Posted on 06/29/2013 6:49:03 AM PDT by Michael.SF.
GETTYSBURG, Pa. (AP) — On the second day of fighting at Gettysburg, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee listened to scouting reports, scanned the battlefield and ordered his second-in-command, James Longstreet, to attack the Union Army's left flank.
It was a fateful decision, one that led to one of the most desperate clashes of the entire Civil War — the fight for a piece of ground called Little Round Top. The Union's defense of the boulder-strewn promontory helped send Lee to defeat at Gettysburg, and he never again ventured into Northern territory.
Why did the shrewd and canny Lee choose to attack, especially in the face of the Union's superior numbers?
Our analysis shows that he had a very poor understanding of how many forces he was up against, which made him bolder," said Middlebury College professor Anne Knowles, whose team produced the most faithful re-creation of the Gettysburg battlefield to date, using software called GIS, or geographic information systems.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
That source ony says: “After distinguishing himself as bold and aggressive commander at Brandy Station and Aldie, Pleasonton promoted him to brevet brigadier general despite his lack of command experience. With this promotion, Custer was assigned to lead a brigade of Michigan cavalry in the division of Major General Judson Kilpatrick. After fighting the Confederate cavalry at Hanover and Hunterstown, Custer and his brigade, which he nicknamed the “Wolverines,” played a key role in the cavalry battle east of Gettysburg on July 3.”
Aldie was june 17, 1863
http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/aldie.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aldie
Custer was promoted on June 29, 1863
Quote” Following General Meade’s replacement of General Hooker after the Chancellorsville debacle. Meade advised General Halleck in Washington that he would shake up the command of his cavalry in the hope of improving its efficiency. After consulting the Cavalry Commander General Pleasanton and accepting his recommendations. Meade wired Halleck an unheard-of request: -
“To promote - in one jump - three brilliant young officers from the rank of captain to that of brigadier general”.
These officers were:
Elon J. Farnsworth, 8th Illinois Cavalry
Wesley Merritt, 2nd US Cavalry and
George A. Custer, 5th US Cavalry.
Either Halleck approved in record time, or else Meade went ahead without his permission, for within a matter of hours Pleasanton had three new generals. Custer and Farnsworth were assigned to brigades of the Third Division to be commanded by Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick, who was known more for his reckless bravery than his brains.
Custer’s promotion to Brigadier General, United States Volunteers, to date June 29 1863, two years after graduation, was even more unusual in that he was in fact only a substantive lieutenant. Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer aged 23 was at that time - the youngest General officer in the Union Army.”
http://www.americancivilwar.asn.au/meet/2004_04_mtg_custer.pdf
Finally, the date.
June 29, 1863, Custer Promoted to Brigadier General from Captain.
The very next day, June 30th, 1863, the newly promoted Custer and Farnsworth’s troops fight a battle with Jeb Stuart’s Cavalry.
Quote:
“ During the cannonading, Kilpatrick ordered Custer and two of his brigades from Michigan to attack the Confederates from the west side of town.
Dismounted, Custer’s men twice attacked the rebel positions south of Frederick Street using seven-shot repeating rifles, the first time such rifles were used during the Civil War, according to several sources.
Around 2 p.m., Stuart gave up the fight and directed his troops down Baltimore Street to what is now Fuhrman Mill Road before turning toward Jefferson, Wallace said.
By the end of the conflict, about 300 men were killed, wounded or captured. Townspeople cared for some in their homes. Eventually, four hospitals were set up in town for the wounded.
The engagement in Hanover kept Stuart busy for a day, delaying his arrival in Gettysburg until the second day of that battle . His mounted troops could have been used by Gen. Robert E. Lee to scout the battlefield, giving the Rebels better knowledge of the strength of the Union forces gathered around Gettysburg.”
http://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-1EB
This page “Mount Up!”: Cavalry Operations in the Gettysburg Campaign has a good account of the Union Cavalry during the battle.
All three newly minted Brigadier Generals see action - George Custer, Elon Farnsworth, and Wesley Merritt.
Farnsworth is killed in a charge.
Thanks for the post, I'd never read details of Custer's assault on Stuart before.
Always heard it was just a "mad dash".
In fact, there was serious planning and tactics.
So, at least at Gettysburg, Custer wasn't just reckless, but also smart.
I have just driven 400+ miles through I-95 traffic and need to eat and reflect before answering your last post at length.
However, a search concerning Robert E. Lee’s missing memoir came up with this link: http://www.historynet.com/lees-unwritten-memoir.htm
Lee has some interesting things to say post-war about Gettysburg. It’s about half way down in the article.
Planning and Custer just don’t seem to go together. Perhaps someone else laid the trap.
Custer was a battler. Agressive, impulsive.
If he was ordering a charge, he was probably leading it.
His aggressive march/attack led to Lee being cut off and forced to surrender at Appomatax on April 9th.
My understanding is that Lee also suffered dysentery, and was mostly confined to his tent and a nearby bucket. That is why he delegated the assessment of the artillery effect and the timing of Pickett’s charge to Longstreet.
Part of the reason for the failure of the artillery barrage was the decision to hold back some of the Union Artillery behind the hill, rather than exposing it to direct fire on the front of the hill. When the confederate artillery stopped, Union artillery could be run out to the front of the hill. Also the Union forces pushed small forces out to north and south of Pickett’s line of advance. The small forces provided a band of intersecting fire through which Pickett’s men tried to advance, at the quick (not double time, not in rushes).
Meade’s decision not to counterattack was the right one: Lee seemed to recover from his illness, and all the advantages of the defense would have been his if Meade had aggressively countered.
If Mead had put a corps with cavalry support to Lee’s south, with orders not to attack but to stay to Lee’s south (so Lee would have had to attack) Lee could have been destroyed. Alas that had to wait until 1865 and the Union forces were south of Richmond and Petersburg.
I put Thomas as number 3, for the reasons you note.
I put Grant at 1, Sherman at 2. I can’t imagine Thomas conducting the Vicksburg campaign or the March to the Sea. Like Halleck, Thomas was too smart and careful for either of those operations.
One reason why Thomas was careful was because as a Virginia, his loyalty would have been suspect in the press. Even with that disadvantage, he got great results, destroying Hood’s army as Sherman did not. To be fair, Hood cooperated in the destruction of his army.
Intelligence also is subject to manipulation.
Magruder before the 7 days battles marched men forward in plain view, and marched them back covertly. Lee was happy to work with Pinkerton to provide men for McClellan to count, and the illusion that the Confederates had 250,000 men or more had much to do with McClellan’s methods. When pushed away from Richmond, McClellan never had more than 90,000 men opposed to him.
The German Tank Problem is (in English) a treatment of how to estimate enemy numbers based on incomplete information. German fed enemy intelligence tank production numbers that were false, leading to estimates of 1400 tanks a month produced. From two tanks, serial numbers on various parts (engines, chassis, transmissions, road wheels) were compared, and the difference between them was very small, leading to a more correct estimate of less than 270 tanks per month. Analysis of German production records after the war revealed that tank production never exceeded about 275.
Thaddeus Lowe performed the first air reconnaissance over Virginia, and was able to report that after Bull Run, the insurrection was not ready to attack.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle was still in the future: By measuring something, you change it. An alert enemy, such as the insurrection, was able to participate in the measurement process, and influence the smart decision makers that used the various measurements.
Strategic Offensive and Tactical Defense is an ideal but hard to achieve. Jan Hus tried the same with cannon, wagon lagers and aggressive cavalry to goad his opponents into a counterattack.
His tactics worked until the other side had figured out the gag. Alert enemies could prevent setting up the wagon lager, or could counter the lager with walls of circumvalliation, as Caesar did at Alesia.
Meade was in on the gag, and refused to bloody his forces at Gettysburg in a counterattack. The Tactical defensive against an opponent that refused to attack would mean getting cut off and starved. That eventually happened in Virginia.
Sheridan was ordered to put his forces in the Shenandoah valley south of the pretended confederates and follow them to hell. That permitted operational flexibility that prevented costly frontal attacks by the US against the insurrection.
Grant’s offensive in TN removed that state from the southern economy. As such the southern soldier was unable to get much pork, TN’s major contribution to the southern economy.
In response to Grant’s successful offensive there, the pretended confederate government tried to get farmers to grow poultry for their own needs, and for supplying southern armies. Grant’s and Sherman’s campaigns at Vicksburg and the March to the Sea could not have taken place without that change to the southern economy.
Lee was trying to take some pressure off the remaining southern farmers such as those in the Shenandoah. He was partially successful, as the losses he suffered didn’t show up at the dinner table ever again.
Longstreet’s advice looks a lot like the successful US approach in the Overland Campaign. Grant would attack, fix Lee, and then bypass him. Fixing looks a lot like a frontal attack, and against a foe of Lee’s and the pretended “army of northern Virgina”’s caliber, had to be made with substantial forces, and absent modern armor, suffer substantial losses.
Lee was asked what kind of reserve he maintained. “Not a regiment. If I pull anyone from the line he will break me, if I shorten the line he will turn me.
Looking carfully at Culp’s hill, you can see where US forces flanked the attacking insurrection forces. Not shown in the map is how Picket’s Charge was also flanked from both sides by US forces, so the large heavy bullets of the time could drill through two or more rebels as they walked up to the position they were to attack.
I submit that WWI was necessary, given the rules of the time, and Germany’s refusal to abide by the rules of war.
They didn’t intend to lose, and thought that their cheating would not be punished after the war was over if they won. Also in WWII they were the same way, as Manstein/Lewinski was the nephew of Hindenburg, and had the same idea of laws of war (lie as necessary to avoid punishment afterwards, and emphasize differences between the victors).
Custer’s near stationary attack by fire at Five Forks was decisive. Custer knew there was a time for planing and a time for execution, or as he would put it “Up Guards! At Them!”
Was there some reason why Britain had more "right" to have an Empire than did Germany?
Granted the Kaiser was not a lovable character, and the maladroit Zimmerman Note was no help. But WWI in the best interests of the US? No way.
Certainly the Zimmerman Note, passed to their Embassy over cables through the US, was not worth a war by itself.
US had a lot of trade at that time, most carried on by ships. Germany’s violation of the Hague convention rules with their submarine attacks threatened that trade. They had agreed to the Hague convention, and then after the Lusitania, agreed again to an interpretation of the Hague Convention that would forbid their use of U-boats.
And then, after making such agreements with the US, they violated them.
WWI was not about the German empire, except that empire was one way to attack Germany without shedding oceans of blood in France. I don’t wonder that Britain tried that approach first.
Germany was treaty bound to honor the neutrality of Belgium. That they didn’t, brought in Britain.
Rule of thumb: Breaking rules of civilized warfare gives a temporary advantage, but also give you more enemies.
Completely off-topic, I'd suppose, but will bite anyway:
For the US, WWI was not about who had more "right" to Empire.
In those days, everyone had empires, even the US.
The key fact to remember about WWI is that US investors had sunk $billions into Britain & France, and didn't want to see that money lost.
And with the impending collapse of Russia, Germany looked like the winner, unless the US intervened.
So the US did intervene, Germans were defeated and US prosperity protected, at least for ten more years.
What happened next is a different subject, but my point is, without US intervention in WWI, our Great Depression would have begun in 1919.
Speaking of hitting, Buchanan, History, and going even farther afield from topic, Pat's nickname in college was "The Coldcocker." If he didn't like your tie, or thought the girl you were talking to was too pretty for you, he would just haul off and punch! He was ahead of his time in inventing the ghetto "Knockout" game.
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