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Brian Holden Reid 1863: Military Turning Points, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Tullahoma W hen did war cease to be decisive? In his old age, Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, expressed a preference for Waterloo over all his other battles because it brought peace to the world. During his later years the European great powers engaged in no great wars, and the greatest war fought between 1815 and 1914 was fought in North America—the American Civil War. The year before the great duke’s death, Sir Edward Creasy (1812–1878) published a book that exerted great influence in the English-speaking world, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo (1851), which traced the influence of notable battles on the course and effects of Western civilization; a best seller, it spawned a host of imitators. The writings of Creasy and others taught that wars would be ended by one decisive, climactic battle. The fate of civilization would rest on the cool calculations made by a man of destiny in the course of an afternoon. In the nineteenth century the great commander almost universally revered was the Emperor Napoleon I (1769–1821). The power of Napoleon’s mystique spread to the United States (his brother, Joseph, lived in Bordentown, New Jersey), and an entire generation of generals North and South who fought the Civil War sought to emulate the dazzling maneuvers and tactical virtuosity that brought shattering defeats to his enemies. Battle could be made decisive and victory achieved rapidly. The only trouble with this image was that the Napoleonic Wars were not actually won in this way—and Napoleon was defeated. (1) This harsh reality did not dampen the enthusiasm for so many Civil War generals, including William T. Sherman, who lined up to be photographed striking Napoleonic poses. For more than a year, Civil War generals both North and South maintained a Creasy-like faith that one great battle would bring victory. The Civil War resembled the Napoleonic Wars in being a war of mass involvement and resources, and the American conflict could not conform to the oversimplified model applied to it. Battles may be decisive in more than one way. Two battles, First Bull Run in July 1861 and the Seven Days’ Battles a year later ensured that the Civil War would continue, not end. Once the aims of war were enlarged and the stakes increased, as occurred after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, first issued in September 1862, then its destructive propensities likewise increased, and these must be sustained by greater organization, systems, and management. Northern war planners shifted from seeking the unattainable, rapid defeat of the Confederacy to its exhaustion; this type of strategy usually, but not invariably, leaves the economically and financially weaker side more vulnerable. Military theorists refer to this as a war of attrition, in which the capacity of one side is worn away incrementally, so that it cannot realize its own war aims and gradually succumbs to those of the stronger side. Such an equation was complicated in the American case by the sheer size of the theater of war and the difficulties of organizing, feeding, commanding, and transporting troops over great distances, and bringing the Confederates to battle at a disadvantage. Geography played a large part in the war. Finally, warfare knows no inevitabilities. The side with the largest resources enjoys certain advantages but even these give no guarantee of victory. The year 1863 in the Civil War illustrates many of these themes. It indicates that the war had crossed some indefinable threshold, what Winston Churchill would call in 1942 the “end of the beginning.” The turn of 1862–1863 that year seemed to indicate that a Confederate victory beckoned. Union armies were defeated at Fredericksburg (December 13, 1862), disaster staved off at Murfreesboro (December 31, 1862–January 3, 1863), followed by the humiliating disaster at Chancellorsville (April 30–May 6, 1863). The air of gloom was hardly lifted by the simultaneous failure of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s First Vicksburg Campaign, capped by Sherman’s repulse at Chickasaw Bayou (December 27–29, 1862), or later efforts in the new year. The difficulties of operating in the unpredictable, impenetrable bayous convinced Confederates that the fastness of Vicksburg, atop a bluff on a great bend of the Mississippi River, could never fall. Yet within six months this dreary march of defeat would be completely reversed; but such a reverse could not be achieved in an afternoon. (2) Matters deteriorated further before they improved. The incomparable Army of Northern Virginia, led by its redoubtable commander, Gen. Robert E. Lee, launched a second invasion of the North. Lee’s army crossed the Potomac River into Maryland and then fanned out across Pennsylvania, supplying itself from the prosperous countryside. Lee remained convinced that he would have to demonstrate to the world that the Confederacy could achieve its independence by its own exertions, and there was no better place to do this than on Northern soil. Thereafter, it could look for foreign support. One of the North’s most notable successes in 1862 lay in ensuring that foreign powers were kept out of the war. Intervention—though a remote contingency by 1863—would stack up too much strength for the North to overcome. Yet if Lee pulled off a triumph in Pennsylvania then he might succeed, as he put it in a letter to the Confederate president Jefferson Davis, in altering the “disproportion” of resources “between us and our enemies” by a psychological blow comparable to Chancellorsville. To achieve this he did not need to gain the complete surrender of his adversary, the Army of the Potomac. (3) However, should Lee seek any kind of victory, then he needed to concentrate his strength, but the urgent need to subsist his troops required them to disperse. He also repeated the error he had made the year before in Maryland by exaggerating the amount of time he had available to bring his army together should Union forces resist his incursion in a determined fashion. He had also committed another major error in dispatching Maj. Gen. J. E. B. Stuart on a raid in the Union army’s rear areas; however desirable this might have been in adding to the alarm and despondency caused by his invasion, Stuart failed to maintain contact with Lee and the latter’s army was stumbling OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 23–27 doi: 10.1093/oahmag/oat008 © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Figure 1. “The battle of Gettysburg, Pa., July 3rd, 1863.” A hand-colored lithograph by Currier and Ives. The caption under the images reads: “This terrific and bloody conflict between the gallant ‘Army of the Potomac,’ commanded by their great General George G. Meade, and the hosts of the rebel ‘Army of the East’ under General Lee, was commenced on Wednesday, July 1st and ended on Friday the 3rd at 5 O’Clock P.M. The decisive Battle was fought on Friday, ending in the complete rout & dispersion of the Rebel Army. A Nation’s thanks and undying fame ever crown the Arms of the heroic soldiers, who fought with such unflinching bravery this long and desperate fight.” Courtesy the Library of Congress. forward in unfamiliar country “blind,” lacking Stuart’s skills at reconnaissance. (4) The Union commander, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, took over the Army of the Potomac in the early hours of June 28, 1863, amid a campaign after his ill-starred predecessor, Joseph Hooker, asked to be relieved—hardly propitious circumstances. Meade was a shrewd tactician, sensible though volatile under pressure, and at Gettysburg performed soundly though not at the levels of Napoleonic inspiration expected by his contemporaries. His first reaction was to find a strong defensive position; he found one at Pipe Creek, Maryland, but this would have required a retreat. As the Union columns closed in on the Confederates, he entrusted command of this advanced force to his old friend John Reynolds. Union forces collided with Confederate on July 1, beyond the road junction of Gettysburg and came off worse, with Reynolds’s body left on the field, withdrawing to the high ground southeast of town. Meade quickly grasped the advantages of this position, combining narrowness and depth in its concave shape: all points could be reinforced more quickly than Lee could concentrate to attack them. (Figure 1.) 24 OAH Magazine of History • April 2013 Lee had to try and find a weak point and then concentrate sufficient force to attack and exploit it, a task made more difficult by Stuart’s absence. On July 2 he launched a nearly successful attack on the Union left; on July 3 he assaulted the Union left center but completely failed, as a diversionary assault on the far Union right in which Stuart’s cavalry belatedly joined, was botched and both attempts degenerated into piecemeal attacks driven back separately. Each commitment increased the stakes for Lee. His gamble failed for the simple reason that Meade’s defensive tactics were sound—he committed no serious error—and in the face of superior Union artillery, the execution of the offensive broke down. Lee failed to mount, as he later admitted, “one determined and united blow . . . by our whole line.” (5) During these days, Meade sustained over 23,000 casualties and Lee 28,000. Lee got his army safely away but found the Potomac swollen by floodwater and his pontoon bridges swept away. With his army trapped, Lee ordered the digging of strong entrenchments. Meade was accused of committing a serious error by not pursuing Lee more vigorously. He reminded President Lincoln of an old woman with a broom shooing her geese around a farm yard. Meade refused all presidential Figure 2. “Siege of Vicksburg.” The caption in the bottom left corner reads: “13, 15, & 17 Corps, Commanded by Gen. U.S. Grant, assisted by the Navy under Admiral Porter—Surrender, July 4, 1863.” Courtesy the Library of Congress. landishments to attack, even when Lincoln offered to take responsibilb ity for them, and Lee escaped once the floodwaters subsided. Gettysburg was thus no Austerlitz of 1805, when Napoleon defeated a combined Austrian and Russian army, let alone a Waterloo, but by eroding Lee’s offensive capability Gettysburg would prove a significant turning point: a decisive battle but of a different kind from the Creasy model. The campaign of Vicksburg highlights to a greater degree than Gettysburg some of the unavoidable realities of operating over the huge expanses of the North American continent. Grant had initially attempted an assault on Vicksburg via the overland route from the northeast—the simplest and most direct route. Yet he had inherited operations on the Mississippi, and to return again to his base at Oxford, Mississippi, would give the impression of yet another retreat, unacceptable to the Lincoln administration. So Grant had the good political sense to persevere on the river side, and his army concentrated in the vicinity of Milliken’s Bend, south of Vicksburg even though this meant operating in the uncongenial, entangled, and swampy bayous where men worked in water almost up to their shoulders and warded off innumerable snakes. For about three months he persisted with three schemes to break through to dry land on the east bank of the ississippi: building a canal at Young’s Point, seeking a route to Lake M Providence, and then using Steele’s Bayou with the cooperation of Admiral David D. Porter’s squadron of gunboats. Despite Grant’s claim in his Personal Memoirs (1885–1886) that he had little faith in these expedients, the failure of the last two came as a severe disappointment. The morale of the troops slumped, and Grant faced another crisis. His friend Sherman argued furiously against a continuance of these operations with Vicksburg still astride their communications and suggested that Grant’s army should retire northeast to Oxford, Mississippi, and start all over again with the advantage of operating over dry land. On April 16 Grant made his d ecision. He rejected Sherman’s advice and ordered an advance southward, assisted by the U.S. Navy, defying conventional military wisdom. That night, as Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton, the Confederate commander, enjoyed a ball celebrating his success so far, the music was interrupted by Confederate cannon fire failing to stop Porter’s squadron escorting a convoy safely past Vicksburg’s defenses with only minor casualties. (6) (Figure 2.) Grant’s army took Grand Gulf and then crossed the Mississippi River at Hard Times. Pemberton had a total of 61,000 men under his command but failed to concentrate them, mustering at best half that OAH Magazine of History • April 2013 25 Figure 3. On this map of the Tullahoma Campaign, red signifies the movement of Confederate forces, while blue signifies that of Union forces. Map by Hal Jespersen, www.cwmaps.com. number in the field. Grant’s army of 55,000 was concentrated and his three corps advanced northeastwards, one corps feinting towards Vicksburg while the other two moved into the hinterland to cut Pemberton’s line of communications to the east, occupying the Mississippi state capital, Jackson, on May 14. Grant then shifted two corps westwards to engage 23,000 Confederates at Champion’s Hill, where the latter were driven from their position, a success repeated at the Big Black River, with Pemberton’s troops finally fleeing back into Vicksburg by May 18. Grant had provided a master class in skillful maneuver, making decisions more quickly than the hesitant Pemberton, dividing the latter’s distracted forces and thus bringing to bear greater strength at the decisive point. After two failed assaults on the city’s defences on May 19 and 22, Grant settled down to besiege Vicksburg. The Confederate departmental commander, Joseph E. Johnston, pleaded with Pemberton to get out of the city while he could and save his army. Pemberton lacked the moral courage to defy the wishes of the Confederate president Jefferson Davis, who wanted the city held at all costs. Pemberton bleated that Johnston should advance and relieve Vicksburg, but with 22,000 men he was too weak to do so and advanced to the northeast of the city hoping that Pemberton would join him, as their combined forces were superior to Grant’s. With the U.S. Navy dominating the river, Vicksburg’s fall was only a matter of time. Pemberton surrendered on July 4, and Sherman chased Johnston away from Jackson. During this admirably conducted operation Grant had not completely abandoned his supply lines from Grand Gulf. But he still 26 OAH Magazine of History • April 2013 managed to demonstrate that troops could feed themselves from the countryside and be supplied with weapons and ammunition—even with a massive enemy fortress in the Union rear. The fall of Vicksburg rendered the war more difficult for the Confederates to conduct—it did not render that conduct impossible. For Grant, the siege and fall of Vicksburg was a personal triumph and for the North not only a signal strategic success but also a massive boost for morale, as news of Grant’s victory arrived almost simultaneously with word of Meade’s success at Gettysburg. These two successes helped seal Northerners’ resolution to see the war through to a victorious conclusion; despite the many strains imposed upon it in 1864 that resolve did not crack. The third, rather more transient success, the Tullahoma Campaign in central Tennessee, represented the response of the Army of the Cumberland’s commander, William S. Rosecrans, to the logistical difficulties of advancing through that barren country. He built a massive fortified base at Murfreesboro, immodestly named Fort Rosecrans, from which he could supply himself with confidence. His three corps advanced south and east along the radial road network from Murfreesboro, turning the right flank of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, commanded by the cantankerous Braxton Bragg. These maneuvers worked, if anything, too well. Bragg made no attempt to resist Rosecrans’s advance and withdrew successively out of the state on September 6, pulling back into north Georgia with his army intact. Rosecrans complained that he had got little credit from politicians for his success “because it is not written in letters of blood.” He remained in pursuit mode, his army becoming increasingly spread out with a frontage of as much as thirtyfive miles. He remained oblivious to the danger it faced with a concentrated opponent ready to launch a riposte. (7) (Figure 3.) This counterstroke made Tennessee the Confederacy’s point of main strategic effort in the autumn of 1863. Reinforcements were sent from the Army of Northern Virginia to the Army of Tennessee, as Lee eventually agreed in early September to transfer James Longstreet’s First Corps to support Bragg. The stage was thus set for the campaigns of Chickamauga and Chattanooga that would finally decide the course of the war in Tennessee. The campaigns of Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Tullahoma, despite their importance, indicated that the Civil War would not end soon. In a war of attrition, the effect of individual victories is incremental. Consequently, the advantage that one side might enjoy in operational skill might be cancelled out by what the historian Michael Howard has called the “forgotten dimensions of strategy,” resources and their management—factors that operate far from the battlefield. Actually, in these operations, Confederate advantages in operational skill are not self-evident. Lee operated with less than his customary flair; Pemberton lacked confidence and failed to gain the respect of his troops; Bragg bided his time. All of these campaigns focused around communications centers: Vicksburg and Tullahoma were important railroad, and Gettysburg road, junctions, as communications were a vital means of reducing the problems of moving men and supplies over great distances. The Union strategy of striking hard at vulnerable points had begun to foreclose on Confederate strategic options. But none of these campaigns alone could bring the North victory. Together they added immeasurably to the cumulative Union advantage. (8) q Endnotes 1. Edward Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Water loo (1851). For general works on the Civil War, see Brian Holden Reid, Amer ica’s Civil War: The Operational Battlefield, 1861–1863 (New York, 2008); Steven Sears, Gettysburg (New York, 2003); Brooks D. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity (New York, 2000); Michael B. Ballard, Vicks burg (Chapel Hill, 2004); Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Fort Donelson’s Leg acy: War and Society in Kentucky and Tennessee, 1862–1863 (Knoxville, 1997); Albert Castel with Brooks D. Simpson, Victors in Blue (Lawrence, 2011). 2.“The Lord Mayor’s Luncheon, Mansion House Speech,” Nov. 10, 1942, quoted in Winston S. Churchill, War Speeches, vol. 3: The End of the Begin ning, comp. Charles Eade (London, 1942), 214. 3. Robert E. Lee to Jefferson Davis, June 10, 1863, in The War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (70 vols., Washington, 1880–1901), XXVII, part 3, 881. 4. See Joseph G. Dawson III, “Jeb Stuart, R. E. Lee, and the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg,” in Lee and His Generals: Essays in Honor of T. Harry Williams, ed. Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Thomas E. Schott (Knoxville, 2012), 115–51. 5. Quoted in Brian Holden Reid, Robert E. Lee: Icon for a Nation (New York, 2007), 192. 6. William T. Sherman to Stephen A. Hurlbut, March 16, 1863, in Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin, eds., Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspon dence of William T. Sherman, 1860–1865 (Chapel Hill, 1999), 423. 7. William S. Rosecrans to Edwin M. Stanton, July 7, 1863, War of the Rebel lion, XXIII, part 2, 518. 8. The essay with this title was originally published in Foreign Affairs (Summer 1979); see also Brian Holden Reid, “Michael Howard and the Evolution of Modern War Studies,” Journal of Military History, 73 (July 2009), 869–904. Brian Holden Reid is professor of American history and military institutions at King’s College, London. He is the author of Robert E. Lee: Icon for a Nation (New York, 2007) and America’s Civil War: The Operational Battlefield, 1861–1863 (New York, 2008). OAH Magazine of History • April 2013 27 28 OAH Magazine of History • April 2013 OAH Magazine of History • April 2013 29 30 OAH Magazine of History • April 2013