It’s pretty much part of American mythos that he was a brilliant commander, but was he?
Military history is not my area, but from the books I’ve read he seems to have been a great organizer (his defenses during the first year of the war were well done) and he was certainly not a blithering incompetent, but some of his greatest victories seem to have relied on northern blunders while Gettysburg, his climactic defeat, was (from what I’ve read and in my not militaristically over-informed opinion) his fault (or perhaps Longstreet’s for not obeying orders and attacking earlier, but Lee knew of this and even conceded for Longstreet to wait for reinforcement).
Anyway, I’m eager to read what people better informed than I have to say about it. Was Lee a genius or not? Was Pickett’s Charge ill advised from the start or is it one of those “he’d have been called a genius if it had worked” (ala Cold Harbor) things? Any books you’d recommend?
(Won’t be surprised if this one sinks like the Titanic hauling elephants, but worth a shot.)
He played a loosing hand very well indeed. He focused on what was important and ignored much of what was extraneous. If his victories resulted from bungling on the other side, so what? Who can this not be said of?
He provided the Army of Northern Virginia with the determination it needed to survive to fight another day.
You’re not going to win every battle. And really what someone like Lee would have been doing is running the war, not the battles. So for how smart or not-smart he was you really need to look at some simple stuff like how many troops he had versus how many the other guy had, how well armed they were versus the other guy, how long he was able to keep putting up a fight, etc.
Yes, he eventually lost the war, and he certainly lost several battles, but to accomplish as much as he did with what he had, you have to assume that he was head and shoulders above his opponents.
IANAMH, but I read a book with several short essays by a MH once (sorry, it’s been years and I can’t remember his name). He claimed that what made, for example, Eisenhower a better choice for megaboss than his “shining star” subordinate Patton was being a good organizer. It’s what bosses do.
At least few authorities ( and I’m thinking of Bevin Alexander in particular ) have argued that he was an exceptional tactician, but that his ( supported by Jefferson Davis ) strategic conception of how the Civil War should be won was fatally flawed. In this view Lee’s concentration on engaging in set-piece battles, however successful in the short run, was a losing proposition long-term in the face of the North’s vastly greater resources in both men and materials.
Alexander instead tends to champion Stonewall Jackson and Sherman as superior strategic minds over either Lee or a butcher like Grant ( whose Vicksburg campaign was brilliant, but his grinding northern Virginia one less so ). Jackson relied on threatening multiple high-value targets and misdirecting his enemies such that they had to commit and divide their forces - he at one point favored a bold offensive designed not to engage the Union armies, but rather to threaten either to ravage the industrial heartland of the North or seize the capital ( and when the disposition of forces were such that the North wasn’t prepared to adequately thwart both threats simultaneously ). I think Alexander makes a decent case that either of those would have won the war in the early stages, when the northern populace was less than enthusiastic ( in the wake of debacles like the First Bull Run ).
Grant gets a bad rap. In many ways he provided a prelude to modern war. Unlike other Union generals, he did not see much purpose in capturing the field, the traditional measure of winning a battle. He saw his job as crushing the opposing army. That done, all territorial goals fall with no trouble at all.
Getting back to the OP, I would say there were enough examples, like Chancellorsville, of Lee’s tactical genius to demonstrate that he was a very good tactician, as well as strategist. Remember, Gettysburg was a loss, but it wasn’t a loss because of anything inherent in the situation other than the Union managed to obtain a better position from which to fight, and Lee didn’t really have the option of marching away to fight another day; the die was cast at that point.
As for his strategic abilities, I think it only need be said that, from 6/1/62, it took the Union army almost three full years to overcome the resistance of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, which is attributable in large part to Lee’s strategic abilities. The fault of the Antietam/Sharpsburg and Gettysburg campaigns wasn’t his lack of strategic military capabilities, but rather the fundamental misunderstanding that persisted on both sides of the war that, if only the supporters on the other side would hear the trumpets of the army of the righteous, they would flock to the banner, and the opposition would tremble and lose heart and faith (see the Union activities in Kentucky, for example). And to be completely fair to Lee, had Stuart not been less of a “right arm” than Jackson had been, the Confederate forces might well have won at Gettysburg. Then what?
I disagree that it was necessarily a losing hand. As was pointed out, he was a great tactician, but I’m not sure he saw the big picture. He did not need to take an inch of ground. He did not need to win a single battle. All he had to do was hold out until the North got tired of fighting. This gave him a huge advantage. The disparity between the US and Iraq is far greater than the disparity between Union and Confederate was, but the Iraqis understand the big picture and they are handing us our asses. Imagine if the Iraqis were trying to match our army in conventional battles- it would be over in five minutes.
I think Lee fought battles well, but I agree that making offensive moves was the wrong approach and the advance into Pennsylvania showed it. The Union was bound to win a battle of attrition. As soon as Lincoln found a general who understood that, Grant, the Confederacy was over. All Grant need do is keep coming on all fronts and the outcome was certain. In the final stages of the war too much is made of Lee. In the west General Thomas destroyed the army of John B. Hood at Nashville thus eliminating Confederate power there. At the same time Sherman’s army was going, unimpeded, through the heart of Georgia and South Carolina destrying everything in its path.New Orleans was in Union hands closing off access there to the outside world and the Union coastal blockade was increasingly effective. Lee’s surrender was a great psychological blow to Confederate morale, but was only a part of the military destruction.
It could have worked…with massive losses. The Ridge in question has almost no real relief. It was not at all like getting up Little Round Top or Lookout Mountain. Pickett’s Charge had a reasonable chance of succeeding, if they’d only been able to push a few more yards to the crest. It was a pretty close thing.
Short reply, gotta run. I think neither. Lee had been caught up in the recent successes on the field were his men were outnumbered but had won. The “Rebel Yell” has famous and feared and his men had overcome immense odds. I think from my reading that he was caught up in bravado of the time and misjudged the call.
I’d also add that, as to knowing the big picture, he was probably as fully aware as communications and surveillance of the time allowed. At the height of the war there were 4 million Union troops and One million Confederates, most of whom were farmers and such. The North had almost all the trains, tracks, iron and coal sources and well as the foundries to produce the tools of war. Cannons, muskets, ammo, wagon wheels, as well as trained medical personnel for casualties and a large population to draw from to sustain a war. They also had a viable fleet and manpower to use it to form an effective blockade around the South to prevent movement and resupply by foreign sources. I don’t think a war of attrition against the North would have fared well.
I think he well knew the lopsided nature of the conflict and did admirably with the resources at hand.
I think Lee is over-rated. He was a great operational leader but he was over his head as a strategic planner. Compare him to that other famous fighting Virginian, George Washington. Washington realized he was fighting against an opponent that had more military resources and therefore avoided most opportunities for battle - he realized that keeping his army in existence was more important than winning battles. Lee failed to figure this out.
Hmm, I wonder how many Southerners would have looked at the current situation in Iraq and think, “Yeah, we want that!”
Whether Lee missed out on the “big picture” depends on what you consider to be Southern war aims. Separation, of course, but at what acceptable cost? Lee was certainly aware of guerrilla tactics and their effectiveness – the term comes from the “Spanish ulcer” of irregulars who ground down Napoleon’s forces during the Penninsular Campaign.
But he was also aware of what such a strategy would entail for the South – a massive, open-ended military occupation of Southern territory that would employ increasingly brutal tactics to supress the insurgency. Instead of the war being fought on the battlefield, it would be fought in Southern homes as the Union sought to root out irregulars hiding among the citizenry, with all the collateral damage that would entail. Reconstruction would have looked like a picnic in comparison.
True, eventually the North may have decided the pain wasn’t worth it, but that likely would have taken years or decades during which the South likely would have been reduced to cinders.
Well, you may be taking the analogy further than I intended. It wasn’t meant to be a side-by-side comparison, merely a demonstration that having what would conventionally considered “a losing hand” doesn’t always spell defeat.
The power gap between the US and Iraqis is far greater than the power gap between Union and Confederate. Most importantly, the Confederates had an army that could have remained elusive, not in civilian homes, as you suggest, but in the wilderness that they knew well. The Union army would have had to occupy huge areas, stretching them thin enough for raids, and their long supply lines would have been very vulnerable as well. Little Nemo made a great point about the Continental Army’s tactics that are a much better example than my Iraq analogy.
If Lee thought a guerilla war wasn’t worth the cost and if he had realized (as he should have) that he couldn’t win a conventional war, then the rational plan would have been a surrender in 1860 and rejoining the Union under the best terms that could be negotiated.
I think in 1860 Buchanan would have been really surprised to get a surrender offer.
I don’t think Lee had the slightest delusions about the position the South was in and if I’m not mistaken (I can’t provide a cite but then I haven’t looked for one) he said as much in his correspondence before the war. (Varina Davis most certainly said so, repeatedly in fact, up until she was made first lady of the CSA). I think his belief it would be next to impossible to win figured as heavily in his not wanting to fight as his disapproval of secession and his belief that slavery needed to go (he was not a racial egalitarian by any means [except when compared to Jefferson Davis or Robert Toombs or, for that matter, Sherman] and probably loathed Harriet Beecher Stowe, but he thought slavery was an outdated and amoral institution). Having finally taken the field after his initial “I’ll help but I won’t fire a shot” phase I don’t think he could bring himself to surrender, and he was probably right that one solid victory on northern soil would multiply the already very vocal antiwar factions in the north. I’m not sure how much he knew about the fortifications of D.C.; it was one of the least defended capitol city in the world at the beginning of the war and while, as mentioned above, it had become the most fortified, I’m not sure how much the South knew about its new strength.
I understand your point, and I’m just trying to point out that Lee didn’t have many “winning” options that wouldn’t destroy the very Southern economy, culture and way of life that he was trying to protect. Seccession was not an end in and of itself – it was the means by which Southern politicians sought to secure the lifestyle and institutions (i.e. slavery) that they perceived to be under threat by Northern abolitionists. The election of a (somewhat) abolitionist President left the South with the belief that only political separation could secure their way of life.
But any hostile occupation, even along the revised lines you suggest, would have shreded the Southern economy and culture. Southern troops hiding in the woods would still need to be fed and supplied by a friendly populace, and the Union would have come down hard on real or suspected “collaborators”. The Union would not be without supporters in the South – including millions of newly freed slaves – who could be organized into para-military units to meet reprisal with reprisal. Look at what did end up happening in Missouri, where pro-Union and pro-Confederate irregulars terroized the countryside and civil society all but fell apart.
Looking at his options, Lee chose the path that seemed to offer the best hope of protecting the Southern way of life – defend Southern territory while trying to inflict enough pain on the North to prod them toward a favorable political settlement before they could bring their overwhelming resources to bear. Did it work? Well, no. But it was probably the only path that gave him a shot, and once it failed he was right not to turn to guerrila warfare to acheive his goals.
Would Lee have been better off (in strategic terms) fighting a guerrilla war? Probably. But that misses one of the principle aims of the war – to preserve slavery. If the Union Army had been allowed to roam freely through the South, emancipation would have come much sooner. Moreover, all those blowhard Southern politicians who started the war would have been put on the run or captured. Lee was constrained by these considerations.
I’ll second what flurb said. Look at Iraq now, and think of the hell that a long-term guerilla war in the South would have been. They could have kept the North from winning, but at a horrific cost to the South.
The war was far too bloody as it was. We should all be thankful that the Southern generals, from Lee on down, had the sense to call it quits, and tell their soldiers to do the same.
