If you look at the American Civil War, there are many important decisions on both sides that helped bring it to a conclusion.
Gettysburg is rightly viewed by most as **the **battle that pivoted the war in favor of the North for good. The South simply couldn’t replace the men it was losing like the North could, and any chance they had to get foreign recognition and aid was gone. It was just a matter of time until the South bled to death.
Which brings me to my question.
If Lee never invaded the North but instead fought a defensive war on his soil, and on his chosen terrain, would the South have won the war, or would the North still win?
When you look at the American Revolution, or even the Vietnam War, two things seem to stand out as vital keys to victory:
The victorious army (the american patriots in the revolution, and the north vietnamese in Vietnam) was fighting a superior opponent, but* on their own ground*.
Both victors didn’t have to win complete victory… but they did have to keep an army in the field. That’s a big difference in strategy. No knockout blow was needed, but instead, they turned to guerrilla warfare to keep the larger force engaged without risking their entire army to do it.
If Lee’s Army of NoVa isn’t battered at Gettysburg, and he decides to make the Union chase him on his ground, I believe the South wins the Civil War. Lee would have had the ability to pick the ground he fought the Union on, and he knew that time was on his side with the Union elections coming up.
I believe the population of the North would have pushed Lincoln to sue for peace or be pushed out of office. Whoever won, like a George McClellan, would have given the people what they wanted. An end to the Civil War and to let the South go away in peace.
I think Lee could have fielded a great army easily for 3 or maybe 4 more years. I don’t think the Union would have ever knocked him out unless, like Gettysburg, he made a huge tactical blunder. The South would have won the war simply by outlasting the North.
Well, does the North still blockade the various Southern ports? The Confederacy could gradually be starved into submission, or at least critically deprived of European trade.
Total Rebel deaths at Gettysburg were, IIRC, about 15,000 men. I don’t mean to sneeze at fifteen thousand lives, but that’s a small portion of Confederate losses during the war as a whole.
Great generals do not win battles, they win campaigns. The South was not done in by a single battle, and many of the battles that were the most destructive were the ones where they were on the defensive, anyway. They lost their biggest city in April of 1862 and the Mississippi was conquered by mid 1863, all in Union offensives.
I don’t think, in the grand scheme of things, Lee would have changed the course of the war at all had he held back a little more.
Vicksburg falling was the end of the Confederacy. Gettysburg hurt, but it was hardly a fatal blow defensively. It is hard to imagine that Grant would not have done pretty much the same thing to Lee if Gettysburg hadn’t happened.
Even ignoring indivudual battles, Lee was not the man the south needed to win the war. He concentrated on winning battles and that is what the ANV was set up to do. He really had no idea what to do strategically and the less said about his logistic abilities the better.
I think he had the right idea strategically. He realized that the south couldn’t win a defensive war, and that a major victory in northern territory was the best chance at foreign recognition and intervention. As long as everybody was fighting and dying “over there” the north could continue to beat the shit out of the south as long as was necessary. Soon as bad shit happens in northern soil, people start thinking “why are we fighting, again?”
The North still wins. Might be even uglier, but they win.
The problem is Lee would have very little ground to pick from as long as he and Davis were obsessed with protecting Richmond. Grant would have known exactly what button to push - threaten Richmond and Lee has very little room to maneuver. I just don’t seeing much difference from what happened historically. Grant would use his large material advantage to bludgeon Lee into stasis and Sherman would gut the Confederacy from the underside. In the grand scheme of things, saving the losses at Gettysburg weren’t anywhere near enough to make up for the Union superiority in men and material. Forced into a war of attrition, Lee still loses.
As AK84 noted, Lee was probably the wrong man for the job, though obviously pickers can’t be choosy. The best strategic mind in the south was probably Stonewall Jackson. His idea ( proposed after 1rst Manassas and again after the Shenandoah campaign ) to sweep across the Union rear threatening multiple targets, cutting communications and taking lightly defended major population centers, all while avoiding strong concentrations of Union forces, was probably in hindsight the best shot at ending the war through internal Union political pressure. Whether he could have pulled it off is an open question ( but given Jackson’s performance in the Shenandoah, it seems possible ). But it was a page right out of Sherman’s book and a far more imaginative strategic concept than any of those Lee implemented.
By the time Gettysburg rolls around the Confederacy was already well down the road to being truly fucked, barring some serious luck.
Yes. I don’t think you can just toss out the north’s superiority over the south in this area. The union navy had the ability to put a major dent in the Confederacy’s almost endless coastline. Lee’s defensive strategy won’t change this.
That was dead. Not casualties or POW’s. According to Wikipedia (not THE source, but a quick one to use), the CSA had 75K men and lost 27K. That’s over a third of his strength in 3 days. Not to mention the loss of horses, draft animals, cannon, and other stores that weren’t easily replaced.
True, but if Lee had the ability to move part or all of his army to strategic areas, the outcome of some of those campaigns may have been different.
you may be right. However, don’t forget that Lee would have been in a position to send a large part of his force to try to give relief to Vicksburg without giving up defensive security to Richmond.
Are you saying that Lee could not, if given the ground rules, couldn’t fight a defensive campaign? Certainly he proved you correct at Gettysburg, as he didn’t hold any of the high ground, his army was made up with about 20K less men and his line was longer than the Unions. So many problems in Gettysburg, I’m amazed he tried the center assault on day 3.
That’s been the conventional wisdom. However, part of me thinks that the drive into the North was driven by ego. Fighting at Gettsburg made no sense at all. It made even less sense to be the aggressor given his terrain.
I’m not convinced that Grant would have been put in charge of the Army of the Potomac if Lee was playing a different game. It’s impossible to know for sure, but assuming he is permitted to leave the west is not a slam dunk.
[QUOTE=Tamerlane;14215972
As AK84 noted, Lee was probably the wrong man for the job, though obviously pickers can’t be choosy. The best strategic mind in the south was probably Stonewall Jackson. His idea ( proposed after 1rst Manassas and again after the Shenandoah campaign ) to sweep across the Union rear threatening multiple targets, cutting communications and taking lightly defended major population centers, all while avoiding strong concentrations of Union forces, was probably in hindsight the best shot at ending the war through internal Union political pressure. Whether he could have pulled it off is an open question ( but given Jackson’s performance in the Shenandoah, it seems possible ). But it was a page right out of Sherman’s book and a far more imaginative strategic concept than any of those Lee implemented.
By the time Gettysburg rolls around the Confederacy was already well down the road to being truly fucked, barring some serious luck.[/QUOTE]
I too believe Jackson was the best strategic mind the South had. And in my opinion, losing Jackson was one of the biggest nails in the coffin of the CSA. What he did during the Shenadoah campaign was brilliant, and his ability to beat Union generals consistently would have continued if he was alive throughout the war.
I agree with you that before Gettysburg, the south was well down the road to eventual loss, but if Gettysburg never happened, the war would have lasted much longer than 1865. The North was already tired of the war. Imagine if 1866 rolled around with not an end in sight.
The South still would have lost. It just would have taken more time. Wars of attrition are messy, but the South didn’t have the industry or the population to sustain an extended war. Grant, Sheridan, Sherman and the rest would just slowly grind Lee’s forces into mincemeat. As noted, Vicksburg was the key. Even if Lee had shifted forces west, Grant was still going to win eventually. Add in the blockade and the South is a goner.
Victory in that war wasn’t decided by military strategy but by politics and simple determination. As long as the Union, with its vastly bigger population and industrial base, was determined to win, it was going to. All the slave regime could hope for was to make the people of the North decide ending slavery wasn’t worth the human cost anymore. How could they have accomplished that except by extracting that cost?
Even militarily, a defensive strategy works if you have superior numbers, position, equipment, etc. That describes the Union, not the rebels. All Lee and Davis could have accomplished was to watch their forces crumble into scattered guerrilla bands that would have kept the bloodshed going on for many more years.
Gettysburg was a desperate attempt to keep Vicksburg from being the fatal blow the South knew it would be. Both were lost on July 4, 1863.
Yes, Lee’s losses were heavy in Gettysburg. But he really wouldn’t have been able to last any longer than he did. Sherman’s march was completely unaffected by what happened there, and if Lee had managed to hold off Grant because he still had his pre-Gettysburg army, Sherman would simply have come up from his rear and sandwiched him in. Sherman was held back, as a matter of fact, so that Grant’s army could be the one that defeated Lee. If Gettysburg hadn’t happened, Sherman wouldn’t have been held back. Same result, at pretty much the same time.
The above are pretty good analyses. Gettysburg was Lee’s big chance to win the war by inflicting major symbolic damage on the Union by capturing (and, let’s face it, razing) Washington D.C. It was a last-ditch effort to pull the war back from the brink and had Lee beaten Grant at Gettysburg, I think one can make a case for Southern victory. The Confederacy could still never outproduce the Union and win Grant’s war of attrition, but losing Washington might demoralize the North enough to lose Lincoln the election and end the war.
Maybe. If you turn that around and ask whether the North would have won fighting a defensive war along the lines of the Anaconda Plan, yes that could well have worked.
But generals, not to mention politicians and the public are notably intolerant of the idea of continually staying on the defensive. If Lee and his colleagues had stuck to this, they’d arguably have been replaced by more offensive-minded generals (example: Joe Johnston was pretty good at fighting a defensive campaign and frustrating Sherman for quite awhile, but Johnston got sacked in favor of the more aggressive Hood, which worked out nicely for the Union forces).
It’s questionable to me whether a less battered Lee could have prevented Union victories at Chattanooga and Atlanta, both of which gave a sizable boost to Lincoln’s re-election effort.
Interesting comparison though between the Confederates and the North Vietnamese. The Confederates stage a showy raid into Pennsylvania and are thrown back, with the Union considering that it’s victorious and pressing on to final victory. The North Vietnamese stage the Tet offensive and are also thrown back with heavy losses, but it’s seen as a Pyrrhic victory for the U.S. :dubious:
Vicksburg fell the same day Gettysburg ended. I don’t quite understand how not invading Pennsylvania in favour of a defensive stance frees up troops to go to Vicksburg; if Lee were to emphasize defending Richmond, why would be send away his troops to Mississippi?
Aside from the fact that it wouldn’t be in Lee’s nature to do that anyway, it’s doubtful his masters would have let him pare down the Army of Northern Virginia. Vicksburg was lost, and with it the Mississippi, and with it the war.
There is no evidence at all Jackson had any strategic sense of any sort. He may have been something of a tactical and operational genius (it’s equally possible he was just an unpredictable nutball, but he inspired his men, so frankly, it worked.) Strategic understanding, however, he showed no promise for and never had the opportunity to.
Nitpick; Grant wasn’t at Gettysburg. The Union commander there was George Meade. When Gettysburg was happening, Grant was conquering Vicksburg, in command of the Army of the Tennessee.
I agree with the rest of your post, but I gotta disagree with this. Jackson’s proposed strategy of attacking the North’s will to win by invading Maryland and Pennsylvania in the rear of the Army of the Potomac which was largely locked northeast of Richmond, while pretty audacious, also seems sensible to me. At least in hindsight. If McClellan panicked ( or was recalled by a panicked Union government ) and pulled back to defend Washington he would have had Johnston ( or Lee depending on the time frame ) threatening his rear. It would have at least temporarily thrown the Union on the strategic defensive and given McClellan’s cautiousness might well have allowed Jackson to implement his plan to raze Baltimore, cut rail lines and burn factories galore. The pressure to negotiate might have become intolerable for Lincoln.
Of course maybe Jackson would have flubbed it and got caught out and annihilated to little purpose. You’re right that he never had the opportunity to put his idea into practice due to Lee and Davis’ recalcitrance. And maybe in the end he would have proved not up to the task of handling an entire 40,000 man army like requested for his counteroffensive. Let alone the question of whether he could have managed to support himself logistically. But if it was a risky maneuver, it nonetheless had a chance at paying big dividends. And let’s face it - the Confederacy probably never had a great shot at winning the war. It may be they needed to take just such a risk if they were going to pull off secession.
Fair 'nough. Consider that nit picked. My larger point was that the strategy of attrition that Grant pursued at the end of the war would have still have been capable of defeating Lee if and only if the Union retained the political will to fight, something that may not have happened if Lincoln lost the election to McClellan.
I agree. The Union had all the advantages. The Confederates were never going to win a military victory. So their only hope was to win a political victory.
And it’s tough to judge what would have been the best Confederate military strategy for winning a political victory. Hold to the defensive and drag the war on as long as possible and hope the United States got tired of fighting? Head into Union territory and hope a victory in the north scared the American government? As it turned out, Confederate attempts to follow the latter strategy failed - the United States showed it could adequately defend northern territory. Meanwhile, the Confederate government showed it was not able to adequately defend southern territory. Once the northern people knew that the Confederates could be contained and conquered at a reasonable cost, the Confederate cause was lost - the will of the United States wasn’t going to break.