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Gettysburg and Vicksburg at 150 By BG John S. Brown U.S. Army retired J uly Fourth, in my view, marks the 150th anniversary of the climax of the Civil War. On that day in 1863, GEN Robert E. Lee retreated from Gettysburg, Pa., with his defeated Army of Northern Virginia after a gigantic three-day battle with the Army of the Potomac, commanded by MG George G. Meade. That same day, half a continent away, the fortress city of Vicksburg, Miss., capitulated to MG Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee. In my youth, I often heard Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg referred to as “the high tide of the Confederacy,” and a glance at a map reveals the strategic wisdom of a Mississippi River that “flowed unvexed to the sea.” Elsewhere in this issue of ARMY, my colleagues, Colonels Cole Kingseed and Kevin Farrell, examine Gettysburg in more detail and flag up tactical and operational issues that have excited controversy since the battle ended. Here, I hope to put Vicksburg and Gettysburg in a strategic context and underscore the importance of July 4, 1863, as a pivotal point in American history. The February and April 2012 “Historically Speaking” articles examined the critical importance of the Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee and Mississippi rivers to communications west of the Appalachian Mountains and the revolutionary advantages steamboats afforded in travelling the arteries with or against the current. Union successes in Tennessee at 34 ARMY ■ July 2013 Forts Henry and Donelson, and also at Shiloh, penetrated deep into the Confederacy and compromised all but one of the rail lines running across it. That final rail line ran through Vicksburg and readily connected Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas with the rest of the Confederacy. These western states became an increasingly important source of supplies for the Confederacy as the effects of the Union naval blockade deepened. Conversely, arms and ammunition shipped west did much to assist the western states in continuing the war. President Abraham Lincoln and his generals recognized the significance of the Mississippi River from the beginning of the war. Union forces assisted by gunboats thrust south from Cairo, Ill., in early 1862 to seize New Madrid, Mo.; Island No. 10, between Missouri and Tennessee; Fort Pillow, Tenn.; and Memphis, Tenn. Memphis surrendered in June 1862, and Union gunboats steamed on to the mouth of the Yazoo River. Meanwhile, Union naval forces commanded by Commodore David G. Farragut went up the Mississippi from the Gulf of Mexico and facilitated amphibious landings. New Orleans surrendered on April 27, 1862, and Baton Rouge, La., soon followed. Vicksburg proved a harder nut to crack. Fortified and perched on high bluffs with a maze of swamps to its north, Vicksburg repelled a thrust from the south in May 1862 and a thrust from the north in December. Gettysburg (Pa.) National Military Park by Dennis Steele At year’s end, the Confederacy still held open a 100-mile window across the Mississippi River extending from Vicksburg in the north to Port Hudson, La., in the south. G rant resolved to change all of this. As his subordinate MG William T. Sherman moved north of Vicksburg on April 30, 1863, Grant amphibiously slipped the bulk of his army past Vicksburg and landed well to the south of its defenses, at Bruinsburg, Miss. This simultaneously bypassed the difficult terrain north of Vicksburg and turned Confederate defenses along the river. It also left Grant at the end of a perilously exposed logistical tether running past the guns along the bluffs at Vicksburg. Unfazed, Grant took an overdraft of ammunition with him and abandoned his line of communications altogether. He sped north, interposing himself between Confederate GEN Joseph E. Johnston’s forces concentrated at Jackson and Confederate LTG John C. Pemberton’s forces around Vicksburg. Meanwhile, three regiments of Union cavalry commanded by COL Benjamin H. Grierson launched a destructive raid deep into Mississippi. This drew off cavalry that could have improved the reconnaissance of the separated and increasingly confused Confederate forces. Living off the land as necessary, Grant first massed against Johnston and drove him out of Jackson. He then turned sharply on Pemberton and soundly defeated him at the Battle of Champion Hill in Mississippi. Pemberton retreated into the defenses of Vicksburg. Deploying Sherman to screen against Johnston’s return, Grant followed Pemberton in hot pursuit. Premature assaults on May 19 and 22 failed, so Grant settled into a methodical siege. Trench lines and saps worked their way ever closer to the Confederate defenses. Mines penetrated underneath the fortifications, seeking to bring them down before countermines interrupted them. Snipers and artillery fire exacted a daily toll. Starvation and disease beset the isolated Confederates, who nevertheless kept up a gallant defense. Johnston tried to mount a relief but never mustered sufficient strength to achieve one. Pushed to the breaking point, Pemberton surrendered on July 4. To his credit, Grant rushed rations to the famished civilians and prisoners of war in the starving city. While Grant was campaigning in central Mississippi, Union forces pushed up the Mississippi River from the south and invested Port Hudson, La., the southern terminus of Confederate holdings on the river. After the news of Vicksburg reached them, the defenders of Port Hudson accepted the inevitable and surrendered on July 9. In eastern Tennessee, a Union thrust reached Chattanooga, which threatened to split the Confederacy along yet another axis through Atlanta and Savannah, Ga. A strangulation first enJuly 2013 ■ ARMY 35 Library of Congress Library of Congress Above: A panoramic view of the Civil War battlefield at Vicksburg, Miss., shows the Illinois Memorial (left) and the Shirley House. Right: Union soldiers built shelters around the Shirley House to protect themselves against artillery fire. visioned by GEN Winfield Scott was taking effect, shredding the Confederacy and threatening to crush its constituent parts like an anaconda. F acing disintegration in the West, the Confederacy’s only real hope for victory was a knockout blow in the East. With so many vital strategic objectives so close to the common border in the East, perhaps a Napoleonic battle of annihilation could induce a war-weary Union to make peace. The Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by Lee, seemed the ideal instrument to strike such a blow. ARMY’s July 2012 “Historically Speaking” examined Lee’s defeat of MG George B. McClellan in the Virginia Peninsula Campaign. The September 2012 “Historically Speaking” discussed Lee’s defeat of MG John Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas, Va.) and his moral victory over McClellan at Antietam (Sharpsburg, Md.). In December 2012, “Historically Speaking” described the devastation Lee inflicted upon MG Ambrose E. Burnside’s Army at Fredericksburg, Va. In May, Lee’s striking victory over MG Joseph Hooker at Chancellorsville, Va., was discussed. When MG George G. Meade took over on June 28, 1863, he became the fifth commanding general of the Army of the Potomac. BG John S. Brown, USA Ret., was chief of military history at the U.S. Army Center of Military History from December 1998 to October 2005. He commanded the 2nd Battalion, 66th Armor, in Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War and returned to Kuwait as commander of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, in 1995. Author of Kevlar Legions: The Transformation of the U.S. Army, 1989–2005, he has a doctorate in history from Indiana University. 36 ARMY ■ July 2013 All four of his predecessors had been defeated despite their general superiority in numbers, and three of them had been defeated by Lee. Having built up a strike force of 76,000 following Chancellorsville, Lee resolved to take the war into Maryland and Pennsylvania. He would seek the knockout victory the Confederacy so desperately needed and also replenish his supplies from the Union’s ample stocks—civilian and military. While Grant was tightening his siege lines around Vicksburg, Lee slipped the bulk of his army up the Shenandoah Valley. The Union forces sensed the move and confirmed it during a chaotic cavalry battle around Brandy Station, Va., on June 9—the largest single cavalry collision in the war. The Confederates stole a march on the Union forces guarding the lower Shenandoah Valley, badly mauling them before crossing the Potomac and progressing along an axis running through Hagerstown, Md., and Carlisle, Pa. Minimally opposed and with the 115,000-man Army of the Potomac far behind them, the Confederates spread out to exploit the countryside. Commandeering wagons in addition to those they brought with them, they forced purchases with Confederate dollars or formal “requisitions.” They demanded $100,000 in U.S. currency from York, Pa., but settled for the $28,000 that the city had on hand. As their wagons filled up, their forces became less nimble. One Confederate cavalry brigade under BG John D. Imboden took off on a western arc to ravage the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and gather livestock. More consequentially, MG J.E.B. Stuart interpreted discretionary orders broadly enough to swing his division on a wide arc to the east, which effectively put him on the opposite side of the Union Army from Lee. To make things worse, he captured an opulent 125-wagon Union supply train and could not bring himself to part with View of a rocky nest within Devil’s Den, a boulder-ridden hill used by both Confederate and Union artillery and infantry during the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. the south. Lee gambled on a breakthrough in the center, attacking in the wake of a massive artillery barrage. The attack failed and the Union line held. Dennis Steele C it for the sake of operational mobility. With his cavalry scattered and forces dispersed in hostile territory, Lee found himself in the unusual situation of knowing less about his opponents’ whereabouts than they did about his. Once launched, the Union pursuit of Lee was reasonably efficient, if neither breakneck nor daring. By June 28, Union troops had accumulated in a great mass around Frederick, Md., and by June 30 were similarly massing south of Gettysburg. Two brigades of Union cavalry under MG John Buford Jr. pushed north through Gettysburg and clashed briefly with a Confederate brigade marching south, ostensibly to secure a supply of shoes reported to be in the town. Alarmed by belated news of the Union concentration, Lee hurriedly ordered a concentration at Cashtown, Pa., about six miles northwest of Gettysburg, starting the night of July 28–29. Buford recognized the strength of successive positions dominated by Seminary Ridge and flanking hills north and west of Gettysburg, and by Cemetery Ridge and flanking hills south and east of the town. He occupied the former position and sent for help. The battle that ensued was a colossal engagement, with one division after another marching in to join the fray. On the first day, July 1, the Confederates massed enough force to outflank and overpower the Union right, forcing the Union off Seminary Ridge. The Union rallied on Cemetery Ridge, where a stream of reinforcements arriving through the night broadened and thickened their line. On the second day, the Confederates sought to turn the Union left but were barely halted by the hasty and gallant defense of Little Round Top. The Confederates penetrated the Union line elsewhere but were ultimately repulsed. By the third day, the ever-stronger Union line resembled a fishhook firmly anchored around Culp’s Hill in the north and by the formidable Round Top in onfederate losses in three days of savage fighting were 3,903 killed, 18,735 wounded and 5,425 missing. Union losses were 3,155 killed, 14,529 wounded and 5,365 missing. The Union could afford such a butcher’s bill, but the Confederacy could not. Lee had to win a decisive victory if the Confederacy were to survive. Meade could win by not losing. By and large Lee punched, and by and large Meade counterpunched. Lee’s dispersal and distractions before the battle worked against concentrating overwhelming force at a decisive place and time. Meade, hugely assisted by able Corps commanders, survived the punches and held the line. So awesome was Lee’s reputation that Meade declined to attack him in the aftermath of his defeat. Lee’s beaten army retreated back across the Potomac without much interference. He would fight again, but never again at the summit of his strength. Vicksburg’s fall and Lee’s retreat marked a decisive pivot point. The Confederacy would continue to disintegrate in the West, and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia would continue to be ground down. In a few months’ time, Grant would assume overall command in the West. A few months after that, he would assume military command of the war as a whole. Meade would continue on as the capable—albeit methodical—commander of the Army of the Potomac. The Confederacy still had some fight and a few offensives left in it, and Lee would continue to muster his tactical brilliance, but the writing was on the wall. The overwhelming manpower and materiel advantages of the Union would inevitably be brought to bear upon the estranged countrymen of the Confederacy. ✭ Recommended Reading Carter III, Samuel, The Final Fortress: The Campaign for Vicksburg 1862–1863 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980) Coddington, Edwin B., The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command (Norwalk, Conn.: Easton Press, 1989) Esposito, Vincent J., The West Point Atlas of American Wars, Volume I: 1689–1900 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1959) McPherson, James, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) Williams, T. Harry, Lincoln and His Generals (New York: Gramercy Books, 2000) July 2013 ■ ARMY 37