Robert E. Lee as Military Commander

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
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.
[/quote]

Well, we don’t know how long it would have been. There was a lot of pressure in the North to end the war early; perhaps if the South had been using guerilla tactics the number of voices would have grown. It was big military victories that silenced those voices, which would not happen in a guerilla war. Once again, look at the example of George Washington. There was certainly some hardship endured by civilians during the Revolutionary War but nothing that the country couldn’t recover from.

Perhaps, but you can also fault Lee for not coming to his senses and calling it quits sooner. He certainly continued to fight long after it was clear he could not win. I could see maybe holding out until November 1864 in hopes that Lincoln would be defeated, but once he was re-elected it should have been clear that he could not win.

A great book that addresses all these issues is Lee Considered by historian (and my relative, sort of!) Alan Nolan.

22

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
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.
[/QUOTE]

Especially considering that the CSA government (Davis particularly) was furious with Lee for surrendering and, while he himself was on the run in South Carolina, sent orders to Johnston to dismiss his infantry and keep fighting as geurilla forces with his cavalry. (Johnston’s reply was essentially Dear Jeff/Up Yours/When You Get Out of Prison Drop Me a Line.)

23

One other crucial point that guided the South and Lee’s strategy was that they felt that thye really needed to get the support of England and France if they were to win. They knew they were unlikley to win a drawn out war, but if they could show enough resolve and win enough battles the European powers would support them and that would force the North to sue for peace. Whether that would have ever happened is hard to say, England would have found it very hard to support the South, and in their minds slavery. France would not support the South if England was not also planning to.

24

[QUOTE=Don’t Call Me Shirley]
Perhaps, but you can also fault Lee for not coming to his senses and calling it quits sooner. He certainly continued to fight long after it was clear he could not win. I could see maybe holding out until November 1864 in hopes that Lincoln would be defeated, but once he was re-elected it should have been clear that he could not win.

A great book that addresses all these issues is Lee Considered by historian (and my relative, sort of!) Alan Nolan.
[/QUOTE]
It is so rare as to be unheard of for military officers to surrender an army that is still capable of defending itself. Lee simply couldn’t quit, both by training and inclination.

25

The thing that Lee did better than any other American general (with the possible exception of Washington) is inspire men to follow him. There were better tacticians, braver generals and even more intelligent, but none had the love of the common man like Lee. Everytime I find something written by any rank of soldier in the Confederacy, it always speaks of his love for Lee. From my readings of history, by the end of the war, most of the soldiers seemed to be fighting for Lee not necessarily for “The South.”

Having been in the military in war time, I can tell you that trait is very important. It is possibly the most important trait a general can have. It carried Washington through the Revolution.

26

[QUOTE=TV time]
The thing that Lee did better than any other American general (with the possible exception of Washington) is inspire men to follow him… I can tell you that trait is very important. It is possibly the most important trait a general can have.
[/QUOTE]

It’s also one credited with the Union victory at Gettysburg. Hancock’s inspiration is credited by many with his troops holding the line, while Pickett was famously invisible and Longstreet was famously against the charge from the get-go. Similar stories with Chamberlain and Little Round Top.

27

[QUOTE=Sampiro]
It’s also one credited with the Union victory at Gettysburg. Hancock’s inspiration is credited by many with his troops holding the line, while Pickett was famously invisible and Longstreet was famously against the charge from the get-go. Similar stories with Chamberlain and Little Round Top.
[/QUOTE]
As is the case with BG Norman Cota with the 29th Infantry Division Ranger battallion on Omaha Beach.

28

According to Paul Johnson in A History of the American People, Lee’s weakness was that he was too much of a gentleman to make it clear to his junior officers that his orders were orders, not suggestions. That’s why he lost at Gettysburg – lack of coordination.

29

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
According to Paul Johnson in A History of the American People, Lee’s weakness was that he was too much of a gentleman to make it clear to his junior officers that his orders were orders, not suggestions. That’s why he lost at Gettysburg – lack of coordination.
[/QUOTE]

This is a basic misunderstanding of command structure at the time. We forget in today’s communication dependent world how it was back then.

It was very difficult to co-ordinate military maneuvers in the 19th century. Anytime people had to work over long distances, or separated by difficult terrain, or the confusion of battle, precise co-ordination became quite near impossible.

As a result, command structure was looser. A supreme commander would give his juniors a set of orders, which were relatively broad and general. “Be at Smithtown by March 23; I intend to attack at dawn on March 24.” Not, “Be on the Hancock Farm south of the Field Road by 2:30 PM on March 23; you will then attack at 5:30 am on March 24, using the Shady Lane past Round Lake, and are not to withdraw without my direct approval.” The orders usually left a large amount of room for initiative and improvisation. Hopefully, you had subordinate officers who understood your plans, knew how to make them happen best, and didn’t have their own agendas or egos that made them want to cause you to lose, or them to carry out their orders less than the best way possible.

In the Civil War, on both sides, especially early in the War, this tended not to be the case. Junior generals, etc., would mis-interpret, would take their own initiative to do things that were contrary to the main plans, would sit on their asses and do nothing out of “concern” for some relatively unimportant potentiality, etc. In general, there wasn’t much that could be done, because often these men were in their positions because they had influence in the government; disloging them was dangerous and/or impossible. Instead, you simply tried to work around them when possible, and get them to do what you needed when necessary.

This is why Lee was so devastated when Jackson died. Jackson was the type of officer you wanted commanding units under you. Stuart, for all his flash and dash, was not always so reliable; it caused the Confederates to face considerably more difficulty at Gettysburg than would have been the case had someone more reliable been in charge of the scouting cavalry.

30

Is it just me, or were there a lot of generals involved in the Civil War? I mean, I hear about Longstreet, Sherman, Grant, McClellan, Hood, Lee, and many others. What’s the deal?

31

[QUOTE=spoke-]
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.
[/QUOTE]
<bolding mine>
First let me say that slavery was not a principle aim of the war, least ways not at the beginning. If so, why did the Emancipation Proclamation not be made until January 1, 1863 and them only applied to those Southern States still held by the South?
In my readings (sorry, no particular cite comes to mind) in Antebellum USA there were more Northern Industrial States than Southern Agricultural States and these Northern States had greater populations. This resulted in control of both Houses of Congress. This law-making power led to requirements for the Southern States to sell their crops, foremost among these being the new wonder fabric Cotton, exclusively to the mills and plants of the North and not directly to the many mills existing in Europe. As a result, the North could name their price for the raw materials. I also seem to recall that about this same time, Cuba was considering a bid for Statehood. But since Cuba would come in as a slave/Agrarian State, the Northern policy makes voted them out.
The “blowhard Southern Politicans” were tired of “Taxation without Representation” (sound familiar) and isolation from free market trading. I have no doubt that a war with the industrial north (that had a standing army, factories of military weapons, a navy, iron works and rail systems and a larger population) was not the intent of the Southern Leaders. States Rights and Fair Trade along with representation in Congress was what they sought. Failing this, succession.

Originally posted by Gangster Octopus

<bolding mine>
That is the reason for the timing of the Emancipation Proclamation. The South had won some victories over the armies of the North and were desperately trying to have official recognition from Europe. If they had gotten it, imagine the first time a British Man-O-War, loaded with firearms and food stuffs, faced a Northern ship off the coast of Charlotte, N.C.. Lincoln (formerly a Lawyer for the land barons of the railroad) was no fool and had to stop this. Making the war about slavery would make any supporter of the South look bad in the eyes of the world. It worked.

32

[QUOTE=Captain Carrot]
Is it just me, or were there a lot of generals involved in the Civil War? I mean, I hear about Longstreet, Sherman, Grant, McClellan, Hood, Lee, and many others. What’s the deal?
[/QUOTE]
Even in modern warfare with good communications that allows a somewhat greater span of control for generals there are a lot of them. For approximately every 4000 soldiers or so there is a general.

33

This is really a side issue to the topic of Lee’s military skills, but whenever I see this argument being made, I try to correct it.

The war was about slavery. The seceding southern states all openly declared that the reason they were leaving the Union was to preserve slavery. The federal government resisted the idea of states leaving the union. And then the CSA declared war on the USA. And because the CSA started the war and because their goal was defending slavery, then slavery was the cause of the war.

As for your other issues; no, there was never any federal law forcing southern farmers to sell cotton to northern millers (there was a vigourous pre-war cotton trade with England and other European countries), there was no government attempt to set a price on cotton, cotton was an established commodity not some new product, Cuba (which was a Spanish territory) was never considered for statehood, and the United States did not have a significant standing army or military industry before the war.

The southern states were actually disproportionally strong in Congress and they used the power of the federal government to preserve slavery and limit the ability of individual states to control it. When South Carolina seceded, its only mention of states rights was to proclaim that the federal government shouldn’t allow states to have so many rights.

34

Lee was very good indeed (although calling him a genius is a bit of a stretch) and was consequently a complete disaster for the South. He made them think it was possible for the South to win the war in the east - it wasn’t, in any realistic sense - and meant he got the lion’s share of the South’s scarce resources. As a result the South had an almost unrelieved series of defeats in the West/Mississippi theatre that ensured their doom.

35

Shelby Foote has said that Gettysburg was the price that The South paid for having Lee in charge and I agree with that. Lee did not have to fight there for three days and make the decisions he did – he wasn’t trapped, he did have other choices, he made a decision to get a major battle on there (by throwing more and more chips on the table)– and that was a bad decision that he compounded by making other bad tactical decisions.

Case in point: the most disastrous part of the battle for the Confederacy – “Pickett’s Charge” – did not have a result that was in any way unforeseeable by other competent military commanders on the ground in time and place, Pickett was all for it but Longstreet especially and others suggested, pretty directly, that it was a mistake – Lee ignored this advice – and admitted afterwards that it was a mistake.

All this is not to say “Lee was a boob” but it is to say he made a critical military mistake that probably should have cost the South the War. Because he was against less competent Generals he lasted a while longer –and it enhanced his reputation. What he did at Richmond splitting his forces was brilliant (and borne of desperation) I don’t take that away from him – but like Larry Holmes his overall record needs to be looked at in light of his competition.

Gangster Octopus did a good job on Lee’s strategy I would echo on 1 and add that the South wins:

1.If Europeans recognize or better aid or (in Davis et al’s wildest dreams) intervene for the South and they needed a traditional Army to do that.
2. If the North elects a guy who wants to make peace and let the South go. Lee thought a Traditional Army, invading and attacking the North could accomplish this

These are not INSANE strategic goals – but they are goals that cannot be accomplished by a guerilla war.

36

[QUOTE=Gangster Octopus]
One other crucial point that guided the South and Lee’s strategy was that they felt that thye really needed to get the support of England and France if they were to win. They knew they were unlikley to win a drawn out war, but if they could show enough resolve and win enough battles the European powers would support them and that would force the North to sue for peace. Whether that would have ever happened is hard to say, England would have found it very hard to support the South, and in their minds slavery. France would not support the South if England was not also planning to.
[/QUOTE]

This is an important point, one James McPherson focuses on in his counterfactual, “If the Lost Order Hadn’t Been Lost,” in What If?, ed. Robert Cowley (which I’ve just finished rereading). In the essay McPherson posits a scenario where Union forces do not discover Lee’s Special Orders No. 191 in a field in September, 1862. It was largely due to intelligence from this order that the Union eked out victory at Antietam/Sharpesburg on September 17, 1862 forcing the Confederates to retreat back into Virginia.

In the counterfactual, Jackson successfully takes Harper’s Ferry, resupplying forces that have been successful but are spent after successive victories at the Seven Days’ Battles, Cedar Mountain, Second Manassas and Chantilly. Resupplied, Confederate forces move into Pennsylvania, burn the railroad bridge at Harrisburg before moving southwards towards a crossroads called Gettysburg. In McPherson’s scenario, a decisive battle is fought there with the Confederacy emerging victorious due to superior positioning on the high ground running from Culp’s Hill, to Cemetery Hill, along Cemetery Ridge to Big Round Top.

With a string of major victories under his belt, Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia proceed towards Baltimore. The victory has the added effect of allowing France and Britain to recognize the Confederate States. In the ensuing election of November 1862, demoralized Northern voters, casting ballots overwhelmingly for Democrats, sweep Republicans out of power in Congress putting pressure on the President to make peace.

Of course because the Union won at Antietam, none of that came to pass. The North could claim a long-needed victory, Republicans maintained control of Congress, the British and French didn’t recognize Southern independence and Lincoln had the victory he needed to promulgate the Emancipation Proclamation effective January 1, 1863.

So in a discussion of Lee’s brilliance or capabilities, I would say that he was a great commander who was dealt a hard hand to play. Moreover, in war it is rarely the genius of the general that determines victory or defeat. Sometimes it is a thing as small as the proverbial lost nail that holds the shoe that supports the horse that carries the general who gives the orders to the men that shoot and die that makes the difference between success and failure.

37

[QUOTE=jimmmy]

All this is not to say “Lee was a boob” but it is to say he made a critical military mistake that probably should have cost the South the War. Because he was against less competent Generals he lasted a while longer –and it enhanced his reputation. What he did at Richmond splitting his forces was brilliant (and borne of desperation) I don’t take that away from him – but like Larry Holmes his overall record needs to be looked at in light of his competition.
[/QUOTE]

But note that this one mistake by Lee COULD cost the South the War, whereas, the too many to list mistakes by Northern generals did not cost the North the War.

If winning the war requires you to have a general who will never make a mistake then you have no hope of winning the war.

38

[QUOTE=candide]
Sometimes it is a thing as small as the proverbial lost nail that holds the shoe that supports the horse that carries the general who gives the orders to the men that shoot and die that makes the difference between success and failure.
[/QUOTE]

In the case of Gettysburg the fact that Stonewall Jackson didn’t know a password a couple of months before had a lot to do with it, or that the artillery couldn’t tell from the smoke how well their bombardment was (or wasn’t) doing, or for that matter the rumor of shoes in town to begin with. On the human level there’s speculation that Lee had suffered a mild heart attack a few weeks before and wasn’t himself, while Longstreet was suffering major depression over the death of three of his children in a scarlet fever epidemic the year before and this could in part have explained his equivalence. (Strangely, Longstreet named the son his wife was pregant with at the time of G’burg ‘Robert Edward Lee Longstreet’, which I find odd because Longstreet hated Lee and was one of the few Confederate veterans to be openly critical of him in his memoirs.)

There is also speculation that a case of hemmorhoids kept Napoleon from being able to remain in the saddle at Waterloo, while Hitler’s inner circle refused to wake him from a nap to tell him of the “rumored” Allied landing at Normandy. Not sure of its merits, but it is amazing how human the joint can be on which history can turn.

39

[QUOTE=DSYoungEsq]
…This is why Lee was so devastated when Jackson died. Jackson was the type of officer you wanted commanding units under you. Stuart, for all his flash and dash, was not always so reliable; it caused the Confederates to face considerably more difficulty at Gettysburg than would have been the case had someone more reliable been in charge of the scouting cavalry.
[/QUOTE]
Jackson had his own problems…He never told anyone what he was up to (I suppose it’s one way to keep others from taking too much iniative). When he was killed none of his staff could figure out exactly what he was trying to acomplish at the time (I’m afraid that Dumbledore may have had the same shortcoming (to seriously jump threads :smiley: )).

40

[QUOTE=Sampiro]
In the case of Gettysburg the fact that Stonewall Jackson didn’t know a password a couple of months before had a lot to do with it, or that the artillery couldn’t tell from the smoke how well their bombardment was (or wasn’t) doing, or for that matter the rumor of shoes in town to begin with. On the human level there’s speculation that Lee had suffered a mild heart attack a few weeks before and wasn’t himself, while Longstreet was suffering major depression over the death of three of his children in a scarlet fever epidemic the year before and this could in part have explained his equivalence. (Strangely, Longstreet named the son his wife was pregant with at the time of G’burg ‘Robert Edward Lee Longstreet’, which I find odd because Longstreet hated Lee and was one of the few Confederate veterans to be openly critical of him in his memoirs.)

[QUOTE]

Sempiro, do you understand the meaning of counterfactual? When I describe events in the 19th Century that didn’t happen are you confused? Why don’t you read a book? It’s really a simple process. Expand.