of the opinion that the only chance was to emulate Washington and Greene, fight when strong and evade when weak, drag it out as long as possible and don't allow the Union any decisive and morale-boosting victories like Vicksburg. Then you can potentially win even with fewer bodies.

Except that's not how the ARW was won. The ARW was won with foreign troops and ships encircling British troops at Yorktown, Virginia. Davis knew from the very beginning of the war the Confederacy needed foreign allies but foreign nations didn't mind selling arms to the Confederacy but they weren't going to fight for the Confederacy.
Leftyhunter