150th Anniversary of Gettysburg (and other major Confederate defeats)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

There’s a huge reenactment I understand. I think Confederates are going to be “Skins” this year (which for many Civil War reenactors would be a horrifying thought).

To many Gettysburg is a major “What if?” moment in American history. To me it’s a major “WTF?” moment as I’ve never understood the strategy. (Yes, I know the plan was to invade the north, take or at least threaten D.C., use the leverage to demand peace talks, but…WTF?
There are several ways Lee could conceivably have won the battle, but I think it would have resulted in far more Confederate deaths if he had won: it means that his troops, minus heavy losses, would still have been in enemy territory, advancing on a city that had gone from least-defended to most-fortified capitol city in the Americas in a matter of months and that was easily supplied by ships and by railroads, facing an army that not only outnumbered them as it stood but could replace every man who fell from a population galvanized by the fact they were being invaded while the Confederacy couldn’t replace a single troop and was cut off from any kind of supply line- I can only see it having ended in a total massacre (heavy losses for both sides, no doubt, but the Confederate armies would have been destroyed).
The above is a bit simplified of course, but an “in general” critique. And certainly James Longstreet saw the near impossibility of it: he counselled strongly against invading the north, against fighting the Union at Gettysburg where they’d already entrenched by the time the Confederacy massed force (he was an advocate of “let’s move East and fortify high ground and make them come to us”), and saw Pickett’s Charge for the absolute suicide mission it was from the get-go. His grave (which I pass on my way to work) reads “Oh bitch I mean it, don’t even talk to me about it… No! Shhh! I mean it, don’t bring it up!” (albeit it in symbols and codes only I can read).

Anyway, another Sesquicentennial this week: the surrender of Vicksburg, which unclogged the Mississippi and made it a Union highway. And in Tennessee, Bragg was forced to retreat from Tullahoma to the other side of the Tennessee River.

Speaking of Tennessee, a sesquicentennial from last week of note:
I had never really studied the Battle of Hoover’s Gap until I learned of two ancestors who were there (attached to Wheeler’s Cavalry) and it’s a small but important battle with a distinction I found really interesting: it was the first major use of Spencer repeating rifles and it was a total game changer but not just because of the repeating aspect. As is well documented in all accounts, it was one hell of a wet summer (one soldier wrote that Tullahoma was from the Greek words meaning “mud and more mud”) and Spencer rifles, since they didn’t require paper cartridges, were incomparably better equipped to be fired in the rain. My ancestors units (the 51st Alabama and the 3rd Alabama) were already exhausted from endless patrols and recons, had set up camp for the night expecting the chance to take a rare long sleep during a rainstorm since nobody could attack in such weather, when Surprise! Not only an attack but an attack that was sending bullets flying everywhere and, because of the repeating function, seemed to be coming from a force several times it’s actual size: it was a total rout in a matter of a few minutes, with extremely heavy losses to capture- just a brilliant surprise attack and quick overrun.

2

Man…all that carnage! Over 50,000 dead…I wonder if battles like this would be possible if the had TV. That was horrible!

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the 50K were overall casualties: 7,863 KIA’s - over the course of three days

Three years to the day later, the Austrians and Prussians fought at Sadowa, killing 7,746 between late morning and early afternoon.

4

Historian James McPherson (and probably many others) noted the great strategic problem with Gettysburg was the same problem the Antietam/Sharpsburg campaign posed for Lee: Unless the North surrendered wholesale after a Confederate victory and/or foreign intervention, lee would not be able to STAY on Northern soil. Both “invasions” were actually mere raids. And, win, lose, or draw, Lee would eventually have to retreat back to his supply lines in Confederate territory, which would inevitably look like defeat and retreat – even after a hypothetical victory.

Lee was not a stupid man, so he must have known this, and really been counting on/hoping for a miraculous collapse by the Northerners before his retreat became unavoidable.

Right, conquest was out of the question. I conclude he was hoping for sudden collapse as described above.

And certainly James Longstreet saw …Pickett’s Charge for the absolute suicide mission it was from the get-go.
[/QUOTE]

“General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know, as well as any one, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arrayed for battle can take that position.”

Interestingly, Vicksburg was intentionally surrendered on July 4th; its commander, Pemberton, was a former Northerner (albeit Southerners do not use the word “former” in that context), and he believed he would get more generous terms from Grant on that date. He may have had a point, as Grant relented somewhat from his unconditional surrender demand, and paroled the men instead. And the rank-and-file Union soldiers were eager to give their food to the starving Confederates and townspeople the moment the siege ended.

This was the second of three times Grant captured entire confederate armies (Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and the Army of northern Virginia at Appomattox), a feat unparalleled in American military history (although Washington got two, didn’t he…the Hessians at Trenton, and Cornwallis at Yorktown?).

The Vicksburg campaign had been very long and arduous; Grant’s men had battled the river and the swamps and bayous as much as any Southern boys. But to this day it’s hard to believe the Confederacy left Pemberton hanging on unsupported, as if terrain alone would stop Grant. The failure of the Confederacy to concentrate troops from, well, literally anywhere else to this key point is one of the main reasons they lost the war, and one of the main criticisms of Lee is that he refused to go west and help out.

5

Faulkner summed up the unbearable what if that haunts the Southern imagination:

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In Lee’s defense, Pickett’s charge was supposed to have been supported by a simultaneous flanking attack which would have made its success merely unlikely rather than virtually impossible. (Although Lee also deserves a good share of the blame for not making sure the flanking attack went off on schedule.)

Strategically, the CSA had no chance for winning the war by military means. But a major military victory could have triggered political events like British intervention or Lincoln losing the 1864 election.

7

One of my ancestors was among the thousands captured at Fort Donelson and imprisoned near Chicago. The amazing thing was the MASSIVE prisoner exchange that released him and thousands of others to fight again the next year- that must have been hell on whoever had to arrange the transportation and other matters to get the men back to Mississippi and Tennessee. (Of course that stopped later as the North realized “hey, they can’t replace the men we capture”.)

[QUOTE=Sailboat]
The Vicksburg campaign had been very long and arduous; Grant’s men had battled the river and the swamps and bayous as much as any Southern boys. But to this day it’s hard to believe the Confederacy left Pemberton hanging on unsupported, as if terrain alone would stop Grant. The failure of the Confederacy to concentrate troops from, well, literally anywhere else to this key point is one of the main reasons they lost the war, and one of the main criticisms of Lee is that he refused to go west and help out.
[/QUOTE]

There are accounts of rats selling for gold coins during the worst of the siege (though in fairness that was skinned and dressed).
Jefferson Davis’s brother Joe, who was 24 years his senior and raised him like a son, wrote to him frantically saying (paraphrase) "I’ve indulged you like a spoiled brat since you were a kid, I’ve given you education and plantations and slaves and pretty much everything you have, I am now asking you unapologetically to abuse the hell out of your power and send some troops to protect our plantations. (Joe Davis owned about 5,000 acres, called Hurricane (for an interesting but long reason- his brother was far more interesting than Jefferson) on the Mississippi near Vicksburg and had given Jefferson 1,200 adjoining- most of it is now an island due to a canal being cut.) Davis, perhaps to his credit, would not- he kept all troops assigned to military targets, and as a result his own plantation and his brother’s were overrun, stripped of everything edible or ridable, and even some of the slaves killed for. His brother’s mansion, considered a humdinger- about 15,000 square feet with running water and a form of steampunk air conditioning- was looted and burned to the ground. Jefferson’s house was spared for use as a field hospital (pic- much plainer than you’d think).
He fought for years to get his property returned after the war (fought longer against his brother’s heirs than the Federal government because Joe never put the place in his name) and as a pathetic old man he’d sleep on a cot in the ruined hallway as he tried to resurrect a plantation that had a lot of very bad years even when he had almost 200 slaves to operate it. As with his refusal to acknowledge the south was licked even when Lincoln was in Richmond, he refused to admit that the golden age of the planter class was gone as well. He was staying in the remains of that house when a cold developed into the pneumonia that would slowly take his life and had to be manually picked up and put on a boat because he refused to leave; I’ve always likened his occupation of that ruined house (not to be confused with the quite lovely place he had in Biloxi due to a bequest from a- we’ll call her ‘an admirer’) to the version of the Jason legend in which as a pitiful old man his skull is crushed by a falling beam from the ruins of the Argo.

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A more likely explanation is Grant didn’t have the capacity to hold or transport that many POWs.

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[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Strategically, the CSA had no chance for winning the war by military means. But a major military victory could have triggered political events like British intervention or Lincoln losing the 1864 election.
[/QUOTE]

Britain was never going to intervene; they owned waaaay too many U.S. bonds to risk a federal defeat, and the Suez was nearing completion to get their cotton and other supplies from Egypt and India.

In other news, Forbes.com published an article last week stating that tariffs were the primary reason for the southern secession. It… went badly. It’s no longer on their page. (Where it was is now just an error message.)

10

Corrected link to pic of Jefferson Davis’s occupied home. The banner says “The House That Jeff Built.” It appeared in papers and was sold as prints and CDVs. Brilliant use of propaganda, probably more than if they’d burned it.

11

Eh. The Confederacy’s economic, industrial, and especially military might compared to its adversary more favorably than that of the 13 Colonies or North Vietnam to their respective adversaries. Other revolutions have come from farther behind as well…not that it’s easy.

IMHO, what defeated the South operationally was making strategic errors (or more strategic errors than their adversary, at least). But the more fundamental cause of their defeat could be said to be the logical contradictions of waging a remorseless revolutionary struggle to restore a conservative status quo dedicated to preserving social institutions unchanged.

12

I’m guessing CDV=carte de visite?

13

Interesting thread, though I’ve nothing to add, but, um… what the heck are “skins”?

14

They were also damned by the very “independent streak” they and many of their descendants romanticize: it was the original herding of cats to get them to work together.

[QUOTE=LawMonkey]
Interesting thread, though I’ve nothing to add, but, um… what the heck are “skins”?
[/QUOTE]

A bad joke- the “shirts v. skins” sports reference.

15

Yes. Some were like postcards.

16

I think you’re talking about Ewell’s fight to seize Culp’s Hill, which petered out before Pickett’s charge was ready. That’s a flanking attack in the broad sense, although it would more have served to draw reserves away from the point of Pickett’s attack than actually outflank the federal line at that point.

Another factor in the failure of Pickett’s charge is the artillery preparation. Before the charge, 150 to 170 Confederate guns opened a preliminary cannonade to break the Union line at the chosen point of attack. This was the largest artillery barrage, not just of the war, but ever in the Western hemisphere. Confederate artillerymen were short on ammunition, and eventually slackened their fire before using the last of their reserve (which was held back in case of an emergency), but the larger problem was the low standard of training in the Confederate artillery arm – the gunners failed to anticipate a common problem with sustained barrages, and did not correct for the progressive shock of recoil driving the tails of the cannons lower, thus inadvertently elevating their muzzles. Much of the shot flew high and landed well behind the strong Union position they were trying to destroy. Smoke prevented them from realizing this was happening.

I’ve read that more experienced Union gunners recognized the problem from watching the fall of the Confederate shot.

In later wars, especially World War I, the limits of artillery preparation would gradually become better understood, but as of Gettysburg, it had never been tried on that scale, and Lee may have been hoping it would work a lot better than it did.

17

[QUOTE=Sailboat]

“General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know, as well as any one, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arrayed for battle can take that position.”

[/QUOTE]

Longstreet would also give an ear full to anybody who accused the Yankees of being cowards. He said repeatedly that the Union troops at Fredericksburg were the bravest men he ever saw in two wars and that any men who went into battle thinking of the northerners as classless rabble was a damned fool who’d probably get killed.

18

Another point to make is that if they had still been using smooth bore muskets and the same tactics that had been used in previous wars, Pickett’s charge probably would have been successful, though still a bit costly in terms of men. The generals of the Civil War were a bit slow to learn the lesson that those types of charges were now obsolete.

Pickett’s charge unfortunately wasn’t the only disastrous charge like that during the war.

19

A pity Chamberlain’s bayonet charge is not as famous as Pickett’s; that was skill and discipline and bravery all in perfect harmony.

20

But those revolutions followed the path I described. The Colonials and the Vietnamese didn’t defeat their enemies in military terms; both the British and the Americans still had the ability to keep fighting. But military events in the field triggered political events that were what actually won the war.

Americans don’t like to acknowledge it but the thing that won the American Revolution was French intervention. Saratoga was a turning point not because an American army beat a British army but because it convinced France to join the war. The Tet Offensive wasn’t even a battlefield victory for the North Vietnamese - but it was a strategic victory for them because it caused a political change in Washington.