We see this failure of Lee again during the first day of Gettysburg. His order to Ewell to take cemetary hill "if practicable" was inexcusable. Lee had plenty of intelligence at that point to make the call instead of passing the buck. One cannot concieve of Grant ever telling one of his commanders in the heat of battle to accomplish an objective "if practicable".
In fairness to Lee that had always been his style, and when he had Longstreet and Jackson as his corps commanders it wasn't a problem. In the few weeks prior to the Gettysburg campaign Lee had reorganized his army into three corps. So he had two new subordinate corps commanders and many of his division commanders had new corps commanders they reported up to and were trying to establish working relations with. It was not an ideal situation all around.
There is an equally interesting book recently released called "Retreat From Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign" by Kent Masterson Brown. In addition to laying out in detail exactly what it took to get an army and its supply trains from point A to point B, it shows just how desperate Lee was to retain all the supplies he had gathered from the civilian population during his campaign. To the point where he left thousands of wounded behind to fall into the hands of the Union army because the wagons that might have carried them were used to move goods instead.
Sorry, but it’s “conceive”, not “concieve”.
There’s a very interesting book which just came out called “Enough Blame to go Around” which examines in detail Jeb Stuarts actions during Gettysburg and who was to blame for Jeb’s disappearance during the one of the most important battles of the war. Lee does not come out well which I expected given the vague open ended orders he gave Jeb at the begining of the campaign. This points to a major defect in Lee’s generalship - a poor staff and an inablility to communicate clear orders to subordinates. Combine this with Lee’s tendency to delegate enormous responsibility to his Corps commanders in a battle and it was often a reciepe for disaster. Conversely, it was said of Grant by his generals after the war that it was impossible to read on of his orders and not know exactly what he wanted you to do.
We see this failure of Lee again during the first day of Gettysburg. His order to Ewell to take cemetary hill “if practicable” was inexcusable. Lee had plenty of intelligence at that point to make the call instead of passing the buck. One cannot concieve of Grant ever telling one of his commanders in the heat of battle to accomplish an objective “if practicable”.
Very good analysis of the ANV’s command and control as it existed after the shakeup required after Jackson’s death in May of 1863.
I’ve never been impressed by Lee’s offensive abilities. He was the master of the counterattack, but his own offensive attacks were almost always completely disjointed. Gettysburg’s three days are a case in point.
The same can be said for most of the ‘Seven Days’ battle when he originally took over command for Joe ‘The Great Retreater’ Johnson. Jackson in particular was curiously lethargic/inactive. Was it due to ‘vague’ orders?
Perhaps. Or perhaps Jackson’s legend was realized due to the incompetence of those he faced in the Valley Campaign that made him a world renowned General.
Lee was a great General, nobody thats ever seriously studied the era can say otherwise. But he had his own weakness as you demonstrate.