Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  By June 10 Lee planned for Jackson to come from the Shenandoah and sweep down the north bank of the Chickahominy to cut McClellan’s communications, while Lee kept him busy by attacking his main line. At the same time Stuart and the army’s cavalry were to ride around the Federal army, further disrupting communications and spreading as much pandemonium as possible. Lee’s army now totaled something over 92,000 men, the largest he would ever command, and he expected to use every bit of it. Davis approved the plan, and on June 13 Lee set in motion Jackson’s shift to the east. “The sooner you unite with this army the better,” Lee told him.125 Stuart performed his part brilliantly, boosting morale in the army at large. Believing Jackson to be on his way, Lee now framed his final plan of attack, and not just to drive McClellan back from Richmond, but all the way into Hampton Roads itself. In one of many similarities to Grant’s thinking, Lee wanted more than immediate results. Every action must have contingent alternatives, and always he hoped that a crushing blow might dampen or even extinguish the North’s willingness to continue the fight. He recognized the Union’s vastly greater resources, but that would not matter if they defeated the Yankees’ will to continue.

  The magnitude of what Lee faced was greater than posterity has acknowledged. This would be his first battle of any kind under his hand, and his first action in nearly fifteen years. He would command the second-largest army ever fielded in the American hemisphere to date, only marginally smaller than the army it faced. Its organization was as new as its name, most of its soldiers and their officers not yet veterans. Lee’s was a good and ancient name in Virginia, but thus far redolent only of failure in the western counties and tons of shifted earth on the southern coast. He had to prove himself to everyone. Still, he had advantages. This was home ground for many of his men, and not altogether unfamiliar to him, giving him the benefit of knowing the terrain. McClellan’s supply line was many times longer than Lee’s and vulnerable, as Stuart demonstrated. And at least a part of his army already had a tradition of victory, thanks to Big Bethel and Manassas and some action on the peninsula. Lee also had luck, for like Grant at Fort Donelson and the second day at Shiloh, he was fortunate in his opponent. He knew McClellan from Mexico, but their paths rarely crossed after the war. Lee watched “Little Mac” spend months throwing away time awaiting heavy artillery rather than use his strength in combat. He need expect no surprises. For Lee, McClellan was an open book, if dull reading.

  On the afternoon of June 23 Lee convened Longstreet, the two Hills, and Jackson, who had ridden ahead of his command, and put the situation before them. It was time to strike McClellan before he laid siege to Richmond. These four Confederate division commanders were to concentrate against that lone Yankee corps north of the Chickahominy and drive it back down the peninsula, while Lee occupied the other Yankee corps south of the river. That would concentrate 65,000 Confederates against perhaps 30,000 north of the river, which ought to be enough to shatter the Federals. The risk was that Lee with only 25,000 below the stream could hold McClellan with 60,000. Lee left them to work out details while he attended to other business, then returned to find them in agreement that, Jackson’s command having the greatest distance to march, the time for the attack ought to be set for when he believed he could arrive, and he proposed dawn on June 26.126 Lee agreed, though it was a managerial departure for him that involved some risk. Life had taught him that if something was to be done well he needed to do it himself, yet he left this crucial decision for his first battle to the judgment of these subordinates. All of them had more combat command experience than he, and the Cheat Mountain fiasco may have taught him that it was better for generals on the scene to set tactical details rather than a single more remote commander. Hereafter he would allow considerable latitude to senior commanders to conform their individual operations into his overall grand plan.

  The campaign later called the Seven Days’ Battles—though in reality they were one heavy skirmish and a brace of engagements, one of two days and the other of three—began June 25 with a minor action near Oak Grove when McClellan launched a tentative assault that Confederates handily repulsed. Lee spent the day from noon until after darkness on the lines, not eating his supper until ten o’clock, the first such day of many that he would have with his army, and even then he had much remaining to do. He gave up trying to get away to see Mary briefly, knowing he would only arrive in the middle of the night and have to wake her. Trusting that “a Merciful Providence may hear and answer” her prayers, he made do with a brief note expressing his hope that when this was all over they might “merit many happy days yet.”127

  The next day the real fighting began inauspiciously when Jackson was inexplicably eleven hours late getting his division in place. Lee spent hours on a height above Mechanicsville looking to see Jackson’s legions approach, but when finally he heard firing and saw Yankees pulling back through the village, it was A. P. Hill’s doing after he wearied of waiting on Jackson and launched the attack on his own. Lee immediately put Longstreet and D. H. Hill into their holding action, and though the Yankees repulsed the attack around Mechanicsville that first day, they still withdrew, followed by Jackson, Longstreet, and both Hills. Lee renewed the assault the next day around Gaines’s Mill, but could not maintain effective control of his divisions because of mistakes over roads, bad maps, and Jackson being tardy yet again. By late afternoon Lee gained a better grasp of the situation and managed to initiate a combined—though far from simultaneous—assault by all of his divisions that hammered the Union V Corps, until at dusk it broke and retreated across the Chickahominy during the night. All the while McClellan remained frozen in his lines south of the river, obsessed with the fiction that Lee vastly outnumbered him. Lee had his first victory and the threat to Richmond was mitigated. Almost ecstatically he sent Davis a note that, “profoundly grateful to Almighty God,” they had repulsed the Federals and he intended to give the enemy no time to regroup. He added that losses had been heavy, and he was right.128 Outnumbering the Federals engaged more than two to one, his losses were about one-sixth greater than theirs, an arithmetic of battle he could not long afford. But he had the initiative.

  By late afternoon on June 28 Lee felt certain that McClellan was abandoning his line of communications on the Richmond & York Railroad and withdrawing south to the James River, where Union gunboats could protect a new line of supply from Fort Monroe.129 Since the four divisions from the previous days’ fights were battered and disorganized, Lee ordered Magruder’s fresh division to lead the pursuit on June 29, supported by Huger’s equally fresh troops, and Jackson, but once again Lee discovered that generals marched faster in his imagination than on the ground. When Magruder finally encountered the Yankee rear guard that morning he stopped entirely for several hours awaiting reinforcements. Seeing his opportunity to demoralize a retreating foe fading, Lee sent Magruder an impatient note chiding him that “we must lose no more time.”130 Huger was just as tardy and never reached Magruder, while Jackson halted for the day in spite of his instructions, leaving Magruder on his own. Thanks to their failures, Lee saw his concentration squandered that afternoon when Magruder finally attacked two Union corps near Savage Station on the Richmond & York. Lee had planned to isolate those corps, a devastating blow if successful, but all three of his division commanders let him down, and the Yankees succeeded in continuing their retreat. That day marked both Magruder and Huger as likely candidates for transfer to oblivion with G. W. Smith. Jackson’s performance had been worse than any, though the importance of his Shenandoah campaign would sustain him for now. Lee was starting to face some very tough personnel issues at the worst possible moment.

  He also rethought his own command style on the field that night. He remained largely at his headquarters, which moved almost daily, leaving it to his staff to communicate his instructions, though he failed to use them to investigate Jackson’s and Hill’s galling delays. While that made him easy to find, it also meant he saw little of the overall field. Giv
en his personality, that instinctive feeling of blame for what went wrong around him, he naturally assumed that some responsibility for the failure rested on himself. The way to counter that was to spend more time on the front. He also gave orders, and when they failed to be realized he just waited longer rather than actively seeking to discover the cause. That would have to change with better use of staff. On June 29 he changed his habit and established no fixed headquarters, meaning subordinates could not be sure where to find him to report or receive orders. That, too, would have to change. His staff performed well, but he did not use it well. Seven aides were not a lot, but they could be enough if properly employed.131

  By noon on June 30 McClellan anchored his left on Malvern Hill, protected by a bend of the James River on its left, while his retreating corps, as they approached, extended his line northward four miles to White Oak Swamp, which protected its right. Once again Lee planned a convergence: Longstreet, the Hills, and Huger to hit the main enemy line, while Holmes’s freshly arrived division would take Malvern Hill itself, and Jackson was to attack across the swamp to crush McClellan’s right. Breaching Federal ranks anywhere should force the enemy to retreat to the bank of the James, and if Lee pinned them there before McClellan organized water evacuation, Lee might bag the entire army. He met during the night with Jackson about his role, called at Magruder’s bivouac at dawn to do the same, and thereafter conferred in person with every division commander but Huger, trying to ensure no mistakes this time. Once the fight commenced he spent much of the day on the fighting line surveying enemy positions at no small risk. That afternoon while overlooking Hill’s position, Lee’s career as army commander very nearly came to an abrupt end when enemy artillery narrowly missed him as he spoke with President Davis, Longstreet, and others just behind A. P. Hill’s lines.

  But the machine was breaking down from losses, exhaustion, and confusion, and the test of stress on his commanders’ abilities and stamina compromised Lee’s best designs.

  Huger was slow again. Magruder dithered and never reached the field. Where Jackson had performed better on June 29, on this day he was virtually useless, and again Lee failed to send someone to find out why. Only A. P. Hill and Longstreet actually attacked the Union line, at a spot locally known as Frayser’s Farm, and though the fighting lasted for hours, they were too weak to break through. In a last gamble Lee attempted to coordinate Jackson hitting McClellan’s right below the swamp while Holmes stuck the left at the hill. Then he went to the right of his line to try to hurry Holmes forward to Malvern Hill, which he reconnoitered first himself. The Yankees beat back Holmes easily, and once again Jackson failed to appear, as did Huger. With Magruder slowly on his way to Hill’s support, Lee ably redirected him to the right to reinforce Holmes’s attack, but in the event Magruder supported neither.132 When darkness closed the fighting, Lee had gained nothing, and during the night McClellan succeeded in consolidating his corps on Malvern Hill in a formidable position.

  Lee felt immeasurably frustrated, exclaiming to one general that McClellan “will get away because I cannot have my orders carried out.”133 Everyone but Longstreet and A. P. Hill let him down, and Longstreet lost valuable time in confusion about roads. Even if his hope of demolishing McClellan’s army was unrealistic, still Lee’s plans ought to have yielded more results. Like every army commander thus far in the war, Lee was learning that large columns of soldiers simply could not move fast, even on good roads in countryside they knew. Lee had tried everything, and still McClellan reached the James River and was within reach of Harrison’s Landing, where he could easily reestablish supply and communications. Meanwhile, the Army of Northern Virginia was badly bloodied and bone weary, and Lee himself close to exhaustion. Any commander ought reasonably to question whether he and his men had one more push in them.

  Lee decided to find out. He designed a heavy assault on Malvern Hill for the morning of July 1, and this time eschewed subtle tactics. Artillery was to drive back enemy cannon, and then he would send Huger, Jackson, and D. H. Hill up the hill in a massed frontal assault. He suspended the action when his artillery failed in their part, but then saw what he took to be signs that McClellan was evacuating. Lee thought the moment right to deliver a hammer blow and ordered the frontal assault again. Instead of moving up the slopes in unison, however, the Confederate divisions failed to coordinate their movements, and the Yankees succeeded in beating them back a division at a time with heavy casualties.

  Lee decided that night that he had gained enough. “Our success has not been as great or complete as I could have desired,” he told Mary a few days later. Ultimately, of course, it was out of his hands, for “God knows what is best for us.”134 In fact, the impact of Lee’s achievement was seismic. Personally it saved his reputation from the doldrums and possible obscurity. The impact on Confederate morale could not be overstated. At the end of a long season of Confederate setbacks and outright disasters, Lee inflicted humiliating defeat on presumably the best the Union could send against him. He made spectacular and far reaching gains. A commander less than a month in office wielded an untested army against an opponent numerically his superior and in a steady offensive pushed it back nearly thirty miles, forcing it to make an unexpected change of base, and considerably demoralizing its already weak-willed commander. He relieved his capital from the imminent threat of siege, sent a fresh fright across the North to counter the optimism spawned by Grant’s gains on the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers, and electrified Virginia and the Confederacy. It came at heavy cost, perhaps 20,000 casualties, nearly one-fourth of his army, but Lee understood from the outset that this would be no short war. Time sided with the biggest battalions, and if the South was to overcome its disparity of odds with the North, it must be done by bold resolve, swift action, and sacrifice. Suddenly that seemed to be the very definition of Robert E. Lee. Goodbye to “Spades” and “stick-in-the-mud.”

  9

  LEE VICTORIOUS AND GRANT FRUSTRATED

  THE DAY AFTER the battle closed, Grant congratulated his men in terms revealing that even he was not immune from hyperbole. The enemy had outnumbered them, he said, its army composed of “the flower of the southern army commanded by their ablest Generals and fought by them with all the desperation of despair.” Still, there was no exaggeration when he told them that “no such contest ever took place on this continent.”1

  Grant sent Halleck almost daily reports of affairs, and apologized that it would be some days before he could submit troop strengths.2 He would not again be accused of failing to keep his commander informed, and may have been especially sensitive as he could now expect an outcry over the battle. It came in less than a week when the press hinted that Grant was taken by surprise. As more details filtered north from Pittsburg Landing, a trickle became a rill.3 Of course he had been surprised, and it availed little to point out that so had Sherman, who actually commanded on the front line. They knew a large enemy army was concentrated at Corinth. They knew significant portions of it had moved north. And they knew that skirmishes of the past few days involved not just the usual outposts and scouts, but some artillery and even infantry.

  A year later experience would equip Grant to read those signs better. Every army commander in time would be surprised, as would Lee not too long from now. Shiloh was Grant’s turn. He expected criticism, candidly admitting to Julia that “I say I dont care for what the papers say but I do.” It annoyed him even more when he saw such reports causing her distress for his sake.4 Grant was human enough to rationalize away the surprise of April 6. “We could not have been better prepared had the enemy sent word three days before when they would attack,” he told a friend later that April. He could have initiated the battle a day or two before April 6, but waited for Buell. Even after the fight he still thought in terms of his intent to attack. That the foe attacked him, and caught him with no defensive works, did not signify. Without saying so, he implied that the foe drove his army back onto the landing by overwhelming strength of more th
an double his numbers; by May he escalated those odds to three to one.5

  Grant had reports to back up his claim of 80,000 rebels in the battle, though soon he learned to discount such information. He never admitted the degree to which he was taken unawares, though, going only so far as to say the strength of the attack was greater than he expected.6 His response to surprise, however, needed no rationalization. It was just as dynamic as at Fort Donelson. What mattered more was whether he had learned enough from the experience not to be surprised again. Would he restrain his optimism hereafter and spend more time thinking about what the enemy might do, assuming that he kept his command? The coming of Halleck on April 11 put that in some doubt.

  Halleck’s arrival was about Halleck’s ambition, not Grant’s surprise, and he seemed to take it thus. For the rest of the month he prepared for more action, expecting Halleck to let him move quickly for the battle to end the rebellion in the West. Instead, Halleck ordered Grant and Buell to prepare to be attacked again, which did not look like intent to advance. Grant saw a flurry of orders from Halleck covering everything from mounting guard to digging latrines, even the proper way to fold letters sent to headquarters.7

  The outcry over the high casualties led Washington to ask Halleck if Grant or other generals were guilty of neglect or misconduct, but he withheld any comment.8 The press was less generous. “The papers are giving me fits,” Grant complained, and a fortnight after Halleck’s arrival Grant told Julia that he was glad to be superseded. Perhaps now they would leave him alone. “If the papers only knew how little ambition I have outside of putting down this rebellion,” he complained. He all but stopped reading the press, and felt better for it.9 “The best contradiction in the world,” he said, “is to pay no attention.”10