damYankee
Captain
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2011
Everything you say is rubbish,. Don't waste my time you ask for sources then dismiss them out of hand,
I don't play well with trolls
Last edited:
-
Welcome to CivilWarTalk, a forum about the American Civil War! - Join today! It's fast, simple, and FREE!
Grant Grant v Lee
- Thread starter David Ireland
- Start date
Everything you say is rubbish,. Don't waste my time you ask for sources then dismiss them out of hand,
I don't play well with trolls
Saphroneth
Colonel
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2017
You quoted a source which strongly implied that Grant was the one who came up with the idea of fighting wars during a period other than "when the seasons best permitted or when men could be away from farms".
This source certainly exists, but surely you can understand that the claim it makes is completely astonishing? I mean, given that Grant's army spent the time from the 1864 early summer campaign season to the 1865 early summer campaign season in siege lines around Petersburg, the source is effectively suggesting that Grant invented the siege.
If you think that my being incredulous over that claim makes me a troll, I suppose that's your prerogative...
Note, by the way, that what I was asking for in the posts you quote is an example of a battle where Grant pursued (as you claim) or in the second case a primary source for the claim:
So can you provide a primary source for this claim? That's what I was asking for a source for, and you didn't provide one; certainly not a primary one.
A leaf from
S. B. Cummins
Diary 1864
CAMPAIGN OF THE 151ST N. Y. V.
THROUGH THE WILDERNESS IN VA.
ARMY OF THE POTOMAC
May the 7th 1864 Arose at daylight, we had our breakfast about half cooked when the battle commenced. The rebels came out of the woods in 4 lines of battle, then Our artilery opened on them with Grape & Canister causing them to retreat in confusion & were glad to get out of sight. Very heavy fighting down the left of the line near Chancelorsville. It was reported we had captured between 4 & 5000 prizoners today. Heared good news about dark and Great Cheering prevailed the whol length of the line. We recd orders to be ready to move at dark. We marched 3 or 4 miles and halted untill 2 O clock in the morning by the side of the road. We slept with our knapsacks on our backs. Was aroused from our slumbers by a pack of mules running away. We sprung to our feet, grabbed our muskets & got ready for action. We considered it an attack from the rebels. In a moments time we were all quiet and down we laid until daybreak.
Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant:
Troops know but little about what is going on in a large army, except the occurrences which take place in their immediate vicinity ; but this night ride of the general-in-chief told plainly the story of success, and gave each man to understand that the cry was to be " On to Richmond! " Soldiers weary and sleepy after their long battle, with stiffened limbs and smarting wounds, now sprang to their feet, forgetful of their pains, and rushed forward to the roadside. Wild cheers echoed through the forest, and glad shouts of triumph rent the air. Men swung their hats, tossed up their arms, and pressed forward to within touch of their chief, clapping their hands, and speaking to him with the familiarity of comrades. Pine-knots and leaves were set on fire, and lighted the scene with their weird, flickering glare.The night march had become a triumphal procession for the new commander. The demonstration was the emphatic verdict pronounced by the troops upon his first battle in the East. The excitement had been imparted to the horses, which soon became restive, and even the general's large bay, over which he possessed ordinarily such perfect control, became difficult to manage. In stead of being elated by this significant ovation, the general, thoughtful only of the practical question of the success of the movement, said: " This is most unfortunate. The sound will reach the ears of the enemy, and I fear it may reveal our movement." By his direction, staff officers rode forward and urged the men to keep quiet so as not to attract the enemy's attention; but the demonstration did not really cease until the general was out of sight.
Troops know but little about what is going on in a large army, except the occurrences which take place in their immediate vicinity ; but this night ride of the general-in-chief told plainly the story of success, and gave each man to understand that the cry was to be " On to Richmond! " Soldiers weary and sleepy after their long battle, with stiffened limbs and smarting wounds, now sprang to their feet, forgetful of their pains, and rushed forward to the roadside. Wild cheers echoed through the forest, and glad shouts of triumph rent the air. Men swung their hats, tossed up their arms, and pressed forward to within touch of their chief, clapping their hands, and speaking to him with the familiarity of comrades. Pine-knots and leaves were set on fire, and lighted the scene with their weird, flickering glare.The night march had become a triumphal procession for the new commander. The demonstration was the emphatic verdict pronounced by the troops upon his first battle in the East. The excitement had been imparted to the horses, which soon became restive, and even the general's large bay, over which he possessed ordinarily such perfect control, became difficult to manage. In stead of being elated by this significant ovation, the general, thoughtful only of the practical question of the success of the movement, said: " This is most unfortunate. The sound will reach the ears of the enemy, and I fear it may reveal our movement." By his direction, staff officers rode forward and urged the men to keep quiet so as not to attract the enemy's attention; but the demonstration did not really cease until the general was out of sight.
Saphroneth
Colonel
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2017
That certainly describes the army cheering, so I suppose that's fair enough.
damYankee
Captain
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2011
Horace Porter is a fine reference, as is Ohio State University, Which I previously quoted and which you dismissed out of hand.
https://ehistory.osu.edu/articles/us-grant-and-operations-0
One story illuminates the "cockiness" I guess you could say that prevailed in the officer corps of the ANV when Grant was appointed commander of the AoP, at Lee's headquarters staff officers joked about how this new Union general would falter and fail just as McClellan and Hooker and the rest had before, I believe it was
Longstreet who knew Grant very well broke up the joke fest when he interjected "Grant isn't like the others, he has no quit in him" .
To Grant there was one way to defeat Lee and therefore the CSA, pursuit.
Saphroneth
Colonel
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2017
Are you seriously supporting the text which says:
?
To say that this source is questionable is not to dismiss it out of hand; it's to highlight a very serious flaw in the way the source has simplified the "before Grant" situation (and which the source then uses to argue that Grant changed the nature of war).
In fact I'm not aware of any case when an ACW army sent men home to the farms, except when they were three-month militia or volunteers and they'd only enlisted for the summer anyway.
So when does this pursuit take place? Note that pursuit means something specific in military operations, it means that the enemy is retreating from the battlefield and you are following them.
Wilderness - Grant moves east away from the battlefield to reopen his supply. A sound operational move, but it's not entering into the "pursuit" phase.
Spotsylvania - after a several-day pause, Grant orders Hancock's corps to march south to try and draw off Lee's force. This is an attempt to enter the pursuit phase by drawing Lee into a trap, but it does not succeed in doing so; Grant has manoeuvred and Lee has countermanoeuvred, there is no pursuit.
North Anna - Grant disengages north of the North Anna river and marches south; Lee also shifts south to parallel him.
Cold Harbor - Grant disengages and moves south to the James river.
These are all sound operational moves, but they are not pursuit. Grant does not enter a pursuit phase against Lee until 1865.
If what you meant was that Grant's operations in 1865 include a pursuit operation, that's fine and I agree with you; it does not however characterize the Overland campaign.
Are you suggesting that armies never went into "winter camp" or used the seasons (ex: bad roads) as an excuse for inaction?
If the action through the war was so consistent throughout the years, why was Lincoln getting so agitated in the winter of '61-62 for someone, anyone, to go on the offensive?
I think it is fair to characterize the "before Grant" situation as a failure to get all the forces taking the offensive at the same time. Or at least most of the forces taking the offensive at the same time. Even under Grant, some commanders stalled.
One additional factor that you should consider is that in the West, the Federal armies had conquered and occupied huge areas of Confederate territory. Someone has to garrison that territory.
Saphroneth
Colonel
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2017
No, not at all. What I'm suggesting instead is that campaigning after Grant arrived was much the same as it was before Grant arrived - men stayed with the army all year round, manoeuvred mostly in the months of the year when movement was easiest (sometimes April, May, June, July, August, September) and sometimes some way into the colder months of the year (October, November, December) but were often static over the winter months (e.g. Grant in 1864-5 is in siege lines around Petersburg, not manoeuvering).
It wasn't constant, certainly, but it was constrained by the same things Grant was constrained by. His offensive launched in May 1864 (that is to say, it was a summer campaign).
In any case, to disprove the assertion "until 1864 wars were conducted when the seasons best permitted" it's only necessary to show one counterexample - not every winter period has to be one - and the winter of 1862-3 sees the Army of the Potomac on the move and fighting while the Battle of Stones River takes place actually over the new-year.
(Indeed, as stated the assertion is so broad that Wellington's Pyrenees campaign and his fighting on the Nive disproves it.)
That, on the other hand, is the case - and there's several possible causes. Certainly in 1862 there was the problem that there was no single person in command during the summer campaign season.
True, but then Rosecrans didn't move until June.
Just my opinion... don't feel obligated to engage with members who are besotten with some historical figure. Every post of theirs is going to be serving their bias.
Last edited:
damYankee
Captain
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2011
After nearly 9 years it just gets old
67th Tigers
Major
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2006
A more careful reading dispels your argument.
The "Great Cheering" was in response to news of the successful repulse of the rebels on his corps (6th) left. It was certainly not in response to a "heading south", because they hadn't yet. The movement of the 6th Corps the night of the 7th/8th May was not south, but E, away from Lee's army and back towards the Rappahannock. They didn't turn S until they reached Chancellorsville, which happened around midday on the 8th. Had this been the 5th Corps, you'd be on stronger ground, as they moved SE down the Brock Road. As Cummins' 8th May entry makes clear, the 6th Corps didn't "turn south" until midday on the 8th:
"May the 8th
Arose at daylight and marched about 8 miles very fast. Very warm today. We passed our ambulances loaded with our wounded comrades & saw lots of men laying by the road side that were wounded. Some with a leg off, some with an arm off, some a hand, some a foot. I tell you it was a hard sight to behold. We passed through Chancelersville and also through a dense pine forest. We saw lots of dead & wounded all along the roadside. Canonading in the morning but not much fighting today but at dark we made a charge on the Rebel Breastworks and drove them from their position. We cut them down dreadfully. The ground was covered with the dead and dieing. They laid like sheaves of wheat in a harvest field. Our men slept in the Breastworks & rifle pits they had captured."
As Sodergren points out in his book and various talks, there is no primary source that has been located about this mythical event. The earliest incidence he could find was Dana's 1902 memoir.
Saphroneth
Colonel
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2017
As a commander, especially one coming to command an army with a decidedly mixed record of success, there are benefits to saying that you have a different and more decisive and more easily understandable means of fighting; the first task of a commander is to make men face death.
It looks like this is something that Grant achieved. It's something that Lee didn't really have to do after June 1862 when he inherited the Army of Northern Virginia - even then he had an army which was still quite new and which was defending the national capital, as opposed to the 1864 Army of the Potomac which was about to undertake an offensive of a type which had been repulsed twice before (i.e. crossing the Rappahanock upstream of Fredericksburg)
This is a trick also employed by Pope, in his address to the Army of Virginia, though Pope did it with much less finesse and essentially accused his own army of cowardice. (Though shame is certainly a valid emotion to use to make men face death.)
It is, however, rhetoric. It is important to separate this rhetoric from what Grant actually did, and what Grant actually did was considerably more nuanced (and more successful) than the idea of simply going where the enemy is and hitting them very hard in the face without regard for the maintenance of supply lines or the danger of being outflanked.
Grant was a competent enough commander; he didn't have the same manoeuvrist brilliance of Lee, but then even Lee didn't have the manoeuvrist brilliance of Lee on some occasions.
It may perhaps require restating that a commander who charges ahead to try and find the enemy without finesse is either going to win only because his army is too vast for enemy finesse to possibly overcome it, or going to win because his enemy is also disdaining finesse and has the weaker army for a head-on pounding contest, or is going to lose - possibly very badly.
Grant had finesse - less than Lee, but he did have it - and aside from his flying column move through the Wilderness he always had an operative supply base. He attempted to turn Lee out of the positions Lee found, but without managing successfully; one can blame the instrument or the man, but certainly if Lee had been slower to react to Grant's initiatives then Grant could have achieved a success through manoeuvre; in this case that would come from forcing a battle through the threat to Richmond.
It should be noted, however, that pre-Grant operations were always based around the idea that Richmond is a location the Army of Northern Virginia would fight to defend, precisely because taking Richmond would cause such massive damage to the Confederate cause - cutting them off from Virgina as a farmland and recruiting ground, cutting them off from Henrico County's industry, rendering the prospect of threatening Washington very remote. There is perhaps a difference in the exact emphasis (between "we will approach Richmond and the enemy will have to either fight us or let us take it" and "we will approach Richmond so as to compel the enemy to fight us on our terms") but the operational reality is the same - movements aimed at creating a threat to Richmond and dispositions to recieve the effectively inevitable enemy attack.
If the aim was to cause attrition to the Confederate army in keeping with the greater ability of the Union to replace losses, then the Overland campaign has a number of issues. Chief among these is the effect it had on the Union army's morale - mathematically speaking the Confederacy took a greater percentage of their military manpower as casualties over the Overland by reason of their smaller population, and Lee took about 33% of his total army's PFD in casualties (vice a number less than 30% for Grant), but the effect on the morale of the Army of the Potomac was catastrophic.
Grant perhaps cannot be fully blamed for this as the psychology was not properly understood at the time by all, but the extent to which a force once repulsed without tangible gains has a significant loss in effectiveness was well known in the battles of the Napoleonic wars; witness how Napoleon's regular French divisions at Waterloo were reduced to supporting the Guard once previously repulsed, or indeed how Meade himself noted at Antietam that his (newly inherited) corps underwent a temporary but catastrophic collapse after it was repulsed.
What does all this boil down to?
I think the best way of putting it is that Grant was - as I've said - a competent commander. He wasn't anything transformative in operational terms, but he got over the Rappahanock (a major acheivement) and his efforts sufficiently revived the offensive spirit of the Army of the Potomac to carry it south to Cold Harbor; his flaw is that he sent forward too many attacks against strong Confederate positions.
In the process of doing this he effectively "proved" that he was willing to fight, which makes his attacks arguably a way to successfully demonstrate that the actual operational moves he was making weren't to avoid fighting; alternatively Grant was operating based on his experiences in the west where an entrenched force was already psychologically "half beaten". Either way the strategic result of Grant's operations in the Overland campaign was a Union army on the James and attacking Petersburg, and one which was allowed to remain there until decisive operations were achieved.
The actual cost of Grant's operations makes them a potential subject for criticism; however which criticism is most correct depends on the extent to which Grant considered them necessary versus likely to succeed and what his ultimate objective was. If he was attempting grand attrition of Lee's veterans with his own on the grounds that his own were soon to leave the army, or attempting to prove to the Washington establishment that he was willing to fight, then they are clear-headed and successful but cold-blooded; if he was attempting an actual operational breakthrough then he was unsuccessful but not catastrophically so.
It may be worth considering Grant as a "pounder", willing to pound away at the enemy frontally with the use of mass instead of finesse tactically; this may sound uncharitable, and to an extent it is, but such was Napoleon from 1809 onwards and especially at Waterloo.
It looks like this is something that Grant achieved. It's something that Lee didn't really have to do after June 1862 when he inherited the Army of Northern Virginia - even then he had an army which was still quite new and which was defending the national capital, as opposed to the 1864 Army of the Potomac which was about to undertake an offensive of a type which had been repulsed twice before (i.e. crossing the Rappahanock upstream of Fredericksburg)
This is a trick also employed by Pope, in his address to the Army of Virginia, though Pope did it with much less finesse and essentially accused his own army of cowardice. (Though shame is certainly a valid emotion to use to make men face death.)
It is, however, rhetoric. It is important to separate this rhetoric from what Grant actually did, and what Grant actually did was considerably more nuanced (and more successful) than the idea of simply going where the enemy is and hitting them very hard in the face without regard for the maintenance of supply lines or the danger of being outflanked.
Grant was a competent enough commander; he didn't have the same manoeuvrist brilliance of Lee, but then even Lee didn't have the manoeuvrist brilliance of Lee on some occasions.
It may perhaps require restating that a commander who charges ahead to try and find the enemy without finesse is either going to win only because his army is too vast for enemy finesse to possibly overcome it, or going to win because his enemy is also disdaining finesse and has the weaker army for a head-on pounding contest, or is going to lose - possibly very badly.
Grant had finesse - less than Lee, but he did have it - and aside from his flying column move through the Wilderness he always had an operative supply base. He attempted to turn Lee out of the positions Lee found, but without managing successfully; one can blame the instrument or the man, but certainly if Lee had been slower to react to Grant's initiatives then Grant could have achieved a success through manoeuvre; in this case that would come from forcing a battle through the threat to Richmond.
It should be noted, however, that pre-Grant operations were always based around the idea that Richmond is a location the Army of Northern Virginia would fight to defend, precisely because taking Richmond would cause such massive damage to the Confederate cause - cutting them off from Virgina as a farmland and recruiting ground, cutting them off from Henrico County's industry, rendering the prospect of threatening Washington very remote. There is perhaps a difference in the exact emphasis (between "we will approach Richmond and the enemy will have to either fight us or let us take it" and "we will approach Richmond so as to compel the enemy to fight us on our terms") but the operational reality is the same - movements aimed at creating a threat to Richmond and dispositions to recieve the effectively inevitable enemy attack.
If the aim was to cause attrition to the Confederate army in keeping with the greater ability of the Union to replace losses, then the Overland campaign has a number of issues. Chief among these is the effect it had on the Union army's morale - mathematically speaking the Confederacy took a greater percentage of their military manpower as casualties over the Overland by reason of their smaller population, and Lee took about 33% of his total army's PFD in casualties (vice a number less than 30% for Grant), but the effect on the morale of the Army of the Potomac was catastrophic.
Grant perhaps cannot be fully blamed for this as the psychology was not properly understood at the time by all, but the extent to which a force once repulsed without tangible gains has a significant loss in effectiveness was well known in the battles of the Napoleonic wars; witness how Napoleon's regular French divisions at Waterloo were reduced to supporting the Guard once previously repulsed, or indeed how Meade himself noted at Antietam that his (newly inherited) corps underwent a temporary but catastrophic collapse after it was repulsed.
What does all this boil down to?
I think the best way of putting it is that Grant was - as I've said - a competent commander. He wasn't anything transformative in operational terms, but he got over the Rappahanock (a major acheivement) and his efforts sufficiently revived the offensive spirit of the Army of the Potomac to carry it south to Cold Harbor; his flaw is that he sent forward too many attacks against strong Confederate positions.
In the process of doing this he effectively "proved" that he was willing to fight, which makes his attacks arguably a way to successfully demonstrate that the actual operational moves he was making weren't to avoid fighting; alternatively Grant was operating based on his experiences in the west where an entrenched force was already psychologically "half beaten". Either way the strategic result of Grant's operations in the Overland campaign was a Union army on the James and attacking Petersburg, and one which was allowed to remain there until decisive operations were achieved.
The actual cost of Grant's operations makes them a potential subject for criticism; however which criticism is most correct depends on the extent to which Grant considered them necessary versus likely to succeed and what his ultimate objective was. If he was attempting grand attrition of Lee's veterans with his own on the grounds that his own were soon to leave the army, or attempting to prove to the Washington establishment that he was willing to fight, then they are clear-headed and successful but cold-blooded; if he was attempting an actual operational breakthrough then he was unsuccessful but not catastrophically so.
It may be worth considering Grant as a "pounder", willing to pound away at the enemy frontally with the use of mass instead of finesse tactically; this may sound uncharitable, and to an extent it is, but such was Napoleon from 1809 onwards and especially at Waterloo.
Saphroneth
Colonel
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2017
Now to look at Lee's operational movements.
Lee's priority was effectively to defend Richmond, and we can add to that the idea that he was also to preserve his army as best as possible (that is, to avoid unwarranted attrition).
It is worth contemplating that he had a difficult task, as his complete force was about 100,000 PFD all told (counting reinforcements) and Grant's army was at least twice that all told (ditto).
Of the battles he fought during the overland, all but one of them was conducted with his own troops in defensive positions. Examining them in order:
The Wilderness. This is the only battle in which Lee was making major offensive moves, and he attempted to manoeuvre as best as was possible in the terrain (with one of his corps coming around for a turning movement).
The battle was quite close, operationally speaking, and Lee managed to block three of the four Federal corps (5th, 6th and 9th) but not the fourth (Hancock's 2nd corps) which meant he was unable to repeat the Chancellorsville trick of knocking the Union army back over the Rapidan. (This isn't a matter of willpower on the part of the commander so much as it is a matter of the defensive virtues of blocking the enemy in behind rivers.)
Lee could have done better in this battle if he'd had a better read of Grant's intentions, but as it is he came close to forcing the Union back over the Rapidan. In this light his high casualties in this battle can be argued as - not precisely "acceptable" but "worth a try".
Spotsylvania.
This is basically a defensive battle where Grant moved south and east, Lee matched him, and Lee managed to win the race. Grant certainly needed to pause here to refill his wagons anyway, but if Lee hadn't moved quite so fast then Grant might have been able to control the rail line further south than he did.
Lee was able to successfully defend here. He took notable casualties, but less than the attackers, and it's a little hard to see how he could have done all that much better. Attritionally speaking this battle was not a good one for the Confederates, though they also caused serious morale problems for the Union that would manifest later.
North Anna.
Much like Spotsylvania this battle saw a race which Lee won. Lee also made an attempt to win a decisive victory by counterattack, but it didn't come off thanks in no small part to casualties among the general officers (including Longstreet who was out of action and Lee himself who was inflicted with an illness).
It's hard to say exactly how well the idea would have worked, but it can be considered a positive move because it has the potential for a decision; the Union army certainly did what Lee wanted.
The battle also saw Lee failing to initially set up earthworks, which was probably an error.
It was a positive attritional battle because Union losses were more than double Confederate ones, though it saw some small-unit and large-scale failures of coordination which can probably be attributed to the loss of good Confederate commanders. This could be blamed on Lee not selecting the replacements well, but we can't credit it to Grant because both of the most critical casualties had been fired on by their own men in the Wilderness (to whit, Jackson and Longstreet).
Cold Harbor's story isn't all that far from the others. In this case it's interesting that Lee was initially decieved about where Grant was going but "didn't lose" the race - which isn't as good as winning it, of course.
Ultimately this battle was another positive attritional one, but it also represents the last place Lee could have contested Grant's advance directly (short of managing to contest the establishment of the pontoon bridge south of the James, which may not have been feasible).
After Cold Harbor the main operational move Lee made which is worth noting is Early's raid. The concept of operations here was much like that of Jackson's raids in 1862, to try and draw off Union forces to protect Washington, and it was a qualified success - 6th Corps was drawn off and did not return until December that year, but the rest of the Army of the Potomac stayed.
Once the Army of the Potomac was established close enough to Richmond or Petersburg and somewhere that Lee couldn't get at the supply lines, so long as it was not withdrawn then the fall of Richmond was basically inveitable. Lee managed to delay it over the winter, which is fairly impressive; it's hard to see how he could have had Richmond hold out indefinitely.
In this light the biggest errors are probably Spotsylvania (which was much bloodier for the CSA than Cold Harbor, though this may be due to the Union) and North Anna (where a plan hung fire).
I'm unable immediately to see where Lee made an unforced error, except in the North Anna period when he was quite ill. He managed to sieze the advantage of the defensive in all battles except one, and in the North Anna battle he made plans which relied on counteroffensive work (which is a good way to make an attack while minimizing your own casualties, as troops who have assaulted are vulnerable either once they've failed or in the moments after success.)
Lee's priority was effectively to defend Richmond, and we can add to that the idea that he was also to preserve his army as best as possible (that is, to avoid unwarranted attrition).
It is worth contemplating that he had a difficult task, as his complete force was about 100,000 PFD all told (counting reinforcements) and Grant's army was at least twice that all told (ditto).
Of the battles he fought during the overland, all but one of them was conducted with his own troops in defensive positions. Examining them in order:
The Wilderness. This is the only battle in which Lee was making major offensive moves, and he attempted to manoeuvre as best as was possible in the terrain (with one of his corps coming around for a turning movement).
The battle was quite close, operationally speaking, and Lee managed to block three of the four Federal corps (5th, 6th and 9th) but not the fourth (Hancock's 2nd corps) which meant he was unable to repeat the Chancellorsville trick of knocking the Union army back over the Rapidan. (This isn't a matter of willpower on the part of the commander so much as it is a matter of the defensive virtues of blocking the enemy in behind rivers.)
Lee could have done better in this battle if he'd had a better read of Grant's intentions, but as it is he came close to forcing the Union back over the Rapidan. In this light his high casualties in this battle can be argued as - not precisely "acceptable" but "worth a try".
Spotsylvania.
This is basically a defensive battle where Grant moved south and east, Lee matched him, and Lee managed to win the race. Grant certainly needed to pause here to refill his wagons anyway, but if Lee hadn't moved quite so fast then Grant might have been able to control the rail line further south than he did.
Lee was able to successfully defend here. He took notable casualties, but less than the attackers, and it's a little hard to see how he could have done all that much better. Attritionally speaking this battle was not a good one for the Confederates, though they also caused serious morale problems for the Union that would manifest later.
North Anna.
Much like Spotsylvania this battle saw a race which Lee won. Lee also made an attempt to win a decisive victory by counterattack, but it didn't come off thanks in no small part to casualties among the general officers (including Longstreet who was out of action and Lee himself who was inflicted with an illness).
It's hard to say exactly how well the idea would have worked, but it can be considered a positive move because it has the potential for a decision; the Union army certainly did what Lee wanted.
The battle also saw Lee failing to initially set up earthworks, which was probably an error.
It was a positive attritional battle because Union losses were more than double Confederate ones, though it saw some small-unit and large-scale failures of coordination which can probably be attributed to the loss of good Confederate commanders. This could be blamed on Lee not selecting the replacements well, but we can't credit it to Grant because both of the most critical casualties had been fired on by their own men in the Wilderness (to whit, Jackson and Longstreet).
Cold Harbor's story isn't all that far from the others. In this case it's interesting that Lee was initially decieved about where Grant was going but "didn't lose" the race - which isn't as good as winning it, of course.
Ultimately this battle was another positive attritional one, but it also represents the last place Lee could have contested Grant's advance directly (short of managing to contest the establishment of the pontoon bridge south of the James, which may not have been feasible).
After Cold Harbor the main operational move Lee made which is worth noting is Early's raid. The concept of operations here was much like that of Jackson's raids in 1862, to try and draw off Union forces to protect Washington, and it was a qualified success - 6th Corps was drawn off and did not return until December that year, but the rest of the Army of the Potomac stayed.
Once the Army of the Potomac was established close enough to Richmond or Petersburg and somewhere that Lee couldn't get at the supply lines, so long as it was not withdrawn then the fall of Richmond was basically inveitable. Lee managed to delay it over the winter, which is fairly impressive; it's hard to see how he could have had Richmond hold out indefinitely.
In this light the biggest errors are probably Spotsylvania (which was much bloodier for the CSA than Cold Harbor, though this may be due to the Union) and North Anna (where a plan hung fire).
I'm unable immediately to see where Lee made an unforced error, except in the North Anna period when he was quite ill. He managed to sieze the advantage of the defensive in all battles except one, and in the North Anna battle he made plans which relied on counteroffensive work (which is a good way to make an attack while minimizing your own casualties, as troops who have assaulted are vulnerable either once they've failed or in the moments after success.)
Actually, Sodergren lists a few primary sources that back up the story, from veterans writing mostly after the war. Sodergren doesn't claim that it was a "mythical" event, just that it may not have been as widespread as claimed after the war.
A careful reading shows that the cheering was a reaction to hearing that they were to move forward.
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2017
- Location
- Denver, CO
Grant knew the US was going to win. When he applied the available resources correctly, he shortened the war. When he made mistakes, it lengthened the war. Not surprisingly, his first campaign in the east did not go well, for exactly the reasons he predicted. His second simultaneous campaign succeeded on all fronts. His third campaign ended the war without a fifth summer of death and destruction.
After Kentucky stayed in the US, and Unionist battalions took control of most the west, it was simply a question of faster or slower.
After Kentucky stayed in the US, and Unionist battalions took control of most the west, it was simply a question of faster or slower.
Similar threads
Similar threads
- Learn About Us
- ►About CivilWarTalk
- ►Contact the Webmaster
- ►Meet the Staff
- ►Link to CivilWarTalk
- Join Our Community
- ►Register
- ►Browse Forums
- ►View Today's Discussions
- ►Search the Forum
- Get Help
- ►FAQ
- ►Student Guide
- ►Forum Rules & Etiquette
- ►Copyright / DMCA
Bringing the