Tag Archives: petersburg

July 22, 2020 · 01:33

“Proper Commanders – Where Can they Be Found” Lee’s Reorganization of His Army Before Gettysburg, Stuart’s Cavalry Division and Attached Units and Generals

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I’ve been working of trying to finish my manuscript for my book “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory” much of the night and have pretty much absented myself from social media. However, had a nice night with Judy and playing with our pups. Our Youngest Maddy Lyn, is so full of herself and full of energy that she gives all of us a run for our money. Anyway, this is another segment of one of my Gettysburg book manuscripts dealing with the reorganization of Lee’s Army after Chancellorsville in preparation for Lee’s invasion of the north, which culminated at Gettysburg. Today is a look at the leaders of Major General J.E.B Stuart’s Cavalry Division as well as three other generals, Brigadier General John Imboden who commanded an independent cavalry brigade, Lee’s Chief of Artillery, Brigadier General William Pendleton, Whose artillery had been reorganized leaving him with few actual duties, and Major General Isaac Trimble. This like the previous sections of this chapter of my Gettysburg text is interesting because it shows the complexities of the lives and personalities of the men leading these units. Professional soldiers, volunteers with little military experience, soldiers, lawyers, engineers and politicians they are an interesting collection of personalities; some surrounded in myth and others practically unknown. I think it is important for anyone studying a war, a campaign, or a battle to at least look at the lives of the men who planned and fought it. In doing so, even those that oppose what they did in rebelling against the United States can find in them some measure of humanity, and sometimes even gain a sense of empathy for some of them.

That is why when we look at the lives of soldiers, we have to take the time to at least try to understand the nuance, the contradictions, their strengths and weaknesses as leaders, as well as a measure of their character.

Have a great night, and pray that I can finish “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory” tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+

Stuart’s Cavalry Division

Major General J.E.B. Stuart C.S.A.

The Cavalry Division was commanded by Major General J.E.B. Stuart. While it was considered a division, Stuart’s command was the size of a Union Army Corps with over 10,000 troopers assigned. Despite its large size at Gettysburg the Division was split by agreement of Lee and Stuart. Stuart who had five brigades at his immediate disposal would take three of them, Hampton’s, Rooney Lee’s and Fitz Lee’s on an ill-fated mission which would leave him and them out of the fight during the most important part of the movement to and first two days of battle. His raid causes him “to be absent on the day of all days when he could reconnoiter the Federal position.” [1] Two, Robertson and Grumble Jones’s would remain guarding passes along the Blue Ridge long after that mission had any relevance. Imboden’s would be far to the west and Jenkin’s ere with Ewell’s vanguard in the advance north.

Major General James Ewell Brown Stuart was the son of a former congressman whose family went back five generations in Virginia. He graduated thirteenth in a class of forty-six at West Point in 1854. Classmates included Dorsey Pender and Oliver O. Howard. A fellow cadet who would serve under Stuart during the war, Fitzhugh Lee wrote:

“His distinguishing characteristics were a strict attention to his military duties, an erect, soldierly bearing, an immediate and almost thankful acceptance of a challenge from any cadet to fight, who might in any way feel himself aggrieved, and a clear, metallic, ringing voice.” [2]

At West Point Stuart was noted for his “lifelong religious devoutness. When he was at West Point he was known as a “Bible Class Man.” [3] Stuart was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and assigned to the Mounted Rifles, which Stuart noted was “a corps which my taste, fondness for riding, and my desire to serve my country in some acceptable manner led me to select above all the rest.” [4]Stuart would serve with the Mounted Rifles for about a year before being selected to serve in one of the first Cavalry regiments formed, the First Cavalry at Jefferson Barracks Missouri.

In the pre-war years the young officer developed a solid reputation in the army where he served on the frontier and in “Bleeding Kansas.” In those years Stuart “was already a young officer of great promise, a natural horseman with a reputation for dash and bravery gained in countless clashes with Indians throughout the West, and for steady competence in the pro- and antislavery warfare of Kansas.” [5]

In 1859 Stuart was on leave visiting Washington D.C. and staying with the Lee’s at Arlington. He was visiting the War Department when news came of John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry. He was given a letter to take to Lee which ordered Lee to take command of troops to suppress the rebellion. Stuart accompanied Lee on the mission and was send by Lee to present terms of surrender to the raiders, who at the time were still nameless to the Federal authorities. Stuart entered the building and was confronted by Brown who he had previously met in Kansas. After some fruitless negotiation, Stuart realized that Brown was not about to surrender. At some time Stuart broke away and motioned for the Marines to move in. “Three minutes after Stuart had given his signal, the affair was over.” [6]

Stuart resigned his commission when Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861, while his father-in-law, Colonel Philip St. George Cooke remained in Union service. He commanded the 1^st Virginia Cavalry in the Valley and at First Manassas and was promoted to Brigadier General in September 1861. The following month he was given command of the army’s cavalry brigade and distinguished himself in the eyes of both General Joseph Johnston and Robert E. Lee. Johnston wrote to President Jefferson Davis praising the young brigadier “He is a rare man…wonderfully endowed by nature with the qualities necessary for an officer of light cavalry….If you add to this army a real brigade of cavalry, you can find no better brigadier-general to command it.” [7]

Lee came to share that opinion and over the course of his service Stuart had come to:

“demonstrate a real talent for the most mundane and most essential role cavalry played in this war – reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. No intelligence source surpassed his eye for seeing and evaluating a military landscape or an enemy’s strengths and dispositions.” [8]

This would be something that Lee came to rely and which he would dearly miss at Gettysburg.

Despite his excellence in this “most mundane” task Stuart developed a flair and passion for the spectacular, which was first demonstrated during the Seven Days, where he took his cavalry on a circuit of McClellan’s army which not only gathered a significant amount of intelligence also unnerved the Army of the Potomac. His raid was “flawlessly executed….” And Stuart “became a hero to his troopers and one of the idols of the public.” [9] Lee wrote that Stuart’s operation “was executed with great address and daring by accomplished officer.” [10] The raid did have its detractors, especially among the infantry and it also revealed something to Stuart that appealed to his own vanity, “that raiding would easily garner headlines in the Richmond papers.” [11]

Stuart Lee’s staff secretary, Colonel Robert Taylor noted that Stuart was “possessing of great powers of endurance, courageous to an exalted degree, of sanguine temperament, prompt to act, always ready for fight – he was the ideal cavalryman.” [12] Stuart also kept a lively headquarters. Taylor remarked “How genial he was! There was no room for “the blues” around his headquarters; the hesitating and desponding found no congenial atmosphere at his camp; good will, jollity, and even hilarity, reigned there.” [13]

Stuart always had his African-American banjo player with him and frequently sang around camp and on campaign. That was not always appreciated by some other officers. Wade Hampton, who in time became Stuart’s right-hand man was not impressed with the atmosphere at Stuart’s headquarters and “was not certain that he could flourish, or even survive, among such people….” [14] Lafayette McLaws wrote home complaining not only about Stuart but others:

“Stuart carries around with him a banjo player and special correspondent. This claptrap is noticed and lauded as a peculiarity of genius, when, in fact, it is nothing more but the act of a buffoon to get attention.” [15]

But Stuart was always aware of his own mortality and there was a serious side to him, often expressed in his faith, which impressed those around him. His West Point classmate and friend, Oliver O. Howard wrote:

“J.E.B. Stuart was cut out for a cavalry leader. In perfect health, but thirty-two years of age, full of vigor and enterprise, with the usual ideas imbibed in Virginia concerning State Supremacy, Christian thought and temperate by habit, no man could ride faster, endure more hardships, make a livelier charge, or be more hearty and cheerful while so engaged. A touch of vanity, which invited the smiles and applause of the fair maidens of Virginia, but added to the zest and ardor of Stuart’s parades and achievements.” [16]

At Chancellorsville Stuart assumed acting command of Jackson’s Second Corps which he led well during the battle, even impressing the infantry, who had long derided Stuart and his cavalry. Leading by example “seemed on fire.” Stuart sang as he led the Stonewall Brigade into action and “the troops joined him, singing while they loaded and fired.” One officer stated “Jeb impressed himself on the infantry.” [17]

Some believed that Stuart should have been appointed to command Second Corps after Jackson’s death, but evidently Lee valued Stuart’s role as a cavalry commander more and despite his accomplishments refused to proffer the command to Stuart. Colonel Rosser told Stuart, who was grieving the loss of his friend Jackson “On his death bed Jackson said that you should succeed him, and command his corps.” Stuart responded “I would rather know that Jackson said that, than to have the appointment.” [18] One wonders what might have occurred during the Gettysburg campaign if Stuart had commanded Second Corps and left the cavalry to someone like the accomplished and level headed Wade Hampton.

Stuart was mortally wounded less than a year after Gettysburg at the Battle of Yellow Tavern, upon his death Hampton was promoted to command what was left of the Cavalry Corps.

Hampton

Brigadier General Wade Hampton C.S.A.

Brigadier General Wade Hampton is one of the fascinating and complex characters in either army who served at Gettysburg. He defies a one dimensional treatment or stereotype. His complexities, contradictions and character make him one of the most interesting men that I have written about during my study of this battle.

Wade Hampton III was one of the richest, if not the richest man in the Confederacy when the war broke out. He had inherited his family’s expansive plantation and many slaves and studied law at the College of South Carolina. As a slave owner he expressed an aversion for the institution, ensured that his slaves were well cared for by the standards of his day, including medical care, he never condemned slavery or worked for the abolition of a system that had made him and his family quite prosperous. He served in the South Carolina legislature and Senate, where he took an “active and prominent role in the public debate on many issues. He was vocal not only on the perils of reopening the African slave trade but also on whether and how his state should seek redress of wrongs, real and imagined, by the federal government.” [19]

As a state senator Hampton was pragmatic, and while he defended the South’s economic interests in slavery, Hampton cautioned against the rhetoric of secessionist fire-breathers. His argument was about “the preservation of the South’s political power and her social and economic institutions, now threatened by the short sighted policies of otherwise good and decent men.” [20] He did not wish to do anything that would lead to the destruction of the South, and he felt that the “only viable course was moderation, conciliation, compromise….” [21]

Hampton was a classic rich “Southern moderate He had opposed secession, and the fire eaters repulsed him.” [22] However, when Lincoln called for volunteers Hampton volunteered to serve in a war that he did not want, which would cost him dearly, and change him from a moderate to a vociferous opponent of most Reconstructionist policies.

Volunteering at the age of forty-three, Hampton had no prior military training. However, he had great organizational skill, leadership ability and a tremendous care and compassion for those who served under his command. Using his own money Hampton organized what would now be called a combined arms unit, the Hampton Legion, which comprised eight companies of infantry, four of cavalry and a battery of light artillery. He was careful in the appointment of the Legion’s officers choosing the best he could find.

Hampton rapidly rose to prominence as a respected officer and commander despite his lack of military training or experience. His soldiers fought well and took over command of an infantry brigade on the Peninsula, and was promoted to Brigadier General in May of 1862 and given command of a cavalry brigade serving under J.E.B. Stuart in July and he “became Stuart’s finest subordinate.” [23] As a brigade, and later division commander, Hampton had “little fondness or respect for Stuart. He regularly criticized Stuart for pampering the Virginia regiments and assigning his South Carolinians to the more arduous tasks.” [24]

During the war he was wounded several times, including at Gettysburg where he took two sabre cuts to the head. Eventually he took command of the Cavalry Corps after Stuart was killed in action. He fought in nearly every cavalry engagement under Stuart and led his own raids deep into Union territory. He fought well, but “hated the war. In October 1862 he wrote home: “My heart has grown sick of the war, & I long for peace.” [25] Hampton was “one of only three civilians to attain the rank of Lieutenant General in Confederate service.” [26]At Petersburg his son Preston was mortally wounded and died in his arms even as his other son Wade IV was wounded when coming to Preston’s aid. Douglass South Freeman wrote of Hampton:

“Untrained in arms and abhorring war, the South Carolina planter had proved himself the peer of any professional soldier commanding within the same bounds and opportunities. He may not have possessed military genius, but he had the nearest approach to it.” [27]

The war that he opposed cost him the life of his brother, one of his sons and his livelihood. “His property destroyed, many of his slaves gone, and deep in debt from which he would never recover, Hampton faced the future with $1.75 in his pocket.” [28] The war changed the former moderate into a man who sought vindication in some ways, but reconciliation with the black population.

Hampton again entered politics and became the first post-Reconstruction Governor of South Carolina when President Rutherford Hayes withdrew the Federal troops which had supported the Reconstructionist governor. During his campaign and during his terms as Governor, Hampton “opposed the South’s imposition of so-called “black codes” which so restricted the freedom of former slaves as virtually to return them to civility.” [29] Unlike many in the post-reconstruction South Hampton won the thanks of African Americans for condemning whites that would vote for him if they thought that he would “stand between him and the law, or grant him any privileges or immunities that shall not be granted to the colored man.” [30]

Hampton came to dominate South Carolina politics for fifteen years, after two terms as Governor he served as a U.S. Senator until 1891 when a political enemy won the governorship and forced him from the Senate. When he died on April 11^th1902 his final words were “God bless my people, black and white.” [31]

Like so many leaders of so many tumultuous eras, Hampton was complex and cannot be easily classified. He was certainly not perfect, but in war and in peace gave of himself to his state and community.

Rooney Lee

Brigadier General William Fitzhugh “Rooney” Lee C.S.A.

Brigadier General William Fitzhugh Lee, who went by his nickname “Rooney” to distinguish himself from his cousin Fitzhugh Lee, was the second son of Robert E. Lee. He was educated at Harvard and received a direct commission into the Army in 1857, which he resigned in 1859 to manage the White House planation which had been left to him by his grandfather. When war came Lee volunteered for service and was named Colonel of the 9^th Virginia Cavalry earning the trust and respect of Stuart and the quiet admiration of his father.

Rooney Lee was promoted to Brigadier General in September 1862 and was wounded at the Battle of Brandy Station as the Gettysburg campaign began and while convalescing was captured by Union forces. He was replaced by Colonel John R. Chambliss, an 1853 graduate of West Point who had left the army after a short amount of active service prior to the war. He was viewed as a competent cavalry tactician and “there was no perceptible anxiety when “Rooney” Lee’s brigade came under Chambliss’ command.” [32]

He was paroled and exchanged in March of 1864. He was promoted to Major General in April 1864 and served until his surrender with the army at Appomattox. After the war he would return to farming and serve in the Virginia legislature and as a Congressman.

Robertson

Brigadier General Beverly Roberson C.S.A.

Brigadier General Beverly Roberson was a native Virginian who graduated from West Point in 1849. Most of his service was spent on the frontier with the Second Dragoons where for part of his service he served under command of J.E.B. Stuart’s father-in-law Colonel Philip St. George Cooke who “commended him repeatedly in dispatches.” [33]

Robertson was a veteran of much Indian service and “in person the embodiment of the fashionable French cavalry officer of the time.” [34] Robertson was dismissed from the U.S. Army in August 1861 when it was discovered that he had accepted an appointment in the Confederate army in April 1861.

Robertson’s Confederate service was less than distinguished. He never meshed with Jackson when he commanded Jackson’s cavalry, and Stuart was less than impressed when Robertson’s brigade was assigned to his command. During the Second Manassas campaign Stuart observed Robertson’s less than stellar performance, and his centrality to “so many cavalry quarrels” convinced Stuart that the old regular army veteran and West Pointer “must go. Within a month Robertson was transferred. He would finally go, as one of Stuart’s staff noted, “much to the joy of all concerned.” [35]

Robertson and his brigade were transferred to North Carolina, but returned to the Army of Northern Virginia to participate in the Gettysburg campaign. It was far too easy for Lee to obtain. D.H. Hill commanding in North Carolina “characterized Robertson’s command as “wonderfully inefficient,” [36] and Robertson would prove that again in the coming campaign where he would fail “miserably in his primary duty.” [37] After Gettysburg Robertson was relieved and reassigned to the Department of South Carolina where he served with little distinction until the end of the war.

Fitzhugh Lee

Brigadier General Fitzhugh Lee C.S.A.

Brigadier General Fitzhugh Lee was a nephew of both Robert E. Lee and Confederate Adjutant General Samuel Cooper. He “graduated forty-fifth in a class of forty-nine at West Point in 1856.” [38] He was wounded on the frontier and was an instructor at West Point when Virginia seceded. He resigned his commission and was appointed as a Captain. Through his friendship with Stuart he was promoted to Colonel and given command of the First Virginia Cavalry after Grumble Jones was reassigned to the 7^th Virginia. He and Stuart “shared a frolicsome nature and hearty laughter, but Lee’s abilities as a horse soldier were limited.” [39]

Wade Hampton held Lee in low regard, and Hampton believed that that Lee was representative of the “most objectionable qualities of the Virginia aristocrat – vanity, ostentation, pomposity, and condensation.” [40] Despite a condition which includes arthritis which hampers him he “fights hard and learns much of the art of command.” [41] He serves until the end of the war, finally surrendering his command in North Carolina.

After the war Fitz Lee enters politics, is elected governor of Virginia and following his defeat in attempting to become U.S. Senator was appointed as counsel-general in Havana by President Grover Cleveland. When the United States went to war with Spain, Lee was appointed as a Major General of Volunteers and serves honorably. Wade Hampton, whose regard for Lee did not increase during the war told his son Albert, who had volunteered to serve on Lee’s staff “Under no circumstances would he have a sin of his ever serve under “such an imperious blowhard as Robert E. Lee’s nephew continued to be.” [42] Lee was retired from the United States Army in 1901 with the rank of Brigadier General and died in Washington D.C. on April 28^th 1905.

“Grumble” Jones

Brigadier General William “Grumble” Jones C.S.A.

Another of the old army cavalrymen to serve under Stuart was Brigadier General William “Grumble” Jones. Jones was an 1848 graduate of West Point and served on the frontier. In 1852 he and his new bride were in a shipwreck, and she was swept out of his arms and drowned. “Jones never recovered in spirit. Embittered, complaining, suspicious he resigned from the army” [43] in 1857 and returned to Virginia.

Jones raised a company at the beginning of the war, and served under Stuart at First Manassas, and from the beginning took a dislike to his young superior. He grumbled to his men that he “would take no orders from that young whippersnapper.” [44] When Stuart was promoted he was made Colonel of the 1^stVirginia Cavalry. The assignment did not go well for him. His loathing for Stuart grew and one officer wrote that it “ripened afterwards into as genuine hatred as I ever remembered to have seen.” [45] His hatred of Stuart expanded into a hatred for his Lieutenant Colonel, Fitzhugh Lee, who was a close friend of Stuart. Jones was unpopular with the regiment and Lee much admired and the situation became so bad that Jones was reassigned to command the 7^th Virginia Cavalry. Jones performed well in this duty, well enough to warrant promotion and he was promoted to Brigadier General in September 1862. The promotion allowed Lee to send Jones to serve in the Shenandoah Valley away from Stuart since their relationship was so toxic and Jones’s hatred of Stuart “bordered on pathological.”[46]

The need for cavalry for the upcoming invasion of Pennsylvania forced Lee to bring Jones and his command back to the Army of Northern Virginia. Stuart expressed his misgiving to Lee but was given no choice in the matter. Since Jones “had the biggest brigade in the division and had the reputation of being the “best outpost officer” [47] Stuart solved his problem by leaving Jones with Robertson to guard the passes of the Blue Ridge.

After Gettysburg Jones clashed again with Stuart over not being recommend for promotion when the division became a corps. The affair was so explosive and Jones reportedly “cursed him venomously” [48] an offense so great that Stuart had him arrested and court-martialed. The court found him guilty, and although Lee had great respect for Jones’s abilities as a brigade commander he wrote to Jefferson Davis:

“I consider General Jones a brave and intelligent officer, but his feelings have become so opposed to General Stuart that I have lost all hope of his being useful in the cavalry here… He has been tried by court-martial for disrespect and the proceedings are now in Richmond. I understand he says he will no longer serve under Stuart and I do not think it advantageous for him to do so.” [49]

Jones was assigned to command in Southwestern Virginia where “organized a cavalry brigade and rendered excellent service.” [50] In June of 1864, his understrength command was defeated and he was killed at the Battle of Piedmont. Douglas Southall Freeman called his death “a tragic end to a tragic life.” [51]

Jenkins

General Albert G. Jenkins C.S.A.

General Albert G. Jenkins was another anomaly in the Army of Northern Virginia. He was a native of the far western county of Virginia, Cabell County which was one of the six counties to secede from Virginia after Virginia seceded from the Union. He had no previous military training and like many of the Confederate volunteer officers was a lawyer and politician before the war. At the outset of the war he raised a company of volunteer cavalry from that area, which grew to become the 8^th Virginia Cavalry.

Jenkins was promoted to Brigadier General and he and three regiments of his brigade were requisitioned by Lee for the invasion of Pennsylvania. The brigade was badly needed but the troops “had not been well schooled in cavalry tactics or in hard fighting at close quarters. Some had the complex of home guards, and some preferred the life of a guerilla to that of a trooper, but many were good raw material” [52] who Lee hoped could be wielded into a good cavalry force.

Jenkins was wounded on July 2^nd in an action east of Gettysburg and his brigade was commanded by a subordinate during the final cavalry clash on July 3^rd 1863. Jenkins and his brigade returned to the Valley where he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Cloyd’s Mountain in May of 1864.

Attached or Staff Officers: Imboden, Pendleton and Trimble

Imboden

Brigadier General John Imboden C.S.A.

Brigadier General John Imboden commanded a cavalry brigade which operated independently of Stuart’s division during the campaign. Imboden had no prior military experience before the war. He was a graduate of Washington College and a lawyer in Staunton Virginia. He raised a volunteer battery of light artillery, occupied “Harpers Ferry less than thirty hours after Virginia’s secession from the Union.” [53]

Imboden fought at Manassas where he and his battery gave a respectable performance. After Manassas Imboden raised another unit, “the 1^st Virginia Partisan Rangers (later called the 62^nd Virginia Mounted Infantry)” [54] and operated primarily in the valley and western Virginia. His command expanded in size and he was promoted to Brigadier General in January 1862.

His command during the Gettysburg campaign included the 18^th Virginia Cavalry, the previously mentioned 62^nd Virginia Mounted Infantry, a battery of artillery and several other partisan units. Imboden and his unit had been on “irregular, detached duty, and many of his men had recently been recruited, some from the infantry service.”[55] Imboden’s “brigade” was “more an assortment of armed riders even more unruly and untrained than Jenkins’ and possessing a well-developed proclivity to rob civilians, especially of their horses.” [56] However, they were useful for foraging and guarding supply bases and wagon trains during the march north. It was of dubious value in fighting “pitched battles with veteran enemy cavalry” [57] and would not be used in that capacity. Lee and Stuart did understand the limitations of such irregular formations.

Pendleton and Trimble – Generals Without Commands

During the march north Imboden’s command slipped away and when found was discovered to be “resting idly at Hancock Maryland, more than fifty miles from Chambersburg When this became known it was to provoke the wrath of Lee as did few events of the war.” [58] Imboden and his brigade served well during the army’s withdraw from Gettysburg, protecting the wounded and the trains. Overall Imboden was not well respected by Lee, Stuart or Early who he later served under and the brigade was not an effective fighting force. As such Lee sent it back to the Valley after Gettysburg.

Pendleton

Brigadier General William Pendleton C.S.A.

Brigadier General William Pendleton graduated fifth in his class at west Point in 1830, in the class behind Robert E. Lee and was commissioned as an artillery officer. He spent little time on active service and spent most of his active duty in hospitals battling the effects of “fever, nausea, and paralyzed limbs from an illness that may have been yellow fever.” [59] He resigned his commission in 1833, became a teacher and then entered the ministry as an Episcopal Priest. He pastored Grace Episcopal Church in Lexington where after John Brown’s raid he was asked to assist and train some men who had formed a battery of artillery. When war came he was elected Captain of the battery and served at First Manassas. Joseph Johnston appointed Pendleton as Chief of Artillery as he does have a certain amount of organizational skill, and “Johnston appointed him to the post more for his administrative ability, not for his tactical control of cannon on the battlefield.” [60]

When Lee took command he kept Pendleton in the position, in large part due to their friendship and spiritual connection as Episcopalians. As an artillery commander Pendleton showed his limitations during the Malvern Hill, Antietam and Chancellorsville, all of which harmed Confederate efforts on the battlefield. A junior officer remarked: “Pendleton is Lee’s weakness…. He is like the elephant, we have him and we don’t know what on earth to do with him, and it costs a devil of a sight to feed him.” ^[61]

His miserable performance “makes the younger men of the artillery wonder if he has the basic qualities of command.” [62]As such Lee removed him from command and returned him to his staff position and his “impatient subordinates hoped that would sever him from any combat role.” [63] At Gettysburg, Pendleton’s interference in moving the artillery trains to the rear and repositioning batteries without informing Porter Alexander, would again prove harmful to Confederate efforts.

Pendleton’s relationship with Lee, and his impact as a spiritual leader kept him with the army, today it would be argued that such a man should have been the senior chaplain of the army rather than remain in any form of combatant role. He did have a major effect on many leaders and soldiers as a source of spiritual encouragement. In fact, he “played such an invaluable role in the spiritual well-being of the army, travelling throughout the army and offering Divine Liturgy so frequently that Lee was loath to remove him as artillery chief, even when more accomplished and capable officers were available.” [64] A junior officer remarked: Pendleton was with Lee at Appomattox and after the war the two remained close, Pendleton helping to secure Lee’s appointment at Washington College and Lee serving on the vestry of Pendleton’s parish. When Lee died it was Pendleton who conducted the last rights as the family gathered around Lee’s deathbed. [65]

Trimble

Major General Isaac Trimble C.S.A.

Major General Isaac Trimble was a General without a command. One of the oldest Confederate Generals at Gettysburg, William “Extra Billy” Smith was older, Trimble graduated from West Point in 1822 and served as a lieutenant of artillery for ten years. He resigned in 1832 and spent the years before the war “as engineer for a succession of Eastern and Southern roads then being constructed.” [66] At the time of secession “Trimble was general superintendent of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad, and Marylanders regarded him as one of their most distinguished citizens.” [67] He immediately went to Virginia and was appointed as a Colonel of Engineers and was rapidly promoted to Brigadier General. At First Manassas it was his skill with railroads that enabled the troops from the Valley to join with P.T.G. Beauregard’s forces, it was “an assignment that would have overtaxed the ingenuity of any railroad man.” [68] Likewise, it was the first and last time that the Confederacy would use railroads to their fullest advantage.

Trimble led a brigade of Ewell’s division with great verve and skill during the Valley campaign, during the Seven Days and Cedar Mountain. One officer remarked that “there was enough fight in old man Trimble to satisfy a herd of tigers.” [69] His abilities were such that Stonewall Jackson “had him ticked for future command of his own division.” [70] However his was severely wounded at Second Manassas and still convalescing when Lee named Allegheny Johnson to command Jackson’s old division.

Having recovered Trimble was given command of the forces that were to protect Lee’s supply line in the Shenandoah Valley, but “when he reached his new post he found no troops.” [71] This would have deterred or discouraged many an officer, but Trimble wasted no time and riding alone sought out Lee and reported to the army commander at Chambersburg on June 27^th 1863. Lee who admired Trimble’s aggressiveness sent him on to Ewell, who he had previously served under as “as a sort of general officer without portfolio.” [72] The old but fiery general would get his chance in battle commanding Pender’s old division during Pickett’s Charge. Badly wounded in the assault he never commands again. He survived the war and died in 1888.

Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia would go into the Gettysburg Campaign with two new and untried corps commanders. Of nine infantry division commanders four were new to division command and another who had never commanded a division in combat. “At brigade level more than one third of the commanders lacked serious combat experience,” [73] of the infantry brigade commanders First Corps was in the best shape with ten of eleven assigned commanders having experience in command at that level, and most were of sound reputation and seasoned by combat. Second Corps was worse off, with six of thirteen assigned brigade commanders new to command, and two of the experienced brigade commanders were not competent to command at that level. Third Corps had nine of its thirteen commanders who had experience as brigade commanders; however, one of them, Brockenbrough was of little value despite being experienced. The Cavalry division too was a mixed bag of solid commanders, especially Wade Hampton but it too suffered its share of less than effective leaders and formations.

Douglas Southall Freeman wrote that the reorganization necessitated by the losses:

“involved an admixture of new units with old, it broke up many associations of long standing, and it placed veteran regiments of a large part of the army under men who were unacquainted with the soldiers and methods of General Lee. The same magnificent infantry were ready to obey Lee’s orders, but many of their superior officers were untried and were nervous in their new responsibilities.” [74]

Had the new commanders had been given a chance to work together in their new command assignments, especially those who had been promoted and or working with new subordinates or superiors before going into action, Lee might have achieved better results. But as Lee told Hood “this army would be invincible if…” In May and June of 1863 Lee did not believe that he had time to do this.

As we know, “if” is the biggest two letter word in the English language, and these men, as Barbara Tuchman noted would be “made bold by the moment, some irresolute, some carefully judicious, some paralyzed and powerless to act.”

[1] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.34

[2] Davis, Burke J.E.B. Stuart: The Last Cavalier Random House, New York 1957 p.20

[3] Ibid. Tagg The Generals of Gettysburg p.356

[4] Ibid. Davis J.E.B. Stuart p.27

[5] Ibid. Korda Clouds of Glory p.xxv

[6] Freeman, Douglas Southall, Lee an abridgment by Richard Harwell, Touchstone Books, New York 1997 p.101

[7] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.149

[8] Sears, Stephen W. To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1992 p.167

[9] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.158

[10] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.26

[11] Ibid. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion p.54

[12] Taylor, Walter. General Lee: His campaigns in Virginia 1861-1865 With Personal Reminiscences University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln Nebraska and London, 1994 previously published 1906 p.92

[13] Ibid. Taylor General Lee p.92

[14] Longacre, Edward G. Gentleman and Soldier: The Extraordinary Life of General Wade Hampton Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville TN 2003 p.83

[15] Ibid. Davis J.E.B. Stuart p.264

[16] Ibid. Girardi. The Civil War Generals p.255

[17] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.198

[18] Ibid. Davis J.E.B. Stuart p.299

[19] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier pp.26-27

[20] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier p.28

[21] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier p.28

[22] Goldfield, David. America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation Bloomsbury Press, New York 2011 p.399

[23] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.64

[24] Ibid. Glatthaar, General Lee’s Army p.352

[25] Ibid. Goldfield, America Aflame p.399

[26] Ibid. Warner Generals in Gray p.123

[27] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.770

[28] Ibid. Goldfield, America Aflame p.399

[29] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier p.265

[30] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier p.265

[31] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier p.276

[32] Ibid. Tagg The Generals of Gettysburg p.365

[33] Ibid. Warner Generals in Gray p.259

[34] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.286

[35] Ibid. Davis J.E.B. Stuart p.159

[36] Ibid. Sears. Gettysburg p.57

[37] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.227

[38] Ibid. Warner Generals in Gray p.178

[39] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.64

[40] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier pp.84-85

[41] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.36

[42] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier p.275

[43] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.427

[44] Ibid. Davis J.E.B. Stuart p.54

[45] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.427

[46] Ibid. Coddington The Gettysburg Campaign p.15

[47] Ibid. Coddington The Gettysburg Campaign p.111

[48] Ibid. Davis J.E.B. Stuart p.352

[49] Ibid. Davis J.E.B. Stuart p.352

[50] Ibid. Warner Generals in Gray p.167

[51] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.723

[52] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.532

[53] Brown, Kent Masterson Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, & the Pennsylvania Campaign University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 2005 p.81

[54] Ibid. Warner Generals in Gray p.147

[55] Ibid. Freeman Lee p.306

[56] Ibid. Coddington The Gettysburg Campaign p.17

[57] Ibid. Coddington The Gettysburg Campaign p.17

[58] Ibid. Freeman Lee p.551

[59] Ibid. Tagg The Generals of Gettysburg p.371

[60] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.16

[61] Ibid. Tagg The Generals of Gettysburg p.373

[62] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.35

[63] Ibid. Sears. Gettysburg p.57

[64] Ibid. Glatthaar, General Lee’s Army p.239

[65] Ibid. Thomas Robert E. Lee p.415

[66] Ibid. Warner Generals in Gray p.147

[67] Ibid. Dowdy. Lee and His Men at Gettysburg p.129

[68] Ibid. Freeman Lee p.173

[69] Ibid. Pfanz Ewell p.152

[70] Ibid. Dowdy. Lee and His Men at Gettysburg p.129

[71] Ibid. Dowdy. Lee and His Men at Gettysburg p.129

[72] Ibid. Dowdy. Lee and His Men at Gettysburg p.130

[73] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.217

[74] Ibid. Freeman Lee p.30

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Tagged as albert jenkins, appomattox, army of northern virginia, battle of chancellorsville, battle of gettysburg, battle of second manassas, beverly robertson, first manassas, fitzhugh "rooney" lee, fitzhugh Lee, general wade hampton, grumble jones, hampton legion, j.e.b. stuart, john chambliss, john imboden, jubal early, petersburg, richard ewell, robert e lee, stuart's cavalry division, thomas stonewall jackson, william pendleton, yellow tavern

April 9, 2018 · 00:01

“We Are All Americans” Ely Parker’s Words at Appomattox

Joshua Chamberlain Receives the Surrender of John Gordon at Appomattox

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

One hundred and fifty three years ago on the 9th and 10th of April 1865, four men, Ulysses S Grant, Robert E. Lee, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and Ely Parker, taught succeeding generations of Americans the value of mutual respect and reconciliation. The four men, each very different, would do so after a bitter and bloody war that had cost the lives of over 600,000 Americans which had left hundreds of thousands others maimed, shattered or without a place to live, and seen vast swaths of the country ravaged by war and its attendant plagues.

The differences in the men, their upbringing, and their views about life seemed to be insurmountable. The Confederate commander, General Robert E. Lee was the epitome of a Southern aristocrat and career army officer. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, like Lee was a West Point graduate and veteran of the War with Mexico, but there the similarities ended. Grant was an officer of humble means who had struggled with alcoholism and failed in his civilian life after he left the army, before returning to it as a volunteer when war began. Major General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had been a professor of rhetoric and natural and revealed religion from Bowdoin College until 1862 when he volunteered to serve. He was a hero of Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg, who helped exemplify the importance of citizen soldiers in peace and war. Finally there was Colonel Ely Parker, a full-blooded Seneca Indian; a professional engineer by trade, a man who was barred from being an attorney because as a Native American he was never considered a citizen. Although he had been rejected from serving in the army for the same reason, his friend Grant had obtained him a commission and kept him on his staff.

Ulysses S. Grant

A few days bef0ore the Confederate line around the fortress of Petersburg was shattered at the battle of Five Forks, and to save the last vestiges of his army Lee attempted to withdraw to the west. Within a few days the once magnificent Army of Northern Virginia was trapped near the town of Appomattox. On the morning of April 9th 1865 Lee replied to an entreaty of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant requesting that he and his Army of Northern Virginia be allowed to surrender. Lee wrote to Grant:

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, APRIL 9, 1865

Lieut. Gen. U.S. GRANT:

I received your note of this morning on the picket-line, whither I had come to meet you and ascertain definitely what terms were embraced in your proposal of yesterday with reference to the surrender of this army. I now ask an interview in accordance with the offer contained in your letter of yesterday for that purpose.

R.E. LEE, General.

The once mighty Army of Northern Virginia, which had won so many victories, and which at its peak numbered nearly 80,000 men, was now a haggard and emaciated, but still proud force of about 15,000 soldiers. For Lee to continue the war now would mean that they would have to face hopeless odds against a vastly superior enemy. Grant recognized this and wrote Lee:

I am equally anxious for peace with yourself, and the whole North entertains the same feeling. The terms upon which peace can be had are well understood. By the South laying down their arms they will hasten that most desirable event, save thousands of human lives, and hundreds of millions of property not yet destroyed. Seriously hoping that all our difficulties may be set-tied without the loss of another life, I subscribe myself, &c.,

Since the high water mark at Gettysburg, Lee’s army had been on the defensive. Lee’s ill-fated offensive into Pennsylvania was one of the two climactic events that sealed the doom of the Confederacy. The other was Grant’s victory at Vicksburg which fell to him a day after Pickett’s Charge, and which cut the Confederacy in half.

Robert E. Lee

The bloody defensive struggle lasted through 1864 as Grant bled the Confederates dry during the Overland Campaign, leading to the long siege of Petersburg. Likewise the armies of William Tecumseh Sherman had cut a swath through the Deep South and were moving toward Virginia from the Carolinas.

With each battle following Gettysburg the Army of Northern Virginia became weaker and finally after the nine month long siege of Petersburg ended with a Union victory there was little else to do. On the morning of April 9th a final attempt to break through the Union lines by John Gordon’s division was turned back by vastly superior Union forces.

On April 7th Grant wrote a letter to Lee, which began the process of ending the war in Virginia. He wrote:

General R. E. LEE:

The result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the C. S. Army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.

U.S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General

Lee was hesitant to surrender knowing Grant’s reputation for insisting on unconditional surrender, terms that Lee could not accept. He replied to Grant:

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, APRIL 7, 1865 Lieut. Gen. U.S. GRANT:

I have received your note of this date. Though not entertaining the opinion you express on the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia, I reciprocate your desire to avoid useless effusion of blood, and therefore, before considering your proposition, ask the terms you will offer on condition of its surrender.

R.E. LEE, General.

The correspondence continued over the next day even as the Confederates hoped to fight their way out of the trap that they were in. But now Robert E. Lee, who had through his efforts extended the war for at least six months, knew that he could no longer continue. Even so some of his younger subordinates wanted to continue the fight. When his artillery chief Porter Alexander recommended that the Army be released, “take to the woods and report to their state governors” Lee replied:

“We have simply now to face the fact that the Confederacy has failed. And as Christian men, Gen. Alexander, you & I have no right to think for one moment of our personal feelings or affairs. We must consider only the effect which our action will have upon the country at large.”

Lee continued:

“Already [the country] is demoralized by the four years of war. If I took your advice, the men would be without rations and under no control of their officers. They would be compelled to rob and steal in order to live…. We would bring on a state of affairs it would take the country years to recover from… You young fellows might go bushwhacking, but the only dignified course for me would be to go to General Grant and surrender myself and take the consequences of my acts.”

Alexander was so humbled at Lee’s reply he later wrote “I was so ashamed of having proposed such a foolish and wild cat scheme that I felt like begging him to forget he had ever heard it.” When Alexander saw the gracious terms of the surrender he was particularly impressed with how non-vindictive the terms were, especially in terms of parole and amnesty for the surrendered soldiers.

Abraham Lincoln had already set the tone for the surrender in his Second Inaugural Address given just over a month before the surrender of Lee’s army. Lincoln closed that speech with these words of reconciliation:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Lee met Grant at the house of Wilmer McLean, who had moved to Appomattox in 1861 after his home near Manassas had been used as a Confederate headquarters and was damaged by artillery fire. Lee was dressed in his finest uniform complete with sash, while Grant was dressed in a mud splattered uniform and overcoat only distinguished from his soldiers by the three stars on his should boards. Grant’s dress uniforms were far to the rear in the baggage trains and Grant was afraid that his slovenly appearance would insult Lee, but it did not. It was a friendly meeting, before getting down to business the two reminisced about the Mexican War.

Grant provided his vanquished foe very generous surrender terms:

“In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate. One copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.”

When Lee left the building Federal troops began cheering but Grant ordered them to stop. Grant felt a sense of melancholy and wrote “I felt…sad and depressed, at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people has fought.” He later noted: “The Confederates were now our countrymen, and we did not want to exult over their downfall.”

In the hours before and after the signing of the surrender documents old friends and classmates, separated by four long years of war gathered on the porch or around the house. Grant and others were gracious to their now defeated friends and the bitterness of war began to melt away. Some Union officers offered money to help their Confederate friends get through the coming months. It was an emotional reunion, especially for the former West Point classmates gathered there:

“It had never been in their hearts to hate the classmates they were fighting. Their lives and affections for one another had been indelibly framed and inextricably intertwined in their academy days. No adversity, war, killing, or political estrangement could undo that. Now, meeting together when the guns were quiet, they yearned to know that they would never hear their thunder or be ordered to take up arms against one another again.”

Grant also sent 25,000 rations to the starving Confederate army waiting to surrender. The gesture meant much to the defeated Confederate soldiers who had had little to eat ever since the retreat began.

The surrender itself was accomplished with a recognition that soldiers who have given the full measure of devotion can know when confronting a defeated enemy. Major General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the heroic victor of Little Round Top was directed by Grant to receive the final surrender of the defeated Confederate infantry on the morning of April 12th.

It was a rainy and gloomy morning as the beaten Confederates marched to the surrender grounds. As the initial units under the command of John Gordon passed him, Chamberlain was moved with emotion he ordered his soldiers to salute the defeated enemy for whose cause he had no sympathy, Chamberlain honored the defeated Rebel army by bringing his division to present arms.

John Gordon, who was “riding with heavy spirit and downcast face,” looked up, surveyed the scene, wheeled about on his horse, and “with profound salutation returned the gesture by lowering his saber to the toe of his boot. The Georgian then ordered each following brigade to carry arms as they passed third brigade, “honor answering honor.”

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

Chamberlain was not just a soldier, but before the war had been Professor of Natural and Revealed Religions at Bowdoin College, and a student of theology before the war. He could not help to see the significance of the occasion. He understood that some people would criticize him for saluting the surrendered enemy. However, Chamberlain, unlike others, understood the value of reconciliation. Chamberlain was a staunch abolitionist and Unionist who had nearly died on more than one occasion fighting the defeated Confederate Army, and he understood that no true peace could transpire unless the enemies became reconciled to one another.

He noted that his chief reason for doing so:

“The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least. The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;—was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? Instructions had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier’s salutation, from the “order arms” to the old “carry”—the marching salute. Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual,—honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!”

The next day Robert E Lee addressed his soldiers for the last time. Lee’s final order to his loyal troops was published the day after the surrender. It was a gracious letter of thanks to men that had served their beloved commander well in the course of the three years since he assumed command of them outside Richmond in 1862.

General Order No. 9  

After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.

I need not tell the survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to the result from no distrust of them.

But feeling that valour and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I have determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.

By the terms of the agreement, officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you his blessing and protection.

With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your Country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you an affectionate farewell. — R. E. Lee, General

The surrender was the beginning of the end. Other Confederate forces continued to resist for several weeks, but with the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia led by the man that nearly all Southerners saw as the embodiment of their nation the war was effectively over.

Lee had fought hard and after the war was still under the charge of treason, but he understood the significance of defeat and the necessity of moving forward as one nation. In August 1865 Lee wrote to the trustees of Washington College of which he was now President:

“I think it is the duty of every citizen, in the present condition of the Country, to do all in his power to aid the restoration of peace and harmony… It is particularly incumbent upon those charged with the instruction of the young to set them an example of submission to authority.”

Brigadier General Ely Parker

It is a lesson that all of us in our terribly divided land need to learn regardless of or political affiliation or ideology. After he had signed the surrender document, Lee learned that Grant’s Aide-de-Camp Colonel Ely Parker, was a full-blooded Seneca Indian. He stared at Parker’s dark features and said: “It is good to have one real American here.”

Parker, a man whose people had known the brutality of the white man, a man who was not considered a citizen and would never gain the right to vote, replied, “Sir, we are all Americans.” That afternoon Parker would receive a commission as a Brevet Brigadier General of Volunteers, making him the first Native American to hold that rank in the United States Army. He would later be made a Brigadier General in the Regular Army.

I don’t know what Lee thought of that. His reaction is not recorded and he never wrote about it after the war, but it might have been in some way led to Lee’s letter to the trustees of Washington College. I think with our land so divided, ands that is time again that we learn the lessons so evidenced in the actions and words of Ely Parker, Ulysses Grant, Robert E. Lee and Joshua Chamberlain, for we are all Americans.

Sadly, I think that there is a portion of the American population who will not heed these words and will continue to agitate for policies and laws similar to those that led to the Civil War, and which those the could not reconcile defeat instituted again during the Post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. For me such behavior and attitudes are incompressible, but they are all too real, and all too present in our divided nation.

But I still maintain hope that in spite of everything that divides us, in spite of the intolerance and hatred of some, that we can overcome. I think that the magnanimity of Grant in victory, the humility of Lee in defeat, the graciousness of Chamberlain in honoring the defeated foe, and the stark bluntness of Parker, the Native American, in reminding Lee, that “we are all Americans,” is something that is worth remembering, and yes, even emulating.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Tagged as abraham lincoln, american civil war, battle of five forks, ely parker, john gordon, joshua lawrence chamberlain, petersburg, porter alexander, robert e lee, surrender at appomattox court house, ulysses s grant

April 12, 2016 · 07:00

We Are All Americans: Appomattox at 151

Joshua Chamberlain Receives the Surrender of John Gordon at Appomattox

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am back from my recent trip and I am posting an article that I recently revised and had intended to post over the weekend, but did not get around to it. I guess that is a good thing. I hope that you enjoy it, and glean from it the lessons that the events that it is based on have helped to teach me.

Peace

Padre Steve+

One hundred and fifty years ago on the 9th and 10th of April 1865, four men, Ulysses S Grant, Robert E. Lee, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and Ely Parker, taught succeeding generations of Americans the value of mutual respect and reconciliation. The four men, each very different, would do so after a bitter and bloody war that had cost the lives of over 600,000 Americans which had left hundreds of thousands others maimed, shattered or without a place to live, and seen vast swaths of the country ravaged by war and its attendant plagues.

Ulysses S. Grant

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, APRIL 9, 1865

Lieut. Gen. U.S. GRANT:

R.E. LEE, General.

Robert E. Lee

On April 7th Grant wrote a letter to Lee, which began the process of ending the war in Virginia. He wrote:

General R. E. LEE:

U.S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General

Lee was hesitant to surrender knowing Grant’s reputation for insisting on unconditional surrender, terms that Lee could not accept. He replied to Grant:

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, APRIL 7, 1865 Lieut. Gen. U.S. GRANT:

R.E. LEE, General.

Lee continued:

Grant provided his vanquished foe very generous surrender terms:

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

He noted that his chief reason for doing so:

General Order No. 9  

After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.

I need not tell the survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to the result from no distrust of them.

Brigadier General Ely Parker

Peace

Padre Steve+

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June 8, 2015 · 16:17

The First Modern War – Introduction

Friends of Padre Steve’s World

Those who are habitual readers here know that I teach military history and ethics. One of the things that I lead is a Staff Ride at Gettysburg for which I am in the process of writing a text which will probably when I am done will be two, maybe even three books. The text is massive and I have been done a lot of editing, revising and even expanding it as I come to realize just how limited my previous vision was for producing it.

I have been writing about the pursuit of truth for several months, and one of those truths is that war cannot be separated from its contexts and that military power alone does not win wars or establish a just and equitable peace. That is one of the problems with many who write popular military history, they are so focused on the battles, campaigns, tactics and technology that they focus so much on the military aspects, that the miss the other contexts that are so important.

A few days ago I released a section of this same chapter dealing with women in the Civil War. Today is the introduction to that chapter, appropriately titled “The First Modern War.” It deals with the political, social-cultural, economic, technological, military strategic, geographical, and historical contexts of the war and introduces us to the importance of capable and competent civilian leadership as was exhibited by Lincoln and his advisers; and that how that knowing understanding the contexts keeps leaders from seeking short-cuts from the snake oil salesmen who promise a “silver bullet” with which all war can be won.

I’ll be releasing the second section of this chapter dealing with the importance of civilian leadership either tomorrow or Wednesday because I need to get my opinion piece that deals with the Duggaring of the Religious Right.

So, have a wonderful evening.

Peace

Padre Steve+

The American Civil War was the first modern war. It was a watershed event in an era, which introduced changes in new types of weapons, more lethal versions of older weapons, tactics, army organization, logistics, intelligence and communications. Though the war did not change the essential nature of war, which Clausewitz says is “is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will” [1] it expanded the parameters of war and re-introduced the concept of “total war” to the world and “because its aim was all embracing, the war was to be absolute in character.” [2] In a sense it was a true revolution in military affairs.

The Civil War was truly a revolution in military affairs. The war changed the character of war, as it had been known for centuries, since the Peace of Westphalia and the end of the Thirty Years War. In the American Civil War, the character of war changed from a limited war waged between opposing armies to a total war, waged between two people who shared much in common but were divided by an ideology which encompassed politics, economics, society, law, and even religion.

The war was revolutionary in other ways, and brought about a host of social, philosophical, economic, and political changes which continue to impact the lives of people in the United States and around the world even today. Some of these, especially those regarding the abolition of slavery and emancipation, as well as the beginnings of the Women’s Rights movement have had a ripple effect in matters of political and social equality for other previously disenfranchised groups of citizens. As one author noted “The Civil War uprooted institutions, transformed our politics, influenced social relationships of half a continent, and wrought changes that echo down the generations.” ^{^[3]}

In a sense, when Abraham Lincoln proclaimed “a new birth of freedom” in his Gettysburg address it served as a watershed moment in American history because it brought to the forefront the understanding of Jefferson and the other signers of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal.

Thus it is important to study the Gettysburg campaign in the context of the Civil War because the campaign of 1863 in the east cannot be divorced from what was happening in the west at Vicksburg, nor the Union blockade, nor the diplomatic, economic and informational aspects of the war. Likewise the Gettysburg campaign cannot be separated from its relationship to the broader understanding of the nature and character of war. To do this one must examine the connection between them and policies made by political leaders; to include the relationship of political to military leaders, diplomats, the leaders of business and industry and not to be forgotten, the press and the people. Likewise we must understand the various contexts of war, to include the social, political, ideological and even the religious components of war, how they impacted Civil War leaders and why civilian policy makers and military leaders must understand them today.

While the essential nature of war remains constant, wars and the manner in which they are fought have changed in their character throughout history, and this distinction matters not only for military professionals, but also policy makers. The changing character of war was something that military leaders as well as policy makers struggled with during the American Civil War much as today’s military leaders and policy makers seek to understand the character of warfare today. British military theorist Colin Gray writes “Since the character of every war is unique in the details of its contexts (political, social-cultural, economic, technological, military strategic, geographical, and historical), the policymaker most probably will struggle of the warfare that is unleashed.” [4] That was not just an issue for Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, both of whom struggled with the nature of the war which had been unleashed, but it is one for our present political leaders, who as civilian politicians are “likely to be challenged by a deficient grasp of both the nature of war as well as its contemporary context-specific character.” [5]

In addition to being the first modern war, or maybe I should say, the first war of the Industrial Age, the Civil War became a “total war.” It was the product of both the massive number of technological advances which both preceded and occurred during it, in which the philosophical nature of the Industrial Revolution came to the fore. Likewise, the enmity of the two sides for one another which had been fostered by a half century of relentless and violent propaganda which ushered from the mouths of politicians, the press and even from the pulpit, even to the point of outright armed conflict and murder in “Bleeding Kansas” during the 1850s.

As a total war it became a war that was as close to Clausewitz’s understanding of absolute war in its in character waged on the American continent, and it prefigured the great ideological wars of the twentieth century, as J.F.C. Fuller noted “for the first time in modern history the aim of war became not only the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces, but also of their foundations- his entire political, social and economic order.” [6] It was the first war where at least some of the commanders, especially Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman were men of the Industrial Age, in their thought and in the way that they waged war, in strategy, tactics even more importantly, psychologically. Fuller wrote:

“Spiritually and morally they belonged to the age of the Industrial Revolution. Their guiding principle was that of the machine which was fashioning them, namely, efficiency. And as efficiency is governed by a single end- that every means is justified- no moral or spiritual conceptions of traditional behavior must stand in its way.” [7]

William Tecumseh Sherman told the mayor of Atlanta after ordering the civilian population expelled that “we are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make the old and young, the rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.” [10] Sherman was one of the first American military leaders to understand that a civil war could not be waged according to the limited war doctrines most American officers had been taught. He not only “carried on war against the enemy’s resources more extensively and systematically than anyone else had done, but he developed also a deliberate strategy of terror directed against the enemy’s minds.” [11] While some might find this troubling, the fact remains that it was Sherman’s Southern sweep of all that lay before him that broke the back of the Confederacy.

Abraham Lincoln came to embrace the eternal nature of war as well as the change in the character of the war over time. Lincoln had gone to war for the preservation of the Union, something that for him was almost spiritual in nature, as is evidenced by the language he used in both of his inaugural addresses and the Gettysburg Address. Instead of a war to re-unite the Union with the Emancipation Proclamation the war became a war for the liberation of enslaved African Americans, After January 1^st 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, Lincoln “told an official of the Interior Department, “the character of the war will be changed. It will be one of subjugation…The [old] South is to be destroyed and replaced by new propositions and ideas.” [12] That too was a modern understanding of war.

Of course, the revolution in military affairs that characterized the Civil War took time, but it was the political and military leaders of the North who better adapted themselves and their nation to the kind of war that was being fought. “Lincoln’s remarkable abilities gave him a wide edge over Davis as a war leader, while in Grant and Sherman the North acquired commanders with a concept of total war and the determination to make it succeed.” [13]

At the beginning of the war the leaders and populace of both sides still held a romantic idea of war. The belief that the war would be over in a few months and that would be settled by a few decisive battles was held by most, including many military officers on both sides. There were some naysayers like the venerable and rather corpulent General Winfield Scott, but politicians and the press mocked Scott and those who even suggested that the war would be long, hard, and bloody. Of course those who predicted a short, easy, and relatively bloodless war who were proven wrong, and the war became the bloodiest war ever waged by Americans, and it was against other Americans.

The Civil War became an archetype of the wars of the twentieth century, and I believe will be so for the twenty-first century as well because of the emphasis on competing ideologies often buttressed with near fanatical religious extremism. The American Civil War evolved into a clash between peoples with radically different ideologies, which extended beyond the province of purely military action. The war “was preceded by years of violent propaganda, which long before the war had obliterated all sense of moderation, and awakened in the contending parties the primitive spirit of tribal fanaticism.” [14]

Those who conducted the American Civil War added new dimensions to war, and the technology they embraced increased war’s lethality in ways that they did not anticipate. For the first time since the 30 Years’ War, this war on the American continent saw opponents intentionally target the property, homes and businesses of the opposing civilian populations as part of their military campaign. The Civil War was a precursor to the wars that followed, especially the First World War that it prefigured in so many ways.

British general and military theorist J.F.C. Fuller encapsulated the massive amount of change brought about by the Civil War quite well in his book A Military History of the Modern World:

The war fought by Grant and Lee, Sherman and Johnston, and others closely resembled the First of the World Wars. No other war, not even the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, offers so exact a parallel. It was a war of rifle bullets and trenches, of slashings, abattis, and even of wire entanglements- an obstacle the Confederates called “a devilish contrivance which none but a Yankee could devise” because at Drewry’s Bluff they had been trapped in them and slaughtered like partridges.” It was a war of astonishing in its modernity, with wooden wire-bound mortars hand and winged grenades, rockets, and many forms of booby traps. Magazine rifles and Requa’s machine guns were introduced and balloons were used by both sides although the confederates did not think much of them. Explosive bullets are mentioned and also a flame projector, and in June, 1864, General Pendleton asked the chief ordnance officer at Richmond whether he could supply him with “stink-shells” which would give off “offensive gases” and cause “suffocating effect.” The answer he got was “stink-shells, none on hand; don’t keep them; will make them if ordered.” Nor did modernity end there; armoured ships, armoured trains, land mines and torpedoes were used. A submarine was built by Horace H. Hundley at Mobile….” [15]

However, like all in nearly all wars, the many lessons of the American Civil War were forgotten, or even worse, completely dismissed by military professionals in the United States as well as in Europe. Thus 50 years later during First World War, the governments Britain, France, Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary and Imperial Russia wasted vast amounts of manpower and destroyed the flower of a generation because they did not heed the lessons of the Civil War. For that matter neither did General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force who three and a half years after those countries destroyed the flower of their nation’s manhood and repeated all of their mistakes with the lives of American soldiers. Fuller noted:

“Had the nations of Europe studied the lessons of the Civil War and taken them to heart they could not in 1914-1918 have perpetuated the enormous tactical blunders of which that war bears record.” [16]

The lessons of the war are still relevant today. Despite vast advances in weaponry, technology and the distances with which force can be applied by opponents, war remains an act of violence to compel an enemy to fulfill our will. War according to Clausewitz is “more than a chameleon that slightly adapts its characteristics to the given case.” [17] but it is always characterized by the violence of its elements, the province of chance and its subordination to the political objective and as such forces political and military leaders as well as policy makers to wrestle with “the practical challenge of somehow mastering the challenge of strategy in an actual historical context.” [18]

Colin Gray in his book Fighting Talk emphasizes that the “contexts of war are all important.” Gray makes a case for seven essential contexts that must be understood by policy makers and military leaders regarding war, which if ignored or misunderstood “can have strong negative consequences.” [19] Gray enunciates seven contexts of war that policy makers as well as military professionals ignore at the own peril: There is the political context, the social context, the cultural context, the economic context; the military-strategic context, the geographic context and the historical context. Gray notes these seven contexts “define all the essential characteristics of a particular armed conflict.” [20]

Gray discusses the importance of this. Noting that strategists are “ever on the look out for shortcuts” [21] and because they are pragmatic, wanting simple and well defined solutions they tend not to want to deal with complexities that muddy the water, that those who decide on strategy are “eternally at hazard to the siren call of the technological solution, the cultural fix, the promise of historical understanding and so forth.” [22] He notes that there are always those trying to sell strategists catalogs, which promise “products that answer the strategist’s questions” turning “the base metal of confusion of information into the pure gold of comprehension.” [23] But such easy answers are often little more than snake oil. The virtue of seeing war through all of these contexts “obliges strategists to examine holistically, in the round,” [24] that the “recognition of war’s multiple contexts helps immunize the strategist against getting captured by such fantasies.” [25]

The study of the Civil War can be helpful to political leaders, military strategists, joint planners and commanders because it so wonderfully shows just how important understanding the context of wars is. Likewise it gives us an American context where we can see the interplay of how Clausewitz’s “paradoxical trinity- composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; of the play of chance and the element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason alone.” [26]

This is especially important, because we live during an era of great technological, social, geopolitical and philosophical change, just as did the leaders of the United States and the Rebel Confederates States did in the ante-bellum and the war years. The importance of this cannot be underestimated, for in this era of change, like in every era, some leaders and commanders were either resistant to, or failed to understand the changes being forced upon them in their conduct of war by the industrialization of war and its attendant technology.

Examples of this are found in the actions of so many leaders and commanders in the Civil War. Like the American political and military leaders who in Iraq “were ignorant of how to conduct themselves in a military and social-cultural context of irregular warfare” [27] many of the officers who fought the Civil War completely ignorant of what they were facing. Educated in Napoleonic the principles of Henri Jomini, officers who only knew limited war in Mexico and irregular warfare against Indians were faced with fighting a total war on a continental scale. The war witnessed a host of new technologies and “many officers found themselves wholly unprepared for what they faced, in effect, compelled to purchase learning with lives.” [28]

However, unlike many political leaders, Abraham Lincoln came to understand the radical and revolutionary nature of the war and had to find military leaders who understood the same. In frustration Lincoln rebuked those who urged limited war saying “The government cannot much longer play a game in which it stakes all, and its enemies stake nothing. Those enemies must understand that they cannot experiment for ten years trying to destroy the government, then if the fail still come back into the Union unhurt.” [29]

Eventually Lincoln found Ulysses Grant and his lieutenants William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan. These me not only understood the military aspects of the contexts of the war, but embraced them and applied them with ruthless skill and vigor that stunned the leaders and the people of the South. When John Bell Hood wrote Sherman a letter in which he condemned the Union commander for the destruction of Atlanta, and the forced evacuation of its inhabitants, even invoking God’s judgment Sherman would have nothing of it. Sherman wrote back that “Hood’s appeal to a “just God” was “sacrilegious,” Sherman insisted, for it was the South which had “plunged a nation into war, dark and cruel war, who dared and badgered us to battle.” Having created the war, the South would now experience it.” [30]

Strategists and planners must develop a philosophical foundation that they must seek to understand the contexts of war matters now more than ever. By looking at the Gettysburg campaign in context we can begin to draw lessons that we can apply today. Not that our situation is the same as the leaders who led the Union and Confederacy in the Civil War, but exploring these issues is vital to us understanding the contexts of the wars that we fight today and the world in which we live.

Notes

[1] Clausewitz, Carl von. On War Indexed edition, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1976 p.75

[2] Fuller, J.F.C. The Conduct of War 1789-1961 Da Capo Press, New York 1992. Originally published by Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick N.J p.99

[3] Lowry, Thomas P. The Stories the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg PA 1994 p.176

[4] Gray, Colin S. Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy Potomac Book, Dulles VA 2009 p.36

[5] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.36

[6] Fuller, J.F.C. A Military History of the Modern World, Volume Three: From the Seven Days Battle, 1862, to the Battle of Leyte Gulf, 1944 Minerva Press 1956 p.88

[7] Ibid. Fuller A Military History of the Modern World, Volume Three p.88

[8] Flood, Charles Bracelen, Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the War, Harper Perennial, New York 2005 p.238

[9] Ibid. Clausewitz p.90

[10] McPherson, James. The Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1988 p.809

[11] Weigley, Russell F. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military History and Policy University of Indiana Press, Bloomington IN, 1973 p.149

[12] Ibid. McPherson The Battle Cry of Freedom p.558

[13] Ibid. McPherson The Battle Cry of Freedom p.857

[14] Ibid. Fuller The Conduct of War 1789-1961 p.99

[15] Ibid. Fuller A Military History of the Modern World, Volume Three p.89

[16] Ibid. Fuller A Military History of the Modern World, Volume Three p.89

[17] Ibid. Clausewitz On War p.89

[18] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.38

[19] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.5

[20] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.3

[21] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.5

[22] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk pp. 5-6

[23] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.5

[24] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.5

[25] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.5

[26] Ibid. Clausewitz On War p.89

[27] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk pp.38-39

[28] Sinnreich, Richard Hart Awkward Partners: military history and American military education in The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession edited by Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York 2006 p.56

[29] McPherson, James M. Drawn With the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1996 p.80

[30] Fellman, Michael. Lincoln and Sherman in Lincoln’s Generals edited by Gabor S. Boritt University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln NE 1994 p.153

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Tagged as abraham lincoln, ambrose burnside, american civil war, ante-bellum army, antietam, army of the potomac, attrition and exhaustion strategy, beardslee wireless telegrpahs, communications, corps of engineers, dennis hart mahan, edward hagerman, forage requirments, fortifications, george mcclellan, henri jomini, henry halleck, j f c fuller, joe wheeler, jominian theory, joseph hooker, logistics, manuever warfare, military telegraph service, napoleonic tactics, petersburg, positional warfare, railroads, russell weigley, shiloh, signal corps, the american way of war, US Grant, vicksburg campaign, west point, William T Sherman

February 5, 2015 · 18:31

“Our Army Would Be Invincible If…” Pt.5 Stuart’s Cavalry

This is the fourth part of my re-written chapter on the leadership of Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg. Today is a look at the leaders of Major General J.E.B Stuart as well as three other generals, Brigadier General John Imboden who commanded an independent cavalry brigade, Lee’s Chief of Artillery, Brigadier General William Pendleton, and Major General Isaac Trimble. This like the previous sections of this chapter of my Gettysburg text is interesting because it shows the complexities of the lives and personalities of the men leading these units. Professional soldiers, volunteers with little military experience, soldiers, lawyers, engineers and politicians they are an interesting collection of personalities; some surrounded in myth and others practically unknown. I think it is important for anyone studying a war, a campaign, or a battle to at least look at the lives of the men who planned and fought it. In doing so, even those that oppose what they did in rebelling against the United States can find in them some measure of humanity, and sometimes even gain a sense of empathy for some of them.

As I get ready to take another group of students to Gettysburg I will be doing more work on my text, editing previously written chapters and writing a chapter similar on the leaders of the Army of the Potomac.

Have a great night

Peace

Padre Steve+

Stuart’s Cavalry Division

Major General J.E.B. Stuart C.S.A.

At West Point Stuart was noted for his “lifelong religious devoutness. When he was at West Point he was known as a “Bible Class Man.” [3] Stuart was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and assigned to the Mounted Rifles, which Stuart noted was “a corps which my taste, fondness for riding, and my desire to serve my country in some acceptable manner led me to select above all the rest.” [4] Stuart would serve with the Mounted Rifles for about a year before being selected to serve in one of the first Cavalry regiments formed, the First Cavalry at Jefferson Barracks Missouri.

Lee came to share that opinion and over the course of his service Stuart had come to:

This would be something that Lee came to rely and which he would dearly miss at Gettysburg.

Stuart was mortally wounded less than a year after Gettysburg at the Battle of Yellow Tavern, upon his death Hampton was promoted to command what was left of the Cavalry Corps.

Hampton

Brigadier General Wade Hampton C.S.A.

Hampton came to dominate South Carolina politics for fifteen years, after two terms as Governor he served as a U.S. Senator until 1891 when a political enemy won the governorship and forced him from the Senate. When he died on April 11^th 1902 his final words were “God bless my people, black and white.” [31]

Like so many leaders of so many tumultuous eras, Hampton was complex and cannot be easily classified. He was certainly not perfect, but in war and in peace gave of himself to his state and community.

Rooney Lee

Brigadier General William Fitzhugh “Rooney” Lee C.S.A.

Robertson

Brigadier General Beverly Roberson C.S.A.

Fitzhugh Lee

Brigadier General Fitzhugh Lee C.S.A.

“Grumble” Jones

Brigadier General William “Grumble” Jones C.S.A.

Jones raised a company at the beginning of the war, and served under Stuart at First Manassas, and from the beginning took a dislike to his young superior. He grumbled to his men that he “would take no orders from that young whippersnapper.” [44] When Stuart was promoted he was made Colonel of the 1^st Virginia Cavalry. The assignment did not go well for him. His loathing for Stuart grew and one officer wrote that it “ripened afterwards into as genuine hatred as I ever remembered to have seen.” [45] His hatred of Stuart expanded into a hatred for his Lieutenant Colonel, Fitzhugh Lee, who was a close friend of Stuart. Jones was unpopular with the regiment and Lee much admired and the situation became so bad that Jones was reassigned to command the 7^th Virginia Cavalry. Jones performed well in this duty, well enough to warrant promotion and he was promoted to Brigadier General in September 1862. The promotion allowed Lee to send Jones to serve in the Shenandoah Valley away from Stuart since their relationship was so toxic and Jones’s hatred of Stuart “bordered on pathological.” [46]

Jenkins

General Albert G. Jenkins C.S.A.

Attached or Staff Officers: Imboden, Pendleton and Trimble

Imboden

Brigadier General John Imboden C.S.A.

Pendleton

Brigadier General William Pendleton C.S.A.

Trimble

Major General Isaac Trimble C.S.A.

Douglas Southall Freeman wrote that the reorganization necessitated by the losses:

[1] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.34

[2] Davis, Burke J.E.B. Stuart: The Last Cavalier Random House, New York 1957 p.20

[3] Ibid. Tagg The Generals of Gettysburg p.356

[4] Ibid. Davis J.E.B. Stuart p.27

[5] Ibid. Korda Clouds of Glory p.xxv

[6] Freeman, Douglas Southall, Lee an abridgment by Richard Harwell, Touchstone Books, New York 1997 p.101

[7] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.149

[8] Sears, Stephen W. To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1992 p.167

[9] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.158

[10] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.26

[11] Ibid. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion p.54

[12] Taylor, Walter. General Lee: His campaigns in Virginia 1861-1865 With Personal Reminiscences University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln Nebraska and London, 1994 previously published 1906 p.92

[13] Ibid. Taylor General Lee p.92

[14] Longacre, Edward G. Gentleman and Soldier: The Extraordinary Life of General Wade Hampton Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville TN 2003 p.83

[15] Ibid. Davis J.E.B. Stuart p.264

[16] Ibid. Girardi. The Civil War Generals p.255

[17] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.198

[18] Ibid. Davis J.E.B. Stuart p.299

[19] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier pp.26-27

[20] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier p.28

[21] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier p.28

[22] Goldfield, David. America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation Bloomsbury Press, New York 2011 p.399

[23] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.64

[24] Ibid. Glatthaar, General Lee’s Army p.352

[25] Ibid. Goldfield, America Aflame p.399

[26] Ibid. Warner Generals in Gray p.123

[27] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.770

[28] Ibid. Goldfield, America Aflame p.399

[29] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier p.265

[30] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier p.265

[31] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier p.276

[32] Ibid. Tagg The Generals of Gettysburg p.365

[33] Ibid. Warner Generals in Gray p.259

[34] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.286

[35] Ibid. Davis J.E.B. Stuart p.159

[36] Ibid. Sears. Gettysburg p.57

[37] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.227

[38] Ibid. Warner Generals in Gray p.178

[39] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.64

[40] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier pp.84-85

[41] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.36

[42] Ibid. Longacre, Gentleman and Soldier p.275

[43] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.427

[44] Ibid. Davis J.E.B. Stuart p.54

[45] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.427

[46] Ibid. Coddington The Gettysburg Campaign p.15

[47] Ibid. Coddington The Gettysburg Campaign p.111

[48] Ibid. Davis J.E.B. Stuart p.352

[49] Ibid. Davis J.E.B. Stuart p.352

[50] Ibid. Warner Generals in Gray p.167

[51] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.723

[52] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.532

[53] Brown, Kent Masterson Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, & the Pennsylvania Campaign University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 2005 p.81

[54] Ibid. Warner Generals in Gray p.147

[55] Ibid. Freeman Lee p.306

[56] Ibid. Coddington The Gettysburg Campaign p.17

[57] Ibid. Coddington The Gettysburg Campaign p.17

[58] Ibid. Freeman Lee p.551

[59] Ibid. Tagg The Generals of Gettysburg p.371

[60] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.16

[61] Ibid. Tagg The Generals of Gettysburg p.373

[62] Ibid. Freeman Lee’s Lieutenants p.35

[63] Ibid. Sears. Gettysburg p.57

[64] Ibid. Glatthaar, General Lee’s Army p.239

[65] Ibid. Thomas Robert E. Lee p.415

[66] Ibid. Warner Generals in Gray p.147

[67] Ibid. Dowdy. Lee and His Men at Gettysburg p.129

[68] Ibid. Freeman Lee p.173

[69] Ibid. Pfanz Ewell p.152

[70] Ibid. Dowdy. Lee and His Men at Gettysburg p.129

[71] Ibid. Dowdy. Lee and His Men at Gettysburg p.129

[72] Ibid. Dowdy. Lee and His Men at Gettysburg p.130

[73] Ibid. Wert A Glorious Army p.217

[74] Ibid. Freeman Lee p.306

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October 9, 2014 · 16:57

The Character, Nature and Context of The Civil War and Why it Still Matters Part 2

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Here is part two to yesterday’s post.

Since I am now working my way back to Gettysburg his is a significant revision of an article that I published here earlier in the year and that is a part of my Gettysburg Staff Ride text. The actual full title of the chapter is The Foundations of the First Modern War: The Character, Nature and Context of the Civil War and its Importance to Us Today but that is rather long to put as the title here. This is pretty detailed and specialized so many may not want to read it, however, for those with in interest in how United States policy in regard to how we use our military today and the myriad of tensions that we wrestle with that have been with us for about 150 years it should prove enlightening. Todays article is more concerned with how the war was waged and developments which began in the Civil War which changed the ways that later wars were conducted.

Have a great night!

Peace

Padre Steve+

Part Two…

Weaponry, Tactics, Technical Advancements and Mobilization

All of these factors influenced and affected the Union and Confederate armies as they campaigned. Likewise, advances weaponry particularly the rifled musket, posed a conundrum for officers educated in the Napoleonic tactics that both armies began the war. The tactics the officers were educated in were developed at a time when the maximum effective range of muskets was barely 100 meters. Yet by 1860 the rifled muskets had an effective range of about 400 meters, and the advent of the repeating rifle increased the firepower available to individual soldiers. This made it especially difficult for the armies that fought the Civil War to “rise up and deliver a frontal attack became almost always futile against any reasonably steady defenders. Even well executed flank attacks tended to suffer such heavy casualties as experienced riflemen maneuvered to form new fronts against them that they lost the decisiveness they had enjoyed in the Napoleonic Wars.” [1] Despite the increased range and accuracy that came with the rifled musket tactics in all arms were slow to change and even at Gettysburg Lee would demonstrate that he had not fully appreciated the effects of the change of warfare learned during the battles of 1862.

Though there were a number of mounted combats between Union and Confederate cavalry, “they were incidental both to the cavalry’s primary role and to the course of tactical development” [2]which generally fought dismounted. The way in which both sides used their cavalry showed that by the end of 1863 each had “arrived at a war of tactical entrenchment dominated by infantry armed with the rifled musket, and supported by the defensive deployment of smoothbore artillery.” [3]

Another issue faced by all of the officers now commanding large formations in the Civil War was their inexperience in dealing with such large numbers of troops. When the war began, the officers educated at West Point, as well as others who had been directly appointed had previously only commanded small units. Even those who commanded regiments such as Lee seldom had more than a few companies with them at any given time. Those who had campaigned and fought in Mexico, and had some experience in handling larger formations were handicapped because that war was still very much a Napoleonic War fought with Napoleonic era weapons against a more numerous but poorly equipped enemy.

These men were now faced with the task of organizing, training and employing large armies made up primarily of militia units and volunteers. Most had little experience commanding such units and their experience with militia and volunteer formations during the Mexican War did not increase the appreciation of Regulars for them or for their leaders. J.F.C Fuller noted that at the beginning of the war “the Federal soldier was semiregular and the Confederate semiguerilla. The one strove after discipline, the other unleashed initiative. In battle the Confederate fought like a berserker, but out of battle he ceased to be a soldier.” [4] Both required certain kinds of leadership and Regular officers serving in both the Union and Confederate armies “embedded with the volunteers to give them some professional stiffening privately regarded them as uncontrollable adolescents who kicked off every back-home restraint the moment they were on campaign.” [5] Over the course of time this did change as the units of both armies learned to be professional soldiers.

The Regular Army numbered but 16,000 men at the beginning of the war most scattered in isolated posts and coastal defense fortifications around the country. Most of the Army remained loyal to the Union, “except for 313 officers who resigned their commissions, but this force was swamped by a Union war army that reached about 500,000 within four months of the firing on Fort Sumter.” [6] These officers however were among the Army’s best and brightest who rose to prominence and fame in their service to the Confederacy.

At the beginning of the war General George McClellan successful fought the break-up of the Regular Army. He helped keep it separate from the militia units organized by the States. This preserved a professional core in a time where the new volunteer units were learning their craft. In the North a parallel system “composed of three kinds of military organizations” developed as calls went out for “militia, volunteers and an expanded regular army” went out. [7]

Regular Army units were formed for the duration and were exclusively under the control of the Federal government. While comparatively few in number they often held the line and kept the Army of the Potomac intact during the early battles where volunteer units collapsed. Volunteer regiments, often officered by regulars or former regulars “remained state-based, and they signed up for two- or three- year periods, after which they returned to civilian life and their evaporated without any further fiscal obligations.” [8] Some of the volunteer regiments were formed from various state militia units, but since few states had effective militia systems, militia units “were usually employed only on emergency rear-echelon duties, to free up the volunteers and regulars.” [9]

The Confederacy faced a similar situation to the Union, but it did not have a Regular Army and all of its units were raised by the various states. “In early 1861 the Confederate Congress authorized the creation of a provisional army of 100,000 men. To get these troops [the first Confederate Secretary of War Leroy Pope] Walker asked state governors to raise regiments and transfer them to the national army. The War Office provided generals and staff officers and, in theory at least, could employ the troops and their officers in any way it pleased once they mustered the provisional army.” [10] Some states were quite cooperative but others were not and the tension between the central government in Richmond in regard to military policy and some states would continue throughout the war. The quality of these units varied widely, mostly based on the leadership provide by their officers. That being said many of the regiments mustered into service early in the war proved tough, resilient and served with distinction throughout the war.

Southern units were officered by a collection of professionals from the Ante-bellum Army, militia officers, political appointees or anyone with enough money to raise a unit. However command of divisional sized units and above was nearly always reserved to former professional soldiers from the old Army, most being graduates of West Point. At Gettysburg only one officer commanding a division or above was a non-academy graduate, Robert Rodes, who was a graduate of VMI. The quality of these officers varied greatly, as some of the old regulars failed miserably in combat and some of the volunteers such as John Gordon were remarkably successful as leaders of troops in combat. .

As in the North militia and home guard units remained to free up these units. However, the South was always wrestling with the intense independence of every state government, each of which often held back units from service with the field armies in order to ensure their own states’ defense. The withholding of troops and manpower by the states hindered Confederate war efforts, even though “the draft had been “eminently successful” in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, but less so in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.” [11]

New York Draft Riots

The Changing Character of the Armies and Society

Gettysburg was the last battle where the original volunteer armies predominated as nature of both armies was changed by the war. Initially both sides sought to fight the war with volunteers but the increasingly costly battles which consumed vast numbers of men necessitated conscription and the creation of draft laws and bureaus.

The in April 1862 Confederate Congress passed the Conscription Act of 1862 which stated that “all persons residing in the Confederate States, between the ages of 18 and 35 years, and rightfully subject to military duty, shall be held to be in the military service of the Confederate States, and that a plain and simple method be adopted for their prompt enrollment and organization.” [12] The act was highly controversial and often resisted and the Congress issued a large number of class exemptions. Despite the exemptions “many Southerners resisted the draft or assisted evasion by others” [13] The main purpose of the conscription act was “to stimulate volunteering rather than by its actual use” [14] and while it did help increase the number of soldiers in Confederate service by the end of 1862 it was decidedly unpopular among soldiers, chafing at an exemption for “owners or overseers of twenty or more slaves” [15] who referred to the war as a “rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight.” [16]

Richmond Bread Riot

Some governors who espoused state’s rights viewpoints “utilized their state forces to challenge Richmond’s centralized authority, hindering efficient manpower mobilization.” [17] Some, most notably Georgia’s governor Joseph Brown “denounced the draft as “a most dangerous usurpation by Congress of the rights of the States…at war with all principles for which Georgia entered the revolution.” [18] Brown and a number of other governors, including Zebulun Vance of North Carolina fought the law in the courts but when overruled resisted it through the many exemption loopholes, especially that of civil servants. Governor Brown “insisted that militia officers were included in this category, and proceeded to appoint hundreds of new officers.” [19] Due to the problems with the act and the abuses by the governors, Jefferson Davis lobbied Congress to pass the Conscription Act of 1864 which “severely limited the number of draft exemption categories and expanded military age limits from eighteen to forty-five and seventeen to fifty. The most significant feature of the new act, however, was the vast prerogatives it gave to the President and War Department to control the South’s labor pool.” [20] Despite the problems eventually “mobilized 75 to 80 percent of its available draft age military population.” [21]

The Congress of the United States authorized conscription in 1863 as the Union Army had reached an impasse as in terms of the vast number of men motivated to serve “for patriotic reasons or peer group pressure were already in the army” while “War weariness and the grim realities of army life discouraged further volunteering” and “the booming war economy had shrunk the number of unemployed men to the vanishing point.” [22] Like the Confederate legislation it was also tremendously unpopular and ridden with exemptions and abuses. The Federal draft was conducted by lottery in each congressional district with each district being assigned a quota to meet by the War Department. Under one third of the men drafted actually were inducted into the army, “more than one-fifth (161,000 of 776,000) “failed to report” and about 300,000 “were exempted for physical or mental disability or because they convinced the inducting officer that they were the sole means of support for a widow, an orphan sibling, a motherless child, or an indigent parent.” [23]

The Union draft law provoked great resentment, more from the way that it was administered than its purpose as “which brought the naked power of military government into play on the home front and went much against the national grain.” [24] Open clashes and violence erupted in several cities and President Lincoln was forced to use Union Soldiers, recently victorious at Gettysburg to end the rioting and violence taking place in New York where protestors involved in a three day riot, many of whom were Irish immigrants urged on by Democratic Tammany Hall politicians, “soon degenerated into violence for its own sake” [25] wrecking the draft office, seizing the Second Avenue armory, attacking police, soldiers and blacks on the streets and soon “the mob had undisputed control of the city.” [26] The veteran troops quickly and violently put down the insurrection and “poured volleys into the ranks of protestors with the same deadly effect they had produced against the rebels at Gettysburg two weeks earlier.” [27]

The Rise of Positional Warfare

As the opposing sides prepared, organized and adapted for war, the Union and Confederate armies in the field evolved in terms of their tactical, organizational and operational methods during the war. The realities of the deadliness of the rifled muskets and other advances in firepower which “made the defensive the stronger form of war” [28] brought about a renewal of interest and use of field fortifications, which had been taught to so many at West Point and the state military schools through the work of Mahan, Halleck and their students.

McClellan made extensive use of them on the Peninsula in 1861 and 1862 as did Lee outside of Richmond in 1862 where his troops derisively nicknamed him “the King of Spades.” However after the Seven Days Lee only made sporadic use of them instead following a strategy of the offense which culminated in the defeat at Gettysburg. [29] After Gettysburg, Lee made much more use of field fortifications, especially during the Wilderness campaign and the battles around Richmond culminating in the defense of Petersburg “where both sides became so extensively entrenched that siege warfare set in and lasted for nearly ten months.” [30]

The developments in field works and firepower gave the advantage to the defense, an advantage that made the massed frontal attack by infantry or massed cavalry charge obsolete as a tactic and disastrous to those commanders that attempted it. “On every occasion, a frontal assault delivered against an unshaken enemy led to costly failure. Nevertheless, neither side learnt this lesson.” [31] The examples of Burnside at Fredericksburg, Lee at Malvern Hill and Pickett’s Charge or Grant at Vicksburg and Cold Harbor demonstrated the futility of such tactics.

This was especially the case when opposing armies made the frontal attacks which were at the heart of Jominian offensive tactics. Early in the war commanders including Grant at Shiloh and Lee at Antietam failed to dig in, but over time both the Union and Confederate armies learned to dig hasty field works as a matter of course.[32] At Gettysburg the well placed and constructed field fortifications and abattis constructed by XII Corps on Culp’s Hill would prove impregnable to the assaults of Ewell’s Second Corps on the night of July 2^nd and morning of July 3^rd.

Both sides also learned to use maneuver in combination with positional warfare to force the enemy to battle. In the West, Grant, Sherman and Rosecrans all did this successfully, particularly Stone’s River, during the Vicksburg Campaign, and the campaigns in middle Tennessee.[33] During the 1864-65 campaign around Richmond and Sherman’s campaigns in Georgia and the Carolinas the use of field fortifications and entrenchments became common. Of particular note is how Sherman’s forces routinely entrenched while on the offensive [34] where “the mobility of his campaign was due, not only to his skill in maneuvering his men, but also in his ability to manouvere their entrenchments with them.” [35]

Sherman’s opponent Confederate General Joseph Johnston made skillful use of entrenchments on the defensive and his attention to detail and training his men to fight well defensively was a hallmark of his campaign against Sherman, as had Lee against Grant. They were not without their critics. General John Bell Hood who was “the most uncompromising advocate of the orthodox view that weakened moral and made troops cautious” [36] was a stern critic of Johnston, who had relieved him following the fall of Atlanta. Hood’s tactics were costly and produced ghastly numbers of casualties.

The changing nature of how the war was being fought was demonstrated by General Joe Wheeler who commanded Johnston’s cavalry in Georgia and the Carolinas toward the end of the war. Wheel and his troopers made significant use of entrenchments, something not seen before by an arm traditionally known for its dependency on maneuver. He habitually fought his troops dismounted and at Atlanta fought from behind successive lines of barricades. Wheeler successfully integrated his cavalry with the infantry at the Battle of Bentonville North Carolina, constructing a line of breastworks 1200 yards long. Hagerman notes that “it is fitting to the changing nature of warfare that some of the most vivid description of trench warfare is found in Wheeler’s report of cavalry action as fighting came to an end at Bentonville.” [37]

The Corps of Engineers in both armies were changed by the war. Prior to the war the Corps of Engineers was primarily responsible for building coastal fortifications, civil projects and outposts in the west. Both remained small by 1864 the Federal Corps of Engineers numbered only eighty-six officers, split between civil and topographical engineers. The Confederates grew their Corps of Engineers more than the Union during the war and by 1865 the Confederates had “13 regular officers, 115 provisional officers, and 188 officers assigned to engineer troops.” [38] It should be noted the paucity West Point trained engineers of all types in the Confederate Army. Though many senior officers including Lee were trained as engineers they were not serving as such, and Lee’s Engineering Staff Officer at Gettysburg was but a Captain.

During the war both sides created Engineer or Pioneer units from scratch. The Union efforts to form permanent units began under McClellan beginning in 1861 as such units specialized units had not existed in the old army. The Union Army Corps of Engineers initially had a difficult time adapting to war. The dispersion of the Corps among the line and its civil duties were impediments to responding to the needs of war. There was a hesitancy and resistance to creating engineering units by Congress, despite the pleas of McClellan and Lincoln for specialized engineering units.^{^[39]}

By the middle of the war organized units of Pioneers and Engineers were enhancing both offensive and defensive operations. Meade had three battalions of Engineers available to him at Gettysburg, the 15^th New York, the 50^th New York and the United States Engineer Battalion, but these were not on the battlefield being at Beaver Creek Dam on July 1^st before being ordered to the defenses of Washington. [40]

The Confederate army began the war with only thirteen Corps of Engineers officers and Congress never acceded to Secretary of War James Seddon’s pleas “failed to provide the Confederate army with the pioneer troops that Seddon had requested” [41] and it was not until March 1863 that the Confederate Congress authorized the formation of “one company of engineer troops, to consist of one hundred men” ^{^[42]} from in each division.

When they were established most of the newly organized engineer units had few very few West Point trained Corps of Engineers officers. Most Union Engineer Units were primarily staffed and commanded by officers detailed from the line or who had come from civilian life. The effect was a “decline in the antebellum definition of professionalism embodied in the Corps of Engineers” [43] which prior to the war were considered the elite branch of the Army. While this opened up new ideas, the Corps of Engineers remained resistant to change. In the years following the war as the Corps of Engineers retained its privileged status and the West Point curriculum remained mostly the same as it had during the ante-bellum period.

Strategy and operational level adapted to the new reality of war. Attrition and exhaustion became as important in relation to both positional and maneuver warfare. In 1864 in the East the “ascendancy of positional warfare” allowed Lee to hold out as Grant attempted to fight and maneuver him out of Richmond.[44] Lee was fighting on interior lines at this point and the campaign demonstrated that “an army fighting on interior lines, even under nearly overwhelming conditions of deprivation and against vastly superior numbers, could sustain a prolonged existence by use of field fortification and defensive maneuver.” [45]

Despite the increasing power of positional warfare in relation to fortifications in the East and around Atlanta, maneuver was not ignored. Sherman’s campaign in Georgia and the Carolinas demonstrated how an army could exploit “diversion, dispersion, and surprise to successfully pursue a modern total-war strategy of exhaustion against the enemy’s resources, communications and will.” [46] Sherman used maneuver to force his opponents out of their prepared positions and did not hesitate to target the key infrastructure and infrastructure needed by the Confederate armies. The same was true in Virginia where in 1864 General Phillip Sheridan laid waste to the Shenandoah Valley, the breadbasket of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Logistics, Transportation and Signals

While the advances in weaponry, technology turned the adoption of field fortifications and the tactical defense even during offensive operations changed the way that the armies conducted the war; other advances were occurring. These took place in logistics, transportation, signals and communications.

In a country as vast as the United States logistics was a major concern of both armies. The ante-bellum Army developed its logistic doctrine from Napoleonic examples. That doctrine had to be modified in light of the American reality of a less developed continent with far greater distances involved in the movement of troops. “While the North’s logistical mobilization expanded, the South’s peaked in early 1863 and then declined. Fundamental interlocking problems beset logistics. The Confederacy had few preexisting industries to expand and lacked sufficient raw materials upon which to build an industrial base.” [47]

The Confederacy “did not have the material resources to fight a mass industrial war” [48] and the actions of its leaders from Jefferson Davis down did not help their cause. “The South needed a careful weighing of assets and liabilities, the setting of strict priorities, and centralized direction in order to use its resources efficiently. But Confederate leaders allowed events to control planning, resulting in uncoordinated, tardy, and incompetent centralization of the logistical effort.” [49]

The issue was not limited to industry but also agriculture, which in a region as rich as the Confederacy should not have been a problem. However, it was a major issue that became ever more serious throughout the war, not only for the Confederate armies in the field but for the population as a whole. While the South managed to maintain effective armies until the end of 1864, it “failed to preserve the population’s well-being.” [50] By the spring of 1863 five major cities experienced bread riots, the most serious being in Richmond; where Jefferson Davis had to personally give an ultimatum to rioters ordering them to disperse or have the militia open fire. [51] Many blamed merchants in general and the press labeled most businesses as speculators and extortionists. However as a result of the great privations at home and the need for a scapegoat, the specter of anti-Semitism rose in the Confederacy. Many, including some influential newspapers and government officials “focused on the Jews as the worst “extortioners” [52] blaming them for many if not most of the Confederacy’s economic woes.

During the war, both armies learned to adapt their logistical support services to the reality of war, however, the South for a number of reasons especially poor infrastructure and the lack of standardized rail systems, and the inability of the government in Richmond, the various states and the private sector to work together helped doom the Confederacy. The South did not lack food supplies, it was a rich agricultural region, but however its ability to provide sustenance for its people and its armies was hindered due to woeful infrastructure and various self-inflicted political and economic reasons. Several major issues affected the South’s ability to feed its people and its armies.

Among these were “the deficiencies of the Confederate rail system” which deteriorated throughout the war and was made worse by the lack of cooperation of Confederate railroad owners. The South “did not have a railroad network that tied its scant industrial base together or readily permitted long distance movements.” [53] This would hamper Confederate attempts to move and supply its armies as well as sustain its economy throughout the war. The Confederacy never nationalized its railroads, and “no centralized planning or organization developed, and field commanders, supply agencies, and civilian shippers competed for use of Southern rolling stock.” [54] Southern policy towards the use of its railroads was muddled at best and the demands of the war and by 1863, “the excessive wear of wartime rail movement was chewing up southern rail lines” [55] which resulted in the “South barely keeping a few lines operating by cannibalizing less important lines and could not replace its rolling stock.” [56] The combination of the lack of a strong industrial base to produce the iron to make replacement rails and the similar lack of producing facilities to manufacture locomotives and rolling stock, combined with the “unsure policies of the Confederate government and military” [57] ran the already feeble Southern railway system into the ground.

The Confederacy also faced a basic unwillingness of many producers of food, textiles and other necessities to cooperate with the Confederate government which often could not even find ways for its own agencies to cooperate with each other. “The government gave no overall direction to the supply bureaus, which often bid against each other for materials and labor.” [58] This was a pervasive problem, and not helped by the efforts of some parts of the Confederate government to nationalize various parts of their economy in direct competition with the private sector. This contrasted starkly with the Union whose “quartermaster and commissary heads contracted out their needs for weapons, horses and clothes by bid on the open market, rather than by appropriating existing industries for government use.” [59]

The confederate policies meant that many citizens and businesses found ways to not submit to government edicts. There was a basic “unwillingness of farmers to sell goods and produce at government rates” [60] and the greed of hoarders and war profiteers who through “hoarding, black marketing and simple withdraw from the market” [61] crippled Southern war efforts and by “1862 much of the Confederate economy had become unmanageable.” [62] When Davis attempted to use the religious faith of the people to bolster more and “called for a day of fasting and prayer in March 1863, one man wrote that the president asked for “fasting in the midst of famine.” [63]

Where possible each side used railroads and maritime forces to move troops and supplies. The Confederacy, as has been noted was lacking in both, and was at a severe disadvantage. The Union however enjoyed a great advantage in modern rail networks, as well as ocean and river based maritime power. By late 1863 the Army of the Potomac, as well as forces in the West demonstrated “the close integration of operational planning and that of the general in chief and supply bureaus. In this one area, the development of a mature and modern staff was evident.” ^{^[64]}

Once the armies were away from railheads or the ports from where they drew supplies both armies, like their Napoleonic cousins relied on wagons to transport essential food, supplies and ammunition when on campaign. In both armies commanders and their logisticians experimented with the number of wagons per regiment and how army commanders, modified that number at various points during the war based on their situation. At the beginning of the war the Napoleonic standards by which both armies based the number of wagons, 12 wagons per 1000 men to support the troops on campaign were found to be insufficient as it “placed too much emphasis on foraging for American conditions” [65] and throughout the war standards for what the armies needed would be debated and commanders in different theaters of the war often set their own standards based on their needs and the availability of wagons and livestock to draw them.

As the war went on the Federal army experimented with the use of the “flying column” as a response to the dependency on wagons in order to increase their mobility. The flying column was an idea drawn from the French by Major General Montgomery Meigs, the Union Quartermaster General. The idea was simple; in order to reduce dependency on wagons the army itself would be reorganized at the lowest level, the infantry squad.

“The soldier in a flying column carried eight days’ compressed rations, including desiccated vegetables on his back. He carried a blanket but no overcoat. The men were divided into squads of eight, one of whom was to carry a covered cooking kettle, another a large mess tin, another an axe, another a pick, and one a shovel. One man in each company carried the hospital knapsack. Each man carried his share of a shelter tent. The cavalry were pickets and grain for their horses.” [66]

After Gettysburg and the unsuccessful pursuit of Lee’s army, Halleck and Rufus Ingalls the Army of the Potomac’s chief quartermaster made provision and set standards “to convert the army into a flying column that would be self-sufficient for eight- and twelve- day periods away from the base of supply.” [67] In contrast the Confederacy lacked in wagons and livestock to support the field operations of the army on campaign. Wagons, especially those suited for military operations were in short supply and any time the opportunity presented Confederate commanders ensured the capture of Union wagons. This turned out to be a major problem during the Gettysburg campaign, when Stuart during his ride around the Army of the Potomac “succumbed to temptation of capturing a beautifully equipped and heavily laden Union supply train near Rockville, Maryland, at the cost of exhausting his cavalry and wasting precious time.” [68] In most cases Stuart’s action would have been commendable, and he certainly felt that such should have been the case here as well, but the cost to his operations and Lee’s need for his cavalry were such that it was a mistake of disastrous consequences.

The basic load of food and ammunition carried by each soldier in order to increase strategic maneuverability was adjusted to meet the operational need. Both armies, but more often the Confederate army frequently had to live off the land. The success and failure of forage operations and the requirements for people and animals in each theater of operations had a large impact on each army. By early 1863 the Army of Northern Virginia was “greatly deficient in all areas of supply….there were extreme shortages of footwear, clothing, draft animals, and wagons.” [69] When the Army of Northern Virginia advanced into Pennsylvania they found it to be “a land of plenty” while “quartermaster and commissary details, acting under official instructions, filled wagons and supplies with foodstuffs.” [70]

While the Federal army never lacked in provisions or supplies the Confederate armies were almost always in short supply, even in regard to adequate food supplies needed to maintain an adequate caloric intake on the march were almost impossible to achieve, but were so critical that they were barely adequate when the army was encamped. In fact one of the reasons which Lee based his invasion of Pennsylvania was to alleviate his desperate supply situation. One regimental commander in Pickett’s division recalled that Lee told him that “the movement was a necessity; that our provisions and supplies of every kind were nearly exhausted in Virginia, and we had to go into Pennsylvania for supplies.” [71]

The size of the armies and the distances involved on the battlefield made command and control difficult. As such communications became more important and each army experimented with new signals organizations that used both old and new communication technologies. At the beginning of the war both sides made extensive use of visual signals and couriers, but rapidly began to rely on the telegraph for rapid communications.

The organizational tension was particularly evident in the rivalry between the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Military Telegraph Service. The Signal Corps focused on wireless communications. It preferred the Beardslee wireless telegraphs which had the limitations of such early wireless technology. The Union Army command favored the traditional wire bound networks operated by the Military Telegraph due to better reliability and security and eventually the Military Telegraph Service and its Morse trained operators were given “jurisdiction for all field telegraph” services at the urging of President Lincoln in November 1863. [72]Though the Army rejected the Beardslee equipment some commanders requested it for their operations.^{^[73]} As each Army became more dependent on the telegraph, each feared that their signals could be compromised through wiretapping and made efforts to encode their transmissions.

While the various forms of telegraphic communication were important in keeping higher headquarters in contact with armies in the field, battlefield communication could be difficult. Commanders on both sides relied on messengers to relay orders to subordinate commanders as well as pass information to senior commanders. On the battlefield this took time, and since the messengers were subject to the same dangers as ordinary soldiers messages might not reach the intended commanders. It took approximately an hour for a message to travel from an army commander to a corps commander, 30 minutes from a corps commander to a division commander, 20 from division to brigade, 15 from brigade to regiment and 5 minutes from regiment to company. ^{^[74]}

Written orders generally provided better clarity if detailed enough but if they were passed orally, as was Lee’s preferred method they could easily be miscommunicated by messengers, or misunderstood or even ignored by commanders. This was a major source of Lee’s consternation during the Gettysburg campaign. A major problem for Lee during the campaign was that his orders, be they written or oral were frequently vague and discretionary, something that we will discuss in detail later, but Lieutenant General Richard Ewell spoke for many Confederate subordinate commanders on the evening of June 30^th when he asked his division commanders in frustration “Why can’t a commanding General have someone on his staff who can write an intelligent order?” ^{^[75]}

The Union Signal Corps also pioneered the use and development with a “modern system of semaphores with a telegraphic alphabet…” as well as “a cipher disk…that allowed the Union Signal Corps to change the code hourly if need be.” ^{^[76]} The one disadvantage to this form of visual communication was that it could be limited due to weather conditions or the smoke of battle. While semaphore was used with a good deal of success by the Union, and Meade would make good use of it at Gettysburg, it was not used by the Confederate army.

Likewise Meade “set a precedent in command procedures” during the Gettysburg campaign, where “for perhaps the first time in military history the commanding general of a large army was kept in communication during active operations with his corps and division commanders.” Likewise Meade “set a precedent in command procedures when he brought signal officers to the conference table for consultation on the plan of battle” [77] and for the first time Signal Corps officers were assigned directly to each corps, when Meade ordered that two Signal Corps officers be “detached for service with each corps.” [78]

The troops of the Union Signal Corps were also a vital link in the transmission of military intelligence gathered by Colonel George Sharpe’s Bureau of Military Information, whose network of scouts during the Gettysburg campaign were “supported by Signal Corps detachments which could establish chains of flag stations from Harpers Ferry to “South Mountain, Monterey, Greencastle…up to Parnell’s Knob, in the Cumberland Valley.” [79] This link helped provide Meade with much better intelligence regarding the movement of Lee’s army throughout the campaign.

Regardless of the means of transmitting orders the fact was that at Gettysburg the element of friction entered the communication process. Wireless could suffer from encryption problems, semaphore from visibility issues on a smoke covered battlefield, written orders could be delayed, lost or misunderstood and verbal orders were frequently misunderstood or understood in the manner that best fit the situation of the recipient.

The developments in tactics, maneuver, defense and logistics and how those were developed over the course of the war brought about a form of warfare that remained dominant of decades. In studying the campaigns, developments and tensions between the competing theories of Jomini and Mahan in the Civil War a student can begin to recognize them in future wars fought by the US Army including World War Two.

Russell Weigley picks up this theme in his books The American Way of War and Eisenhower’s Lieutenants. Weigley discusses Lee’s use of Napoleonic strategy and Grant’s corresponding strategy of annihilation as well as Sherman’s campaign against Johnston, Sheridan’s devastation of the Shenandoah Valley to impose its aims on the Confederacy, [80] lessons which influenced American strategic doctrine over the next century. “Because it worked so well, achieving total submission, American soldiers thereafter tended to generalize the United States strategy of the Civil War into the appropriate strategy for all major, full scale wars.” [81]

The Timeless Art of Strategy and Statecraft

It is important for planners and commanders at the operational level to see the importance the developments of the Civil War on how we campaign today. While the technology and tactics of the war are now antiquated, the ideas are not and still pervade much of American military thought. Joint Publication 1: Doctrine for the Armed Forces notes that: “The two fundamental strategies in the use of military force are strategy of annihilation and strategy of erosion” both of which were at the heart of Union strategy after 1863.

One example of how the Civil War provides examples of and prefigures how the United States conducts joint operations is the example is that of how Grant and Sherman working together with Flag Officer Samuel Foote and Admiral David Dixon Porter on the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers. The joint operations of the Army and Navy at Island Number Ten, Fort Donaldson and Fort Henry and in particular during the Vicksburg campaign, still influence modern American thinking in terms of Joint Operations and are mentioned in a number of Joint Publications.

The understanding of war that came out of the Civil War, where for the first time the United States waged a modern war where what we now refer to as the DIME was practiced. The precedents in the use of the diplomatic, informational, military and economic elements of national power are reflected various Joint and Service doctrinal publications including Joint Publication 1 which notes that: “As a nation, the US wages war employing all instruments of national power—diplomatic, informational, military, and economic.” [82]

MCDP 1 Warfighting which discusses the maneuver and attrition warfare continuum.[83] It is important for students of operational art to be able recognize the these developments and principles in what we do today, to see the logical development of each of these elements in modern war and to find new ways to apply them within the scope of the technologies we now use that those that will be available in the coming years.

The important things that we learn from studying the various campaigns of the Civil War and the Gettysburg campaign are timeless. If we only focus on the military aspects of the great battles we can miss the really important lessons. The battles and leadership lessons that we learn from them are important, especially in how we understand and practice the concept of Mission Command. However it is the often arcane but important subjects such as transportation, logistics, communications and signals, fortifications, as well as the diplomatic, economic and informational aspects of the war that are often more important.

At the end of his discussion of the Corps of Engineers and the Army following the war, he notes “that change in war requires time for digestion before lessons are converted-if they are converted-into theory and doctrine.” [84] Such is true in every war and we too will need to reflect on the lessons of the wars that we have been engaged in Iraq, Afghanistan and other lesser known theaters of the War on Terror.

We typically do not do this well. After the Civil War American military theory stagnated, very few took of the mantle of Mahan and Halleck. One who did was John Bigelow, who commanded a battery at the Plum Run during the climactic hour of the second day at Gettysburg. Bigelow attempted to interpret the American experience of the Civil War in light of Jominian maneuver, but no matter how he tried he tried the “American experience on which Bigelow relied for examples tended to undercut confidence that such maneuver could suffice to achieve the object of war….” [85] This sent many American soldiers back to the tradition of Grant as the United States became a world power in the early twentieth century who believed “that the superior weight of military force that America could bring to bear against almost any rival would be their only sure military reliance.” [86]

When the United States entered ground combat operations in the First World War, General John Pershing’s strategy revisited some of the worst mistakes of the Civil War, as well as the bloody lessons learned by the Europeans during the first three years of that war.

Such an observation can be made about the wars that the United States has waged in the Middle East over the past decade as well as our experience in Vietnam where Irregular Warfare has predominated. We need to ask if the lessons of previous insurgencies have been digested, even going back to the lessons of the Union Army operating in the hostile lands of the conquered Confederacy.[87] Likewise it is fair game for us to examine how our military adjusts to developments in weaponry, technology and tactics today in relation to past examples. Such studies must include regular and irregular warfare. Thus when we look at the Civil War, it is important to use those lessons to better understand the timeless aspects of military history, theory, doctrinal development, logistics, communications and experiential learning in war.

History is our guide to war, warfare, diplomacy and statecraft. The American Civil War and the Gettysburg Campaign are part of a historical continuum that we are a part. As Colin Gray noted; “the most important features of statecraft and strategy do not change.” [88]

History serves as our guide in such an understanding, but we must also be aware of the human context of war and how individual and group psychology, sociology as well as political, philosophic and religious ideology cannot be ignored when we examine military history in context. The human actors are still the most important part of the war, because while the characteristics of war may change, and as Gray notes; the challenges that modern leaders face are “identical in nature” to what leaders in previous eras have faced. [89]

Notes

[1] Ibid. Weigley, American Strategy from Its Beginnings through the First World War. In Makers of Modern Strategy, from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age p.419

[2] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.146

[3] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.146

[5] Guelzo, Allen C. Gettysburg: The Last Invasion Vintage Books a Division of Random House, New York 2013 p.12

[6] Ibid. Weigley, American Strategy from Its Beginnings through the First World War. In Makers of Modern Strategy, from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age p.419

[7] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lighteningp.143

[8] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lighteningp.143

[9] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lighteningp.143

[10] Thomas, Emory The Confederate Nation 1861-1865 Harper Perennial, New York and London 1979 p.74

[11] Gallagher, Gary W. The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism and Military Strategy Could not Stave Off Defeat Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA and London 1999 p.34

[12] Ibid. Thomas, The Confederate Nation p.152

[13] Ibid. Thomas, The Confederate Nation p.152

[14] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p. 432

[15] Ibid. Thomas, The Confederate Nation p.154

[16] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.431

[17] Millet, Allan R. and Maslowski, Peter, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States The Free Press a Division of Macmillan Inc. New York, 1984 p.166

[18] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.433

[19] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.431

[20] Ibid. Thomas, The Confederate Nation p.261

[21] Ibid. Gallagher The Confederate War p.28

[22] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.600

[23] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.601

[24] Ibid. Foote , The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Two p.635

[25] Ibid. Foote , The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Two p.636

[26] Ibid. Foote , The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Two p.637

[27] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.610

[28] Ibid. Fuller The Conduct of War p.105

[29] The most notable use of them between the Peninsula campaign and the Wilderness was at Fredericksburg by Longstreet’s Corps. Many wonder why Lee failed to entrench at Antietam.

[30] Ibid. Fuller The Conduct of War p.104

[31] Ibid. Fuller The Conduct of War p.104

[32] Fuller, J.F.C. Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship, Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN 1957. Fuller comments “Thus over a year of bitter fighting was necessary to open the eyes of both sides to the fact that the trench was a byproduct of the rifle bullet, and like so many by-products, as valuable as the product itself.” (p.269) He calls it “astonishing that Lee, an engineering officer, made no use of entrenchments at the battle of Antietam.” (pp.269-270)

[33] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare pp. 198-21

[34] Ibid. p.295 Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare Hagerman comments on how Sherman’s troops outside Atlanta began to entrench both the front and rear of their positions.

[35] Ibid. Fuller The Conduct of War p.105

[36] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.297

[37] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare pp.297-298

[38] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.238

[39] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.238

[40] Petruzzi, J. David and Stanley, Steven The Gettysburg Campaign in Numbers and Losses: Synopses, Orders of Battle, Strengths, Casualties and Maps, June 9 – July 1, 1863 Savas Beatie LLC, El Dorado Hills CA 2012 p.100

[41] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p. 238

[42] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p. 238

[43] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare 238

[44] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.272

[45] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.274

[46] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.293. Additionally B.H. Liddell-Hart in comparing the campaigns of Grant and Sherman makes an important note that Sherman’s strategy is more “suited to the psychology of a democracy…” and “ he who pays the piper calls the tune, and that strategists might be better paid in kind if they attuned their strategy, so far as rightly possible, to the popular ear.” Liddell-Hart, B.H. Strategy Faber and Faber Ltd, London 1954 and 1967, Signet Edition, The New American Library, New York 1974 p.132

[47] Ibid. Millet and Maslowski For the Common Defense p.216

[48] Ibid. Thomas, The Confederate Nation p.135

[49] Ibid. Millet and Maslowski For the Common Defense pp.216-217

[50] Ibid. Millet and Maslowski For the Common Defense p.218

[51] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.617-618

[52] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.441

[53] Ibid. Millet and Maslowski For the Common Defense p.156

[54] Ibid. Thomas, The Confederate Nation p.211

[55] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.319

[56] Ibid. Millet and Maslowski For the Common Defense p.216

[57] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.323

[58] Ibid. Millet and Maslowski For the Common Defense p.217

[59] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.322

[60] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.320

[61] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.322

[62] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.442

[63] Ibid. Millet and Maslowski For the Common Defense p.219

[64] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.79

[65] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.44

[66] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.71

[67] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.76

[68] Coddington, Edwin B. The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command, A Touchstone Book, Simon and Schuster New York, 1968 p.198

[69] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.126

[70] Wert, Jeffry D. A Glorious Army: Robert E. Lee’s Triumph 1862-1863 Simon and Schuster, New York and London 2011 p.229

[71] Ibid. West A Glorious Army p.230

[72] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.87

[73] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.87

[74] Cole, Phillip M. Command and Communication Friction in the Gettysburg Campaign Colecraft Industries, Ortanna PA 2006 p.80

[75] Trudeau, Noah Andre. Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage, Harper Collins Publishers, New York 2002 p.140

[76] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare pp.43-44

[77] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.87

[78] Ibid. Guelzo Gettysburg: The Last Invasion p.123

[79] Ibid. Guelzo Gettysburg: The Last Invasion p.42

[80] Ibid. Weigley The American Way of War pp.145-146.

[81] Weigley, Russell F. Eisenhower’s Lieutenants: The Campaign in France and Germany 1944-1945. Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN 1981 p.3

[82] ___________. JP1 Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington DC 2013 p.I-1

[83] ___________. MCDP-1 Warfighting. United States Marine Corps, Washington D.C. 1997. pp. 36-39

[84] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.239

[85] Ibid. Weigley, American Strategy from Its Beginnings through the First World War. In Makers of Modern Strategy, from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age p.440

[86] Ibid. Weigley, American Strategy from Its Beginnings through the First World War. In Makers of Modern Strategy, from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age p.440

[87] Ibid. Fuller. Fuller’s comments on the situation of the Northern Soldier are eerily similar to the wars that the United States has fought in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past decade: “Consequently, minor tactics were definitely against the Northern soldier, because his major tactics demanded the offensive; for without the offensive the South could not be brought to heel. It was the problem which had faced the French in LaVendee and in the Peninsula of Spain, which faced Napoleon in Russia, and the British in South Africa during the Boer War of 1899-1902. Not only was the Northern soldier, through force of circumstances, compelled to fight in the enemy’s country, but he was compelled to devastate it as well as conquer it, in order to protect himself against the bands of irregular troops which were here, there and everywhere.” pp.247-248

[88] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.149

[89] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.149

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October 8, 2014 · 16:56

The Character, Nature and Context of The Civil War and Why it Still Matters Part. 1

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Since it is pretty long I am dividing it up between two posts. Have a great day!

Peace

Padre Steve+

The First Modern War

The American Civil War was the first modern war. It was a watershed time which introduced changes in tactics, logistics, and communications, while showed the world exactly what the concept of total war entailed. Though it did not change the essential nature of war, which Clausewitz says is “is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfil our will” [1] it expanded the parameters of it and re-introduced the concept of “total war” to the world and “because its aim was all embracing, the war was to be absolute in character.”[2] In a sense it was a true revolution in military affairs.

Thus it is important to study the Gettysburg campaign in the context of the Civil War, as well as in relationship to the broader understanding of the nature and character of war. To do this one must examine the connection between them and policies made by political leaders; to include the relationship of political to military leaders, diplomats, the leaders of business and industry and not to be forgotten the press and the people. Likewise we must understand the various contexts of war, how they impacted Civil War leaders and why they must be understood by civilian policy makers and military leaders today.

While the essential nature of war remains constant, wars and the manner in which they are fought have changed in their character throughout history, and this distinction matters not only for military professionals, but also policy makers. The changing character of war was something that military leaders as well as policy makers struggled with during the American Civil War much as today’s military leaders and policy makers seek to understand the character of warfare today. British military theorist Colin Gray writes “Since the character of every war is unique in the details of its contexts (political, social-cultural, economic, technological, military strategic, geographical, and historical), the policymaker most probably will struggle of the warfare that is unleashed.” [3] That was not just an issue for Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, both of whom struggled with the nature of the war which had been unleashed, but it is one for our present political leaders, who as civilian politicians are “likely to be challenged by a deficient grasp of both the nature of war as well as its contemporary context-specific character.” [4]

As a total war it became a war that was as close to Clausewitz’s understanding of absolute war in its in character waged on the American continent, and it prefigured the great ideological wars of the twentieth century, as J.F.C. Fuller noted “for the first time in modern history the aim of war became not only the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces, but also of their foundations- his entire political, social and economic order.” [5] It was the first war where at least some of the commanders, especially Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman were men of the Industrial Age, in their thought and in the way that they waged war, in strategy, tactics even more importantly, psychologically. Fuller wrote:

Both men realized in early 1864 that “the South was indeed a nation in arms and that the common European practice of having standing armies engaged each other in set-piece battles to determine the outcome of a war was not enough to win this struggle.” [7] Though neither man was a student of Clausewitz, their method of waging war was in agreement with the Prussian who wrote that “the fighting forces must be destroyed; that is, they must be put in such a position that they can no longer carry on the fight” but also that “the animosity and the reciprocal effects of hostile elements, cannot be considered to have ended so long as the enemy’s will has not been broken.” [8] Sherman told the mayor of Atlanta after ordering the civilian population expelled that “we are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make the old and young, the rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.” [9] Sherman not only “carried on war against the enemy’s resources more extensively and systematically than anyone else had done, but he developed also a deliberate strategy of terror directed against the enemy’s minds.” [10]

Abraham Lincoln came to embrace eternal nature of war as well as the change in the character of the war over time. Lincoln had gone to war for the preservation of the Union, something that for him was almost spiritual in nature, as is evidenced by the language he used in both of his inaugural addresses and the Gettysburg Address. Instead of a war to re-unite the Union with the Emancipation Proclamation the war became a war for the liberation of enslaved African Americans, After January 1^st 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, Lincoln “told an official of the Interior Department, “the character of the war will be changed. It will be one of subjugation…The [old] South is to be destroyed and replaced by new propositions and ideas.” [11]

Of course, the revolution in military affairs took time and it was the political and military leaders of the North who better adapted themselves and their nation to the kind of war that was being fought. “Lincoln’s remarkable abilities gave him a wide edge over Davis as a war leader, while in Grant and Sherman the North acquired commanders with a concept of total war and the determination to make it succeed.” [12]

The Civil War became an archetype of the wars of the twentieth century, and the twenty-first century. It became a war where a clash between peoples and ideologies which extended beyond the province of purely military action as “it was preceded by years of violent propaganda, which long before the war had obliterated all sense of moderation, and awakened in the contending parties the primitive spirit of tribal fanaticism.” [13]

The conduct of the American Civil War added new dimensions to war, increased its lethality and for the first time since the 30 Years’ War saw opponents intentionally target the property, homes and businesses of civilian populations as part of their military campaign. The Civil War was a precursor to the wars that followed, especially the First World War which it prefigured in so many ways. [14]

However, like all wars many of its lessons were forgotten by military professionals in the United States as well as in Europe. Thus 50 years later during World War One, British, French, German, Austrian and Russian wasted vast amounts of manpower and destroyed the flower of a generation because they did not heed the lessons of the Civil War. Fuller noted:

The lessons of the war are still relevant today. Despite vast advances in weaponry, technology and the distances with which force can be applied by opponents, war remains an act of violence to compel an enemy to fulfill our will. War according to Clausewitz is “more than a chameleon that slightly adapts its characteristics to the given case.” [16] but it is always characterized by the violence of its elements, the province of chance and its subordination to the political objective and as such forces political and military leaders as well as policy makers to wrestle with “the practical challenge of somehow mastering the challenge of strategy in an actual historical context.” [17]

Colin Gray makes a case for seven essential contexts that must be understood by policy makers and military leaders regarding war, which if ignored or misunderstood “can have strong negative consequences.” [18] The contexts which Gray enunciates: a political context, a social-cultural context, an economic context; a military-strategic context, a geographic context and a historical context and as Gray notes they “define all the essential characteristics of a particular armed conflict.” [19]

The study of the Civil War can be helpful to the joint planner and commander because it so wonderfully shows the interplay of Clausewitz’s “paradoxical trinity- composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; of the play of chance and the element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason alone.” [20] during an era of great technological and philosophical change. The importance of this cannot be underestimated, for in this era of change, like in every era, some leaders and commanders were either resistant to, or failed to understand the changes being forced upon them in their conduct of war by the industrialization of war and its attendant technology; while others, like Sherman, Grant and Sheridan not only understood them, but embraced them and applied them with skill and vigor in ways that stunned the people of the South.

The Whole of Government and National Power

Over time the Union developed what we would now refer to as a “whole of government approach” to the war. This included not only the military instrument but the use of every imaginable means of national power, from the diplomatic, the economic and the informational aspects of the Union in the effort to subdue the Confederacy. The understanding and use of the “whole of government approach” to war and conflict is still a cornerstone of United States military policy in “unified action, to achieve leverage across different domains that will ensure conditions favorable to the U.S. and its allies will endure.” [21] The working staff of the War Department headed by Edwin Stanton and Major General Montgomery Meigs developed rapidly. It effectively coordinated with railroads, weapons manufactures and suppliers of clothing, food and other necessities to supply the army and navy so well that “Union forces never seriously lacked the materials necessary to win the war.” [22] Stanton and Meigs were “aided by the entrepreneurial talent of northern businessmen” which allowed “the Union developed a superior managerial talent to mobilize and organize the North’s greater resources for victory in the modern industrialized conflict that the Civil War became.” [23]

The understanding of this eternal nature and ever changing character of war to leaders of nations as well as military commanders and planners has been very important throughout history. It can be seen in the ways that Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln conducted their relationships with their military commanders, including during the Gettysburg campaign and we are reminded by Colin Gray notes that political leaders and policy makers who are in charge of policy often ignorant of the nature and character of war, and this fact “directs attention to the difficulties of translating political judgment into effective warmaking.” [24] Military leaders should be the people to advise and instruct policy makers in aligning their policy to what is actually feasible based on the ends ways and means, as well as the strengths and limitations of the military to carry out policy decisions and history reminds us “that policymakers committed strongly to their political desires are not easily deflected by military advice of a kind that they do not want to hear.” [25]

While there was much support for the Confederacy in the aristocracies of Europe, the effectiveness of the Union military in winning the key battles that allowed Lincoln to make his Emancipation Proclamation ensured that Europe would not recognize the Confederacy, . Charles F. Adams, the United States minister to Britain successfully defused the crisis of the Trent affair, which could have led to British recognition of the Confederacy and intervention in the war. Adams’ efforts were so successful that they “left Anglo-American relations in better shape than before the crisis.” [26]

The Trent Affair

The Importance of Diplomacy

Related to this understanding of warfare one has to also look at the importance of diplomacy, especially in picking the right diplomat for a critical post is a part of a whole of government approach to war and warfare. This was very important in the early stages of the Civil War as there was much support for the Confederacy in the aristocracies of Europe. The effectiveness of the diplomacy was increased by the Union military efforts. The Union suffered many failures at the outset of the war by the time of the Gettysburg campaign they did enough to prevent English or French intervention on the side of the Confederacy, which was also aided by tensions in Europe regarding the Schleswig-Holstein problem between Prussia and Austria as well as unrest in Poland, and the British in particular were loath to risk intervening in a conflict that might be “a disturbance in the precarious balance of power which might be the signal for a general conflagration, they recalled Voltaire’s comment that a torch lighted in 1756 in the forests of the new world had promptly wrapped the old world in flames.” [27] Thus, European leaders and diplomats were very hesitant to allow Southern legations to convince them to intervene.

Though the Confederates won many early battles in 1861 and 1862 it was the success of the Union military that altered the diplomatic landscape and helped doom the Confederacy. The joint operations conducted by Ulysses Grant and Flag Officer Foote at Island Number Ten, Fort Henry, Fort Donaldson and Shiloh opened the door to the western Confederacy making it vulnerable to Union invasion. Likewise, the joint operations conducted by the Union Navy and Army against the Confederacy through the blockade and capture of key ports such as New Orleans by 1862; combined with the bloody repulses of Confederate armies at Perryville and Antietam allowed Lincoln to make his Emancipation Proclamation, an act which reverberated across the Atlantic.

These military successes enabled Lord Palmerston to reject a French proposal for France, England and Russia to propose to the warring parties, a “North-South armistice, accompanied by a six month lifting of the blockade. The result, if they had agreed- as they had been in no uncertain terms warned by Seward in private conversations with British representatives overseas- would have been a complete diplomatic rupture, if not an outright declaration of war.” [28]

The issuance of that proclamation ensured that Europe would not recognize the Confederacy because even pro-Southern English political leaders could not appear to even give the appearance of supporting slavery, especially as both England and France had abolished slavery decades before, while Russia had only recently emancipated its serfs and “was pro-Union from the start….” [29] Popular sentiment in those countries, outside of the ruling class and business elites, was heavily in favor of emancipation, especially among the working classes. The leaders of the workingmen of Manchester England, a major textile producer, who which had been among the “hardest hit by the cotton famine, sent him [Lincoln] an address approved at a meeting on New Year’s Eve, announcing their support of the North in its efforts to “strike off the fetters of the slave.” [30]

There were issues related to the blockade but Charles F. Adams, the United States minister to Britain successfully defused the crisis of the Trent affair, which could have led to British recognition of the Confederacy and intervention in the war in a manner that “left Anglo-American relations in better shape than before the crisis.” ^{^[31]}

The Union blockade was a key factor in the diplomatic efforts. As I have noted there were many in both Britain and France who sympathized with the South and hoped for Southern victory that were not impressed by Southern moves to subject them to an embargo of Southern cotton until they received recognition. While many Englishmen were offended by Seward’s bluster, many “resented even more the Confederacy’s attempt at economic blackmail.” [32]

The British especially were keen on not going to war for the sake of the South, there was far too much at stake for them. This was something that the Southern leaders and representatives did not fully comprehend. Prime Minister Viscount Palmerston and Foreign Minister Lord Russell were concerned about the economic impact of the loss of Southern cotton but also “recognized that any action against the blockade could lead to a conflict with the United States more harmful to England’s interests than the temporary loss of Southern cotton.” [33] Palmerston well remembered the war of 1812 when he served as Minister of War, and the disastrous results for the British Merchant Marine, and he realized that “England could not only afford the risk of a loss in a sideline war; she could not even afford to win one.” [34]

Dennis Hart Mahan the First American Military Theorist

The Development of American Military Culture and Theory

As we examine the Civil War as the first modern war we have to see it as a time of great transition and change for military and political leaders. As such we have to look at the education, culture and experience of the men who fought the war, as well as the various advances in technology and how that technology changed tactics which in turn influenced the operational and strategic choices that defined the characteristics of the Civil War and wars to come.

The leaders who organized the vast armies that fought during the war were influenced more than military factors. Social, political, economic, scientific and even religious factors influenced their conduct of the war. The officers that commanded the armies on both sides grew up during the Jacksonian opposition to professional militaries, and for that matter even somewhat trained militias. The Jacksonian period impacted how officers were appointed and advanced. Samuel Huntington wrote:

“West Point was the principle target of Jacksonian hostility, the criticism centering not on the curriculum and methods of the Academy but rather upon the manner of how cadets were appointed and the extent to which Academy graduates preempted junior officer positions in the Army. In Jacksonian eyes, not only was specialized skill unnecessary for a military officer, but every man had the right to pursue the vocation of his choice….Jackson himself had an undisguised antipathy for the Academy which symbolized such a different conception of officership from that which he himself embodied. During his administration disciple faltered at West Point, and eventually Sylvanus Thayer, the superintendent and molder of the West Point educational methods, resigned in disgust at the intrusion of the spoils system.” [35]

This is particularly important because of how many officers who served in the Civil War were products of the Jacksonian system and what followed over the next two decades. Under the Jackson administration many more officers were appointed directly from civilian sources than from West Point, often based on political connections. “In 1836 when four additional regiments of dragoons were formed, thirty officers were appointed from civilian life and four from West Point graduates.” [36]

While this in itself was a problem it was made worse by a promotion system based on seniority, not merit. There was no retirement system so officers who did not return to the civilian world hung on to their careers until they quite literally died with their boots on. This held up the advancement outstanding junior officers who merited promotion and created a system where “able officers spent decades in the lower ranks, and all officers who had normal or supernormal longevity were assured of reaching higher the higher ranks.” [37]

Robert E. Lee was typical of many officers who stayed in the Army. Despite his success he was haunted by his lack of advancement. While still serving in Mexico having gained great laurels including a brevet promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, but “the “intrigues, pettiness and politics…provoked Lee to question his career.” He wrote “I wish I was out of the Army myself.” [38] In 1860 on the brink of the war Lee was “a fifty-three year-old man and felt he had little to show for it, and small hope for promotion.” [39] Lee’s discouragement was not unwarranted, despite his exemplary service there was little hope for promotion and to add to it Lee knew that “of the Army’s thirty-seven generals from 1802 to 1861, not one was a West Pointer.” [40] Other exemplary officers including Winfield Scott Hancock languished with long waits for promotion between the Mexican War and the Civil War. The long waits for promotion and duty in often desolate duty stations separated from family caused many officers to leave the Army; a good number of whom in 1861 became prominent in both the Union and Confederate armies. Among these officers were such notables as Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Henry Halleck, George McClellan and Jubal Early.

The military education of these officers at West Point was based on the Napoleonic tactics and methods espoused by Henri Jomini as Clausewitz’s works had yet to make their way to America. Most were taught by Dennis Hart Mahan. Mahan, who graduated at the top of the West Point class of 1824 and spent four years in France as a student and observer at the “School of Engineering and Artillery at Metz” [41] before returning to the academy where “he was appointed professor of military and civil engineering and of the science of war.” [42]

In France Mahan studied the prevailing orthodoxy of Henri Jomini who along with Clausewitz was the foremost interpreter of Napoleon and the former Chief of Staff of Marshal Ney. Jomini’s influence cannot be underestimated, some have noted, a correctly so that “Napoleon was the god of war and Jomini was his prophet.” [43]

The basic elements of Jominian orthodoxy were that: “Strategy is the key to warfare; That all strategy is controlled by invariable scientific principles; and That these principles prescribe offensive action to mass forces against weaker enemy forces at some defensive point if strategy is to lead to victory.” [44] Jomini interpreted “the Napoleonic era as the beginning of a new method of all out wars between nations, he recognized that future wars would be total wars in every sense of the word.” [45] Jomini laid out a number of principles of war including elements that we know well today, operations on interior and exterior lines, bases of operations, and lines of operation. He understood the importance of logistics in war, envisioned the future of amphibious operations and his thought would be taken to a new level by Alfred Thayer Mahan, the son of Dennis Hart Mahan in his book The Influence of Sea Power on History.

Jomini also foresaw the horrific nature of the coming wars and expressed his revulsion for them and desire to return to the limited wars of the eighteenth century:

“I acknowledge that my prejudices are in favor of the good old times when the French and English guards courteously invited each other to fire first as at Fontenoy, preferring them to the frightful epoch when priests, women. And children throughout Spain plotted the murder of individual soldiers.” [46]

Jomini’s influence was great throughout Europe and was brought back to the United States by Mahan who principally “transmitted French interpretations of Napoleonic war” [47]including that of Jomini. However, Mahan returned from France somewhat dissatisfied knowing that much of what he learned was impractical in the United States where a tiny professional army and the vast expenses of territory were nothing like European conditions. Mahan thought prevailing doctrine “was acceptable for a professional army on the European model, organized and fighting under European conditions. But for the United States, which in case of war would have to depend upon a civilian army held together by a small professional nucleus, the French tactical system was unrealistic.” [48]

Mahan set about rectifying this immediately upon his return and though “steeped in French thought, but acutely sensitive to American conditions that in his lectures and later writings he modified “the current orthodoxy by rejecting one of its central tenants-primary reliance on offensive assault tactics.” ^{^[49]} Mahan believed that “ If the offensive is attempted against a strongly positioned enemy, Mahan cautioned, it should be an offensive not of direct assault but of the indirect approach, of maneuver and deception. Victories should not be purchased by the sacrifice of one’s own army….To do the greatest damage to our enemy with the least exposure of ourselves,” said Mahan, “is a military axiom lost sight of only by ignorance to the true ends of victory.” [50] However, “so strong was the attraction of Napoleon to nineteenth-century soldiers that American military experience, including the generalship of Washington, was almost ignored in military studies here.” [51]

Thus there was a tension in American military thought between the followers of Jomini and Mahan. Conservative Jominian thinking predominated much of the Army, and within the army “Mahan’s decrees failed to win universal applause.” ^{^[52]} This may have been due in part to the large number of officers accessed directly from civilian life during the Jacksonian period. Despite this it was Mahan who more than any other “taught the professional soldiers who became the generals of the Civil War most of what they knew through the systematic study of war.” [53]

Mahan’s influence on the future leaders of the Union and Confederate armies went beyond the formal classroom setting. Mahan established the “Napoleon Club,” a military round table at West Point.^{^[54]} Mahan dominated the academy in many ways, and for the most part he ran the academic board, which ran the academy, and “no one was more influential than Mahan in the transition of officership from a craft into a profession.” [55] Mahan was a unique presence at West Point who all students had to face in their final year. Mahan was:

“aloof and relentlessly demanding, he detested sloppy thinking, sloppy posture, and a sloppy attitude toward duty…Mahan would demand that they not only learn engineering and tactics, but that every manner and habit that characterizes an officer- gentlemanly deportment, strict integrity, devotion to duty, chivalric honor, and genuine loyalty- be pounded into them. His aim was to “rear soldiers worthy of the Republic.” [56]

Mahan’s greatest contributions in for American military doctrine were his development of the active defense and emphasis on victory through maneuver. Mahan stressed “swiftness of movement, maneuver, and use of interior lines of operation. He emphasized the capture of strategic points instead of the destruction of enemy armies,” [57] while he emphasized the use of “maneuver to occupy the enemy’s territory or strategic points.” ^{^[58]}

That being said Mahan’s “greatest contribution to American military professionalism was, in all probability, his stress upon the lessons to be learned from history. Without “historical knowledge of the rise and progress” of the military art, he argued, it is impossible to get “even tolerably clear elementary notions” beyond “the furnished by mere technical language…It is in military history that we are able to look for the source of all military science.” [59] Mahan emphasized that “study and experience alone produce the successful general” noting “Let no man be so rash as to suppose that, in donning a general’s uniform, he is forthwith competent to perform a general’s function; as reasonably he might assume that in putting on robes of a judge he was ready to decide any point of the law.” [60] Such advice is timeless.

Mahan certainly admired Napoleon and was schooled in Jomini, but he believed that officers needed to think for themselves on the battlefield. And “no two things in his military credo were more important than the speed of movement- celerity, that secret of success- or the use of reason. Mahan preached these twin virtues so vehemently and so often through his chronic nasal infection that the cadets called him “Old Cobbon Sense.” [61] Like Jomini, Mahan was among the first to differentiate between strategy, which involved “fundamental, invariable principles, embodied what was permanent in military science, while tactics concerned what was temporary….and “the line which distinguishes one from another is “that which separates the science from the art.” [62]

Henry Wager Halleck

Mahan’s teaching was both amplified and modified by the work of his star pupil Henry Wager Halleck wrote the first American textbook on military theory Elements of Military Art and Science which was published in 1846 and though it was not a standard text at West Point “it was probably the most read book among contemporary officers.” [63] The text was based on a series of twelve lectures Halleck had given the Lowell Institute in 1845, as Halleck was considered one of America’s premier scholars.

Like Mahan, Halleck was heavily influenced by the writings of Jomini, and the Halleck admitted that his book “was essentially a compilation of other author’s writings,” [64] including those of Jomini and Mahan; and he “changed none of Mahan’s and Jomini’s dogmas.” [65] In addition to his own book, Halleck also “translated Jomini’s Life of Napoleon” from the French. [66] Halleck, like his mentor Mahan “recognized that the defense was outpacing the attack” [67] in regard to how technology was beginning to change war and “five of the fifteen chapters in Halleck’s Elements are devoted to fortification; a sixth chapter is given over to the history and importance of military engineers.” [68] Halleck’s Elements became one of the most influential texts on American military thought during the nineteenth century, and “had a major influence on American military thought” [69] being read by many before, during and after the war, including Abraham Lincoln.

Halleck, as a part of Mahan’s enlightenment too fought against the Jacksonian wave, eloquently speaking out for a more professional military against the Jacksonian critics. Halleck plead “for a body of men who shall devote themselves to the cultivation of military science” and the substitution of Prussian methods of education and advancement for the twin evils of politics and seniority.” [70]

As we look the Gettysburg campaign it is important to note how much of Mahan’s teaching either shows up in the actions of various commanders, such as Meade’s outstanding use of interior lines on the defense; or how in some cases his advice, particularly on attacking strongly held positions was ignored by Lee. In fairness to Lee he “was the only principle general of the war who had attended West Point too early to study the military art under Dennis Mahan.” [71] Likewise, during his tenure as the Superintendent of West Point Lee had little time to immerse himself in new studies due to the changes being wrought at the Academy in terms of discipline and curriculum. If anything can be said about Lee was that he was much more affected by what he read about Napoleon’s battles and campaigns; in which he took a lifelong interest in while a cadet, reading the French editions of the “three volumes of General Montholon’s memoirs of Napoleon dealing with the early campaigns, and the first volume of General Segur’s Expedition de Russie dealing with Napoleon’s advance to Moscow in 1812” [72] than he was with Jomini’s theories, though he certainly would have had some familiarity with them. Lee continued his study of Napoleon’s campaigns during his time as superintendent of West Point, in which “of fifteen books on military subjects that he borrowed from the academy library during his superintendency, no more than seven concerned Napoleon.” [73] Lee’s studies of the emperor’s campaigns allowed him to draw “more aggressive strategic concepts that previous American generals” [74] concepts that he would execute with alacrity during his campaigns of 1862 and 1863.

While West Point was the locus of American military thought and professionalism there was in the South a particular interest in military thought and this “was manifest in the creation of local military schools. Virginia Military Institute was established in 1839, the Citadel and the Arsenal set up in South Carolina in 1842, Kentucky Military Institute in 1845. By 1860 every Southern state, except Texas and Florida, had its own state supported military academy patterned on the models of West Point and VMI.” [75] There was no such development in the North, making these schools a unique part of the American military heritage, only some of which remain.

As the American theorists began their period of enlightenment, there was no real corresponding development in tactical doctrine, in part because “in Europe almost all the tactical experience of the major armies seemed to bear Jomini out.” [76] The American Army lacked “an integrated tactical system for infantry, artillery and cavalry doctrine” [77] which showed up frequently during the Civil War as commanders struggled to adapt tactics to advances in weaponry. The events in Europe, “all seemed to testify that it was the army on offense that won European battles, and at lightning speed.” [78] As such there existed an “ambivalence of thinking on the merits of the offense versus the defense in infantry tactics….while American artillery doctrine firmly subordinated the artillery to the infantry” [79] as many American officers were convinced that this was the face of war and all the major infantry tactics handbooks “borrowed heavily from Napoleonic sources and stressed the virtue of quick, aggressive movements on the battlefield.” [80] The often disjointed developments in infantry, artillery and cavalry tactics of the ante-bellum Army demonstrated that “Military thinking, and even more strategic organization, remained essentially within the Napoleonic tradition filtered through an eighteenth-century world view….” ^{^[81]} It would take the bloody experience of war to change them. As Fuller noted that “the tactics of this war were not discovered through reflection, but through trial and error.” ^{^[82]}

To be continued….

Notes

[1] Clausewitz, Carl von. On War Indexed edition, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1976 p.75

[2] Fuller, J.F.C. The Conduct of War 1789-1961 Da Capo Press, New York 1992. Originally published by Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick N.J p.99

[3] Gray, Colin S. Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy Potomac Book, Dulles VA 2009 p.36

[4] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.36

[5] Fuller, J.F.C. A Military History of the Modern World, Volume Three: From the Seven Days Battle, 1862, to the Battle of Leyte Gulf, 1944 Minerva Press 1956 p.88

[6] Ibid. Fuller A Military History of the Modern World, Volume Three p.88

[7] Flood, Charles Bracelen, Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the War, Harper Perennial, New York 2005 p.238

[8] Ibid. Clausewitz p.90

[9] McPherson, James. The Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1988 p.809

[10] Weigley, Russell F. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military History and Policy University of Indiana Press, Bloomington IN, 1973 p.149

[11] Ibid. McPherson The Battle Cry of Freedom p.558

[12] Ibid. McPherson The Battle Cry of Freedom p.857

[13] Ibid. Fuller The Conduct of War 1789-1961 p.99

[14] Fuller has an excellent synopsis of this in his book A Military History of the Modern World, Volume Three (p.89). He wrote: The war fought by Grant and Lee, Sherman and Johnston, and others closely resembled the First of the World Wars. No other war, not even the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, offers so exact a parallel. It was a war of rifle bullets and trenches, of slashings, abattis, and even of wire entanglements- an obstacle the Confederates called “a devilish contrivance which none but a Yankee could devise” because at Drewry’s Bluff they had been trapped in them and slaughtered like partridges.” It was a war of astonishing in its modernity, with wooden wire-bound mortars hand and winged grenades, rockets, and many forms of booby traps. Magazine rifles and Requa’s machine guns were introduced and balloons were used by both sides although the confederates did not think much of them. Explosive bullets are mentioned and also a flame projector, and in June, 1864, General Pendleton asked the chief ordnance officer at Richmond whether he could supply him with “stink-shells” which would give off “offensive gases” and cause “suffocating effect.” The answer he got was “stink-shells, none on hand; don’t keep them; will make them if ordered.” Nor did modernity end there; armoured ships, armoured trains, land mines and torpedoes were used. A submarine was built by Horace H. Hundley at Mobile….”

[15] Ibid. Fuller A Military History of the Modern World, Volume Three p.89

[16] Ibid. Clausewitz On War p.89

[17] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.38

[18] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.5

[19] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.3

[20] Ibid. Clausewitz On War p.89

[21] ________ JCWS Student Text 1 3^rd Edition, 14 June 2013 p.2-4

[22] Guelzo Allen C. Fateful Lightening: A New History of the Civil War Era and Reconstruction Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 2012

[23] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.857

[24] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.38

[25] Ibid. Gray Fighting Talk p.38

[26] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.391

[27] Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Two Fredericksburg to Meridian Random House, New York 1963 p.154

[28] Ibid. Foote , The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Two p.153

[29] Ibid. Foote , The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Two p.153

[30] Ibid. Foote , The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Two p.155

[31] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.391

[32] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.384

[33] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.384

[34] Ibid. Foote , The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Two p.154

[35] Huntington, Samuel P. The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA and London 1957 pp.204-205

[36] Ibid. Huntington The Soldier and the State p.206

[37] Ibid. Huntington The Soldier and the State p.207

[38] Thomas, Emory Robert E. Lee W.W. Norton and Company, New York and London 1995 p.139

[39] Korda, Michael. Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee Harper Collins Publishers, New York 2014 p.213

[40] Ibid. Huntington The Soldier and the State p.207

[41] Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare Midland Book Editions, Indiana University Press. Bloomington IN. 1992. p.7

[42] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.7

[43] Hittle, J.D. editor Jomini and His Summary of the Art of War a condensed version in Roots of Strategy, Book 2 Stackpole Books, Harrisburg PA 1987 p. 429

[44] Shy, John Jomini in Makers of Modern Strategy, from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age edited by Paret, Peter, Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey 1986 p.146

[45] Ibid. Hittle, Jomini and His Summary of the Art of War p. 428

[46] Ibid. Hittle Jomini p.429

[47] Ibid. Shy Jomini p.414

[48] bid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.7

[49] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.9

[50] Ibid. Weigley The American Way of War p.88

[51] Ibid. Shy Jomini p.414

[52] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.13

[53] Ibid. Shy Jomini p.414

[54] Hagerman also notes the contributions of Henry Halleck and his Elements of Military Art and Science published in 1846 (p.14) and his influence on many American Officers. Weigley in his essay in Peter Paret’s Makers of Modern Strategy would disagree with Hagerman who notes that in Halleck’s own words that his work was a “compendium of contemporary ideas, with no attempt at originality.” (p.14) Weigley taking exception gives credit to Halleck for “his efforts to deal in his own book with particularly American military issues.” Paret, Peter editor. Makers of Modern Strategy: For Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1986 p.416.

[55] Millet, Allan R. and Maslowski, Peter, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States The Free Press a Division of Macmillan Inc. New York, 1984 p.126

[56] Waugh, John C. The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appomattox, Stonewall Jackson, George McClellan and their Brothers Ballantine Books, New York 1994 pp.63-64

[57] Wert, Jeffry D. General James Longstreet The Confederacy’s Most Controversial Soldier, A Touchstone Book, Simon and Schuster, New York and London 1993 p.30

[58] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.14

[59] Ibid. Huntington The Soldier and the State p.220

[60] Ibid. Huntington The Soldier and the State pp.221

[61] Ibid. Waugh The Class of 1846 p.64

[62] Ibid. Huntington The Soldier and the State pp.220-221

[63] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.14

[64] Marszalek, John F. Commander of All of Lincoln’s Armies: A Life of General Henry W. Halleck The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA and London 2004 p.42

[65] Ambrose, Stephen E. Halleck: Lincoln’s Chief of Staff Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge and London 1962 p.6

[66] Weigley, Russell F. American Strategy from Its Beginnings through the First World War. In Makers of Modern Strategy, from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age edited by Paret, Peter, Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey 1986 p.416

[67] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.14

[68] Ibid. Weigley, American Strategy from Its Beginnings through the First World War. In Makers of Modern Strategy, from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age p.417

[69] Ibid. Ambrose Halleck p.7

[70] Ibid. Huntington The Soldier and the State p.221

[71] Ibid. Weigley, American Strategy from Its Beginnings through the First World War. In Makers of Modern Strategy, from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age p.415

[72] Ibid. Korda, Clouds of Glory p.35

[73] Ibid. Weigley, American Strategy from Its Beginnings through the First World War. In Makers of Modern Strategy, from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age p.424

[74] Ibid. Weigley, American Strategy from Its Beginnings through the First World War. In Makers of Modern Strategy, from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age p.424

[75] Ibid. Huntington The Soldier and the State p.219

[76] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lighteningp.147

[77] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.20

[78] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lighteningp.147

[79] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare pp.20-21

[80] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lighteningp.147

[81] Ibid. Hagerman The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare p.27

[82] Ibid. Fuller. Grant and Lee p.269 A similar comment might be made of most wars including the war in Iraq current Afghanistan war.

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Tagged as abraham lincoln, ambrose burnside, american civil war, ante-bellum army, antietam, army of the potomac, attrition and exhaustion strategy, beardslee wireless telegrpahs, communications, corps of engineers, dennis hart mahan, edward hagerman, forage requirments, fortifications, george mcclellan, henri jomini, henry halleck, j f c fuller, joe wheeler, jominian theory, joseph hooker, logistics, manuever warfare, military telegraph service, napoleon club, napoleonic tactics, petersburg, positional warfare, railroads, russell weigley, shiloh, signal corps, the american way of war, trent affair, US Grant, vicksburg campaign, west point, William T Sherman

February 20, 2014 · 22:45

The First Modern War: The American Civil War, its Lessons and Challenges for Today’s Military Planners

Note: This article is one that I am preparing for my Gettysburg Staff Ride in early March. It is more academic and theoretical in its emphasis being directed at those who will be involved in the planning of joint operations at the operational level of war.

Pickett’s Charge Showcased the Futility of Napoleonic Tactics Against Modern Weaponry

The American Civil War was the first modern war. It was a watershed time which introduced changes in tactics, logistics, communications and the concept of total war to the world. Though it did not change the essential nature of war, which Clausewitz says is “is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfil our will.” What the war did was add new dimensions to war, increased its lethality and for the first time since the 30 Years’ War saw opponents take war to civilian populations as part of a military campaign.

The Civil War was a precursor to the wars that followed. However, like all wars many of its lessons were forgotten by military professionals in the United States as well as in Europe. Thus 50 years later during World War One, British, French, German, Austrian and Russian wasted vast amounts of manpower and destroyed the flower of a generation because they did not heed the lessons of the Civil War.

The study of the Civil War can be helpful to the joint planner and commander because it so wonderfully shows the interplay of Clausewitz’s Trinity during an era of great technological change. It is my intent to introduce the reader to the manner in which the military theory and doctrine that dominated American military thought before was applied and changed as a result of the experience gained during the war.

Dennis Hart Mahan’s Book: The First American Book on Military Theory

The professional American army officers on both sides were educated at West Point, VMI or the Citadel. In these institutions they were taught Henri Jomini’s interpretation of Napoleonic warfare and the theories of Dennis Hart Mahan and Henry Halleck.

The war exposed the serious weaknesses in all of these theories which were challenged by advances in weaponry and the vastness of the American continent. During the war both Union and Confederate armies learned to value field fortifications and the limitations of the artillery of the day during offensive operations.

Logistics influenced campaigning on the American continent much more than previous European wars. An example can be found in Lee’s Gettysburg Campaign where he had to travel far from his railheads and bases of supply, meaning that he had to live off the land in enemy territory. The concept of total war found its first application in the campaigns of General William Tecumseh Sherman and Robert E. Lee’s use of defensive maneuver and fortifications in positional warfare heralded a new era in warfare.

These factors influenced and affected the Union and Confederate armies as they campaigned. Likewise, the advances weaponry particularly the rifled musket, posed a conundrum for officers educated in the Napoleonic tactics that both armies began the war. Those tactics were developed at a time when the maximum effective range of muskets was barely 100 meters. Yet by 1860 the rifled muskets had an effective range of about 400 meters, and the advent of the repeating rifle increased the firepower available to individual soldiers. Yet despite the increase in range and accuracy that came with the rifled musket tactics were slow to change.

Ante-bellum US Army leadership was most influenced by the theories of Henri Jomini, Clausewitz had yet to make his appearance in America. Dennis Hart Mahan, a professor at West Point challenged Jominian orthodoxy and modified “the current orthodoxy by rejecting its central tenants-primarily offensive assault tactics.”[i] Thus there was a tension in American military thought between the followers of Jomini and Mahan. Conservative Jominian thinking predominated much of the Army, and within the army “Mahan’s decrees failed to win universal applause.”[ii]

However, Mahan did influence many future leaders of both the Union and Confederate armies who participated in his “Napoleon Club,” a military round table at West Point. [iii] Mahan’s greatest contributions were his development of the active defense and emphasis on victory through maneuver. Mahan’s thought contrasted with that of Jomini who thought maneuver was risky and believed that purpose of war was the “defeat of the enemy’s army.” As we look the Gettysburg campaign it is important to note how much Lee was affected by the thought of Jomini as he attempted to defeat the Army of the Potomac, while ignoring the advice of Longstreet to use maneuver and active defense too his advantage.

Mahan emphasized the use of “maneuver to occupy the enemy’s territory or strategic points.” [iv] Edward Hagerman wrestles with the disjointed developments in infantry, artillery and cavalry tactics of the ante-bellum Army in his book The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare. Hagerman surmised that “Military thinking, and even more strategic organization, remained essentially within the Napoleonic tradition filtered through an eighteenth-century world view….” He asserted that “A broader vision was necessary to pose an alternative to the mechanistic program.”[v]

The leaders who organized the vast armies that fought during the war were influenced more than military factors. Social, political, economic, scientific and even religious factors influenced their conduct of the war. Commanders educated at West Point who had previously commanded small units were faced with the task of organizing, training and employing large armies made up primarily of militia units and volunteers. Most had little experience commanding such units and their experience with militia and volunteer formations during the Mexican War did not increase their appreciation for them or their leaders.

The 2nd Michigan Regiment: Most Civil War Units on both sides were State Regiments

Both armies were changed by the war. Initially both sides sought to fight the war with volunteers. The South began a draft first followed by the Union in 1863. At the beginning of the war General George McClellan successful fought the break-up of the Regular Army. He helped keep it separate from the militia units organized by the States. This preserved a professional core in a time where the new volunteer units were learning their craft. The Confederacy did not have a Regular Army and all of its units were raised by the States and officered by a collection of professionals from the Ante-bellum Army, militia officers, political appointees or anyone with enough money to raise a unit. The draft laws created much consternation in both the Union and Confederate States and the efforts to enforce the draft were filled with controversy and sometimes violence as was evidenced during the New York Draft Riots of 1863 where Union Soldiers, recently victorious at Gettysburg were employed to end the rioting and violence.

The Integration of Sea and Land Logistics Systems in the Civil War Revolutionized the Way that Modern War is Supplied

The Ante-bellum Army developed its logistic doctrine from Napoleonic examples. That doctrine had to be modified in light of the American reality of a less developed continent with far greater distances involved in the movement of troops. During the war, both armies learned to adapt their logistical support services to the reality of war.

Railways Meant the Ability to Move Troops and Supplies Great Distances very Quickly

Where possible each side used railroads and maritime forces to move troops and supplies. The Confederacy, lacking in both was at a severe disadvantage. The Union however enjoyed a great advantage in modern rail networks, as well as ocean and river based maritime power. By late 1863 the Army of the Potomac, as well as forces in the West demonstrated “the close integration of operational planning and that of the general in chief and supply bureaus. In this one area, the development of a mature and modern staff was evident.”[vi]

In both armies commanders and their logisticians experimented with the number of wagons per regiment and how army commanders, modified that number at various points during the war based on their situation. Both armies experimented with the use of the “flying column” as a response to the dependency on wagons. The basic load of food and ammunition carried by each soldier in order to increase strategic maneuverability was adjusted to meet the operational need. Both armies often had to live off the land. The success and failure of forage operations and the requirements for people and animals in each theater of operations had a large impact on each army.

Signal Corps Soldiers and Wire Communications

The organizational tension was particularly evident in the rivalry between the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Military Telegraph Service. The Signal Corps focused on wireless communications. It preferred the Beardslee wireless telegraphs which had the limitations of such early wireless technology. The Army command favored the traditional wire bound networks operated by the Military Telegraph due to better reliability and security. Though the Army rejected the Beardslee equipment some commanders requested it for their operations. [vii] As each Army became more dependent on the telegraph, each feared that their signals could be compromised through wiretapping and made efforts to encode their transmissions.

The Beardslee Wireless Telegraph

The evolution of how Union and Confederate armies used field fortifications is an interesting topic. McClellan made extensive use of them on the Peninsula in 1861 and Lee made sporadic use of them [viii] until 1864. Lee made much more use of field fortifications during the Wilderness campaign, the battles around Richmond culminating in the defense of Petersburg. The developments in field works and firepower gave the advantage to the defense. This was especially the case when opposing armies made the frontal attacks which were at the heart of Jominian offensive tactics. Early in the war commanders including Grant at Shiloh and Lee at Antietam failed to dig in, but over time both the Union and Confederate armies learned to dig hasty field works as a matter of course.[ix]

Massive Siege Mortar outside Petersburg

Both sides also learned to use maneuver in combination with positional warfare to force the enemy to battle. Hagerman examines the campaigns in the West of Grant, Sherman and Rosencrans, particularly Stone’s River, the Vicksburg Campaign, and the campaign in middle Tennessee.[x] The last two chapters of Hagerman’s book detail these issues in the context of the 1864-65 campaign around Richmond and Sherman’s campaigns in Georgia and the Carolinas. Of particular note is how Sherman’s forces routinely entrenched on the offensive [xi] and how Confederate forces under Joseph Johnston employed entrenchments on the defensive.

Petersburg Fortifications a Harbinger of World War One

Surprisingly, it was Confederate Cavalry commander Joe Wheeler toward the end of the war made use of entrenchments, something not seen before by an arm traditionally known fro maneuver. Hagerman noted that Confederate Cavalry “perhaps best displayed the growing intensity of trench warfare” [xii] by the latter part of the war.

The Corps of Engineers in both armies adapted to the war. Prior to the war the Corps of Engineers was primarily responsible for building coastal fortifications and outposts in the west. Both sides had to develop Engineer or Pioneer units from scratch in 1861.By the middle of the war organized units of Pioneers and Engineers were enhancing both offensive and defensive operations.

Engineering Units were Built from Scratch and Accomplished Many Feats

The Corps of Engineers initially had a difficult time adapting to war. The dispersion of the Corps among the line and its civil duties were impediments to responding to the needs of war. There was a hesitancy and resistance to creating engineering units by Congress, despite the pleas of McClellan and Lincoln for specialized engineering units.[xiii] When they were established it was ironic how the newly organized engineer units had few very few West Point trained Corps of Engineers officers. Most Union Engineer Units were primarily staffed and commanded by officers detailed from the line or who had come from civilian life. The effect was a “decline in the antebellum definition of professionalism embodied in the Corps of Engineers” [xiv] which prior to the war were considered the elite branch of the Army.

Strategy and operational level adapted to the new reality of war. Attrition and exhaustion became as important in relation to both positional and maneuver warfare. In 1864 in the East the “ascendancy of positional warfare” allowed Lee to hold out and force Grant into winter quarters at Petersburg.[xv] This demonstrated that “an army fighting on interior lines, even under nearly overwhelming conditions of deprivation and against vastly superior numbers, could sustain a prolonged existence by use of field fortification and defensive maneuver.”[xvi]

Sherman’s March to the Sea

Despite the increasing power of positional warfare in relation to fortifications in the East and around Atlanta, maneuver was not ignored. Sherman’s campaign in Georgia and the Carolinas demonstrated how an army could exploit “diversion, dispersion, and surprise to successfully pursue a modern total-war strategy of exhaustion against the enemy’s resources, communications and will.”[xvii] Sherman used maneuver to force his opponents out of their prepared positions and did not hesitate to target the key infrastructure and infrastructure needed by the Confederate armies. The same was true in Virginia where in 1864 General Phillip Sheridan laid waste to the Shenandoah Valley, the breadbasket of the Army of Northern Virginia.

The developments in tactics, maneuver, defense and logistics and how those were developed over the course of the war brought about a form of warfare that remained dominant of decades. In studying the campaigns, developments and tensions between the theories of Jomini and Mahan in the Civil War a student can begin to recognize them in future wars fought by the US Army including World War Two.

Russell Weigley picks up this theme in his book The American Way of War. Weigley discusses Grant’s strategy of annihilation and its costs as well as Sherman’s campaign against Johnston and his attack upon Southern resources.[xviii] Weigley’s discussion of tactics used by both sides in the Civil War reflects the thought of British theoretician of J.F.C. Fuller. Fuller noted that “the tactics of this war were not discovered through reflection, but through trial and error.”[xix]

It is important for planners and commanders at the operational level to see the importance the developments of the Civil War on how we campaign today. While the technology is now antiquated, the ideas are not. The campaigns of Grant and Sherman in particular influence modern strategy. This is reflected the Marine Corps which discusses the maneuver and attrition warfare continuum in MCDP 1 Warfighting.[xx] It is important for students of operational art to be able recognize the these developments and principles in what we do today, to see the logical development of each of these elements in modern war and to find new ways to apply them within the scope of the technologies we now use that those that will be available in the coming years.

The Destruction of Hood’s Ordnance Train Outside Atlanta

The important things that we learn from studying the various campaigns of the Civil War are timeless. If we only focus on the military aspects of the great battles we miss the really important lessons. The battles and leadership lessons that we learn from them are important. However it is the often arcane but important subjects such as transportation, logistics, communications and fortifications, as well as the diplomatic, economic and informational aspects of the war that are more important.

In his book Hagerman makes an astute observation on how change comes to military organizations. At the end of his discussion of the Corps of Engineers and the Army following the war, he notes “that change in war requires time for digestion before lessons are converted-if they are converted-into theory and doctrine.” [xxi] Such is true in every war.

Irregular Formations Such as Mosby’s Raiders Would Create Problems Behind Union Lines, much Like Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan

Such an observation can be made about our present wars. We need to ask if the lessons of previous insurgencies have been digested, even going back to the lessons of the Union Army operating in the hostile lands of the conquered Confederacy.[xxii] Likewise it is fair game for us to examine how our military adjusts to developments in weaponry, technology and tactics today in relation to past examples. Such studies must include regular and irregular warfare. Thus when we look at the Civil War, it is important to use those lessons to better understand the timeless aspects of military history, theory, doctrinal development, logistics, communications and experiential learning in war.

If we do not believe that we can learn from history we will in the words of historian George Santayana “be doomed to repeat it.”

Peace

Padre Steve+

Notes:

[i] Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare. Midland Book Editions, Indiana University Press. Bloomington IN. 1992. p.9

[ii] Ibid. p.13.

[iii] Hagerman also notes the contributions of Henry Halleck and his Elements of Military Art and Science published in 1846 (p.14) and his influence on many American Officers. Weigley in his essay in Peter Paret’s Makers of Modern Strategy would disagree with Hagerman who notes that in Halleck’s own words that his work was a “compendium of contemporary ideas, with no attempt at originality.” (p.14) Weigley taking exception gives credit to Halleck for “his efforts to deal in his own book with particularly American military issues.” Paret, Peter editor. Makers of Modern Strategy: For Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1986 p.416.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid. p.27.

[vi] Ibid. p.79.

[vii] Ibid. p.87.

[viii] The most notable use of them between the Peninsula campaign and the Wilderness was at Fredericksburg by Longstreet’s Corps. Many wonder why Lee failed to entrench at Antietam.

[ix] Fuller, J.F.C. Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship, Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN 1957. Fuller comments “Thus over a year of bitter fighting was necessary to open the eyes of both sides to the fact that the trench was a by product of the rifle bullet, and like so many by-products, as valuable as the product itself.” (p.269) He calls it “astonishing that Lee, an engineering officer, made no use of entrenchments at the battle of Antietam.” (pp.269-270)

[x] Ibid. pp. 198-219.

[xi] Ibid. p.295. Hagerman comments how Sherman’s troops outside Atlanta began to entrench both the front and rear of their positions.

[xii] Ibid. p.297-298.

[xiii] Ibid. p.238.

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] Ibid. p.272

[xvi] Ibid. p.274.

[xvii] Ibid. p.293. B.H. Liddell-Hart in comparing the campaigns of Grant and Sherman makes an important note that Sherman’s strategy is more “suited to the psychology of a democracy…” and “ he who pays the piper calls the tune, and that strategists might be better paid in kind if they attuned their strategy, so far as rightly possible, to the popular ear.” Liddell-Hart, B.H. Strategy Faber and Faber Ltd, London 1954 and 1967, Signet Edition, The New American Library, New York 1974 p.132

[xviii] Weigley, Russell F. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military History and Policy University of Indiana Press, Bloomington IN, 1973. pp.145-146.

[xix] Ibid. Fuller. P.269 A similar comment might be made of most wars including the current Iraq war.

[xx] ___________. MCDP-1 Warfighting. United States Marine Corps, Washington D.C. 1997. pp. 36-39

[xxi] Ibid. Hagerman. P.239

[xxii] Ibid. Fuller. Fuller’s comments on the situation of the Northern Soldier are eerily similar to our current conflict in Iraq : “Consequently, minor tactics were definitely against the Northern soldier, because his major tactics demanded the offensive; for without the offensive the South could not be brought to heel. It was the problem which had faced the French in LaVendee and in the Peninsula of Spain, which faced Napoleon in Russia, and the British in South Africa during the Boer War of 1899-1902. Not only was the Northern soldier, through force of circumstances, compelled to fight in the enemy’s country, but he was compelled to devastate it as well as conquer it, in order to protect himself against the bands of irregular troops which were here, there and everywhere.” pp.247-248

Bibliography

Fuller, J.F.C. Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship, Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN 1957

Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare. Midland Book Editions, Indiana University Press. Bloomington IN. 1992

Liddell-Hart, B.H. Strategy Faber and Faber Ltd, London 1954 and 1967, Signet Edition, The New American Library, New York 1974

Paret, Peter editor. Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1986

Weigley, Russell F. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military History and Policy University of Indiana Press, Bloomington IN, 1973

___________. MCDP-1 Warfighting. United States Marine Corps, Washington D.C. 1997

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Filed under civil war, History, Military

January 4, 2010 · 23:59

The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare

Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare. Midland Book Editions, Indiana University Press. Bloomington IN. 1992

Pickett’s Charge Displayed the Futility of Napoleonic Tactics Against Modern Weaponry

Edward Hagerman postulates in The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare that the American Civil War is the first modern war. He examines developments in tactics, logistics and the concept of total war and looks specifically how tactical and strategic thought impacted the war. Specifically Hagerman examines how Henri Jomini’s interpretation of Napoleonic warfare and the theories of Dennis Hart Mahan and Henry Halleck which were the prevalent military thought in America were challenged by advances in weaponry and the vastness of the American continent. He surveys how the Union and Confederate armies learned the value and application of field fortifications and the limitations of artillery in the offense. Even more importantly Hagerman argues how logistics influenced campaigning on the American continent as opposed to earlier European wars. Likewise he examines how the 20^th Century concept of total war found its first application in the campaigns of General Sherman and how Robert E. Lee’s use of defensive maneuver and fortifications in positional warfare heralded a new era in warfare.

Dennis Hart Mahan’s Book: The First American Book on Military Theory

Hagerman examines how these factors influence and affected the Union and Confederate armies. His initial focus is the tactical conundrum posed by the advances weaponry particularly the rifled musket to the Napoleonic tactics that both armies began the war. Napoleonic tactics were developed at a time when the maximum effective range of muskets was barely 100 meters and how despite the increase in range and accuracy that came with the rifled musket how tactical formations and tactics were slow to change.

Hagerman spends the first part of his book examining how the ante-bellum US Army leadership was influenced by the theories of Henri Jomini. He discusses the challenge to Jominian orthodoxy by Dennis Hart Mahan, who modified “the current orthodoxy by rejecting its central tenants-primarily offensive assault tactics.”[i] He examines the tension in American military thought between the conservative Jominian thinking which predominated much of the Army, noting that within the army “Mahan’s decrees failed to win universal applause.”[ii] However, Mahan influenced many future leaders of both the Union and Confederate armies in his “Napoleon Club” a military round table at West Point.[iii] Hagerman notes that Mahan’s greatest contributions were his development of the active defense and emphasis on victory through maneuver. Unlike Jomini, who thought maneuver as risky with the purpose of the “defeat of the enemy’s army,” Mahan emphasized “maneuver to occupy the enemy’s territory or strategic points.”[iv] In the book Hagerman wrestles with disjointed developments in infantry, artillery and cavalry tactics of the ante-bellum Army which and surmises that “Military thinking, and even more strategic organization, remained essentially within the Napoleonic tradition filtered through an eighteenth-century world view….” He asserts that “A broader vision was necessary to pose an alternative to the mechanistic program.”[v]

The 2nd Michigan Regiment: Most Civil War Units on both sides were State Regiments

Hagerman then discusses wartime developments in strategy, tactics and organization as they developed in both the Eastern and Western theaters. He focuses on the themes of organization, logistics, communications, weaponry, field fortifications and maneuver. In each chapter he weaves these themes to show how they affected campaigns or were modified during the war based on experience. He deals with leadership, but mostly in the context of how leaders responded to challenges posed in these arenas. Of particular interest to him are the early efforts of successive commanders of the Army of the Potomac including McClellan, Burnside and Hooker to deal with these problems as well as the responses of Grant, Sherman and Rosecrans in the West to the same issues.

Hagerman’s discussion of army organization focuses on how each army developed sociologically as well as professionally prior to and during the war. He examines the ways that commanders educated at West Point initially dealt with large armies made up of militia units and volunteers and how these armies would be changed by the war. He includes in the discussion i the institution of the draft in both the North and South. His discussion of how McClellan successful fought the break-up of the Regular Army keeping it separate from the militia units organized by the States was important to development of the Army. He notes their importance and points out the problems of the militia units raised by the various states particularly in the early part of the war.

The Integration of Sea and Land Logistics Systems in the Civil War Revolutionized the Way that Modern War is Supplied

More significant to Hagerman’s narrative is his emphasis on logistics, and how each Army responded to the challenges of supplying their armies in the field. Hagerman examines how the ante-bellum Army developed its logistic doctrine from the Napoleonic examples and how that doctrine had to be modified in light of the American reality of a less developed continent with far greater distances involved.

Hagerman’s discussion of logistics is quite detailed. He examines topics such as the number of wagons per regiment and how army commanders, modified that number at various points during the war based on their situation. He discusses the development of the “flying column” as a response to the dependency on wagons and basic load of food and ammunition carried by each soldier in order to increase strategic maneuverability. He details the forage requirements for people and animals in each theater of operations and how each army responded to requirement of living off the land for much of their forage requirements and their relative successes and failures in supplying their soldiers in this fashion.

Railways Meant the Ability to Move Troops and Supplies Great Distances very Quickly

Hagenman discusses the use of railroads and the use of naval forces to both assist the ground forces and to move supplies and troops. In each of these areas he provides a detailed examination of the effect of logistical considerations on each army. He notes that of all the areas of development that the Army of the Potomac was successful at putting logistic theory into practice. By late 1863 the Army of the Potomac demonstrated “the close integration of operational planning and that of the general in chief and supply bureaus. In this one area, the development of a mature and modern staff was evident.”[vi]

Hagerman’s discussion of the development of communications in both armies focuses on the fact that the size of the armies and the distances involved on the battlefield made command and control difficult. As such each army experimented with signals organizations that used tradition visual signals and couriers but began to rely on the telegraph for rapid communications. He deals with the conflict in the North between the Signal Corps and the Military Telegraph Service. He discusses the use of wire telegraph equipment and the new Beardslee wireless telegraphs by the Signal Corps and how the Army eventually favored the traditional wire bound networks operated by the Military Telegraph. Though the Army rejected the Beardslee equipment some commanders requested it for their operations.[vii] As they became more dependent on such communications armies feared that their signals could be compromised through wire tapping and made efforts to encode transmissions.

Signal Corps Soldiers and Wire Communications

Hagerman’s discusses the evolution of the Union and Confederate armies use of field fortifications including their use in offensive campaigns. He discusses their use by McClellan on the Peninsula in 1861 and Lee’s sporadic use of them[viii] until 1864 beginning in the Wilderness campaign and culminating in the defense and siege of Petersburg. Hagerman’s thesis is that the developments in field works and firepower gave the advantage to the defense when armies made the frontal attacks which were at the heart of Jominian theory. He notes how various commanders including Grant failed at Shiloh and Lee at Antietam failed to dig in, but how both the Union and Confederate armies learned to dig hasty field works as a matter of course.[ix]

Both sides also learned to use maneuver in combination with positional warfare to force the enemy to battle. Hagerman examines the campaigns in the West of Grant, Sherman and Rosecrans, particularly Stone’s River, the Vicksburg Campaign, and the campaign in middle Tennessee.[x] The last two chapters mention these issues in the context of the 1864-65 campaign around Richmond and Sherman’s campaigns in Georgia and the Carolinas. Of particular note is how Sherman’s forces routinely entrenched on the offensive[xi] and how Confederate forces under Joseph Johnston employed entrenchments on the defensive. Hagerman notes how Confederate Cavalry “perhaps best displayed the growing intensity of trench warfare” noting General Joe Wheeler’s use of them at the close of the war.[xii]

Massive Siege Mortar outside Petersburg

A sidebar to Hagerman’s discussion of fortification is his examination of the Corps of Engineers. He discusses the development of Engineering or Pioneer units from nothing in 1861 to organized units by the middle of the war. He examines the problems of the Engineering Corps in adjusting to the war. He notes its dispersion among the line and its civil duties as impediments to responding to the needs of war and both the hesitancy and resistance to creating engineering units by Congress, despite the pleas of McClellan and Lincoln.[xiii] He then looks at the institutional irony of the how newly organized engineer units had few West Point trained Corps of Engineers officers, but were primarily staffed and commanded by officers detailed from the line. The effect was a “decline in the antebellum definition of professionalism embodied in the Corps of Engineers.”[xiv]

Engineering Units were Built from Scratch and Accomplished Many Feats

Petersburg Fortifications a Harbinger of World War One

Hagerman’s last two chapters focus on the developments in the strategies of attrition and exhaustion in relation to positional and maneuver warfare. He examines how this was by Grant in Virginia and Sherman in Georgia and the Carolinas. He discusses the “ascendancy of positional warfare” which allowed Lee to hold out and force Grant into winter quarters at Petersburg.[xv] This demonstrated that “an army fighting on interior lines, even under nearly overwhelming conditions of deprivation and against vastly superior numbers, could sustain a prolonged existence by use of field fortification and defensive maneuver.”[xvi] Sherman’s campaign demonstrated how an army could exploit “diversion, dispersion, and surprise to successfully pursue a modern total-war strategy of exhaustion against the enemy’s resources, communications and will.”[xvii]

Sherman’s March to the Sea

Hagerman’s book is particularly strong in the discussion of tactical developments and logistics and how those were developed over the course of the war. It is strong because it allows the serious student to trace the developments in each of the areas he examines to future wars fought by the US Army. Russell Weigley picks up the effect of what Hagerman describes in his books The American Way of War discussing both Grant’s strategy of annihilation and its costs, and in Sherman’s campaign against Johnston and attack upon Southern resources.[xviii] His discussion of tactics reflects that of J.F.C. Fuller notes that “the tactics of this war were not discovered through reflection, but through trial and error.”[xix] The events described by Hagerman, especially the campaigns of Grant and Sherman influence modern strategy including that of the Marine Corps which discusses maneuver and attrition warfare continuum in MCDP 1 Warfighting.[xx] Hagerman’s work is best at helping tie the elements of war often ignored by other Civil War historians into a coherent whole that allows the reader to see the logical development of each of these elements in modern war.

Irregular Formations Such as Mosby’s Raiders Would Create Problems Behind Union Lines

Hagerman’s value to the literature is that he fills a void among many Civil War writers who often focus simply on the battles and campaigns and not arcane but important subjects such as transportation, logistics, communications and fortifications. Hagerman makes an astute observation on how change comes to military organizations at the end of his discussion of the Corps of Engineers and the Army following the war. He notes “that change in war requires time for digestion before lessons are converted-if they are converted-into theory and doctrine.” [xxi] In the light of the Pershing’s strategy in the First World War One, which revisited some of the worst mistakes of the Civil War one wonders if those lessons were ever fully digested by the Army. Such an observation can be made about our present war. We need to ask if the lessons of previous insurgencies in conquered areas have been digested, even going back to the lessons of the Union Army operating in the hostile lands of the conquered Confederacy.[xxii] Likewise how an Army adjusts to developments in weaponry, technology and tactics are fair game when one analyzes past campaigns in relation to current wars. Thus when we look at Hagerman it is important to use his work to understand the timeless aspects of military history, theory, doctrinal development, logistics, communications and experiential learning in war that are with us even today.

[i] Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare. Midland Book Editions, Indiana University Press. Bloomington IN. 1992. p.9

[ii] Ibid. p.13.

[iii] Hagerman also notes the contributions of Henry Halleck and his Elements of Military Art and Science published in 1846 (p.14) and his influence on many American Officers. Weigley in his essay in Peter Paret’s Makers of Modern Strategy would disagree with Hagerman who notes that in Halleck’s own words that his work was a “compendium of contemporary ideas, with no attempt at originality.” (p.14) Weigley taking exception gives credit to Halleck for “his efforts to deal in his own book with particularly American military issues.” Paret, Peter editor. Makers of Modern Strategy: For Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1986 p.416.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid. p.27.

[vi] Ibid. p.79.

[vii] Ibid. p.87.

[viii] The most notable use of them between the Peninsula campaign and the Wilderness was at Fredericksburg by Longstreet’s Corps. Many wonder why Lee failed to entrench at Antietam.

[ix] Fuller, J.F.C. Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship, Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN 1957. Fuller comments “Thus over a year of bitter fighting was necessary to open the eyes of both sides to the fact that the trench was a by product of the rifle bullet, and like so many by-products, as valuable as the product itself.” (p.269) He calls it “astonishing that Lee, an engineering officer, made no use of entrenchments at the battle of Antietam.” (pp.269-270)

[x] Ibid. pp. 198-219.

[xi] Ibid. p.295. Hagerman comments how Sherman’s troops outside Atlanta began to entrench both the front and rear of their positions.

[xii] Ibid. p.297-298.

[xiii] Ibid. p.238.

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] Ibid. p.272

[xvi] Ibid. p.274.

[xvii] Ibid. p.293. B.H. Liddell-Hart in comparing the campaigns of Grant and Sherman makes an important note that Sherman’s strategy is more “suited to the psychology of a democracy…” and “ he who pays the piper calls the tune, and that strategists might be better paid in kind if they attuned their strategy, so far as rightly possible, to the popular ear.” Liddell-Hart, B.H. Strategy Faber and Faber Ltd, London 1954 and 1967, Signet Edition, The New American Library, New York 1974 p.132

[xviii] Weigley, Russell F. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military History and Policy University of Indiana Press, Bloomington IN, 1973. pp.145-146.

[xix] Ibid. Fuller. P.269 A similar comment might be made of most wars including the current Iraq war.

[xx] ___________. MCDP-1 Warfighting. United States Marine Corps, Washington D.C. 1997. pp. 36-39

[xxi] Ibid. Hagerman. P.239

Bibliography

Fuller, J.F.C. Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship, Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN 1957

Hagerman, Edward. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare. Midland Book Editions, Indiana University Press. Bloomington IN. 1992

Liddell-Hart, B.H. Strategy Faber and Faber Ltd, London 1954 and 1967, Signet Edition, The New American Library, New York 1974

Paret, Peter editor. Makers of Modern Strategy: For Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1986

Weigley, Russell F. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military History and Policy University of Indiana Press, Bloomington IN, 1973

___________. MCDP-1 Warfighting. United States Marine Corps, Washington D.C. 1997

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The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare

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