Ah, they’re 1860’s-style “Death Raise”.
To see if he could learn to slam-dunk a basketball at his age.
No really, I bet you can figure this one out if you put your mind to it.
I figure Lee wanted McClellan’s forces to withdraw from Confederate territory – and while McClellan’s forces inflicted more casualties on Confederate troops than vice versa, I figure Lee succeeded.
And I figure that, in the reverse situation, McClellan wanted Lee’s forces to withdraw from Union territory – and while Lee’s forces inflicted more casualties on Union troops than vice versa, I figure McClellan succeeded.
If you call one a draw, then I figure you should call the other a draw. If you call one a win, then I figure you should call the other a loss.
The difference is Lee recognized the existence of Confederate and Union territory. So he could be content with McClellan’s withdrawal out of Confederate territory.
McClellan didn’t face the same situation. As far as the United States was concerned it was all Union territory. So it didn’t matter if Lee was in Maryland or Pennsylvania or Virginia - the United States didn’t want Lee to have an army in the field anywhere.
Hey, I’m just guiding off Wiki here – which ain’t authoritative, but which suffices to raise issues – and it spells out that “Several motives led to Lee’s decision to launch an invasion. First, he needed to supply his army and knew the farms of the North had been untouched by war, unlike those in Virginia. Moving the war northward would relieve pressure on Virginia. Second was the issue of Northern morale … With the Congressional elections of 1862 approaching in November, Lee believed that an invading army playing havoc inside the North could tip the balance of Congress to the Democratic Party, which might force Abraham Lincoln to negotiate an end to the war … There were secondary reasons as well. The Confederate invasion might be able to incite an uprising in Maryland, especially given that it was a slave-holding state and many of its citizens held a sympathetic stance toward the South … Jefferson Davis, believed the prospect of foreign recognition for the Confederacy would be made stronger by a military victory on foreign soil,” and so on…
…culminating in the conclusion that “Although a tactical draw, the Battle of Antietam was a strategic victory for the Union. It forced the end of Lee’s strategic invasion of the North and gave Abraham Lincoln the victory he was awaiting before announcing the Emancipation Proclamation … Although Lincoln had intended to do so earlier, he had been advised by his Cabinet to make this announcement after a Union victory to avoid the perception that it was issued out of desperation. The Confederate reversal at Antietam also dissuaded the governments of France and Great Britain from recognizing the Confederacy.”
All that Part One stuff seemed to matter to the South, and all that Part Two stuff – plus foiling all that Part One stuff – seemed to matter to the North, such that it’s “widely considered one of the major turning points of the war.”
And Lee succeeded in doing this for a time, which was about as much as he could hope for. Staying north of the Potomac indefinitely was beyond his army’s capabilities.
These were what you might call *aspirational *goals more than anything else - they weren’t anything that Lee had the direct ability to make happen, but that might happen if Lee’s extended raid went well and a lot of other circumstances came together. If those goals weren’t achieved, nobody was going to blame Lee.
So: Lee more or less achieved his achievable objectives. He probably would have liked to run loose around Maryland and perhaps Pennsylvania for a little while longer, but that’s the extent to which McClellan prevented him from achieving his realistic objectives.
But McClellan still completely failed in his main objective, his reason for engaging in battle at Antietam. Calling it a bloody draw is about right, mostly because the South could afford casualties less than the North could. But the Army of Northern Virginia’s casualties were still not so great as to change Lee’s approach to the war during the time between Antietam and Gettysburg.
So McClellan fights Lee to what you’d call a bloody draw at Antietam, because the South could afford casualties less than the North – and during the Seven Days, McClellan fights Lee, and the South takes more casualties than the North, which, again, it can afford less? And you don’t call that a draw-or-better for McClellan too?
If they’d kept having exchanges like those, the South loses.
Yeah, I know. Like I said upthread, “Lee launched a series of disjointed assaults on the nearly impregnable Union position on Malvern Hill. The Confederates suffered more than 5,300 casualties without gaining an inch of ground … Rather than flanking the position, Lee attacked it directly, hoping that his artillery would clear the way for a successful infantry assault (just as he would plan the following year in Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg).”
Lee did the same thing at Gettysburg; the Confederate soldiers came closer to inflicting as many casualties on the Union ones as compared to Seven Days, but so what? Lee did then what he did against McClellan, and once again the South could afford it less, and once again Southern goals – realistic and aspirational – fell by the wayside as Confederate troops pulled back across the Potomac.
McClellan’s main objective was to not lose; it’s not a glamorous one, but it explains his decisions for both Seven Days and Antietam, and for pretty much the entirety of his service during the Civil War: field a bigger army, make sure it stays the bigger army, and whenever possible stake out a defensible position where you can blast the hell out of anyone dumb enough to slug it out with you.
Was that an aspirational goal? Was it a realistic one? I dunno what you’d call it, but it was his goal, and he went for it with nine kinds of gusto.
It is quite disingenuous of you to focus on this one aspect in isolation, and claim that that somehow refutes my argument.
Hell, I’m not even sure what part of my argument this is supposed to rebut.
I’m not even sure, in this paragraph, where you’re talking about Gettysburg and where (if anywhere) you’re talking about Antietam.
The problem is, the objective of the North in the Civil War wasn’t to not lose; all they had to do to not lose was to not contest the fact of Southern secession, to not fight a war to force the South to remain in the Union.
They didn’t need McClellan, or any other general, for that. Ergo, McClellan’s goals (as you state them) were at cross purposes with those of the President, and with the people of the North, who during McClellan’s tenure unambiguously wanted to fight that war to defeat the South militarily and force it to rejoin the Union. Because this required more than not losing. It required reconquering the South. Hence the objective of the Peninsula Campaign was capturing Richmond, the Confederate capital. If McClellan pursued a different objective, then he failed by definition.
Which would have been terrific if the American public had tolerated the idea of seemingly endless casualties without tangible gains. If it wasn’t for a couple of timely victories Lincoln would have lost the 1864 election (to guess who?) and we might still need to get through border checkpoints to cross from Kentucky into Tennessee.
In addition, McClellan abandoned the goal you claim for him by the very decision to do battle at Antietam. He could have continued doing what he was doing, keeping the Army of the Potomac in between Lee and Washington, despite his new information about the movements of the disparate parts of the Army of Northern Virginia. So you’re additionally wrong there.
Neither the Peninsula Campaign nor the decision to meet the Confederate forces at Antietam make any sense in the context of a goal of not losing. Both of these represent efforts to win - to capture the opposing capital in the first case, and to destroy the Confederate army in the second.
You are wrong every which way.
You’re ignoring the other half of my explanation. Or, to put it another way, “It is quite disingenuous of you to focus on this one aspect in isolation, and claim that that somehow refutes my argument.”
Obviously he wasn’t going to merely run away, to thus keep the army intact; Lincoln would’ve replaced him in a heartbeat. McClellan approached Richmond – which, as you say, makes no sense if he simply and only wanted to avoid contact with the enemy – and then he fell back, staked out a defensible position, and blasted the hell out of anyone dumb enough to attack, and thereby inflicted more casualties on the Confederates than vice versa. Why?
Because his secondary goal – what you’d maybe call his “aspirational” one – was to capture the enemy capital; to the extent that he could go for that without risking a loss, he’ll of course play for the win too. But as soon as his primary goal was in question, nope, forget it, time to play defense.
Imagine if he’d done that again and again and again: optimistically marching into Virginia, and then cautiously backing away from the secondary goal if the Southern egg feels like throwing itself at the Northern whetstone; the Confederates can afford casualties less; who wins?
Imagine, too, that whenever the South heads north, he repeats his perfomance at Antietam: tentatively holding back to keep from losing instead of going all-out for the risky win – because that’s primary – but still slugging it out decisively enough to inflict casualties on the side that can afford it less until the Confederates retreat. Who wins?
Kinda my point.
As I said before, McClellan was a good field commander up to a point. Unfortunately for McClellan, that point had the face & name of Robert E. Lee.
McClellan did well in West Virginia & was doing well on the Peninsula Campaign against Joseph E. Johnston. If Johnston had not been wounded & the command handed over to Lee, McClellan may well have gone down in history as the captor of Richmond.
It makes me wonder how McClellan would have fared in the western theater of the war. The Confederate generals there were not as talented (though I expect Bedford Forrest would have given McClellan some sleepless nights, he certainly worried the hell out of Sherman) & campaigns like the siege of Vicksburg seem right up McClellan’s alley.
Command abilities aside, McClellan was a douche-nozzle in his relationship with Lincoln.
Hell, Lee might have done us a favor in derailing McClellan’s ambitions.
What other half?
Look, if you’re going to talk about a version of the Civil War that’s in your head, rather than the one that was actually fought, that’s your problem.
The fact is, the goal of the Peninsula campaign was to take Richmond. This rope-a-dope business is something you’re conjuring up.
No, McClellan’s goal during the Seven Days wasn’t to lure Lee into overconfidence as he retreated to Malvern Hill, where he’d sucker Lee into a direct frontal attack against a well-defended position on high ground. That may have been how it played out, but it wasn’t part of some broader strategy on McClellan’s part.
You’re making shit up.
Of course it was the goal. It was what you’d call the “aspirational” goal. It was to be attempted if possible, and abandoned if and when he deemed it better to play defense.
His broader strategy was to be cautious and fight defensively, always playing to avoid the loss and occasionally going for the aspirational win.
Y’know, you are only bullshitting yourself. Have fun.
Now that’s just silly.
Look, you’re the one who – when asked what Lee’s objectives were – first stated that “Whatever Lee’s objectives were, he probably didn’t achieve them” before you eventually brought up the whole idea of aspirational goals as distinguished from the objectives you actually judge Lee on.
I didn’t call bullshit on that; I agreed with it, and merely noted that McClellan had aspirational goals of his own, which should likewise be distinguished from the objectives we actually judge him on.
You say that – at Antietam – there’s an extent to which McClellan prevented Lee from achieving his realistic objectives while thwarting Lee’s aspirational ones, which you call a draw, because Lee’s forces turned tail and ran after suffering casualties they could afford less, at which point Lincoln finally had the victory he could piggyback the Emancipation Proclamation on.
I say that – during the Seven Days – there’s an extent to which Lee prevented McClellan from achieving his aspirational objectives, which you don’t call a draw, though Lee’s forces suffered greater casualties they could afford less. It was, you note, “a direct frontal attack against a well-defended position on high ground” by Lee.
If they’d kept having exchanges like the Seven Days, the Confederates run out of soldiers first. If they’d kept having exchanges like Antietam, the Confederates run out of soldiers first. And at Gettysburg, the man who learned nothing from his exchanges with McClellan tried a direct frontal attack against a well-defended position on high ground – and if anything did slightly better than during the Seven Days, but no one cares, because the South couldn’t afford exchanges like that.