The Battle of Gettysburg (3rd Day)

pekin.net ^ | Jon Meinen, Renee Bussone, and Rachel Smith

[beebuster2000]

absolutely staggering that the dem platform of 1864 is almost word for word in use today.

lincoln? lincoln who?

and oh yes, the civil war, we spent way too much on that, didnt we?

/sarcasm

[BroJoeK]

"Yes, but interestingly, even on offense, the Union’s casualty rates were lower than Lee’s-—7 Days’ Battles, for example."

Check out this link: Civil War battle statistics

Note that Lee's casualties were sometimes, but not always, higher than his Union opponent's.

I think a bit of analysis would ask: who was on offense, who was on defense, and who won the battle. The results could well explain the differences in casualties.

[LS]

Again, the issue is not total casualties---the north often had more---but % of men deployed.

BTW, it's interesting in WW II that MacArthur has always been portrayed as the most "economical" of all the American commanders with the lives of his men. But the best of all was Nimitz, who had control of the central sector of the Pacific. Combined ground (island)/naval casualties under him were much lower than under MacArthur.

[BroJoeK]

"Again, the issue is not total casualties---the north often had more---but % of men deployed."

I think you are arguing that Lee was a poor general, because his casualty percentages were higher than his opponents, right?

OK, I count seven major battles for Lee:

1) Gaines' Mill June '62
2) 2nd Manassas Aug '62
3) Antietam Sept '62

4) Chancellorsville May '63
5) Gettysburg July '63

6) Wilderness / Spotsylvania May '64

7) Petersburg April '65

Of those battles, Lee clearly won three: Gaines' Mill, 2nd Manassas and Chancellorsville.

At Gaines' Mill, Lee outnumbered Porter by 80%, and suffered 13% casualties to Porter's 25%.

At 2nd Manassas, Pope outnumbered Lee over 50%, but suffered 26% casualties to Lee's 18%.

At Chancellorsville, Hooker outnumbered Lee over 80%, and suffered 16% casualties to Lee's 22%, though Lee's numbers were 4,000 fewer casualties.

Two battles were more-or-less a draw: Antietam and Wilderness / Spottsylvania.

At Antietam, McClellan outnumbered Lee nearly 50%, but Lee still fought him to a draw, while suffering 14,000 (27%) casualties to McClelland's 12,000 (16%).

At the Wilderness / Spotsylvania, Grant outnumbered Lee by 2/3 more troops while suffering 36,000 casualties (36%) to Lee's 23,000 (38%).

Lee lost two critical battles: Gettysburg and Pettersburg.

At Gettysburg, Meade outnumbered Lee by 8,000 (11%), while suffering 5,000 fewer casualties (28%) than Lee's 28,000 (37%).

At Petersburg, Grant outnumbered Lee over 2 to 1, and suffered over 2 to 1 casualties. Both had casualties of 8%.

Finally, we should note that Civil War statistics can be all over the map, depending on who counts, and who they count. Even so, I think the general picture here is on target.

[LS]

Take a look at the chart in McWhiney and Jamison's "Attack and Die," up front. Their numbers are different, and again, they don't make everything about Lee, but rather the Rebel fighting style overall.

Also, I don't see Malvern Hill listed: Lee lost 2,000 more men than McClellan, and both armies were the same size (80,000). Again, based on the fact that one army should be "on defense" and that the attacker usually is to have a 3:1 advantage, it doesn't seem like genius to lose such large percentages of men in so many critical battles. But, as you say, stats can be all over the map. I personally rank Lee #3 among Civil War generals, behind Grant and Sherman, although Jackson might have been at the top if he had an independent command opportunity.

[kalee]

ping

[BroJoeK]

"I personally rank Lee #3 among Civil War generals, behind Grant and Sherman, although Jackson might have been at the top if he had an independent command opportunity."

Then we agree.

But note that when Grant & Lee fought at the Wilderness / Spotsylvania and again at Petersburg, Grant outnumbered Lee nearly 2 to 1, and each suffered the same percentage of casualties -- meaning that Grant suffered MORE casualties from his larger force.

My only point here is: before you start blaming one commander for the number of his casualties, take a closer look at both forces, and who actually WON the battle.

I think Lee deserves credit, for example at Antietam, for fighting a much larger force to a draw, even if Lee had slightly more casualties.

Yes, I fully understand that the South could NOT AFFORD it's casualties, while the North COULD. But Lee's job was to defeat the northern army, and he did it better than anyone else.

All three commanders were extremely aggressive and mobile, even (or especially) while "playing defense."

[LS]

But you got something basically wrong: a percent doesn't matter which side had the larger army. A percent is the same. I think you meant to say that when the North deployed a larger army, even losing a smaller percent they often lost more men, which is true.

However, your second point actually supports my view that Lee in fact had big problems, because in "winning" the battles that he won by taking such huge casualties, he was losing the war. And we aren't even counting Ft. Donelson's surrender (11,000) or Vicksburg's surrender (20,000) which weren't Lee's, but they were all part of the strategic plan that Lee at least helped to craft. My criticism of Lee is that the "aggressive defense"---which I certainly admit was dreamed up mostly in Davis's office because the Confed. simply couldn't afford to pull a Soviet-style "territory-for-position" retreat---was a loser.

[BroJoeK]

"My criticism of Lee is that the "aggressive defense"---which I certainly admit was dreamed up mostly in Davis's office because the Confed. simply couldn't afford to pull a Soviet-style "territory-for-position" retreat---was a loser."

First, Lee was responsible for the Army of Northern Virginia, and can hardly be blamed for southern defeats elsewhere.

Second, Lee fought his part of the war the way Lee wanted to fight it -- sometimes over objections from Davis & others in the Confederate government. Indeed, at their conference in May 1863, where Lee proposed to go north to Pennsylvania, others wanted him to dig in behind fortifications while sending part his army out west to help at Vicksburg.

Some posters here have even suggested Lee was wrong and the others right, and that Lee's "aggressive defense" was the wrong strategy for the South.

Be that as it may, I don't agree, but my point is: Lee's "aggressive defense" strategy was HIS strategy, not someone else's, and Lee continued it until near the very end, when his forces were too weak to do anything but dig in around Petersbug.

Here's the bottom line: no matter how brilliant Lee & other southern generals were, or how gallant their troops, the South was doomed to lose in the long run. Unless... unless they could somehow early-on convince the North it would never defeat them, and so must negotiate a compromise settlement.

The possibility of doing so ended with the loss of Vicksburg, and in Lee's defeat at Gettysburg, in the summer of 1863. So, Gettysburg was, to quote my trusty source, the South's "Last Chance for Victory."

[LS]

Yah, I absolutely agree with everything you say here. Probably only some really blundering generals early "kept the South in it." Again, not to take away from Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Forrest, or Albert Sidney Johnston---whom some thought was very talented.

Richard Bensel has a great book called "Yankee Leviathan" where he looks at the relative levels of freedom especially in industry and entrepreneurship between the two sections. Virtually all of the new weapons came from the private sector---the Sharps, Spencer, Gatling Gun, one of the heavy guns (Dahlgren or Parrott), Ericcson's Monitor, Hunley's sub, even the signals the North used with the flag system were a private sector invention by a NY doctor. The point is, with a much bigger society to begin with (22 m vs. 9 m, of which only 6 m were free whites), the smaller society would have had to have been far more innovative and freer economically---but it wasn't. Quite the contrary, Bensel showed, the S. had higher taxes, more confiscation, less "free speech," and so on. So hoping to "leapfrog" the North technologically was impossible.