Even if that “metropolis” were Washington? I have never really understood why, with the enemy capital so close and so lightly defended, and with South-friendly Maryland on the other side, Lee never seriously attempted to go around it and cut it off. The demoralization, or at least serious confusion, that would have caused the North seems like it might have been decisive, doesn’t it?
LIGHTLY DEFENDED?
If there was a city in the new world more fortified than Washington City during the Civil War I’d want to see schematics.
Sure, maybe at the beginning of the war. But fortification started quickly upon realizing that one of the confederate states was (literally) across the river and that from Arlington Heights the entire federal district could have easily been destroyed by artillery.
[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
I have never really understood why, with the enemy capital so close and so lightly defended, and with South-friendly Maryland on the other side, Lee never seriously attempted to go around it and cut it off. QUOTE]
Well, to some extent, the invasions of Maryland and Pennsyvania were attempts to do that, and Gen. Early did raid Washington in '64 (Battle of Monocacy, Battle of Ft. Stevens). But Washington was pretty heavily defended, actually. The garrison was pretty large, and the city was ringed with forts. Here’s a map of Civil War Washington. (You can click on the individual fort for a description).
http://www.nps.gov/rocr/ftcircle/
Lee just couldn’t spare the men or time needed to besiege Washington, when places like Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and Pittsburg were reasonably undefended.
I did primarily mean early in the war, when the South had its best chance. The fortifications existed, yes, but the manpower for them was another question. Yes, Washington could be reinforced fairly quickly when Johnny Reb was thought to be near, but the surrounding area was still hostile and willing to support a siege. The actual capture of Washington wasn’t necessary, nor even coming withing artillery range - just a solid siege might have had the desired effect.
Proof once again that spell check is no substitute for proof reading. “Army of the Potomac.”
The basic problem is that Bobby Lee, even with Jackson at his side, was never able to pull off a battle of annihilation that resulted in the destruction of the enemy force as a fighting organization or its capture in toto. McClellan had the chance to do it at Antietam but lacked the determination to commit his whole army to the effort. Grant pulled it off at Vicksburg and Fort Donelson; Thomas effectively destroyed Hood’s Army of Tennessee at Nashville. Lee was on the brink of being on the wrong end of an annihilating battle when he pulled out of the lines around Petersburg and Richmond. As long as Confederate military successes fell sort of depriving the Union of an effective fighting force the war was going to continue and the longer the war lasted the less the chance that the Confederacy was going to gain independence. While Lee stacked up a famous list of victories in the East and Bragg and Forrest and Johnston and Johnson had their victories in the West none of those victories came anyplace to destroying the opposing Union force.
I don’t believe so.
The industrial might of the North was just too great, as was the number of bodies it could throw into the effort. I believe Foote makes the point that the Union essentially fought the war with one hand tied behind its back - his example is that the annual regatta on the Charles River for Harvard/Yale/Brown Universities went on every year just as if nothing was going on in the South. Had push come to shove, there were always more boys that could be put in blue.
In Grant, the Union had a general who was willing to use the resources at his disposal. The carnage at Cold Harbor shocked Grant to no end, but it didn’t stop him from continuing the offensive and pushing toward Richmond (our fair city).
All of the above analysis is looking at the problem from the perspective of regular armies in the field, with the hindsight of general surrenders at Appomattox and Bennett House - but what about the partisan option?
In the spring of 1865, Lee and Johnson both had their armies in coherent form. Other Confederate forces were still in the field - Forrest, Watie, and so on. The Army of North Virginia was struggling and undersupplied, no doubt, but what if Lee had issued a dispersal order - hit the hills and start the partisan war? That, after all, is what Davis wanted the generals to do.
The Confederate strategic goal wasn’t necessarily to defeat the Union forces in a set battle - it was to make them give up the fight. Partisan activities, such as Forrest in the Shenadoah and Mosby in northern Virginia, had already demonstrated that a small amount of Confederate forces could tie up large numbers of Union forces, hit the Union forces hard at select points (like destroying railways), and generally make life hell. If all of the Confederate armies dispersed under small local commands, they could count on the support of the country side. The Union would have had to commit large forces to try to put out the insurgency. Even if the Union held traditional targets such as the major cities that wouldn’t be enough to win the war in this scenario, since the ongoing partisan war would have kept Confederate hopes alive - the “Hearts and Minds” would still have been with Bobby Lee, wherever he was hiding out.
The Union strategic goal was to convince the south to return to the Union. Military victory alone would not do that, if the civilian population of the Confederacy continued to oppose the Union. Would the Union have continued to commit wealth and troops to a smouldering insurgency, one that showed no signs of petering out? At some point, wouldn’t the peace parties in the North have started to gain traction with the argument that by holding onto the South by force, the North was undercutting its own political principles at great waste of life and money?
(The above is not my own bright idea, by the way - it’s a short summary of Jay Winik’s thesis in April 1865.)
There is no question in my mind that had the Confederacy resorted to partisan and guerilla war in the aftermath of Lee and Johnson’s surrenders in the spring of 1865, with Lincoln dead and Stanton in effective control of the federal government, with the rage that would have consumed the North with Lincoln martyred and rebels bush whacking we would have been treated to a heavy handed military occupation of the South that would have made the suppression of the Highlands following the defeat Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1756 look like a Sunday school picnic.
Surely Jeff Davis and all his cabinet and all of the Confederate Supreme Court and the members of the Confederate Congress and Lee and Johnson, and Hood and Longstreet and any other Confederate commander of importance would have been tried for treason and hung while lesser lights would have just been hung or shot out of hand. Surely the South would have been relegated to the status of an occupied territory to be readmitted to the Union only when the federal legislature was good and ready and not before – and it would have been a very long time, 1940 maybe. Surely thousands of unreconstructed rebels would have been exiled. Surely full civil rights of Negroes would have never been short stopped by the end of reconstruction and the South would have been the object of a redistribution of land and wealth on the order of what we have seen in the former Rhodesia. Had the Civil War disintegrated into partisan insurrection Savannah might well be a British Crown Colony and French warships would be patrolling Galveston Bay.
While Jeff Davis was too hate filled and bitter to see that, Lee and Johnson did see it. The resolution of the Civil War and the relatively short reconstruction that followed and the relatively speedy restoration of the former Confederate States to full participation in the federal union owes more to Robert E. Lee than to Andy Johnston. It was Lee’s prestige and the affection his solders had for him that prevented insurrection and its bloody and brutal suppression.
Spavined, if I’ve read you correctly, you think that the partisan option couldn’t have been successful? Or is it just too uncertain to call?
My judgment is that the partisan option would have failed to gain independence for the South but would have resulted in the desolation of the South. Had the South risen in guerilla insurrection the crow that Sheridan reported would have to carry its own rations across the Shenandoah Valley would have been on short rations until it got to Mexico.
I wasn’t thinking of Washington, as I think that Lee would have had a hard time cracking it (and couldn’t afford to lay siege for any period of time) .I am not sure that Washington was particularly lightly defended even during Gettysburg, though Meade prioritized on keeping his army between Lee and Washington. My point was more general - how often in relatively recent history (since Napoleon, say) has losing a city (any city) caused a government to call it quits in a major war. Napoleon took Moscow, to no avail. Prussia took Sedan, captured the emperor Napoleon III, laid siege to Paris for a year before being able to inflict some sort of peace treaty. I tend to think that even if McClellan had taken Richmond in a successful peninsular campaign, it might not have ended the war. A capital further from the borders could certainly be reestablished.
I concur that there is a nontrivial chance of the Democrat’s winning in 1864 if Washington or Philly or Baltimore is taken. But could the Dem’s run on a platform of peace through surrender? A bloody, unwinnable war over there may be a cause for peace, but enemy troops right here calls for the defense of our native soil (however much the phrase would gall Lincoln).
Maybe not Philly, but Baltimore was in a slave state that could be expected to secede if the Federals were routed, and Washington was surrounded by slave territory. It doesn’t seem unrealistic that the fall of either Maryland or DC would mean the fall of the other, followed by some kind of divorce settlement.
Since you ask for historical parallels, how about the European nations in both world wars that surrendered to Germany because they were *about * to lose their capitals? France, again, comes to mind.
Maryland was pretty Unionist, though, especially after 1861.
Yeah, Maryland was never really in play for secession after the start of the war. Most of the citizenry just didn’t WANT to secede.
The most important thing said here is by Norther Piper:
The only means that the south could use to win was to inflict a political loss on the north. Place northern leaders in a position in which the political (and economic) cost of continuing the war exceeded the cost of conceding the secession. Lee’s attempt to bring the war to the north in Pennsylvania was founded on that theory…he always knew that the US Army could outweigh the CS Army if it found itself. So he tried to make the cost too high before it could.
With an occupied Harrisburg or Philadelphia I think there would have been even more of the ‘if they want to go let them’ sentiment than already existed. Especially if the southern negotiating position was ‘we’ll leave Philly free and clear and our proud nations can be brothers’.
I think this is also implied in the general orders against looting, the order that all good requisitioned from the north were to be paid for (with confederate dollars!), and the whole ‘have the army sing ‘Maryland, My Maryland’ as we’re marching through’ thing. All attempts to maximize the political cost to northern politicians while not incurring negative northern public opinion.
Jonathan, I hope you know that Lee’s justification for the raid into Pennsylvania in the high summer of 1863 was to force the Federals to lift the siege of Vicksburg, to relieve Federal pressure on Northern Virginia so that a crop could be produced and to encourage the peace party in the North. What it did do was allow Lee to subsist his army on Northern territory for a few weeks and send a fair amount of cattle and grain South along with a fair number of Black residents of Southern Pennsylvania and Western Maryland. Some uncharitable souls have suggested that it was a huge slave catching expedition.
There is also a line of argument that the whole thing was a ploy to prevent the Confederate government from sending a fair portion of Lee’s veteran army off to the Western Theater to directly intervene in the Vicksburg Campaign. That is precisely what happened that fall when Longstreet’s Corps was sent to Bragg’s army and turned the balance in the Battle of Chickamauga.
This was not the first or last time that some American leader thought it politic to conceal the true objective of military operations.
Once the Federal troops had the occupation settled in, sure. It would be human nature to support the people who looked like they were going to win, whoever that is. If the Confederates had taken control, wouldn’t it look like Confederate-sympathizing territory? You mentioned “Maryland, My Maryland” - that wouldn’t have been made the state song by a populace that *inherently * didn’t want to secede. But what the hell.
In order to occupy Harrisburg/Philadelphia they have to well, occupy it. I don’t think this is an option at all. The Confederate armies lack the logistical support to do more than raid the north. Moving through the countryside the Confederacy can supply itself as it goes (at some PR cost even paying Confederate scrip for goods). Once it stops moving . . . The Union can supply by sea the cities they take in the Confederacy but the south does not have the same option, nor do they have the resources to maintain land lines of supply. And Lee cannot risk having his army besieged in the north. The Union armies are much better at rapidly redeploying by land and sea. Gaining Philly temporarily at a cost of Richmond or the Army of Northern Virginia permanently is not a good tradeoff.
I am probably arguing this issue much more strongly than I feel. I just don’t know that the loss/destruction of a city would have a strong enough anti-war impact to offset the outrage - or rather that northern outrage would be directed entirely at Washington and not at Richmond.
I think that Northern Piper is entirely correct. All the Confederacy had to do was not lose for long enough. The problem is that even continued stalemate in the east is insufficient in the face of monatonic decline in the west. Whether the Army of the Tennessee meets the Army of the Potomac in Atlanta or in Appomattox or in Arlington is irrelevant, as long as western Union forces continue to win.
To exhaust the Union’s will to fight the Confederate forces must:
- Stalemate the Army of the Potomac (which they did until Grant took over)
- Bottle up miscellaneous Union forces in New Orleans, the Peninsula, etc (done)
- Prevent Union victory in the trans-Mississippi theater (IIRC done)
- Stalemate the major western Union fighting force (no dice here)
I’m not sure this is entirely correct. While there is not much argument that the Army of the Potomac was unable to achieve a stunning victory in the Virginia Theater and was kept away from the essential logistical center at Richmond, the Trans-Mississippi Theater was pretty much a side show once Missouri was secured by the Union victory at Pea Ridge / Elk Horn Tavern. The whole Red River Campaign was a fiasco but it wasn’t really significant except for the families of the men sacrificed in that enterprise.
The Union armies were temporarily bottled up in the Virginia Peninsula in the spring of 1862 but once Little Mac gave that one up in the summer of 1862 there was not much to bottle up except the federal garrison at Fortress Monroe. On the Mississippi the pressure on the Confederate hold on the river was primarily from the north, not out of New Orleans. The forces that invested Vicksburg came from the Army of the Tennessee, not from New Orleans, although the naval force came from both Memphis and New Orleans. New Orleans was important as a sea port for the Confederacy and its occupation was important because it deprived the Confederacy of an access to the outside world.
The Western Theater was just one Confederate disaster after another starting with Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in the late winter and very early spring of 1862, followed by the failure to destroy Grant’s army at Shiloh / Pittsburgh Landing in April, followed by the capture and occupation of Corinth, an other logistics center. While the investment of Vicksburg took until the spring and summer of 1863, the Army of the Ohio /Army of the Cumberland had pretty much cleared viable Confederate forces out of Tennessee and captured Chattanooga, the spring board to Atlanta, by the summer of 1863. The Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863 was a set back for the North but was redeemed with a vengeance by Lookout Mountain - Missionary Ridge in November.
While there was some anti-war sentiment in the North and the federal government had to turn to conscription to fill the ranks and replace two year regiments there was a steady determination to see the thing through in the late summer of 1863, the “let the erring sisters go” stuff notwithstanding. By the time of the election in 1864 Sherman’s success in Georgia just capped Lincoln’s election victory and made it certain that there would be, as Brigadier General CF Smith advised Grant at Fort Donelson, “no terms for traitors, God damn it!”
Yes, but losing Arkansas and/or Texas would not look good for the Confederates and would have provided much goodness for the Lincoln administration.
Didn’t Grant send someone (Butler?) to the Peninsula during '64-'65 who promptly got stuck there, doing little to help the overall campaign? Quick Googling brings me Butler at the Bermuda Hundred.
New Orleans was also the base of operations for the Red River expedition. My point here is that the Feds cannot be allowed to get additional victories beyond the cities and bases in the South they already held - Northern victories anywhere offset at least partly bad news from the eastern theater.
This is the heart of what I was trying to say. Unless the South can stalemate the North pretty much everywhere they will likely lose.
Agreed, and the 1864 election was after and during Grant’s bloody campaigns in Northern Virginia.
And isn’t CF Smith a great guy. He died of tetanus shortly after Shiloh but while he lived he was a tremendous influence on Grant, who was a little intimidated by him. The enduring image is of General Smith, on a huge bay horse, white mustachios flying in the breeze, taking the Second Iowa over the trenches at Fort Donelson screaming “Come on you God damned Volunteers, I’ll have no shirking here. You volunteered to die for your country and here’s your chance.” He told Grant that a soldier spent his whole life preparing to fight and when the time to fight came he must fight. He also told Grant that his personal motto was to obey all lawful orders and to fear nothing. Great guy and a real character.