Lee even explicitly said so.
Well to cut lil Mac some slack, he was in a similar position to Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet in WWI, he could have lost the whole war in an afternoon. And he knew it. He nearly did too, at the seven days.
The difference is that Britain would eventually beat Germany in WWI just be maintaining a fleet in being and the blockade. The United States, on the other hand, would eventually lose the war if the CSA was able to maintain an army in the field.
So Jellicoe could win the war without winning a battle. But McClellan needed to win a battle in order to win the war.
I agree. But, the Saratoga precedent was uppermost in the minds of all concerned during the war, and if a major Federal defeat had occurred, then it’s possible that recognition and peace on the basis of separation would occur. As it is, Napoleon III was wondering about recognition as late as Chancellorsville, a major defeat of a Federal Army, could have devastating consequences.
But, of course, there were any number of major Federal defeats, especially in the Virginia Theater. While unpleasant and costly they were not catastrophes and they were not Saratoga type army destroyers. One of the problems with the Napoleonic model was that the contesting armies in America were sufficiently resilient that defeat was not a war ending event. If it were the South would have achieved independence in 1862.
Not sure I agree - while the war was of course eventually decided by wearing down Lee’s army in the north, an argument could be made that this was unnecessary - the “anaconda plan”, the destruction of the southern railways leading to supply impossibilities for the southern cause, & the dismembering of the southern states by splitting the confederacy in two would have won the thing anyway, eventually. As it was, by the end pretty well all that was left of the southern cause was the army of Norther Virginia.
By this argument, all that was necessary was to ensure that the army of Northern Virginia didn’t score any great successes, and win - everywhere else. An army without any base of supplies and recruitment cannot win, no matter how great the generals that command it.
Again, by that token the enormous casualties taken by Grant to wear down Lee’s army look - less necessary.
As the Revolution/Napoleonic wars lasted from 1793 till 1815, I would disagree. While the Feds suffered setbacks and reverses, many of the serious, they were on the offensive for most of the war. The defeat and surrender of a whole Federal army, while not being a war ending event, would have probably made the Euros decide to throw their weight behind the confederacy, something that they came pretty close to IRL.
As it is, during the Seven Days battle, Lee came agonisingly close to encircling the AOTP and is Stonewall Jackson has been less dilatory, he might have succeeded.
McClellan was contemptuous of, and politically disaffected from, his CINC and made no bones about it. He had a huge ego and enjoyed getting good press. He could train the army well but was extremely timid about actually risking it in battle. After getting a copy of Lee’s secret plans dropped in his lap just before Antietam, he was still unable to win a crushing victory. He believed even the most exaggerated intel as to the size of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, and demanded ever more reinforcements. Even SecWar Stanton, an early supporter of McClellan, later said, “If McClellan had a million men, he would squat in the mud and cry for two million.” Lincoln grimly joked, “If Gen. McClellan isn’t going to use the Army of the Potomac, I would like to borrow it for awhile.”
McClellan would make a helluva Quartermaster General or Inspector General. As a battlefield commander, though, he sucked.
One could argue that this is in fact what happened.
There’s a difference between (stupid) split command (above) and staff command, wherein you have a logistical expert and a tactical expert (and, ideally, an overall commander who knows who to listen to and when).
Well, yeah, with the addition of a whole bunch of battles with high casualty counts.
The issue is whether simply forcing Lee to concentrate his army in the north without actively seeking to destroy that army by aggressive offensives would have done the job just as well. If so, no Cold Harbours, etc., were really necessary. As long as Lee didn’t actually defeat the Union in the north, the Southern cause was doomed - as Lee simply could not move his army to counter the strangulation of the south.
If this is the strategic case, a good case could be made for not engaging in costly offensives by the Union in the north.
No. he couldn’t lose the war in a day, but he very nearly managed it in a year. And he won the Seven Days if only he realized it - see my previous post about Malvern Hill.
Then he’s a double failure because he managed to create massive defeats by an inferior foe without creating even the possibility of success.
One would be wrong, too.
The Anaconda plan centered around avoiding battle. This completely failed because even cut off from foreign trade, the Confederacy could survive indefinitely, and could strikle when and where it pleased to break the stalemate. Instead, The Federals won by crushing Confederate forces in the field, capturing important sites (state capitals, ports, rail transit hubs, etc.) and utterly demoralizing the South of all hope of ever achieving victory.
However, Lee’s army did not have to completely move away. Whenever Federal pressure weakened, they immediately mvoed important commands and commanders to other fields, in order to score victories there, or found ways to go on the offensive somehow. So the Union could not really sit around, no matt6er how much they might have liked to.
In short, to keep the Confederates pinned, they had to actively threaten them. To actively threaten them, they had to work at inflicting real damage.
Additionally, the Northern Virginia sector had a lot to reccomend an offensive. It contained some of the SOuther’s richest lands, their biggest and best armories and source of rail and cannon, and a serious threat (or better yet, capture of) to Richmond would essentially end the Confederacy’s attempts to secure international recognition.
With almost any competent commander, it could have been done. As luck would have it, McClellan, Hooker, and Burnside made some massive mistakes and cost immense numbers of lives for no gain. The first two also exhibited cowardice, as well as bad judgement.
I don’t have anything to add, except that it’s amusing to still see McClellan’s strategy debated this far along. I can remember back in history class in the 1970’s as a very young girl reading about McClellan, and thinking “what in the hell was he doing?”
I think at the time most girls were wondering “what in the hell is David Cassidy doing?”…
If he hadn’t produced results, Reuben was ready to remove him from command and appoint Danny as lead singer.
If David hadn’t had that one successful show in West Virginia, he never would’ve gotten the top spot in the first place…
The Anaconda plan, alone and by itself, was not carried out. It was the combination of the Anaconda plan with the more active dismembering of the Confederacy (including, importantly, tearing up southern railways) that did the trick.
A clever commander could have threatened without carrying out blugeoning frontal offensives. Of course threatening has to carry a real threat, meaning that if the South weakened the army facing them the threat could be realized.
The South had the benefit of interior lines, a benefit negated somewhat by the progressive destruction of their railways. Eventually, it would be impossible for them to shuttle resources back and forth to meet threats as they emerged.
I always felt sorta sorry for Burnside. He told everyone he wasn’t up to the task.
There is no argument that McClellan etc. were bad commanders - they were. The issue is whether Grant’s more aggressive strategy, or something like it, was the only way to go.
Grant was an infinitely better commander than McClellan, but his meat-grinder plan to subdue Lee’s army may not have been necessary.
In this he may have been similar to Churchill in WW2, in that their actual wisdom or brilliance of leadership is disputed. What they both had in their favor was simply being too stubborn to give up, both in a time and place when that purely by chance happened to be the recipe for success.
Splitting the Confederacy into three, actually – the seizure of Vicksburg completed severing the far west, and Sherman’s March from Atlanta to the sea split the remainder roughly in half again.
There’s a tragic assessment (I think it was Bruce Catton) of McClellan’s orders after he read Special Order 191, the paper that showed Lee’s army was split into fragments and the Army of the Potomac was closer to each of them than they were to each other. Mac ordered the pursuit to be organized carefully, and started moving 18 hours after deciding to attack…As Catton wrote in frustration, “Not now, not this minute…”
I’ve read a re-assessment (admittedly by a Grant proponent, Bonekemper - reviewed thoughtfully here) which, although flawed, made an interesting and well-supported observation that, overall, Grant inflicted a higher proportion of casualties than he suffered despite being consistently on the offensive, which should have cost him proportionately higher casualties – and even the occasions when the ratio was at its worst were not as lopsided as reverses in other wars and battles. The Overland Campaign was rough, but no Somme or Stalingrad or Fredericksburg.
It seems hard to factor Cold Harbor into that kind of thinking, but the author makes plausible case for his statistical analysis (albeit a less plausible case for his other arguments, IMHO).
The distinction I would make is that Churchill’s stubborness was necessary to the success of the Allies, whereas Grant’s was arguably not necessary - in that it led to a success that would (again, arguably) have come whether he was stubborn or not (I refer only to his role towards the end of the war here).
The issue isn’t whether Grant inflicted more casualties on the Confederacy than his men suffered, the issue is whether a war of attrition was truly necessary for a Union victory - particularly towards the end of the war.
Naturally the debate suffers from “what-if-itis”, as any such reassessment must. It is unarguable that Grant did in fact win, and it is always difficult to argue whether some other strategy would have been better … but certainly the perception lingers that many of the Union casualties died to no good purpose.