Download 1863: Military Turning Points, Gettysburg

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
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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.)
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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
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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
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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).
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