Posted on 07/15/2003 6:06:12 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
Edited on 07/12/2004 4:05:14 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
He was, at the war's end, the senior lieutenant general in the Confederate Army, Lee's trusted friend and second-in-command of the Army of Northern Virginia --- yet it was not until 1998 that a statue was erected anywhere to honor James Longstreet. This slight can be traced to his membership in the Republican Party during Reconstruction, but even more damaging to his reputation was the image created by his postwar enemies: He became a villain in Southern eyes, a scapegoat for the Confederate defeat, and one of the South's most controversial figures.
(Excerpt) Read more at dynamic.washtimes.com ...
To expect 15,000 men to walk about a mile in open ground, subject to artillery fire for at least half that distance, then subject to massed musket fire for the last 200 yards, not to mention snipers and skirmishers, was madness. Meade had at least THREE full corps in reserve, not to mention Union cavalry that could have been called in to plug a hole. Just using a reasonable calculation of 50% casualties to GET to the wall, to expect 7,000 men to take 20,000, plus the reserves, was idiotic.
What gets me is that the apologists of Lee completely overlook this while RIGHTLY praising his otherwise brilliant moves. In contrast, Grant's brilliant capture of Vicksburg is always tainted with Cold Harbor.
Read Gordon C. Rhea's "Cold Harbor" - he's the acknowledged expert on the Overland Campaign of 1864, and he presents a lot of information and evidence that prior historians have completely overlooked.
First, Horace Porter's "Campaigning With Grant" led to the lie that the "soldiers knew they were going to die so they wrote their names on pieces of paper and pinned them to the backs of their shirts". This one little story accounts for 90% of the "butcher" mythology about Grant. In fact, the Union soldiers did this before any assault, and since it was something Porter hadn't seen before, he took it as a sign that the men knew it was going to fail but went anyway. Later historians, for a century now, have quoted that account of Porter's as if it were evidence that "everyone knew the assault would fail but Grant".
In fact, it's an outright lie and a complete myth, based on completely erroneous interpretation of an event.
Grant's strategy at Cold Harbor was completely sound (as Rhea points out). Lee's army had their backs to a river, were not dug in, and Grant was only seven miles from Richmond. He knew an assault had a good chance of success, and being under pressure for political reasons (the upcoming Republican convention and the upcoming election) he knew that if the assault succeeded it would end the war right then and there.
And here's something that Rhea also points out - it almost worked.
Almost only counts in horsehoes and handgrenades, I know, but what Rhea points out is that if Grant's orders had been followed immediately and the tactics hadn't been so bungled, it's very likely the Union would have destroyed Lee right there.
Unfortunately a few things happened. Meade was inept, and being in charge of the tactics, he bungled the assault from beginning to end: First, the assault got delayed for twenty-four hours, again, due to inept commanders - this gave Lee time to fortify. Second, once the assault was underway, it was totally disorganized and uncoordinated, with various divisions and brigades getting off at different times, etc, leading to a completely uncoordinated assault on the Confederate position.
Grant's mistakes were:
1. Leaving Meade in charge.
2. Not calling off the assault after it was known his orders wouldn't be followed when he ordered the assault - that they would be delayed for twenty-four hours.
3. The negotiations with Lee after the assualt that left men lying on the field for two days.
Ultimately, since Grant was in overall command, he has to bear the responsibility. But the blame isn't his, for the bungling, it's Meade's - actually, it's most of the command of the Army of the Potomac.
It's amazing to watch the performance of Grant's Army of the Tennessee in the West - the army that was imbued with Grant's "spirit" - the army he built up, the commanders he picked - and their brilliant success.
And it's depressing to seem him come east and try to manage this large, political, bungling, incompetant mess that was the Army of the Potomac. It's command was a morass of political appointees, egomaniacs, megalomaniacs, prima donnas, and intriguers.
In fact, I am often amazed that Grant was able to win the war, with the Army of the Potomac. It was a pathetic excuse for any army.
The average soldier in the AOTP cannot be faulted in most cases. But you do see a difference between the "suck it up", bold, aggressive, "can do" westerners in the Army of the Tennessee, and the whiney, moaning, soldiers in the AOTP whose morale rose and fell like the rising and setting of the Sun - and as often. They were also imbued with "McClellanism" - his spirit infected the AOTP.
And the command structure Grant was left to deal with...Oy...apart from Hancock and Sedgwick, there was almost no competant commander at the Corps, Division or Brigade level in the AOTP. None come to mind, anyway.
However, if you want to get picky, Cold Harbor was a repeat of a smaller, equally disastrous frontal assault outside of Vicksburg---I forget the exact engagement, but it was eerie how close to Cold Harbor it was. So where I would criticize Grant is for not making a mistake, but for repeating it.
Same goes for Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. At Chancellorsville, if Lee had divided his forces that way, Grant would have destroyed him. First, there's no way Jackson's flanking move would have fooled Grant. Second, let's say for sake of argument Jackson's flanking move worked - Grant would have rallied his troops, lashed immediately out at Jackson, destroying him, and then wheeled around and flung his entire army on Lee's forces. That would have been the end of it. Grant was looking for just such an opportunity throughout the entire Overland Campaign of 1864. In fact, Grant used maneuver to achieve the same position between two wings of an army in the Vicksburg campaign. He took Jackson and drove Johnston out, and then nearly destroyed Pemberton's army at Champion's Hill. In fact, this is what kept Johnson away - he was afraid. At Chancellorsville, Grant would have leapt at the opportunity. He would have annhilated Lee's army.
Same at Gettysburg. No way Lee would have made it back across the Potomac. Not even a question. Lee would have been as dead as fried chicken. Grant would have wiped him out. He would have pursued him immediately, and rapidly, and Lee would have been destroyed by detail.
Lee knew better after the Wilderness. He was put on the defensive and stayed on the defensive. He just rushed to keep putting himself in front of Grant, and threw up fortifications and waited. That's all he could do. You see no more daring plans or aggressive, offensive tactics from Lee, after the Wilderness. And it wasn't because he didn't have enough men - it was because he knew better. He knew if he presented the opportunity to Grant, he would be destroyed. He had to keep his entire army together.
The last sense of aggression or initiative from Lee is when he attempted to break out of Petersburg. And that assault met with a crushing defeat.
Nope, Grant was the man. And it's why all of the historians interviewed in "North and South" magazine recently, all voted Grant #1 in the "Top Ten Generals" of the Civil War.
But what Rhea points out (and other historians have pointed out) is that no general in the Civil War had the insight to realize the tactics of "frontal assault" against a fortified enemy position were simply wrong with the advent of the rifle. The rifle had changed the tactics of combat but no one in the Civil War realized this (they didn't even realize it in World War I, really - as military historian General J.F.C. Fuller pointed out in his "The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant").
The idea was, you got yourself into the best possible position, and when you felt you had enough strategic advantage, you threw your men at the enemy in a direct assault. The only differentiating factor was did the General ordering the assault have a good gauge of whether the assault had a reasonable chance of success. At Fredericksburg, no amount of men could have taken Marye's Heights - and Burnside wasn't smart enough to gauge this. Grant was much better at this, and he only ever ordered an assault when he felt he had a very good chance of success. Looking at his track record, he was right more often than not. On May 22nd, 1863 at Vicksburg, and on June 3, 1864 at Cold Harbor, it didn't work.
However, at the Mule Shoe at Spotsylvania, he almost succeeded in wiping Lee out. If Gordon hadn't led such an amazing resistance and counterattack when he did, the Confederate army would have been in the sh!t. Hancock would have ran right over them. Again, Burnside let everyone down.
So Grant is no more to fault for this than Lee or anyone else when it comes to using frontal assault tactics. Lee deserves more blame for Pickett's Charge than Grant does for Cold Harbor. Pickett's Charge is a far more obvious tactical impossibility - one that rates with the obviousness of Fredericksburg. Lee, however, was caught up in the idea of the invincibility of his army - that was his blunder - he felt they could do anything he asked of them.
What's key is that Grant never tried such an assault again after Cold Harbor.
In the end, it was Grant's grand strategy that beat Lee and the Confederacy.
Grant paid a price of his "hands off" policy with Burnside, then gained it back two-fold with Sherman.
The one thing I truly feel Grant deserves blame for was leaving these incompetants in command after they had failed him.
Butler was a political problem - he couldn't have relieved Butler without there being a significant political price. But Baldy Smith and Burnside were total liabilities who should have been removed from command.
However, as a few historians point out, Grant had no other choice. If he replaced Burnside, he had no one to replace him with. At least Burnside knew the ropes and could marginally follow orders. Historians point out that if he had relieved him, he wouldn't really have had anyone any more competant to put in his place and suggest this might have been why he left someone like him in command.
Overall it's just a sorry reflection of the command deficiencies in the AOTP. Sad.
Grant definitely used the Overland Campaign to hold Lee in place. It was part of his grand strategy. He knew that they couldn't shift troops to different areas then, to reinforce themselves where they were under assault.
He knew somewhere the Confederacy would break. They broke at Atlanta. And Sherman's march was the vindication of Grant's strategy.
Sherman marched straight through the south wreaking havoc and destroying infrastructure and Lee couldn't do a thing about it. That tells you everything you need to know about Grant as a strategist.
Granted (no pun intended), that the preservation of the Union was the right outcome. But, without those rabble rousing rebels, their ancestors and their descendents America would never have been the greatest nation in the history of the earth.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.