Four Days in July: Vicksburg

No one expected much of William Tecumseh Sherman in December of 1861. No one who knew him in the opening months of the Civil War or knows of him through the history books would expect this to be the case. But Sherman nearly self-destructed as the Civil War began. He took a brigade of volunteers on to the field at First Bull Run and was one of the few Union commanders to distinguish himself in that debacle. But Sherman was injured and the Union routed and the general began to question his own competence and the capabilities of the mostly volunteer army he now served. Today we’d probably call it post-traumatic stress disorder. In 1861 they didn’t call it anything. Lincoln promoted Sherman to the rank of brigadier general in the volunteers (there was a difference in the Civil War between a rank in the volunteers and a rank in the regular army. In June of 1861 when Grant took over an Illinois regiment of volunteers he became a colonel of the volunteers while still technically a captain of the regular army. I believe, but could be wrong, that Sherman was still a colonel in the regular army when he received his rank of brigadier general in the volunteer forces and after Vicksburg he would be made a brigadier general of the regular army while retaining his rank as major general of the volunteers. It was a strange, complicated system). He asked Lincoln to never be put in a prominent command position and Lincoln reportedly agreed before making him second in command of the Department of the Cumberland. When his superior, Robert Anderson, best known as the commander at Fort Sumter, was forced to quit the position due to poor health Sherman took command and suffered a breakdown. In November he asked to be relieved and was replaced by Don Carlos Buell. Sherman went west to St. Louis and was declared unfit for duty by Henry Halleck. His wife questioned his sanity. Worse, the Cincinnati Commercial publically declared him insane. In March of 1862 Sherman was assigned to Grant’s Army of West Tennessee and ended up getting nearly overrun at the first day of Shiloh. He held his forces together and kept disaster at bay. That evening he ran in to Grant, who was calmly sitting under a tree smoking a cigar. “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” asked Sherman. “Yes,” Grant replied, “Lick ‘em tomorrow, though.” It was the beginning of the Union Army’s version of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. No one would have guessed, though. Grant lacked the spit and polish bearing of Lee and Sherman lacked the stern, pious gravitas of Jackson. No one ever created a mythical, infallible version of Grant and Sherman. In fact, during the Vicksburg campaign one newspaper referred to the pair as a drunkard whose main adviser was a lunatic. Yet between November of 1862 and July of 1863 that drunkard and his lunatic subordinate pulled off one of the greatest military campaigns in history. The pair managed to outmaneuver two Confederate armies, overcome the self-important blundering of John A. McClernand, and take the fortress city of Vicksburg. In doing so they denied the Confederacy all use of the Mississippi River, cut the southern nation in half, and achieve what may well have been the most important victory of the Civil War. When we last discussed the western theater of operations Grant was stuck by scheme and circumstance on the west side of the Mississippi with the goal of taking a city on the east side. Simply getting back to the correct side of the river would be a chore. Grant took after finding a solution with his characteristic determination. Before he could deal with this, though, there was the minor matter of John McClernand. He still thought he was in command of the Vicksburg expedition. In early January Grant allowed the puffed up general to assemble his and Sherman’s forces in to the so-called Army of the Mississippi and assault Arkansas Post, a point midway between Little Rock and the Mississippi on the Arkansas River. The Union forces outnumbered the defenders of Forth Hindman by more than 6 to 1, the Union gunboats outgunned the Fort Hindman artillery and the Union won the lopsided, pointless battle. Grant disbanded the Army of the Mississippi and ordered McClernand back to the Army of the Tennessee so they could get back to work on the actual campaign. Vicksburg is situated on a bluff above the Mississippi, making it difficult if not downright impossible to assault from the river. It was also strategically located at the tip of a long, nearly 180 degree switchback in the river itself, meaning that gunboats could not easily run past the city’s guns. They’d be exposed on the approach, forced to slow to make the turn, and exposed again on the regress. Grant found himself north and west of the city in the winter of 1862-1863 with difficult terrain directly across from his position. He needed to get his command to good terrain and that was south of Vickburg. His boats and supplies would need to come downriver too, though. His first plan was to dig a canal across the base of the peninsula that was formed by the river’s switchback. When that failed he tried to connect Lake Providence, the Tensas River, and the Red River but that, too, was a failure. He then tried to get gunboats to the northern approaches to Vicksburg through an area known as Steele’s Bayou. The channels proved so narrow his gunboats got stuck and some were nearly lost to infantry assaults. Grant decided he needed a new plan. In May his gunboats and transports ran past the guns at Vicksburg and met Grant south of the city at Hard Times Landing. At the same time he ordered some of his cavalry still stationed in Tennessee to launch a diversionary assault on Mississippi. Colonel Benjamin Grierson led 1700 troops and a battery of 6 light artillery pieces on a ride that would come to be known as Grierson’s Raid. It was the sort of move that would have made Nathan Bedford Forrest or JEB Stuart proud. Grierson’s Brigade rode 600 miles from La Grange, Tennessee to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They raided stores, tore up railroads, burned buildings and bridges and in general made a nuisance of themselves. Pemberton had to devote a full division to protecting his rail lines and Grant was able to use the distraction to slip back across the Mississippi unopposed. He was now back on the east side of the Mississippi but still had to face Pemberton’s army out of Vicksburg. Another army under Joe Johnston out of the east was tasked with keeping Grant from reaching the city at all. Grant’s supply lines were now limited and he cut himself off as much as possible, choosing to live off the land. Sherman would later borrow this strategy in his famed March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah. In order to keep Joe Johnston and Pemberton from linking up Grant first marched on Jackson, the capitol of Mississippi. On May 12 the lead elements of Grant’s forces under James McPherson engaged Johnston’s forces outside Jackson. Sherman was close behind and the two were able to push through the outnumbered Confederate position. McClernand was nowhere close to the battle. He had as much chance of standing up to Joe Johnston as John Pope did to Robert E. Lee and Grant knew it. Sherman and McPherson, however, were fine commanders and they demonstrated it at Jackson. Grant occupied Johnston’s old headquarters on May 14th and one of McPherson’s subordinates discovered an order Johnston wrote but never delivered to Pemberton. It called for Pemberton to assault Grant near Clinton, Mississippi, an attack that would have pitted the capable Confederate commander against the worthless McClernand and possible destroyed Grant’s assault on Vicksburg. Fortunately for Grant, though, Johnston had entrusted his order to a Union spy. Sometimes war turns on events like that. Grant now turned from Jackson and moved on Vicksburg. On May 16 Grant contacted Pemberton at Champion Hill but lost the chance to annihilate the defenders of Vicksburg in the open field when McClernand misinterpreted an order. Pemberton pulled back to the city over Johnston’s request to abandon Vicksburg, move north, and live to fight another day. On May 18 Grant reached the outskirts of Vicksburg. The next day he tried a direct assault on the city and was repulsed. On May 22 he tried again. In the midst of the battle McClernand reported that he’d gained ground and captured two forts. Grant sent reinforcements and ordered Sherman and McPherson to renew their own attacks and keep pressure on Pemberton so McClernand wouldn’t be thrown back. He then discovered that McClernand had made no gains at all and was lying. McClernand’s lies had a real cost in lives and supplies. Grant was livid. McClernand had moved from being a nuisance to a clear danger to his own army. Fortunately McClernand’s relentless self-promotion allowed him to sow the seeds of his own destruction. He drafted an order of congratulations for his troops that was really a bit of self-promotion that included reference to himself as a “born warrior.” He then had it published in a Memphis newspaper. Publishing official military documents for public consumption was against regulations and McClernand’s missive was ostensibly an official order. When Sherman discovered what had happened he immediately took the paper to Grant. Grant now had enough ammunition to get rid of his troublesome subordinate. McClernand wasn’t gone forever, but he didn’t return to the field until 1864. By then the direction of the war meant he was little danger to anyone, Union or Confederate. Still, the actions of May 19 and 22 proved that Vicksburg could not be taken by force so Grant settled in for a siege. Sherman had dislodged the Confederate defenders from Hayne’s Bluff, however. Grant now had a secure dock on the Yazoo River north of Vicksburg. He could once again get all the supplies he needed without risking the guns of Vicksburg or Confederate raids on vulnerable railroads. This would prove invaluable, as the siege lasted for 40 days. In early July Pemberton finally decided he could hold out no longer. Grant had accumulated reinforcements and supplies all through June and had more than 75,000 men manning the trenches backed up by 220 artillery pieces compared to 35,000 men at that first, ill-fated assault on May 19. On June 28 Grant learned that Pemberton only had six days worth of food, so Grant planned an assault for July 6. On July 3rd a messenger from Pemberton arrived in the Union camp and asked for a commission to negotiate surrender. Pemberton informed Grant, “I make this proposition to save the further effusion of blood.” Unconditional Surrender Grant replied, “The useless effusion of blood you propose stopping can be ended at any time you choose, by an unconditional surrender of the city.” Grant wasn’t much for negotiation. He also knew that he had Pemberton by the short hairs. Pemberton came out to personally negotiate with Grant. The two had a history together going back to the war with Mexico, so things began pleasantly enough. The Confederate commander eventually realized that Grant’s terms would not change, however, and threatened further hostilities. Both men knew that all Pemberton could offer was that pointless effusion of blood, however. He still tried to negotiate but all that got was an ultimatum for an assault at nine AM on Independence Day. The army was at breakfast when Pemberton’s messenger arrived. Vicksburg had surrendered. Independence Day wouldn’t be celebrated in the city for another eighty years. It was July 4th, 1863, four score and seven years after a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal was brought forth on the American continent. For three days in Pennsylvania the men of the Army of the Potomac had consecrated that most hallowed ground. On a fourth day in Mississippi the gains at Gettysburg were solidified without having to fire a shot. When Lee withdrew and Pemberton surrendered the Civil War was over. Two more years would pass and thousands more would die before it actually ended, but after July 4th, 1863 the Confederacy had no chance to win the war on the field of battle. All they could hope to do was drag the war on long enough that the North would give up. Should you be the sort who celebrates the Fourth of July remember that eighty-seven years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence another momentous event happened on that same date. Happy Fourth to all.

Four Days in July: Gettysburg Day 3

There’s one thing that all wars have in common. Whether they’re local or global, big or small, whether we call them good wars or colossal mistakes, all wars are a succession of tragedies. Most of the time the historians look at them in the aggregate, they pull out big numbers, tell us that 12,000 men assaulted a position and only 8,000 made it through. These numbers are big, but they’re antiseptic, clean. The butcher’s bill tells us nothing about the lives that are cut short, the fathers who will never again pick up their children, the husbands who will spend sleepless days, months, years, standing at the front window hoping against hope the empty front walk will suddenly be occupied by that familiar form. They tell us nothing about games of catch that will never be played, empty seats at the dinner table, dark suits, and dabbed tears. The small tragedies are rarely told by historians. That task is left to the poets and storytellers. They’re the ones that are left with the task of reminding us that numbers don’t fight wars, statistics don’t die. Husbands and sons fight wars. Mothers and sisters die. We go to war with the shouted slogans of propagandists telling us of the glory to be won. We finish was with the whispers of poets reminding us of all we’ve lost. There are heroes to be sure, those who in death became immortal or in continued life became legends. Day 3 at Gettysburg is a day that looms over the battle that caused it. It didn’t start that way. The Union XII Corps pushed Ewell out of the positions he’d taken the day before. JEB Stuart’s cavalry finally made it in to the battle. He attempted to hit the Union right flank alongside Ewell, but was engaged and stopped short by Union cavalry under Gregg and a star-crossed brigade commander named George Armstrong Custer. Longstreet set about to turn the Union left until Lee found out that Longstreet wasn’t engaging in a frontal assault and changed the plan. This might have been a good thing. Sedgwick’s Corps had finally arrived and Meade had placed him on the far left to make sure Longstreet couldn’t repeat his near victory of the day before. Chances are Longstreet didn’t know this and his flanking maneuver would have ended in disaster. The alternate plan turned out to be much, much worse. We know it today as Pickett’s Charge. In truth, George Pickett only commanded one of the three divisions that assaulted the Union center. General Pettigrew, in command of Henry Heth’s Division, and Isaac Trimble, who finally had the chance to command at Gettysburg after stepping in for the mortally wounded Dorsey Pender, made up the rest of the charge. There are those who wish the assault to be known as the Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble Charge or even Longstreet’s Assault. Sometimes the historian’s accuracy must take a backseat to the memory of the event. Pickett’s Charge, whether he was in charge or not, whether it’s right or wrong to remember the attack by the name of a single man who was not in even in charge of a majority of the troops, will always be remembered as Pickett’s Charge. Sometimes it be that way. We remember Pickett’s Charge mostly as the story of a large body of men that went out and much smaller band of survivors that straggled back. We count some 12,500 attackers and roughly five thousand casualties from that single action and think we understand the scope of war. We look at that butcher’s bill and assume it tells the story. For the proponents of the Lost Cause Myth it’s the story of Longstreet and Pickett’s sniveling attempt to undermine Lee. For those with no vested interest in the infallibility of Lee it’s the story of the hubris of a commander who’s had too much success, the Victory Syndrome that crippled the Japanese in World War II. Yet to those who study the story carefully it’s the story of an attack with a very real chance of success, as Shelby Foote argues. Lee’s army had nearly taken the Union center, which was still spread thin to put more troops on the flanks. The artillery was supposed to have a much greater effect on the Union defenders, defective munitions, vision obscured by the smoke of the guns, and a Union center that refused to turn tail and run rendered the bombardment ineffective. The real story of Pickett’s Charge, though, must be told one man at a time. For our purposes we will look at the stories of two men: II Corps commander Winfield Scott Hancock and one of Pickett’s brigade commanders, Lewis Armistead. Hancock was a Pennsylvanian and Armistead a Virginian with no blood relation. But there are those who become brothers without the help of blood and it is said that civil wars pit brother against brother. Armistead and Hancock, as so many of the stories of the Civil War start, fought in the Mexican-American War together, served under Zachary Taylor and became friends with another young officer named John F. Reynolds, and helped take California from Mexico. They stayed out in California and were there together, Armistead serving as Hancock’s quartermaster, when the Civil War broke out. Armistead headed south out of loyalty to Virginia while Hancock headed north out of loyalty to the Union. It’s said that on the last night they were together Armistead said to Hancock, “If I ever raise my hand against you, may god strike me dead.” Though Armistead joined the Army of Northern Virginia and Hancock the Army of the Potomac they did not meet on the battlefield through the first two years of the war. Now on the afternoon of July 3, 1863 Lewis Armistead was to lead one of Pickett’s brigades up Cemetery Ridge, over the low stone wall, and in to the teeth of the Union II Corps. Lewis Armistead was to direct his troops right at Winfield Scott Hancock. First there was the long artillery bombardment. While his men took cover Hancock sat astride his horse behind the lines for all to see. When a subordinate begged him to get down from his horse Hancock replied, “There are times when a corps commander’s life does not matter.” As the artillery ran low of ammunition the divisions assigned to the assault left the tree line at Seminary Ridge. They now had two miles of open ground to cross, a fence to climb while under fire, and an entrenched enemy waiting for them at the top of the hill. Hancock stayed in the middle of his lines atop his horse until a Confederate bullet that ripped through the pommel of his saddle and in to his thigh knocked him off. He refused to be taken off the battlefield. The Union hero could not have been far from where his friend Lewis Armistead managed to cross the wall after the 71st Pennsylvania retreated. The 72nd Pennsylvania soon arrived to plug the gap and Armistead was mortally wounded in the counter attack. He never did get to see his old friend Hancock. The Confederate center was in disarray, but the Union center wasn’t in much better shape and Meade was unwilling to repeat Lee’s mistake with an assault of his own. Both armies spent a soggy Independence Day staring at each other across their lines and collecting the dead. Lee withdrew and headed back for Virginia. Meade followed, but with no real sense of urgency. The Army of the Potomac held off the Army of Northern Virginia and held the field, but the victory came at great cost. The Army of the Potomac took some 23,000 casualties among its 90,000 soldiers while the Army of Northern Virginia lost somewhere between 20,000 and 28,000 of its 70,000 or so men. Of the casualties on both sides about 8000 died while another 20,000 lay wounded. The lucky ones were in field hospitals surrounded by dying soldiers, spilled blood and amputated limbs. The unlucky ones lay where they fell, dying of thirst and surrounded by corpses and the moaning of other stranded survivors. The armies left the field, but Gettysburg would not return to normal for quite some time. Civilians spent weeks digging graves and helping wounded soldiers. Many had lost their homes and found their property and crops damaged or plundered. But in the aftermath of the battle we forget the tragedies suffered by those who win no laurels and don’t meet death’s swift release. History books can’t offer us the stench of rotted limbs discarded at the sides of primitive field hospitals. Monuments don’t replicate the moans of the dying men who lie dehydrated and helpless in the fields. Films end before the frightened civilians emerge from their cellars with shovels to dig shallow graves and try to get their lives back to normal. That should be the true legacy of Gettysburg. Of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Antietam, and Shiloh, too. We should remember wars not for the great heroism and spoils of the Ardennes, Waterloo, Breitenfeld, Agincourt, Cannae, Gaugamela, or Kadesh, not for the numbers engaged, the numbers killed, or the commanders who gained everlasting fame. We should remember battles by the stories that were cut short, the children who grew up without fathers, the civilians who had to dig the graves. Maybe then we can begin to get rid of this human obsession with marking our history by the wars we fight and fights we win. But that was not what happened at Gettysburg on July 4th, 1863. The battle was over, but focus shifted away from the aftermath in the Pennsylvania countryside. Something happened on banks of the Mississippi River that was at least as important as the Battle of Gettysburg.

Four Days in July: Gettysburg Day 2

As the first day at Gettysburg slipped in to the second Lee faced a challenge of sorts from James Longstreet. Longstreet didn’t like the terrain at all. In truth it’s extremely hard to disagree. The Union held the best terrain in the area and was soon to hold the advantage in numbers, too. The rest of the infantry corps in the Army of the Potomac had straggled in over the course of the night and were busy getting plugged in to the line. The defenses on the left were almost compromised from the start, however. III Corps, under a political general named Dan Sickles, pushed forward from the end of the line, across the Wheatfield and in to the Peach Orchard, creating a salient in the Union line at the point where the defensive terrain was the worst of any along the Union lines. It would put Sickles square in the line of Longstreet’s attack. Lee, however, did not know this. He still had no idea of the extent of the Union lines and thought they terminated at the southern tip of Cemetery Ridge. His plan, then, was to put Longstreet’s Corps across the left flank of the Union position while Anderson’s Division of Hill’s Corps would make a head-on assault at the correct moment. Longstreet, meanwhile, had two of his three divisions on hand. He was to send Lafayette McLaws’ Division straight up the Emmitsburg Road while Hood’s Division went up and over Little Round Top and swept in to the Union rear. On paper it was a devastating plan. Unfortunately for Lee the Union didn’t cooperate. Sickle’s maneuver put his III Corps squarely across McLaws’ line of advance. The two sides stumbled upon each other and ended up slugging it out for most of the afternoon. Hood asked Longstreet to let him slide further around Little Round Top and try to strike from even farther off to the Union left, but Longstreet would not allow it. He didn’t think there was enough time. There may well have not been enough time, but Hood’s instincts were good. He ended up sending Law’s Alabama Brigade against the extreme left end of the Union line. The only thing that stood between Longstreet’s Corps and a successful flanking maneuver was the 385 man 20th Maine Regiment under Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. The hill was almost empty, however. Sickles’ salient left Little Round Top undefended. Gouverneur K. Warren, Meade’s chief engineer, was dispatched to see about the situation and just happened to catch the glint of sunlight off of Longstreet’s advancing infantry. The only Union forces on the hill were an observation group from the Signal Corps. Meade’s old V Corps, now under General George Sykes, was the closest command. Warren filled Sykes in on the situation and the latter immediately dispatched a messenger to his First Division commander, James Barnes. The messenger ran in to Barnes’ third brigade commander, Col. Strong Vincent, before he reached Barnes himself. Vincent seized the initiative and ordered his four regiments to the top of the hill before taking off to evaluate the terrain for himself. He set his forces, from right to left they were the tiny 16th Michigan (only 263 men at the outset of the battle), the 44th New York, the 83rd Pennsylvania, and the 20th Maine. Law’s Brigade charged up Little Round Top, joined by the 4th and 5th Texas after some mistaken maneuvering. The 20th Maine repulsed the Alabamans on the left. Law’s Brigade regrouped and came again, this time slightly farther off to the right. Chamberlain extended his line and repulsed another attack. His men were now single file as a third and fourth assault arrived, stretching more and more to the right. Chamberlain refused the line, which bent his regiment back at a ninety degree angle. Then the 20th Maine ran out of ammunition. As Laws’ right flank rallied for one more assault, Chamberlain ordered his men to fix bayonets and charge. The line snapped straight again and the 20th took off down the hill, clearing not only its own front, but part of the 83rd Pennsylvania’s. , shockwave-flash@http://www.youtube.com/v/wYDhAmjmxYk&hl=en&fs=1&" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/wYDhAmjmxYk&hl=en&fs=1&" id="">

Strong Vincent was hit by a bullet and died on July 7th. On July 3rd George Meade promoted him to the rank of Brigadier General for his actions. Two months later his widowed wife gave birth to a daughter who didn’t make it through her first year of life. Chamberlain would live another 51 years after Gettysburg. He would rise to the rank of Brevet Major General, get wounded six times, get six horses shot out from under him, be pronounced dead at Petersburg, accept the surrender of Lee’s army at Appomattox, be elected governor of Maine 4 times, spend twenty-two years as the President of Bowdoin College, help arrange the fiftieth anniversary celebration of Gettysburg, and be the last Civil War veteran to die of his wounds just four months before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand kicked off World War I. His charge at Little Round Top was the moment that brought him lasting fame. In 1893 he received the Congressional Medal of Honor for the actions of his unit on the afternoon of July 2, 1863. The actions of the 20th Maine were far from the only moments of bravery that afternoon, however. As Chamberlain was clearing Vincent’s left flank, the brigade’s right flank was on the verge of collapse. The misdirected Texas regiments were pounding the tiny 16th Michigan and it began to crumble. At the last moment the 140th New York under Col. Patrick “Paddy” O’Rorke roared in to the gap and pushed the Texans back. O’Rorke and his New Yorkers had no business being on Little Round Top. They were at the rear of Weed’s Brigade of the Second Division of V Corps when Warren, still desperately searching for troops, found him and sent him up the hill. O’Rorke was killed on Little Round Top, but his men saved the day. But there was one more brave charge on that day. Sickles’ Salient was gradually collapsing under the pressure of McLaws’ and Hood’s grinding assault. Had Sickles not pushed forward the Confederate forces moving up the Emmitsburg Road expecting to flank the Union left would have found themselves the victims of enfilade fire. Instead they ended up attacking Sickles from two directions at once. Sickles’ III Corps pulled to the east and north, leaving the II Corps left flank uncovered. Barksdale’s Mississippi Brigade of McLaws’ Division approached II Corps from the left at the same time Anderson’s Division of Hill’s Corps launched its frontal assault on Cemetery Ridge. Hancock, who was now in charge of the entire left wing of the Army of the Potomac, personally led Willard’s Brigade to counter Barksdale, then returned to the north in time to see Cadmus M. Wilcox’s Alabama Brigade advancing on a section of the Union line held only by a single artillery battery and the 330 man 1st Minnesota Regiment. In that desperate moment there was only one order Hancock could give. He told the 1st Minnesota to charge. Somehow the tiny regiment checked Wilcox’s Brigade. The day was still far from secure, however. Farther up to the north Wright’s Brigade actually managed to push through the Union lines, which at the time Wright hit were only occupied by Meade and his staff, and nearly reach the Taneytown Road. Wright was ultimately forced to withdraw. The Union counterattacked and he Wright found he had no support. Carnot Posey’s Brigade, which was supposed to be on Wright’s left, never made it as far as the Emmitsburg Road. William Mahone, on Posey’s left, never actually started moving. Ewell launched a few attacks against Cemetery and Culp’s Hills, but the attacks were never meant to be anything more than demonstrations and managed to accomplish little. He did manage to occupy some XII Corps positions after Meade pulled those forces off the right flank to support the left, but the gains were minor and nothing was done to exploit them. Ewell held his attacks until after Anderson’s assault on the center. Had Ewell moved more quickly he might have been able to crush XII Corps and move in to the Union rear. As it was Meade had just enough time to reinforce his right. Day 2 at Gettysburg was a close-fought thing. The Union left nearly disintegrated, but ultimately held due to the quick thinking of Warren and Strong and the bravery of Chamberlain and O’Rorke. The center similarly held only because of the actions of Hancock and the seemingly hopeless charge of the 1st Minnesota as well as the failure of Anderson’s left flank to capitalize on Wright’s penetration of the Union position. When all is said and done, though, the second day fo Gettysburg had farther-ranging implications than the battle itself. In 1870 a paper written by Confederate General Jubal A. Early kicked off what is known as the Lost Cause Myth. The Lost Cause Myth can be considered analogous to some of the ideas raised about the American loss in Vietnam. The Lost Cause held that generals like Lee and Jackson embodied the nobility of the South while the Northerners were mostly men of low moral standards. They pointed to William Tecumseh Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign and March to the Sea, Philip Sheridan’s burning of the Shenandoah Valley, and Grant’s reputation as a butcher as proof. It’s still possible to tell where a person writing about the Civil War’s sympathies lie, as those from the north tend to call it the Civil War while those from the south call it the War Between the States or, more on the nose, the War of Northern Aggression. This difference in naming highlights one of the main myths perpetrated by the believers in the Lost Cause. It is held that the war was fought entirely for the motive of the defense of state’s rights. This view held that the preservation of slavery wasn’t the key point of all the political fighting in the decades leading up to the Civil War, nor was it the immediate cause of secession. It held that the slaves were little more than farm animals rescued from the dark wilds of Africa and put happily to work under benevolent slave masters in a benign, mutually beneficial relationship. The Lost Cause Myth led to the KKK and, after the end of Reconstruction, the Jim Crow Laws. The Ku Klux Klan was started and promoted by former Confederate soldiers, chief among them Generals George Gordon and Nathan Bedford Forrest. It was a homegrown terrorist organization with the express goal of keeping freed slaves in their place and scaring carpetbaggers and scalawags. In a strange way, the supporters of the Lost Cause Myth nearly ended up winning the war. The state flags of Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida still contain Confederate-inspired designs. Georgia’s flag had one until 2001. In 2002 there was a controversy about the flying of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse. Whenever the message sent by these images are brought up the challenges are brushed off with the response that the Confederate flag represents a proud, noble tradition and the ideals of freedom and self-determination. The very idea that it’s actually a reminder of a horrible time when men held other men as property because of the color of their skin and the idea that some men are made inferior by god is laughed off. The fact that Confederate service and symbols inspired the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow and the men who would hold the freed slaves to the position as second-class citizens for another century is ignored. The idea that the Confederate flag should be relegated to the dustbin of history and only pulled out as a reminder of the darkest days of the American nation is met with confusion and anger by those who wish to bring back the good old days when blacks and women knew their place and the southern states of a country built on freedom and equality were ruled by an aristocracy that had the audacity to call the defense of upper class privilege a defense of their own unalienable rights. Some causes should be lost. Still, much as those infected with Vietnam Syndrome turned the Democrats in to their scapegoats, the proponents of the Lost Cause Myth needed someone to blame for their own failure. They could not blame Lee, who enjoyed an unassailable position in American lore that even he did not think was deserved (Lee accepted full blame for every one of his losses and refused to blame his subordinates or his army). Much like the rest of the Lost Cause Myth this evaluation of Lee lasted far too long and resulted in a negative opinion of the general most associated with the southern failure: James Longstreet. After the war Longstreet became a scalawag, a Southerner who worked with the Union. He re-started his friendship with Ulysses Grant and applied for amnesty, only to find out that he was one of three Confederates deemed too untrustworthy. The other two were Lee and Jefferson Davis. They should have looked more closely at Nathan Bedford Forrest, Jubal A. Early, and George Gordon and left Longstreet alone. Still, Longstreet was given his citizenship back in 1868 as part of the general amnesty. He campaigned for Grant in the Presidential elections of 1868 and served as the adjutant general of the Louisiana militia, surveyor of customs of New Orleans, postmaster of Gainesville, Georgia, Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, U.S. Commissioner of Railroads, and was nearly appointed Secretary of the Navy under Hayes. Longstreet was the very model of the reconstructed rebel. For this he had to leave New Orleans under the real possibility of injury or death (he was pulled off his horse by a mob while trying to stop a riot in 1874) and his reputation as a general suffered for about a century. Jubal Early was the first to blame Longstreet and he pointed to Day 2 at Gettysburg as his prime piece of evidence. Early believed that Longstreet intentionally moved slowly that day and intentionally undermined Lee and the southerners looking for someone to blame bought his arguments. In truth, Longstreet was the victim of circumstance. His divisions were late moving in to line, the Union left extended much farther south than anyone expected, Anderson failed to exploit the Union center, and in most of the places where the battle was in the balance and only luck and circumstance the deciding factor between victory and defeat Lady Luck smiled on the Union side. Lee regarded Longstreet as his “Old War Horse” and Longstreet, too, was diminished by the loss of Stonewall Jackson. Much like Lee and Jackson complemented each other, Longstreet and Jackson were the perfect together as commanders of the Army of Northern Virginia’s wings. Jackson was an offense-minded risk taker while Longstreet was a cautious defender. He didn’t like the field at Gettysburg, but he did everything he could to carry the day for the Confederate side. On some level he still might have done too good a job even in losing. The near victory at the Union center convinced Lee that the Army of the Potomac had spread its forces to the flanks and was paper thin in the middle. This opened the possibility of a direct assault on the Union center in his mind. Meanwhile, on the Union side of the line George Meade called a council of war. At the end he pulled aside General John Gibbon, one of Winfield Scott Hancock’s division commanders, and said he believed Lee would strike at the center of the line the next day. The stage was now set for the climactic third day at Gettysburg.

Four Days in July: Gettysburg Day 1

The Battle of Gettysburg wasn’t supposed to happen. Lee’s goal in his Pennsylvania campaign wasn’t a decisive battle in a sleepy little town no one had ever heard of before. He wanted to hit Harrisburg or even Philadelphia. If he could get to one of those cities he might turn the Union against the war. In war, as they say, the best laid plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy. And so it happened that Lee’s best-laid plans were quashed in a little town that would end up unexpectedly lending its name to history. It was a point of convergence, the place where the aura of invincibility that followed the Army of Northern Virginia was shattered and the Army of the Potomac found its backbone. And it all started because of one thing. Shoes. After Chancellorsville, Lee realized he needed to take some of the pressure of the war off of northern Virginia’s shoulders. He slipped down the Shenandoah Valley with some 70,000 men and headed for the heartlands of Pennsylvania. Joe Hooker refused to follow at first, and instead offered a plan to march on Richmond and force Lee to return. Lincoln rejected it and ordered Hooker to follow Lee to Pennsylvania. Throughout June the two armies snaked their way towards Harrisburg. On June 28 Hooker got in to an argument with Lincoln and offered his resignation in what has always been assumed a gambit. Lincoln promptly accepted and offered the job to John Reynolds, who turned it down. Command of the Union Army fell to V Corps commander George Meade. Three days before the accidental battle at Gettysburg the Army of the Potomac had a new commander who knew practically nothing about the disposition of the Union forces. Events transpired to make things difficult for Lee, too. He had detached most of his cavalry from the army under JEB Stuart, a prototypically flashy cavalry officer who was as interested making a reputation as he was in winning battles. As so often happens, the former motivation hurt the latter and Stuart abandoned, for all intents and purposes, the Army of Northern Virginia in an attempt to circumnavigate the entire Army of the Potomac. He’s now mostly remembered not as a dashing cavalry commander, but as the general who allowed his army to stumble blindly in to the biggest battle of the Civil War. The Union cavalry, however, was on the ball. General John Buford rode in to Gettysburg at the head of a cavalry division on June 30 and had intermittent contact with a Confederate force under Pettigrew, who was on a supply raid looking for shoes, but did not engage. He decided that the terrain around Gettysburg was some of the best he’d seen for a battle and sent word to General John Reynolds and I Corps. Lee, meanwhile, was amassing his forces a few miles up the road in Cashtown. Jackson’s old command had been parceled out to two new corps under A.P. Hill and Richard Ewell. At the end of June, Ewell was in the van and had nearly reached Harrisburg while Hill was close to Cashtown and Longstreet was about a day’s march behind in Chambersburg. The initial attack engagement, then, would fall to Hill from the northwest and Ewell from the north. On the morning of July 1 Heth’s Division of A.P. Hill’s Corps headed down the Chambersburg Pike toward Gettysburg for a reconnaissance in force. Buford’s cavalry was dismounted and arrayed along the ridges to the west of town. The cavalrymen were heavily outnumbered but did have one advantage. They were armed with single-shot, breech loading Sharps carbines, a favorite of the mounted forces on both sides of the war. The Sharps could fire eight or nine rounds per minute, compared to the three rounds that the best-trained users of the muzzle loading infantry muskets could fire. Buford had no real choice other than to trade ground for time. He engaged in what is known as “defense in depth” fighting, a rolling retreat under fire, the sort of tactic pioneered by Gustavus Adolphus. A bit after ten the first elements of I Corps appeared on the field in the form of the famous Iron Brigade and managed to surround and capture a good chunk of Archer’s Brigade of Heth’s Division, including General Archer himself. There would be no time for rest, however. John Reynolds was shot shortly after he appeared on the battlefield to assess the defenses and Abner Doubleday (who is, probably erroneously, best known for inventing the modern game of baseball in a cow patch in Cooperstown, NY, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame) took over. The I Corps was still heavily outnumbered and things were about to get worse. , shockwave-flash@http://www.youtube.com/v/OE-BKmlr3OI&hl=en&fs=1&" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/OE-BKmlr3OI&hl=en&fs=1&" id="">

Heth’s Division was getting reinforcements. Pettigrew and Brockenbrough’s Brigades were arriving in the field along with another of Hill’s divisions under William Dorsey Pender. Ewell’s Corps was approaching from the north at the same time. Oliver O. Howard’s newly arrived Union XI Corps was forced to race up the Taneytown Road, which ran south from Gettysburg along Cemetary Ridge, and up through town in order to hold the line and keep Ewell from outflanking I Corps from the right. Howard left a brigade under Adolph Steinwehr on the high ground of Cemetery Hill to act as a reserve. This would prove fortuitous as the afternoon wore on. The terrain south of Gettysburg is practically tailor-made for a battle. Cemetery Ridge forms a sort of fishhook, with the rounded, bottom part of the hook facing the city and the point anchored by Cemetery Hill to the east. The shaft of the fishhook then runs straight south with the heights topped by a low, brick wall. South of the Ridge the high ground gives way to a relatively flat area known as the Wheat Field that’s fronted to the west by the Peach Orchard. Further south the hills known as Little Round Top, then Round Top rise, covered to the east by a field of boulders called Devil’s Den. For any force that found itself, as the Army of the Potomac did on July 1, 1863, on the field of Gettysburg and attacked by a larger force from the north and west, the battlefield at Gettysburg practically defined itself. As the Union forces collapsed throughout the afternoon of July 1, they naturally converged on Cemetery Ridge and Cemetery Hill. Of course the fact that the battlefield defined the Union lines also meant that it defined the Confederate objectives. , shockwave-flash@http://www.youtube.com/v/1Hpn-puqnKk&hl=en&fs=1&" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/1Hpn-puqnKk&hl=en&fs=1&" id="">

This was where the loss of Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville came back to haunt Robert E. Lee. He issued an order to Richard Ewell commanding him to take Cemetery Hill if it was possible. Jackson probably would not have taken this order as a suggestion. He would have seen Cemetery Hill’s position as absolutely key to the battlefield, assessed the flagging Union defense north of Gettysburg, and done everything in his power to take Cemetery Hill. Ewell chose to conclude that the assault was not practicable. The Confederates lost their best chance to win at Gettysburg when Ewell made that choice. Meade’s subordinates, meanwhile, did not fail him. Howard agreed with Buford’s assessment that the land was good for a fight. When Winfield Scott Hancock, Meade’s most trusted subordinate, arrived at a crucial point he, too, agreed and set about making sure the retreating Union forces took their places along the north side of Cemetery Ridge. Ewell did have a subordinate aggressive enough to take the high ground. Isaac Trimble, who had fought under Jackson at Cross Keys and through every engagement until he was wounded at Second Bull Run was under Ewell’s command but had no troops under his direct command. He noticed that off to the east of Cemetery Hill another rise, Culp’s Hill, was vacant and in perfect position to dominate Cemetery Hill and keep the Union from anchoring their right flank. Trimble didn’t get the troops he needed to take Culp’s Hill. In his papers Trimble claimed that Ewell said he had no orders to engage. Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, which became the movie Gettysburg, had a powerful, but probably not accurate account of Trimble’s report to Lee. “The man is a disgrace. Sir, have you heard what the men are saying? Ask General Gordon, General Ewell, ask them. We could have taken that hill! God in his wisdom knows we should have taken it. There was no one there, no one there at all and it commanded the town. “General Gordon saw it, I mean, he was with us. Me and Ewell and Gordon all standing there in the dark like fat, great idiots with that bloody damned hill empty. I beg your pardon, general. That bloody damned hill as bare as his bloody damned head. We all saw it, as god as my witness we were all there. “I said to him, ‘General Ewell, we have got to take that hill. General Jackson would not have stopped like this with the bluebellies on the run and there was plenty of light left and a hill like that standing there empty.’[…] “Sir, I said to him, ‘General Ewell,’ these words, I said to him, ‘Sir, give me one division, and I will take that hill.’ And he said nothing. He just stood there and he stared at me. I said, ‘General Ewell, give me one brigade, and I will take that hill.’ I was becoming disturbed, sir. And General Ewell put his arms behind him and blinked. So I said, ‘General, give me one regiment, and I will take that hill.' “And he said nothing. He just stood there. I threw down my sword, down on the ground in front of him. “We, we could have done it, sir. A blind man should have seen it. Now they’re working up there. You can hear the axes of the Federal troops. So in the morning many a good boy will die, taking that hill.” Day 1 at Gettysburg was a story of uncharacteristic failure on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia and uncharacteristic success on the part of the Army of the Potomac. Stuart failed to play the role cavalry was supposed to play. Ewell failed to exploit that Union retreat. At the same time John Buford proved the Union cavalry was far better than anyone had suspected up until that point. John Reynolds and Winfield Scott Hancock fought more aggressively than expected and held their ground and managed to keep organized in a rearguard all day against superior forces. Oliver O. Howard managed to make up for his failure to hold the right flank at Chancellorsville. And so Day 1 at Gettysburg passed in to Day 2. The Union commanded the high ground at Cemetery Ridge, Cemetery Hill, and Culp’s Hill. But now Longstreet was in the field. Lafayette McLaws’ Division and John Bell Hood’s Division were on the Confederate right prepared to assault through the Wheatfield and the Round Tops. If they could take the hills they’d be able to roll up the Union left flank. The fight was far from over. ------------------------- The videos, by the by, are from the movie Gettysburg. Anyone who is shocked to learn it's one of my all-time favorites hasn't been paying close attention...

Four Days in July: Setting the Stage: The Anaconda Plan

Every war needs a plan. No commander can go to war with no end game in sight and expect a positive outcome. The plan cannot simply be, “Meet the enemy in the field and kick their butts,” either. The commander of the Union Army at the outset of the Civil War was Old Fuss & Feathers himself, Winfield Scott. He was far too old for a field command but still had a strong grasp of the strategic situation. He realized that what the Union needed to do was slowly strangle the Confederacy by starting at the edges and working in. His plan was derisively dubbed the Anaconda Plan and almost immediately abandoned by his successors in favor of planning for decisive battles of annihilation and a march on Richmond. This would have been a fantastic except for one problem. His immediate successor as commander of the Union Armies was George B. McClellan. Yes, that George B. McClellan, the one who couldn’t be convinced to engage in battle unless Lincoln pretty much set his ass on fire and pointed him in the general direction of the Army of Northern Virginia. Meanwhile, Henry Halleck ended up in charge in the west and didn’t really bother to do much of anything on the Mississippi River, instead deciding that the Tennessee was the river of strategic importance. I honestly find this decision odd. The Anaconda Plan would have actually taken care of the whole Tennessee River fairly quickly. Let me see if I can explain this fairly easily. The northern border of the Confederacy as long as we assume Kentucky is part of the Confederacy was the Ohio River. The Ohio feeds in to the Mississippi at the southern tip of Illinois, which is why Grant’s position in Cairo, Illinois was so strategically important at the outset of the war, since Cairo is the southern-most city in Illinois. The Mississippi, then, was effectively the western border of the Confederacy. Most of Louisiana and all of Arkansas and Texas are west of the Mississippi and Missouri was a battleground at various points but most of the war took place between the Mississippi and the Atlantic. This is why the Anaconda Plan went up the Mississippi and over to the Ohio. The Tennessee, meanwhile, feeds in to the Cumberland, which then feeds in to the Ohio from the south and east. The join occurs just a bit east of Cairo. It therefore stands to reason that any moves east from the Mississippi and south from the Ohio would quickly take away the Tennessee as an operational area from the Confederacy. Halleck apparently didn’t see the wisdom in this and basically abandoned the Mississippi. Fortunately for him, though, the Navy was there to pick up the slack in the early part of the war. Lincoln had declared a blockade on the entire Confederate coastline from the beginning of hostilities. New Orleans, then, was in the Navy’s operational area. Now, the blockade itself was problematic. From Texas to Virginia the Confederate coastline was some three thousand miles long and dotted with tiny inlets and river mouths. To put the whole thing in perspective, though, the Confederate coastline was longer than the entire European Atlantic coast. This was a huge undertaking. Adding to the degree of difficulty was the fact that the U.S. Navy had very few ships at the outset of the war and there were almost no warships capable of navigating the thousands of miles of inland rivers. To put things in perspective, the British effectively blockaded Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. Their blockade was greatly assisted by the fact that Napoleon’s Continental System was built around keeping Europe a self-contained area. The British really only had to keep Napoleon’s warships from concentrating in to a large enough force to sweep aside the British Navy and cross the English Channel. This, too, was greatly helped by Napoleon, since he did not understand naval warfare, did not put the necessary resources in to keeping up his warships, and had a navy built as a coalition of French, Spanish and, briefly, Dutch warships. The British took the Dutch out of the fight quickly and the Spanish hated the French far more than the British. The Spanish, in fact, largely celebrated the British victory at Trafalgar. Meanwhile, the only overseas merchant marine that could have really made the British blockade an issue was from America. And America was mostly on the side of the British from the Jay Treaty of 1794 until the lead-up to the War of 1812. By then it was far too late, anyway. The French also didn’t help their own cause with the XYZ Affair, but that’s a story for another day. The situation at the outset of the Civil War was far different from Europe seven decades earlier. The U.S. Navy was fairly weak, it suddenly lost several of its bases and, in the process, warships (the Merrimac being the most famous example), the South absolutely needed to get its supplies from outside forces, and Britain and France each had a vested interest in keeping trade open with the Confederacy. An effective blockade, then would be of paramount importance to the north while keeping the coastline open would be of equal importance to the south. It was readily apparent to the Navy that New Orleans was key to the entire process. There were two problems, however. First, the mouth of the Mississippi was defended by two redoubts named Fort St. Philip and Fort Jackson that would not go down easy. Second, the abandonment of the Anaconda Plan meant that the Navy would have to get to New Orleans from the south. There was no Union column marching down the Mississippi River like Winfield Scott had planned. On the night of April 24, 1862 a fleet under David Farragut ran the guns of St. Philip and Jackson. Farragut held an interesting but far from rare biography for the Civil War. He was a Tennesseean with family ties in Louisiana and Virginia and a service record in the U.S. Navy that went back to the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War. The Navy didn’t trust his loyalty at the outset of the war, which required Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles to personally intervene on his behalf and get him a command. He started the war commanding a desk in Washington but ended up going down in history. We remember Farragut for his battle cry, “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!” But that was at the Battle of Mobile Bay, about two and a half years after New Orleans. Still, Farragut was responsible for the victories in two of the most important naval battles of the Civil War, not bad for a man rejected as a probable traitor. Of course Farragut probably didn’t say his famous words, but, really, who’s counting? Either way, with New Orleans in the hands of the Union the Mississippi was no longer a valid supply line for the Confederacy. The Mississippi still dominated the strategic situation in the west even if Henry Halleck wasn’t inclined to believe it. The Union couldn’t use the Mississippi because there was still a major Confederate stronghold on the river: Vicksburg. The Confederates recognized the importance of Vicksburg early on and spent 1861, 1862, and 1863 fortifying the city. When Grant finally started moving towards the city at the end of 1862 Confederate cavalry under Generals Van Dorn and Nathan Bedford Forrest did everything in their power to disrupt Grant’s movements and hit his supply lines. Grant’s biggest problem, though, was a Union General named John A. McClernand. McClernand was one of those curious breed in the Union known as a War Democrat. There were few Democrats in the Union and most of them were Copperheads.* War Democrats had a disproportionately large influence. It’s why Andrew Johnson, a Democrat Senator from Tennessee who was the only Southerner who stayed on in Washington ended up as the Vice President and then the President of the United States. Anyway, McClernand thought he should be the one to take Vicksburg. He put forward a plan in Washington to recruit an army in Illinois and move south down the Mississippi. Henry Halleck didn’t like the plan, but lacked the political clout to put it to a stop. He instead informed Grant that something was going on. Separated as he was from Washington and holding Halleck’s old position as a Department Commander, Grant could take over McClernand’s force without getting in trouble. This did mean that Grant was forced to abandon his march from central Mississippi and cross to the west side of the Mississippi River. Rather than a relatively quick overland march, Grant would be forced to operate along the river. His operations suddenly got difficult. ------------------------ *For the record, nicknames for political groups suck anymore. There were great ones in the 1800s, like the Copperheads, the Stalwarts, the Know Nothings (who would make Pat Robertson happy), and the Mugwumps (because they had their mugs on one side of the fence and their wumps on the other). Now we have, what, the neo-cons? Whoop-de-friggin’-do.

Four Days in July: Setting the Stage: Chancellorsville

After Antietam the initiative in the east was entirely on the side of the Union. September and October passed without any action on the part of McClellan. Lincoln was getting angry, especially since not doing anything seemed to be the main skill his generals possessed. On October 8 Don Carlos Buell finally brought Braxton Bragg to battle* at Perryville four days after Bragg and Kirby Smith’s attempt to install a Confederate Governor in Frankfort, Kentucky was interrupted by Union artillery fire. The day at Perryville was a tactical victory for Bragg but it didn’t matter. Buell’s Army of the Ohio outnumbered Bragg’s Army of Mississippi, which had not yet merged with Smith’s army to form the Army of Tennessee. Bragg withdrew, which forced Smith to withdraw and ultimately resulted in the second loss of Kentucky to the Southern cause. Buell followed Bragg with only slightly more verve than McClellan was pursuing Lee. At the end of the month command of Buell’s Army of the Ohio was given to William Rosecrans and the command’s name was changed to the Army of the Cumberland. Rosecrans had defeated Van Dorn at the Second Battle of Corinth on the same day Bragg and Smith were installing a Confederate government in Frankfort and was supposed to be more aggressive. He wasn’t. With Rosecrans in Nashville and Grant preparing the initial stages of a move on Vicksburg all that was left was to get the Army of the Potomac moving again. Lincoln fired McClellan and legend has it the President said of his general, “He is an admirable engineer, but he seems to have a special talent for a stationary engine.” Whether or not this is a true quote is open for debate. It does, however, sum up McClellan as well as the words, “I cannot spare this man, he fights,” summed up Grant. In an inspection of the Army of the Potomac Lincoln also derisively referred to his premier army as “McClellan’s bodyguard.” Ambrose Burnside was put in charge of the Army of the Potomac, an honor Burnside neither wanted nor felt he deserved. As already mentioned, Burnside was an unimaginative general and his talents certainly lay in corps command instead of full army command. He tried to invade Virginia in December and was repulsed at Fredericksburg. There’s not much to learn from that battle, save the fact that attacking uphill against an enemy entrenched behind a stone wall is a bad idea. Burnside tried again in January but got nowhere in the most literal possible sense. Unseasonably warm weather and rain turned the roads to mud and his troops could barely get out of camp. Burnside resigned his command and was ordered to take his old IX Corps west to Ohio. Fighting Joe Hooker was the next through the revolving door that regularly deposited corps commanders in the top spot before they were booted off in ignominy after a new abysmal failure. Hooker had a good reputation and was a fine judge of the shortcomings of his superiors. He had nothing good to say about McClellan and openly mocked Burnside’s assault up Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg. Burnside tried to get Hooker court-martialed. Lincoln promoted him to command of the Army of the Potomac. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to… Hooker was an interesting character. He openly advocated for a Union dictator, which caused Lincoln to invite him to try for the position, since only winning generals become dictators. The word “brothel” was applied to his headquarters, which is how “hooker” became one of our synonyms for prostitute. Burnside’s etymological legacy is for facial hair, Hooker’s for whores, further proof that the Civil War altered history forever in ways huge and small. Unfortunately for Joe Hooker the war had continued unabated. He would be required to take the war to the Confederacy with the added burden of an already exasperated Lincoln watching his every move. During the spring of 1863 it seemed that Hooker was the man for the job. He’d re-equipped the army and was prepared to move aggressively against Lee. He also had more resources than McClellan or Burnside and his opponent had not been able to replenish all his losses. In addition, Hooker wasn’t afraid of bold action or engaging in battle with less than every single soldier he could find. His goal was to pin Lee in place and outflank the Army of Northern Virginia. In service of this plan he left about 30,000 troops at Fredericksburg under Sedgwick and looped to the north and west with a force of 70,000. He crossed the Rapidan River and then…stopped. It seems that Fighting Joe Hooker’s nerves had failed him. He pulled up short at Chancellorsville at the edges of an area known as The Wilderness. The forces under his direct command outnumbered the Army of Northern Virginia and were moving to trap Lee against the Rappahannock, where the forces under Sedgwick would then be able to play the role of anvil to Hooker’s hammer. But in the middle of his move Hooker surrendered the initiative and put his forces in to defensive position around Chancellorsville. This did severe damage to his resume as a would-be dictator. To be fair to Hooker, Lee wasn’t exactly sitting around waiting for the hammer to fall. He left Jubal Early in Fredericksburg with enough troops to discourage any the Federals from getting adventurous and took 45,000 troops to meet Hooker. He also deployed JEB Stuart’s cavalry to control the roads and lines of communication. Weather played a role in the developing battle, too. Hooker’s plan relied on the re-organized Federal cavalry under George Stoneman raiding through Virginia and down towards Richmond. Rains and swollen rivers largely kept them out of the fight. It also meant that they weren’t in position to provide Hooker with data on Lee’s movements. Lee had no such problems. He knew where Hooker was and knew what he was preparing to do. Already heavily outnumbered, Lee split his forces a second time and sent Jackson around the Union right with 26,000 of his 45,000 troops. Oliver O. Howard was holding the Union right and doing a terrible job of it. One of Napoleon’s military maxims was that a corps needed to anchor its flanks against some impassable terrain, lest the enemy get around its edges. To Napoleon’s maxim I’d like to add my own corollary: should there be no impassable cliffs or rivers handy, at least try to avoid anchoring your flank against a road screened by forests, then point a couple of field guns out to the side and call it a day. Sadly, Oliver O. Howard neglected to consult with me before Chancellorsville. When Jackson’s troops boiled out of the forest just before dusk on May 2 they caught Howard’s corps completely by surprise. As the right flank routed the forces under Lee mounted a frontal assault and only the onset of night allowed the Union to stay in the field. Even though Lee won convincingly on the field at Chancellorsville he lost his war that night. Jackson went out to scout the Union lines after nightfall and was shot by his own picket on the way back. Stonewall Jackson died a week later. If nothing else I hope that this particular set of posts has impressed upon anyone who reads them that the people out in the battlefield making history mattered as much as any gun or troop count. When Lee lost Jackson he didn’t just lose a general or a corps commander. He lost the single most irreplaceable person in his army. Richard Ewell would take over Jackson’s troops, but would prove to be no Stonewall Jackson, much to the detriment of the Army of Northern Virginia. War is a complicated business that often relies on timing and luck. Commanders on the modern battlefield with radio communications, aerial observation, and satellite cameras can manufacture their own good timing to a certain extent. The generals of the Civil War had no such advantages. When Lee sent Jackson on his wild ride around the Union flank he effectively sent more than half his forces in to a black hole and hoped that his flank attack would materialize. Those attacks didn’t always occur. Compare Chancellorsville to Pope’s fruitless feints on Jackson’s left at Second Bull Run after Porter and McDowell didn’t attack the Confederate right. Of course had Pope not been a terrible general and Longstreet not been approaching from his left the mistakes at Bull Run probably would not have cost the Army of Virginia too dearly. Jackson’s end run at Chancellorsville could have cost Lee his army. But Lee and Jackson had been working together since the Shenandoah Valley campaign of early 1862 and been a dangerous team ever since. They knew and trusted each other and when working together could pull off the impossible on a regular basis. The invincible Army of Northern Virginia didn’t die with Jackson on May 10, 1863 but it was severely wounded. Lee’s war continued, however. He had beat back McClellan, Pope, Burnside, and Hooker. But with each Union incursion in to Virginia irreplaceable Confederate supplies and manpower were lost while the Union troops withdrew, refit, and returned as strong as, if not stronger than, before. Lee needed to do something and he decided that the key to the war lay in Pennsylvania. The stage was now set for Gettysburg. -------------------- *Yay for unintentional alliteration! Okay, fine, I decided to add Bragg’s first name for effect.

Four Days in July: Setting the Stage: Antietam

Most of history turns on small events. We learn the big things, the dates and names that, as they say, “go down in history.” But it’s usually the small things that matter most and create the scenario for those huge events. A small thing set in motion one of the biggest events of the Civil War. We don’t know the name of the person involved in the small thing. We do know he was a Confederate courier because no one else would have been in possession of Lee’s orders to his widespread command. We also don’t, to the best of my knowledge, know the name of the Union soldier who found the orders and took them to McClellan’s headquarters. (Edit: apparently the best of my knowledge was far from the best available. I've been informed by Brett Schulte in the comments it was Corporal Barton W. Mitchell of the 27th Indiana who found the dropped orders. Danke.) It was September of 1862, Lee was fresh off of his stunning victory at Second Bull Run and looking to capitalize. He decided to invade the north. Mid-term elections were coming up and Lee thought he could influence them if the Union public thought they weren’t safe they’d vote in a Congress that would sue for peace. It’s further proof that the more things change, the more they stay the same. This period of the war is generally known as the Confederate High Tide. At the same time Lee was moving in to Maryland Braxton Bragg was moving through Kentucky and attempting to make up for the reversals at Forts Henry and Donelson and Columbus. He believed that if he moved a powerful enough force in to Kentucky the poor, oppressed Kentuckians who were being ill-treated by the Union government would cast off their chains and join the Confederacy in droves. Bragg’s maneuvers would have a powerful effect on the progress of the war in the west, but not exactly in the way he expected. In the fall of 1862 there were three main Union armies spread across the western theater. Don Carlos Buell was in Ohio with the Army of the Ohio, William Rosecrans was in Corinth with the Army of the Mississippi, and Grant was spread out in between covering supply lines with the Army of the Tennessee. Against these three forces the Confederates could deploy Bragg’s Army of Mississippi and Kirby Smith’s Army of East Tennessee (later combined in to the Army of Tennessee)* along with the small Army of the West under General Van Dorn and a hodgepodge of troops under General Sterling Price that apparently warranted no official name. In spite of it all, though, the South held the advantage in the west. Bragg and Smith were outmaneuvering Buell in Tennessee and headed straight for the Ohio River with no real opposition. If Van Dorn and Price could pin Rosecrans in place Grant would be split between the two forces. If Bragg could get Kentucky to rise he could invade Ohio or take out Grant’s army. In short, Braxton Bragg held the initiative in the west just as Lee held the initiative in the east. Of course there were a lot of ifs in that previous paragraph. The biggest if was out of the control of any of the field commanders, however. England had an alliance with the Confederate States of America in everything but name. These were the days of the early Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and the hungry textile mills of the island nation were fed by King Cotton. It was one of those situations where moral stances are conveniently ignored in the name of, well, convenience. England was not a fan of slavery. It was not legal and the British Navy regularly stopped slave ships. Still, England needed cotton and the Confederates knew it. Throughout the war the British outfitted blockade runners and commerce raiders for the South. The Brits also came close to building ironclad rams for the Confederate Navy, but eventually backed down. In 1872 an international tribunal ruled that the British were liable to the United States for the actions of British-built privateers in the amount of fifteen million dollars. A year later the British ambassador dropped off a check for the full amount with as little fanfare as possible. Throughout 1861 and 1862 there was a real possibility the British would enter the war on the side of the Confederates, a development that would have radically shifted the balance of power. The Union needed a way to make sure that would never happen and knew the best option. They needed to make slavery an issue. Slavery was the central conflict that brought about the Civil War but the Civil War wasn’t actually fought over slavery. At least not originally. There were decades of political conflicts, Bleeding Kansas, and any number of other slavery-related issues that factored in to Southern secession. But Lincoln’s aim at the outset of the war was to preserve the nation. It’s possible that if the war had ended in ninety days as some thought with a Northern victory the South would have been re-admitted to the Union with the peculiar institution intact. It was the British who moved slavery from the outside to the center of the issue. They were already acting against type in their desperation for cotton and uncomfortable with the idea. Making the end of slavery a matter of policy wouldn’t end the British involvement with the South but it would almost certainly keep British involvement from expanding. In 1862 Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a strange document, as it didn’t actually immediately free any slaves. There were no slaves to be freed in the North and the Proclamation specifically excluded those areas controlled by the North where there were slaves for fear of setting off riots. The South, of course, wasn’t about to honor the document. Still, it was the principle of the whole thing. From the point where the Proclamation was made official the Union Army would march forward under the banner of freedom. The PR would be disaster in England if the British government tried to declare war on the Union in support of the Confederacy. What Lincoln needed, though, was a victory. Any victory. So that brings us back to the little things. McClellan had in his hands Lee’s marching orders for his army. The Army of Northern Virginia was split in to three columns that were busy snaking their way in to Maryland. The Army of the Potomac, meanwhile, was concentrated and in perfect position to take advantage of the Napoleonic central position. But there was a little thing getting in the way. His name was George B. McClellan. Numbers, position, and information were all on his side in spades but McClellan didn’t move. Lee figured out his orders had been compromised and did move. He gathered his forces together at Sharpsburg and prepared to meet McClellan. Even with the quick move to change his fortunes Lee entered the battle of Antietam outnumbered two-to-one. McClellan, however, did not deploy all of his forces and the ones he did were used clumsily. Joe Hooker struck Lee’s left flank and battered the Confederates. Other forces repeatedly battered the Confederate center at the strong defensive position known as the Sunken Road. Sheer weight of numbers eventually caused a break in the line that was never exploited. In the afternoon Ambrose Burnside attempted to cross Antietam Creek well to the south of the main battle. A small Confederate holding force kept him in place as his troops repeatedly attempted to cross a single bridge that would be known from then on as Burnside’s Bridge.** By the time the Confederates ran out of ammo and Burnside finally figured out that there was a ford just a little downstream it was too late for him to have any impact on the battle. After Antietam McClellan would basically refuse to follow up and engage Lee. Lincoln eventually put Burnside in command of the Army of the Potomac and he would be in charge at Fredericksburg a few months after Antietam. Burnside would continue to show he was an inflexible, unimaginative commander and waste troops for two days in an ineffective assault against the heavily defended stone wall at the top of Marye’s Heights. However his excellent facial hair would eventually give us the term sideburn, so he did have that going for him. McClellan didn’t exactly win the Battle of Antietam, but he did something nearly as important. He managed to not lose. Admittedly the balance of forces and tactical situation dictated that it was nearly impossible for him not to lose, but considering how amazingly good Union generals were at plucking defeat from the clutching jaws of victory at that point in the war we can applaud McClellan for his good fortune. Lee’s undersized army could no longer stay in Maryland after the Battle of Antietam. He was forced to withdraw to Virginia and only made it because McClellan refused to do what victorious generals are supposed to do. Had McClellan pinned Lee to the Rappahannock and defeated the Army of Northern Virginia in detail the rest of the war would have gone very differently. Still, even if Antietam was a tactical draw and a personal defeat for McClellan it was a strategic victory for the North in more ways than one. Lee was no longer a menace to the North and his withdrawal gave Lincoln all the pretext he needed to actually make the Emancipation Proclamation. The call to preserve the Union was now the battle cry of freedom and England had been kept out of the war without firing a single shot. Antietam had repercussions out west, too. Bragg was finding out that Kentucky really wasn’t interested in being “liberated” by the South. Don Carlos Buell was breathing down his neck with an army that had been bolstered by reinforcements from Grant. More troops were being gathered at Louisville and Columbus. In early September Rosecrans had defeated Price at the Battle of Iuka. In short, nothing worked right for Bragg during the late summer and early fall of 1862. The Confederate High Tide receded and Bragg would find himself fighting a delaying action against an emboldened Rosecrans in command of the newly constituted Army of the Cumberland. With Bragg distracted in Tennessee and most of the opposition in Mississippi quashed Grant was free to open operations against Vicksburg. His only opposition was John A. McClernand. Unfortunately for everyone involved, McClernand was a Union general. Oh, yeah, and there was a garrison force at Vicksburg under John C. Pemberton. There were also the cavalry raids by Nathan Bedford Forrest and Van Dorn. But it McClernand did more to screw up the Vicksburg campaign than any Confederate general could have. The debacle did get Halleck on Grant’s side, though. That was nice. Out east there was more stupidity and cases of the Union shooting itself in the foot. So when we convene next time it will be with Fightin’ Joe Hooker at Chancellorsville. --------------- *One of the interesting things about the Civil War was the naming conventions. The Union tended to name things after rivers and the Confederacy tended to name things after geographic features. This is how you could have the Army of the Tennessee deployed against the Army of Tennessee. The only way to avoid confusion is to understand the naming conventions. Of course this didn’t always work, as John Pope was commander of the short-lived Union Army of Virginia. This is also why battles tend to have several names. The Union called the battles of Bull Run after the tributary of the same name that wound through the battlefield. The Confederacy referred to the same battles as First and Second Manassas after Manassas Junction. Similarly the topic of today’s post was called Antietam in the North for Antietam Creek while in the South the battle was called Sharpsburg. This, too, is not a hard and fast rule of nomenclature. Fredericksburg and Gettysburg only have one name for example. **When I was in juco this little fact taught me about what can happen when you contradict a professor. I was taking an American history course with a teacher I really liked. He claimed that Burnside’s attempted bridge crossing occurred at a different battle. Fredericksburg, I think. I raised my hand, said that it was Antietam. The prof got mad at me. I was a little surprised.

Four Days in July: Setting the Stage: Second Bull Run

[Note: Made a few edits at 10:30 central time. Explanation at bottom.] Lee might have won the Seven Days’ Battles, but he was in trouble. McClellan was still sitting outside Richmond with a viable field army. Even though Stonewall Jackson had managed to tie up a significant Union force in the Shenandoah, he’d come nowhere close to possessing the ability to destroy it. The disparate forces – Banks’, Fremont’s, and McDowell’s armies – were gathered together and put under the command of John Pope. This force was poised to move straight from Washington to Richmond, completely avoiding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in the process. Lee had four things on his side. The first was a concept well used by Frederick the Great, one of the greatest generals in all of history. Lee, like the generals before and since, stood on the shoulders of giants. Perhaps, though, I should back up for just a moment. Firearms entered use in European armies in the late medieval period. By the Renaissance they were well established but not necessarily well used. Early hand guns, as they were called to differentiate them from field guns, were slow, inaccurate, and nearly as dangerous to their owners as their targets. Most handgunners were not equipped to face off against heavy infantry or charging cavalry and were handicapped compared to archers by the significantly reduced effective range of their weapons. Unescorted handgunners, then, usually found themselves at a huge disadvantage on the battlefield. Melee infantry, then, continued to play a role on the battlefield. Armor was virtually useless against guns, so heavy infantry was replaced by light forces armed with long pikes who would form the first line of defense against cavalry. Cavalry changed, too. Knights disappeared, replaced by light, fast cavalry armed with sabers and, eventually, single shot pistols. The first true revolution in the gunpowder age came in the early 1600s with Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and the New Model Army. Matchlock muskets had replaced the primitive weapons of the Renaissance, allowing more consistent fire. Gustavus Adolphus was the first to see the advantages the new weapons provided and capitalize on them. The main innovation he brought to the New Model Army was drill. Rather than unguided masses of gunners between a dozen and thirty ranks deep, Gustavus Adolphus reduced his ranks to three, allowing his forces to engage in a rolling advance. The third rank reloaded, the second rank prepared to fire, and the first rank fired. When the first rank fired the other two ranks could move up or the first could move back, allowing a continuous storm of fire and an orderly advance or retreat. Gustavus Adolphus also re-invented combined-arms tactics. He mixed cavalry in with the infantry to allow quick exploitation of gaps in the enemy line. More importantly, he pioneered the use of light, mobile field guns to provide supporting fire at key points on the battlefield. He also intentionally held forces back in order to reinforce the line in the event of imminent breakthrough or breakdown. About a century later Frederick the Great would take the next step forward in preparation for the Seven Years’ War. He refined the drill and got infantry marching in cadence. This allowed his troops to rapidly change formation, moving from route to battle formation and change their facing far more quickly than previous armies. He also made expert use of interior lines. During the Seven Years’ War Prussia was outnumbered and surrounded from the outset. The only reason Frederick the Great managed to hang on was because he was in a geographically small area surrounded by enemies who were spread out and not always moving in a coordinated fashion. The Prussian Army was able to move from one hotspot to another, then outmaneuver their enemies on the battlefield. Of course, Frederick the Great was also the beneficiary of that most fickle battlefield ally: luck. At the moment it seemed that Prussia had finally run out of steam, Empress Elizabeth of Russia died and opposition to Prussia fell apart. Sometimes that’s what it takes, though. Before I get back to Lee, it’s probably important to mention Napoleon, since he’ll be figuring in pretty soon, too. For one thing, the entire makeup of the armies on both sides owed everything to Napoleon. The basic building block of the Napoleonic army was the regiment (which was made of companies and battalions, but it was regiments that mattered on a strategic level. Eight companies of 100 made a battalion, two battalions made a regiment. In theory. In the Civil War especially those numbers were flexible). Two regiments made a brigade, two brigades made a division, three divisions made a corps (pronounced "core," with the singular and plural spelled the same). The Napoleonic corps was approximately the same length when in marching formation as a days’ march. This made the corps the ideal formation for the Napoleonic age. Civil War armies retained this structure, except there was variation in terms of how the blocks added together (for instance, Hooker’s 70,000 man force at Chancellorsville consisted of 5 corps). The two main Napoleonic strategic innovations were also at play. These were the central position and the envelopment. Central position involved the concentration of power against a foe with superior numbers. If an inferior force can hold local superiority at key points, it can win the day. Envelopment is both a strategic and tactical move. It involved moving around the enemy’s flanks while cutting off communications and threatening stores. Either way, back in the Civil War Lee had the advantage of interior lines when dealing with Pope and McClellan. As I said, though, he had four advantages. His other three advantages were named John Pope, George B. McClellan, and Henry Halleck. Hopefully everyone remembers Henry Halleck as U.S. Grant’s boss out west who wanted Grant booted from the army. His star was on the rise in the summer of 1862 specifically because of the successes of his least-favorite subordinate. Lincoln believed Halleck had the answers the Union needed, so he brought him to Washington and put him in command of the Union armies. It turned out that with generals as slow as he was Halleck was no great general. McClellan stayed put on the bank of the James River asking for reinforcements. Pope moved slowly towards Richmond, stopping to establish a supply depot at Manassas Junction. He was close to the site of the previous spring’s battle at Bull Run. As was often the case in the Civil War, the South called the battles by different names. To the Confederates that battle was known as Manassas, not Bull Run. John Pope’s Army of Virginia had just over 50,000 men. Lee had 55,000, making this particular engagement one of the few where Lee actually enjoyed an advantage in numbers. Lee’s strategic position didn’t actually allow him to take immediate advantage, though. Pope’s forces were strung out across northern Virginia and Washington was taking McClellan’s army apart a corps at a time and moving them up from the Peninsula to reinforce Pope. Lee proceeded to break one of the most important rules in the book. He split his forces in half and sent Jackson around behind Pope to hit his supplies at Manassas Junction. Lee stayed with Longstreet, who maintained position in front of Pope and gave the impression the Confederates were going to stay on the defensive. On his way to Manassas Junction, Jackson attempted his own version of Napoleon’s central position. He fought his old opponent, Nathaniel Banks, at Cedar Mountain. This time it was Jackson who held the numerical advantage and he severely mangled Banks’ force. The battle and a heat wave did manage to pin Jackson in place long enough for Pope to concentrate his forces, however. He’d missed his chance to pull a Napoleon. Confederate cavalry under JEB Stuart kept Pope distracted and the Army of Virginia couldn’t carry the attack to the heavily outnumbered Jackson. Eventually Jackson slipped through the Thoroughfare Gap and hit Manassas Junction itself. The Confederates destroyed what they couldn’t carry, then withdrew before Pope could react. Jackson then fought a short battle at Brawner’s Farm and settled down at the edges of the old Bull Run battlefield to wait for Longstreet. Pope attacked Jackson with a roughly three-to-one advantage and managed to completely bungle the entire thing. He couldn’t send clear orders to Irvin McDowell and Fitz-John Porter about an attack on the Confederate right flank, which proceeded to not really happen. Pope didn’t bother to follow up and ordered some additional feints that were beat back easily. He then decided that he was on the verge of victory. Even the imminent arrival of Longstreet’s Corps through the Thoroughfare Gap didn’t faze Pope. He decided Longstreet was there to cover Jackson’s retreat from the battlefield. No one was more surprised than John Pope when Longstreet’s Corps steamrolled the Union left flank on the morning of August 30. Meanwhile, George McClellan was about ten or twelve miles away in Alexandria with about 25,000 troops from the Army of the Potomac. It’s widely believed that McClellan intentionally stayed out of the fight in an attempt to discredit Pope. I wouldn’t argue the point… What was left of Pope’s Army of Virginia was folded in to the Army of the Potomac, which was left under the command of McClellan. Pope was sent to Minnesota to fight the Sioux. Lee once again had defeated a numerically superior force through superior strategy and tactics. More importantly, he proved yet again that the most important factor in war is to know your enemies weaknesses as well as his strengths.* His attempt to capitalize on the victory at Bull Run would lead to the single most important engagement of the Civil War. But that’s a story for another day… ------------------------------- *One thing Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and Robert E. Lee during the Northern Virginia campaign had in common was that they were fighting coalition forces. It wasn't as much of an issue in the case of Gustavus Adolphus, especially since he had his own problems with allies, but Frederick's interior lines and Napoleon's central position were most effective when used to exploit gaps between allied forces. In general two armies from different nations will look to their own before looking to their allies if they're in trouble. Breaking a line at a national division in the force or preventing two allied armies from joining will generally result in the opposition pulling further apart. In the worst-case scenario one army will actually allow its ally to get defeated in detail out of its own need for self-preservation. McClellan and Pope might have been fighting for the same cause, but McClellan's ambitions and Pope's pride meant that they were effectively uneasy allies who had no intention of formulating a cohesive plan. Had Grant been in charge of the Army of the Potomac and Sherman been in command of the Army of Virginia things would have gone very differently in the summer of 1862. Of course this is the difficulty of alternate history. Sherman or Grant would probably have been able to overwhelm Jackson's Corps on day one of Second Bull Run. But against a pair of armies lead by energetic and aggressive commanders Lee probably wouldn't have taken the risks he did that brought the battle about. There's a reason Lee spent the final year and a half of the war on the defensive and unable to seize the initiative. EDIT: Made a few changes, added a pronunciation guide for the word "corps." Remembered that one of the lessons from Second Bull Run was to know your enemy. I'd intended to put that in, but apparently forgot. Also added the footnote.