I guess they got the brains in the family.
Posted on 07/02/2008 6:08:10 AM PDT by mware
July 2, 1863
The morning of July 2 found the two armies facing each other from two nearly parallel ridges separated by a plain of open farmland. Overnight, Longstreet had arrived with the divisions of McLaws and Hood, bringing the strength of the Confederate Army to 50,000. As of this morning, Pickett's division had not arrived. The Union Army had also received reinforcements during the night, bringing their numbers to over 60,000.
While Meade's attention was directed towards Ewell's corps on Culp's Hill to the north, Lee decided to attack from the south. In the afternoon, Hood's division encountered Federal forces with hand-to-hand combat in an area of rock-strewn confusion of large boulders known as "Devil's Den." The Confederates worked past Devil's Den and for a short time nearly overtook Little Round Top before being repulsed by the 20th Maine regiment. The Confederates withdrew to Devil's Den where sharpshooters kept up a deadly exchange with Federal troops on Little Round Top.
A little later in the afternoon, McLaw's division overpowered Sickles' Federals with hand- to-hand combat at the Peach Orchard and the adjacent wheat field. However, losses were great and the Confederate push lost momentum at the creek at the base of Little Round Top known as Plum Run.
Next, Anderson made a run on Hancock's center Federal position which had been weakened in an attempt to aid Sickles. The Confederates were successfully pushing towards the Federal's ridge position when Hancock ordered the First Minnesota regiment to counterattack. Although the First Minnesota suffered enormous casualties, they managed to give Hancock enough time to establish a new line of defense. Anderson's men had to withdraw to Confederate positions across the valley.
To the north, Ewell's divisions had some success with late afternoon attacks in and around Culp's Hill. Early's division temporarily broke through Federal lines as darkness fell, but with lack of support and Federal counterattacks, had to withdraw. Lee had come close to success causing Meade to consider a possible retreat. The 2nd of July 1863 became one of the bloodiest days in American military history with each side losing about 10,000 men.
free dixie,sw
it would be the same thing as me sitting here "running my mouth" about nuclear physics, if i knew NOTHING (and i do NOT know ANTHING about physics, nuclear or not!) about the subject.
free dixie,sw
Probably the same commission that Lincoln met with in Hampton Roads in January 1865.
A poor analogy. Nuclear physics is a highly specialized field with very few students.
Military strategy, operations and tactics is a much less rarefied discipline.
How many soldiers, active and veteran, are there in the world? How many nuclear physicists?
One gains knowledge of military science by either studying the battles of the past or by personally participating in battle in a command capacity.
I have done a good deal of the former and none of the latter.
Your statements on this forum show that you have done very little of the former and also none of the latter.
This is borne out by the lack of any insightful commentary on strategy or tactics by you on this thread - indeed, by your glaring inability to even distinguish the two.
Your crowing about credentials in lieu of actual substantial commentary inspires me to bring up the case of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest never claimed to have written military police manuals or even to have read or studied anything about warfare - but he is considered one of the greatest tactical innovators of his age.
By your standards, he would have absolutely no idea what he was talking about because he had none of the credentials you claim to have.
It is obvious from the commentary you have given on this thread that you know embarrassingly little about the actions and the military thinking of Forrest, Mosby, Lee, Hood and other great Confederate captains.
Your mention of Bankhead as a potential guerrilla leader was a painful reminder of your ignorance about this episode of our nation's history.
Not only was Bankhead one of the most eager and industrious Southern helpers in the Reconstruction with no personal inclination to carry on the fight, he was an artillerist - not a captain of infantry or cavalry - whose one attempt at a field command over anything other than emplaced batteries was an abject failure that got him disgraced.
The one thing I expect from a neo-Confederate is a basic knowledge of the Confederate armed services. You haven't even given us that.
as for "a poor analogy", there are relatively FEW persons in the US military services, who have ACTUAL training/experience/detailed knowledge of guerrilla/counter-guerrilla operations. & even fewer who have been successful authors of official doctrine on that subject. (i happen to be one of those.)- therefore your comments are UNKNOWING & pardon me for saying so, SILLY & UNEDUCATED.
as for COL Bankhead, YES he was an artillery officer, but his detailed knowledge of his "home area" might well have made him (and many others like him) an excellent guerrilla leader (like Francis Marion of AmRev fame), had he been ordered to do so.===> may i further remind you that LTC Wendell Fertig, a "Reserve Major of Civil Engineers,who is of no particular talent or experience" (according to the J-2 of GEN MacArthur's staff) successfully LED the USFIP, against the Japanese during WW2??
thus your post remains nothing more than your personal opinion. (opinion absent knowledge/experience/training is use-LESS.) free dixie,sw
I use the term "neo-Confederate" to describe people who think that the Confederacy was a great idea.
I don't hate the South at all. I visit the South several times a year and I can't say enough good things about the people and the places I've encountered there from El Paso to Fredericksburg.
even fewer who have been successful authors of official doctrine on that subject
Please name some of these texts that you authored. I have a relative who until very recently served in Afghanistan as a colonel working in counterinsurgency operations. He'll be able to tell me right away how successful those texts are.
as for COL Bankhead, YES he was an artillery officer, but his detailed knowledge of his "home area"
While it is certainly possible that Bankhead might by some chance have turned out to be some kind of hidden guerrilla warfare genius, I'm not sure why you would pick him out of the thousand or more regiment level Southern officers given his service record. That, in addition to the fact that he surrendered early and immediately began working with Unionists in postwar Memphis makes him a spectacularly unlikely candidate for leadership in a guerrilla movement.
Why would he have succeeded when Jubal Early and John Bell Hood failed? Nothing we know about the man would suggest that.
From Wikipedia:
"The term neo-Confederate was used in a scholarly fashion as far back as 1954. In a book review, Leonard Levy, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1968, wrote, "Similar blindness to the moral issue of slavery, plus a resentment against the rise of the Negro and modern industrialism, resulted in the neo-Confederate interpretation of Phillips, Ramsdell and Owsley.""
Wikipedia goes on to note that James McPherson used the term in 1999 while the SPLC first used the term in 2000.
You have absolutely no concept of what truth is, do you?
Except that Bankhead wasn't even around at the end of the war to get such orders, having already cut a deal to go home with a safe-conduct pass in return for giving information to the US forces, more than a month before Lee's surrender.
From The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
From Edward R. S. Canby to Abraham Lincoln, March 1, 1865
Rec'd 4.15 P.M
Mar. 8th 1865
In Cipher—
New Orleans La
Mar. 1st 1865
via Cairo Mar. 8th
I have given a pass to enter our lines, and safe conduct and protection while within them, to Smith F. Bunkhead1 a Brigadier General in the rebel service, with the assurance that if the information he gives is of its promised value I will recommend his case to your favorable consideration. As similar overtures have been made to me before I think it proper to ask for some general instructions with regard to that class of persons excepted by your proclamation of Dec. 8th 1863. There is no difficulty in treating with persons who are entitled to the benefit of that amnesty, but I desire to be advised how far I may take preliminary steps in cases that require the action of the President
1 The business of Acting Brig. Gen. Smith P. Bankhead within Canby's lines is unknown. However, on March 20, the Secretary of War telegraphed Canby that his course with regard to the pass issued to Bankhead was approved by Lincoln. Canby was told that it was proper to issue such passes to persons whose business was deemed beneficial to the public interest. See Official Records, Series I, Volume 48, Part 1, 1216-17.
Ed R.S. Canby
Maj Gen Comdg.
In the same way that there are no “Neo-confederates” there cannot be “Damn Yankees”. You can’t have it both ways swattie.
If you allow for one, you get the other in the bargain.
Personally, I always figured you for a Lost Causer - even more hopeless (and repugnant) than a neo-confederate.
It all comes out in the wash though, doesn’t it swattie?
BTW: Everything on this site is personal opinion - yours included. It’s just that some opinions square up with the truth better than other opinions. And then there’s your opinion, which doesn’t seem to square up with anything ;’}
I paraphrase the Grand Old Man, “Well, the trouble with swattie is not that he is ignorant, but that he knows so much that isn’t so.”
I guess they got the brains in the family.
i suggested Smith P. Bankhead as a POSSIBILITY because he was WELL-known as a hunter/woodsman/leader & was also "well-regarded on his home ground" by citizens. (NOT a bad start to lead a home-based guerrilla movement. LTC Wendell Fertig had FAR LESS obvious knowledge at his founding of USFIP.)
further, you have for the second time failed to notice (or possibly intentionally ignored) that he (nor any of the other CSA leaders) was NOT ordered by President Davis and/or GEN Lee to "go home, organize & continue the fight".
free dixie,sw
He was a Memphis lawyer and newspaper publisher before the war. Sounds pretty city-slicker to me.
Plus there's that whole "giving information to the Yankees to get a free pass home early" thing. Not surprising he was beaten to death by confederate dead-enders.
Morris Dees claims many things.
Explain to me why it is "abusive" for me to use a term which I did not consider offensive (would you prefer to be called a "palaeo-Confederate"? or just plain "Confederate"?) once, but not abusive for you to use the term "Damn Yankee" repeatedly?
i suggested Smith P. Bankhead as a POSSIBILITY because he was WELL-known as a hunter/woodsman/leader & was also "well-regarded on his home ground" by citizens.
So well regarded, apparently, that some of them beat him to death.
further, you have for the second time failed to notice (or possibly intentionally ignored) that he (nor any of the other CSA leaders) was NOT ordered by President Davis and/or GEN Lee to "go home, organize & continue the fight".
General Lee, who was only responsible for his own command, had surrendered. Lee had no legal authority inside or outside of the Confederacy to recruit new troops for a new mission.
Jefferson Davis, who presided over the dissolution of the Confederate government on May 5th, was a private citizen when he was apprehended. As such he also lacked any legal authority inside or outisde the Confederacy to recruit new troops for a new mission.
Jubal Early and John Bell Hood did not look to Davis or to Lee as their commanders anymore, and they took it upon themselves of their own initiative to try to start a guerrilla movement.
They failed. Hood surrendered soon after and Early fled overseas.
Early, Hood and Forrest were the probably highest ranking officers in the Confederate army yet to surrender after May 5, 1865. They were thus, by definition, the highest ranking government officials in the Confederacy and were the only people who could issue such a call under the old chain of command.
And they did issue such a call. And they were all three men of great ability who commanded great respect from Confederate citizens and Confederate soldiers. No one can say that Forrest was not a born guerrilla leader.
Their collective failure demonstrates that a guerrilla campaign was not a realistic undertaking.
There is no point in saying "if only they had." They actually did. And it didn't work.
I would also point out that during the Confederacy's successes, Jefferson Davis did not generally issue orders to Lee or any other general telling them how or when to fight.
Lee never asked permission to enter Maryland. Lee never asked permission to enter Pennsylvania. Lee basically disregarded strong "requests" by Davis to transfer troops to the west. If Lee had believed that a guerrilla campaign was winnable, he would not have awaited orders from Davis - he would have done what he had always done: made an executive decision right there on the spot, and hold himself accountable to dismissal or arrest if it went wrong.
If Lee had believed that a guerrilla campaign was winnable, he would not have awaited orders from Davis - he would have done what he had always done: made an executive decision right there on the spot, and hold himself accountable to dismissal or arrest if it went wrong. "
I much enjoy & appreciate your highly informed comments.
First:
By all reports, Lee was in the best sense "an officer and gentleman."
Indeed, he personified that ideal like no other military leader we know of, excepting of course another Virginian, George Washington.
This is in response to stande waite & others who suggested: somehow Lee COULD have, MIGHT have or SHOULD have lead a "guerrilla war," and so changed focus of military actions from ARMY vs ARMY to GUERILLAS vs CIVILIANS.
I'm saying, given his basic character, such a thing was impossible for Lee.
So fahgeddaboutit, COULD NOT happen.
It's been posted here that: the idea was even suggested to Lee and he turned it down.
But I would also note again that Lee was scrupulous in ordering his troops to behave themselves, and to pay for their requisitions in the Gettysburg campaign.
Let's see if I can nail this, by quoting Lee again, from Bowden & Ward (p 140).
[On June 21, 1863, Lee] "had issued strict orders outlining how his men would seize and pay for supplies while operating in enemy territory.
"The wanton destruction of Southern civilian property by Federals was a barbarity Lee was determined his soldiers would avoid.
"I cannot hope that Heaven will prosper our cause when we are violating its laws," Lee had informed [General] Trimble. "I shall therefore carry the war into Pennsylvania without offending the sanctions of a high civilization and of Christianity."
"General Order No. 72, promulgated on June 27, updated the Army of Northern Virginia's code of conduct.
"In addition to complimenting his men on their conduct, Lee admonished that they must remember, "that we make war only upon armed men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies, and offending against Him to whom vengeance belongth, without whose favor and support our efforts must all prove in vain."
"There was more behind Lee's latest orders than a display of Christian charity. While his words do indeed reflect his strong character, integrity, and a sense of moral responsibility, they also demonstrate a realistic understanding of the current military and political realities he faced in Pennsylvania.
"Maintaining order and discipline while moving through enemy territory was absolutely vital because it kept every man in the ranks. This was especially important because Lee was already missing five valuable brigades of infantry.
"Avoiding a repeat of the widespread straggling and desertion that had so weakened the army during the Sharpsburg Campaign in the autumn of 1862 was critical to the success of the current Pennsylvania operation.
"Further, outrages against the locals would only serve to galvanize support for the Lincoln administration and fuel partisan operations against the invading southern army.
"Lee's latest general order was both militarily sound and politically astute."
Second:
On Lee's relationship to the Confederate government:
quoting from page 35 about a May 1863 conference:
"For four days Lee, Davis, and the Confederate cabinet officials were consumed with how to address the military situation facing their country.
"Eventually the choice boiled down to either dispatching reinforcements from the Army of Northern Virginia to Johnston in Mississippi [Vicksburg], or strengthening Lee for a new strike north.
"Although Lee's strategic sagacity was decidedly superior to either Davis' or Seddon's, he exhibited an almost limitless tact dealing with officials in Richmond. This verbal diplomacy put him in good stead with his president, but yielded intricatge circumlocutions during the Richmond conference.
"Still his theme and goals remained clear and consistent, and can be summarized as follows..."
Point is, Lee was expected to (and did) respectfully sell his ideas to the South's civilian government officials. They made the final approval.
When not in the presence of Davis and his cabinet, he wrote Davis very courteous letters and dispatches explaining with great deference that he would not be doing or was unable to do what Davis asked of him.
Lee also routinely made bold moves knowing that his initiatives would already be faits accompli by the time Richmond was apprised of them.
Lee was never, ever ill-mannered in doing these things - but he was not exactly obedient. At all, really.
I would also point out that what Lee wrote in his official orders to his troops and what Lee allowed to actually happen are two different things.
If you break into a Pennsylvania farmer's homestead and take all his stores, all his clothes, all his whisky and eat all his cattle and leave him an I.O.U. payable only in Confederate dollars at drastically below market prices - you're still basically doing the exact same thing as Union troops were doing in Virginia but adding some self-serving paperwork to the mix.
On June 27th, 1863 the "atrocities of our enemies" which Lee was decrying were basically the exact same things his troops were doing to Pennsylvanians at the very time he was writing.
Lee's General Order was basically a document wiping his hands clean of anything that might happen subsequently so it could be characterized as a violation of his orders.
Make no mistake: Lee was in Pennsylvania to resupply his army with clothing, shoes, meat, grain, drink, medicine, tools, horses, mules, wagons, various dry goods, harnesses, etc.
All of these supplies were obtained by seizure from the private citizens and business owners of Pennsylvania.
The Confederate army also made sure to burn down and destroy the home and the business properties of Thaddeus Stevens when they were in Pennsylvania - I believe that was done two or three days after that General Order.
In other words, Lee was not necessarily averse to terror. But he was wise enough to know that terror - as a strategy - could never win the war. He had fought enough Union soldiers and rode through enough Union towns as an invader to realize that the people of the Union would not bow to terror as a method.
Hmmmmmm....
Compare and contrast: Lee's army in southern Pennsylvania in 1863, versus Washington's army at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in 1776.
Both armies were near starving (well, Washington's was actually starving), and short on every other necessity.
Washington's troops were starving through a winter.
By the time Lee's reached PA, it was summer and they were in pretty fit condition.
Both armies could only pay for supplies with pretty worthless currency -- for Washington, it was Continentals, for Lee Confederates.
So, the question is, did Washington's army treat the local Pennsylvania farmers any differently, or better than, Lee's army?
Somehow, I think a reason Washington's troops were truly starving was that he refused to allow them to plunder the countryside for supplies.
Instead, Washington depended on commissary agents to freely purchase and ship him supplies.
When those failed to arrive, Washington's troops suffered.
Finally, do we know for certain that NORTHERN troops in Virginia took supplies from farmers without ever "paying" for them?
laughing AT the "members of the clue-LESS coven of BIGOTS/nitwits".
free dixie,sw
laughing AT the clue-LESS/ignorant/SELF-impressed/sanctimonious/hate-FILLED/brain-DEAD members of "the DY coven", as most FReepers DO.
free dixie,sw
That book arrived yet?
Let me know when Blackerby's book arrives.
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