How is the winner determined?

[leftyhunter]

During the Napoleonic Wars when am army lost a battle, it was often destroyed as it attempted to retreat. So under nounal circumstances the side that held the field won the battle. This had changed by the Civil War and the retiring army usually made good its escape. But the view of who won because it held the field was still common in the Civil War despite the fact that the truth on the ground had changed.

In the Civil War battlefield victory was complicated. Deciding on if the battle help or hindered winning the campaign or the war was difficult to ascertain. Often both sides claimed they won the battle and the decision of who was the winner was based on short term success. An example would be Johnston believed Sherman was attempting to flank him and force him to fight an uneven battle and suffer large losses. Johnston slipped the noose and Sherman repeatedly failed to achieve his short term goals so Sherman lost one engagement after another. The problem with this is looking at it in short term and not the long term. Grant lost almost every battle during the Overland Campaign, but the Overland Campaign as a campaign was successful.

One must consider how a battle fit in to the over all campaign or even how it contributed to the war. Both sides could claim victory in the Gettysburg Campaign. For the Confederacy, Northern Virginia was spared battle for of much of 1863, any Union plans for 1863 were disrupted. The Union kept Washington D.C. and other Northern cities form being taken, The Union avoided any major defeat which might have had England or France intervene and the Army of Northern Virginia was damaged. I think we would have less of a problem deciding who won the Battle of Gettysburg, but even that was not clear in 1863.

I would have to disagree a bit with the last paragraph. In order to win a conventional war one side must seize and hold territory from the other side. The CSA knew it had to win on the offense such has Polk invading Ky. Yes one can argue that Perryville was a draw but at the end of the day the CSA leaves KY and Ky remains a Union state other then some CSA guerrillas . Same with Gettysburg . In order to win Lee needs to either seize Union territory or at least burn down a major Union city in order to demoralize Union political opinion. Lee achieves neither. Lee looses a lot of men and by late summer of 1863 Union forces are well into Northern Va.
Leftyhunter

 

[Elennsar]

How would burning down a major Union city help as opposed to outraging Union public opinion? That's the problem with striking those sorts of blows - people can react vengefully as much as fearfully.

 

[JeffBrooks]

Does the outcome of the engagement make it more likely or less likely that your side will win the war? It does? Then you won. It doesn't? Then you lost.

Take Monocacy as an example. Monocacy was, by tactical standards, an overwhelming Confederate victory. They routed the Union force, inflicted heavier casualties upon it than they themselves sustained, and were in control of the battlefield when the fighting ended. However, by delaying their advance on Washington City for one crucial day, the Union forces made it less likely that the Confederacy would win the war and more likely that the Union would win the war.

Ergo, Monocacy was a Union victory.

 

[Elennsar]

Does the outcome of the engagement make it more likely or less likely that your side will win the war? It does? Then you won. It doesn't? Then you lost.

I cannot say I support the notion that we should ignore whether or not something was tactically successful or not by saying that if it wasn't a strategic triumph it wasn't a win at all.

Edit: This seems worth reading http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/08summer/bartholo.pdf

Monocacy was a significant achievement by Early, but did not contribute favorably or unfavorably to resolving the overall issues at stake (for either side).

 

[ole]

I'm liking the trend toward differentiating campaigns and the scraps during them. Like Corinth was the objective of the battles at Fts. Henry and Donelson, and at Shiloh. The overall strategy was to gain position for an advance on Vicksburg. (Maybe a wrong example, as the Union prevailed in all of them.)

OK. Let's try the Atlanta Campaign. Sherman lost battles but won the campaign. Or the 40 days. Grant lost battles and failed to take Richmond, but the war in the East was effectively over when Lee got bottled up near Petersburg.

Both attempts at Manassas Junction were Union defeats, so the "campaigns" were abandoned.

Bragg won some battles in his invasion of Kentucky, but his campaign failed.

Just thinking out loud. Sorry about that.

 

[NedBaldwin]

Edit: This seems worth reading http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/08summer/bartholo.pdf

Brilliant paper.

"Victory in war is at the most basic level an assessment, not a fact or condition. It is someone's opinion or an amalgamation of opinions. Victory in war may or may not have anything to do with objective criteria such as casual ties or territory taken or lost. In winning a war, those things matter—at least at some level and always in terms of their effect on perception—but what matters most is the ultimate perception of the situation, not the facts. Different people, depending on their perspective, can legitimately differ in their assessment. The assessment aspect complicates the issue of winning exponentially since it introduces the uncontrolled variables of whose assessment takes precedence, for how much, and based on what criteria."​

 

[Elennsar]

And even if that refers more to "Did we win the war", its still relevant to the level of battles or campaigns.

Sometimes its unambiguous that goals were achieved, but its usually somewhere short of that.

 

[1SGDan]

To understand what was achieved you must understand what was intended. Losing ground you did not intend to keep is not failure. Casualties are the ugly, but generally unavoidable, consequence of military action against another armed force and should not be considered a deciding factor. Who got what they wanted, be it battlefield possession, gaining advantageous position for further operations, avoiding battle at disadvantage, or any other of the myriad of military objectives determines the victor. In some cases both sides actually do accomplish what they intended and therefore a draw is the only logical outcome.

 

[rob63]

Another point to be made is that, along with the other parameters already discussed, you must first decide who was fighting before you can decide who won.

Was Antietam a contest between McClellan and Lee?
Army of the Potomac vs. Army of Northern Virginia?
Lincoln and Davis?
Union vs. Confederate?

You can get different answers for the same battle depending upon whom you decide were the contestants. You can argue that the Union won a strategic victory at Antietam, but it would be preposterous to say that McClellan defeated Lee on the battlefield.

 

[Pat Answer]

In the context of this, where for a variety of reasons it was unlikely for one ACW army to "destroy" another:

During the Napoleonic Wars when am army lost a battle, it was often destroyed as it attempted to retreat. So under nounal circumstances the side that held the field won the battle. This had changed by the Civil War and the retiring army usually made good its escape. But the view of who won because it held the field was still common in the Civil War despite the fact that the truth on the ground had changed.

In the Civil War battlefield victory was complicated. Deciding on if the battle help or hindered winning the campaign or the war was difficult to ascertain.

I have to go with this:

If one side clearly met its objective and the other side failed to do so, then we know who won.

If it is unclear whether either side met its objective more than the other side, then the side that was able to turn it into a strategic victory is the winner.

If it is unclear that either side met its objective and it is also unclear that either side won a strategic victory then the side that held the ground at the end of the fighting was the winner.

Tactical results in the horse-and-musket era (which the ACW still largely was) are subordinate to strategic results, which determine the significance of casualties or 'holding the ground' or 'delaying the enemy'. All too often, the strategic results cannot be fully assessed "at the time" - which goes against our instincts as students of history.

 

[Pat Answer]

Another point to be made is that, along with the other parameters already discussed, you must first decide who was fighting before you can decide who won.

Was Antietam a contest between McClellan and Lee?
Army of the Potomac vs. Army of Northern Virginia?
Lincoln and Davis?
Union vs. Confederate?

You can get different answers for the same battle depending upon whom you decide were the contestants. You can argue that the Union won a strategic victory at Antietam, but it would be preposterous to say that McClellan defeated Lee on the battlefield.

Oh dear. The whole idea of war as not a purely military contest really complicates things.
Good point.

 

[JeffBrooks]

Oh dear. The whole idea of war as not a purely military contest really complicates things.

It does, indeed. The Civil War was determined by what happened on the floor of the bond market, in the halls of Congress, and in the minds of voters reading the newspapers no less than it was determined by what happened on the battlefield.

We had a great thread about who won the Overland Campaign a few months ago. It's a good example of how difficult it is to answer these questions. Tactically, of the three major battles, two were stalemates and one was a clear Confederate victory. Strategically, Grant inflicted casualties on Lee that the latter could not replace, greatly weakening the Army of Northern Virginia as a fighting force. In the realm of public opinion, however, Northern voters were shocked and disgusted by the enormous casualties Grant himself sustained, which contributed to the possibility that Lincoln would be thrown out of office that November, which was the South's only hope for victory by 1864.

These things are not mathematical equations. You have to take all these factors and weigh them in different ways in each individual case.

 

[Rebel from Finland]

Some discussion about this same topic is here on this thread http://civilwartalk.com/threads/who-won-the-overland-campaign.99483/page-5#post-870993

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Caution: I'm inevitably going to cite naval examples.

One of the truly classic "who won?" conundrums is the battle between the Monitor and the Virginia (ex-Merrimack) in Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862. The arguments about who won started immediately upon the last gun falling silent and show no signs of resolution in the foreseeable future. People have put forth successful arguments for each contender, based on different premises and objectives; one fine book about the battle was even titled How the Merrimac Won (by R. W. Daly).

It seems to me to be a prime example that armed conflicts are very difficult (in many cases, impossible) to fit into neat "win-loss-tie" categories. It's entirely possible-- maybe even frequent-- that both sides achieve a number of their goals without achieving all of them. Determining the scope of analysis is important as well, since by 'widening the focus,' the judgment can change. To cite another (naval) example, it's pretty clear who won and who lost in the duel between Alabama and Kearsarge; but if you widen the scope to consider how much damage the Alabama caused and how much effort she forced the Union Navy to expend to stop her, the question of success and failure is a lot less clear-cut.

 

[JeffBrooks]

Caution: I'm inevitably going to cite naval examples.

And the odds-makers take a beating.

 

[Drew]

Good thread with lots of good answers. Keep them coming. (bump)

 

[leftyhunter]

How would burning down a major Union city help as opposed to outraging Union public opinion? That's the problem with striking those sorts of blows - people can react vengefully as much as fearfully.

Simply put Lee has only a finite amount of men in the summer of 1863. The US is forming USCT regiments and there is a lot of black manpower to recruit from. Lee knows by May of 1863 that Gen.Pemberton is not doing all that great in Vicksburg and if Grant takes Vicksburg there will be a whole lot less CSA troops to go around. In Tn Lee knows that Gen. Rosecrans is receiving a lot of men and supplies and he will go on the offensive by August at the latest. Lee has to do something to demoralize Union opinion and he needs to move fast. Desperate problems require desperate solutions.
Leftyhunter

 

[leftyhunter]

Another point to be made is that, along with the other parameters already discussed, you must first decide who was fighting before you can decide who won.

Was Antietam a contest between McClellan and Lee?
Army of the Potomac vs. Army of Northern Virginia?
Lincoln and Davis?
Union vs. Confederate?

You can get different answers for the same battle depending upon whom you decide were the contestants. You can argue that the Union won a strategic victory at Antietam, but it would be preposterous to say that McClellan defeated Lee on the battlefield.

I am not arguing that McClellan was a brilliant battle field general however Lee had to turn tail and go back to Va and left a lot of his men dead or captured. Antietam was not a great victory such has 1st and 2nd Mannassas or Thomas at Nashville but if Lee invades a Union state and has to turn tail that's a good enough victory. Plus Antietam gave Lincoln the political cover to issue the Emancipation Proclamation which was a huge help to the Union cause.
Leftyhunter

 

[Elennsar]

Simply put Lee has only a finite amount of men in the summer of 1863. The US is forming USCT regiments and there is a lot of black manpower to recruit from. Lee knows by May of 1863 that Gen.Pemberton is not doing all that great in Vicksburg and if Grant takes Vicksburg there will be a whole lot less CSA troops to go around. In Tn Lee knows that Gen. Rosecrans is receiving a lot of men and supplies and he will go on the offensive by August at the latest. Lee has to do something to demoralize Union opinion and he needs to move fast. Desperate problems require desperate solutions.
Leftyhunter

Respectfully, that doesn't address how burning down a major Union city would be that something as opposed to making things worse.

Also, and posted just to share what I've done in looking up the USCT: Very few of the USCT regiments are in the field before the end of 1863. So they're not an immediate factor, although they matter in the long term.

 

[leftyhunter]

Respectfully, that doesn't address how burning down a major Union city would be that something as opposed to making things worse.

Also, and posted just to share what I've done in looking up the USCT: Very few of the USCT regiments are in the field before the end of 1863. So they're not an immediate factor, although they matter in the long term.

Burning down an enemies city to demoralize the general population so that they loose the will to fight is an idea that in the 1930's various military proponents of air power proposed and has we know both sides in WW2 gave it a whirl. I am not saying Lee would of done so but the thought did run through the CSA and was attempted in 1864 by having sCSA agents attempt to burn down NYC. Hindsight now tell us that burning down cities may not help as much as was thought decades ago.

I don't doubt that it took a while to get the UCST up and running. On the other hand a good general just like a good CEO looks at the long term picture. By June of 1863 even the medium term picture for the CSA was grim at best so time was running out to try a radical solution and hope for the best.
There are of course many ways to interpret historical events. Based on my knowledge of Gburg Lee who was a realist had to in a football analogy "make a hail Mary pass'. The fact that he had to retreat back to where he started is a major defeat and afterwards other then Early's raid on Washington DC the AnV is now on the defense and wars are won on the offense.
Leftyhunter