Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  Lee was using his staff better now. Couriers kept the separate columns in communication with him and each other, so he knew where his corps were, or had been a few hours earlier. He sent Long to Richmond to make a verbal report on the army’s progress, and to investigate reports of Federal movements on the James-York Peninsula.54 After disdaining signal communication in 1862, he now used signal stations to transmit information, meanwhile asking Richmond to send his correspondence ahead to keep up with his advance. One erroneous press report of Brandy Station said the Yankees captured Lee’s campaign plans at Stuart’s headquarters, a pointed reminder of the danger of mislaid correspondence.55 Lee had already destroyed personal letters he carried, explaining to Rooney’s wife that “we can carry with us only our recollections.”56

  When Lee sent Richmond notice of Brandy Station on the evening of June 9, he headed it “Culpeper,” and the War Department allowed its publication on June 12. Lee knew that as soon as the Yankees saw that they would know he was on the move.57 Back in the Confederacy, people knew it too by now, but not where. Asking “Is General Lee Left-Handed?” a Charleston editor compared him to a boxer who led with his left. He led with his left on the peninsula and the same at Second Manassas, Harpers Ferry, and Chancellorsville.58 Of course that left was lost with Jackson gone, but the speculation was that he was leading with it yet again, suggesting a move from the Shenandoah. None should worry, said an editor, “because we believe that, under God, he has arranged all that is necessary for success.”59 The Almighty was Lee’s left now.

  He traveled with Longstreet, a habit formed largely because in the army’s history to date, Jackson was usually detached and operating in advance. By June 16 he moved north on the east side of the Blue Ridge, using Longstreet’s corps to screen Ewell’s, which had crossed into the Shenandoah Valley to capture Winchester on June 15. Lee’s rail link to Richmond for supplies ended there, so the army would be foraging hereafter. A day later Ewell crossed the Potomac, the first of 80,000 Confederates once more taking the war to the enemy.60 In the first of several instances of confusion, Longstreet failed to keep part of his corps east of the Blue Ridge as a screen, and sent his whole column on the road for the Shenandoah. “I hope it is for the best,” Lee told him, but chagrin was evident when he added that “at any rate it is too late to change.”61 Three days later he told Ewell that “if Harrisburg comes within your means, capture it.”62

  Couriers and staff officers rode back and forth between Ewell’s column and Lee’s headquarters constantly, bringing news not much more than twenty-four hours old. Meanwhile, Lee paid more attention to gathering intelligence of enemy movements. He read every Yankee newspaper found, generally seeing them no more than three days after publication.63 Unfortunately, after June 23 there would be no intelligence from Stuart, who persuaded Lee that he could ride around Hooker’s army as he had McClellan’s, disrupting supply and communications, destroying wagons and equipment, and capturing valuable stores. Lee authorized the raid with the caveat that Stuart must protect Ewell’s eastern flank, which he ignored.64 Stuart left two brigades behind, too little to be of great use either as a screen or for gathering intelligence. Hereafter, the Army of Northern Virginia marched almost without eyes and ears, and after it was too late Lee rued his decision.

  That same day he received positive news that Hooker was about to cross the Potomac.65 He needed a diversion and had proposed to Davis the novel idea of creating a phantom or “effigy” army at Culpeper and placing Beauregard in command. “His presence would give magnitude to even a small demonstration, and tend greatly to perplex and confound the enemy,” Lee reasoned, for the Yankees would assume no officer of Beauregard’s rank would be wasted on a minor outpost. He placed so much importance on the move that he returned to it now on June 25, but nothing was done, in part because they had left it too late.66 By this time Ewell reached Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, with Longstreet and Hill closing up behind him for a concentration, and Lee could no longer keep his courier line running back to Virginia. His last communication to the president expressed the desire that Hooker would follow him north of the Potomac so Lee could at least disrupt Federal plans for the summer before he returned to Virginia. It was not quite the decisive victory he spoke of on May 15. He closed with a hope that “things will end well for us at Vicksburg,” where he had watched events with interest.67

  Having given up his intelligence arm when Stuart left, Lee did not know until he reached Chambersburg on June 28 that Hooker’s army was last known to be near Frederick, Maryland, just thirty-five miles south. By this time he could be much closer. Lee immediately recalled Ewell from the outskirts of Harrisburg and ordered all three corps to use roads converging twenty-five miles southeast of him at Gettysburg.68 This was not what he had planned. Now he must race to concentrate. By nightfall on June 30 Lee camped at Greenwood, less than twenty miles west of Gettysburg, where he learned that Hooker had been replaced by Major General George G. Meade just three days earlier. Other than vague rumors, he still did not know where Meade was, nor did he expect to encounter him for at least another day or two. Once he had his army together, he could reconnoiter to find the dreamed of ideal defensive position from which to annihilate the foe. That evening he wrote Mary a few personal things of no moment. “It is doubtful whether this gets through,” he told her. “Therefore I say nothing more.”69

  For the next three days he had no time to say more. Hill’s advance encountered Federal cavalry at Gettysburg the next morning before Longstreet and Ewell arrived. Thereafter, despite Lee’s instructions not to bring on a general engagement, magnetic forces sucked his army and Meade’s into a meeting engagement that by July 2 involved virtually the whole of both armies, even Stuart, who arrived on July 2 exhausted from a daring ride of little profit. The battlefield was in the main a long low hill called Seminary Ridge on the west, facing parallel Cemetery Hill and then Cemetery Ridge close to a mile east. The town of Gettysburg capped the northern end of Cemetery Hill, while at the south end stood a somewhat commanding eminence called Little Round Top. Lee’s army would take position on Seminary Ridge, and Meade’s on Cemetery Ridge.

  Confronted with a battle he did not want on ground not of his choosing, Lee exercised minimal control before he reached the field late on July 1. While struggling to concentrate the army, he could have sent staff to impose instructions on Hill and Ewell, but he did not, and left them to it. When he directed Ewell to take the key to the Union line on Cemetery Hill, he used the discretionary caveat “if practicable,” an unproductive phrase with a mercurial general like Ewell. Once he established his headquarters on the field, Lee erratically communicated plans to his corps commanders. He met personally with both Ewell and Longstreet on July 1, but no staff officer went to hurry Longstreet to the field that night. The next morning when Longstreet got his orders to march to the right of the line to assault the Union left near Little Round Top, Lee had no maps to give him, but he did provide his engineer officer Colonel Samuel Johnston, who had reconnoitered Little Round Top just that morning. Yet Lee told Johnston only to accompany Longstreet, and that general failed to reveal their destination. “I had no idea where he was going,” Johnston later recalled, a grave error by both Lee and Longstreet.70 Lee gave his orders to his corps commanders but sent no staff with them to make certain his wishes were obeyed. As a result, Lee effectively lost control of Longstreet for the rest of the day and seemed strangely uninvolved. Lee still felt unwell, probably from the angina, now compounded by severe diarrhea, and his habit of dosing himself with quinine made it worse. A British observer found him sitting alone on a stump with almost no communications coming or going, and no aides standing ready for orders.71

  Two months earlier at Chancellorsville Lee had explained his concept of battlefield management to a Prussian officer. He tried to make “plans as good as my human skill allows,” he said. “I plan and work with all my might to bring the troops to the right place at the right time; with that I have done my dut
y. As soon as I order the troops forward into battle, I lay the fate of my army at the hands of God.” Then, he said, “it is my Generals’ turn to perform their duty.”72 That might have worked with Jackson, but Ewell and Hill were new to corps command, and Longstreet was balky at taking the offensive. Where typically Lee personally moved with Longstreet, in this instance he stayed on Seminary Ridge, closer to his new corps commanders, which was prudent. Unfortunately, he seems merely to have waited for Longstreet’s attack to commence rather than sending an officer to regain control.73

  On July 3, after failed attacks on the Union left and right, Lee reasoned that Meade might have strengthened his flanks at his center’s expense, and concluded to mount a massive frontal assault. He had tried it at Gaines’s Mill and saw it work, and again at Malvern Hill with terrible consequences, so his experience was mixed. Like many others in this war he did not yet realize that modern weaponry almost made the open charge obsolete. Yet his decision was not foolhardy. Meade might have weakened his center. A two-hour artillery barrage might disrupt the enemy line, but the war to date argued that it probably would not, especially since Confederate shells had an embarrassing habit of failing to explode. At best he could hope that solid shot might disable some Union field pieces. Nevertheless, if it had worked, Meade’s army might have been driven from the field, in which case the assault would be hailed as genius. He had little alternative now. His army’s ammunition dwindled. Maneuver and flank attacks had failed on July 1 and 2. Any chance for his battle of annihilation was surely gone, but still he could gain great morale advantage by any victory that drove Meade from the field. Win or lose, his raid into Pennsylvania was already over, with his supplies running low and his line of supply too attenuated to maintain securely much longer. His choices were either to retreat to the Potomac now, or take one more risk. In a campaign based on a succession of risks, the decision for Lee was an easy one. It was his most hazardous battlefield expedient yet, but then his men could do anything. Moreover, when he made any decision, success or failure lay not in his hands, but in His. If God meant for the assault to succeed, it would.

  It did not. Lee and his staff sat their horses on Seminary Ridge and watched the mile-wide ranks of 12,000 men go forward, but from that moment he made no effort to coordinate or direct the assault.74 In fact, Lee maintained only moderate control of his army during the entire battle. He did for the first time empower some staff officers to give orders in his name. They surveyed the field for him, and helped in some degree with the July 3 assault.75 Still, in more than a dozen instances when his orders were not obeyed, he sent no one to investigate. It was an improvement on his performance at battlefield management, but he still had much to learn.76

  After playing a key part in General Winfield Scott’s victories in Mexico by his reconnaissance, Lee proved ineffective at it in this campaign. He forfeited any long- or midrange tactical reconnaissance Stuart might have provided, and as a result had no grasp of the overall battlescape. He learned of Union movements too late to react, and never identified Meade’s center of gravity in order to direct his own efforts to best effect. He let Hill bring on a major engagement despite instructions not to do so, and then gave orders too imprecise and discretionary to be effective. Five years later Lee offered two reasons for defeat: Stuart’s absence left him blind; and he could not deliver the “one determined and united blow” that he believed would have assured victory. “As it was,” he said, “victory trembled in the balance for three days.”77 What he did not say was that he was ultimately responsible. He let Stuart go, and his own laissez-faire management helped bungle the attacks on July 1 and 2. Two years after that Lee added another cause of defeat. “If Jackson had been there,” he said in February 1870, they “would have succeeded.”78

  Every great general has his worst battle. Gettysburg was Lee’s.

  “The road to Vicksburg is open.”79 Grant felt cautiously jubilant on May 3 when he told Sherman of progress thus far, promising Halleck to pursue the foe “until Vicksburg is in our possession.”80 Grand Gulf had been taken, and Grant rode ahead of the army to start organizing it as a depot for supplies from Memphis. He saw for himself that the army’s animals could subsist off the land, and he believed his soldiers could get all the beef and vegetables they needed, lacking only coffee, sugar, and hardtack. When he moved out of Bruinsburg he had but two days’ rations per man, yet they stretched those to a full week by foraging, before Sherman collected tons of bacon and other goods to bring forward when he joined the army.81 Every man would get three days’ rations to last five days or more during the inland march. This same day he directed building a road to reduce the time supplies took to reach Grand Gulf, emphasizing that “every thing depends upon the promptness with which our supplies are forwarded.”82

  Popular mythology later asserted that Grant severed his own supply line and lived entirely off the land. What he was doing was hazardous enough, but little more so than Lee’s army in Pennsylvania. He left Hillyer in charge at Grand Gulf and kept the wagons constantly moving between it and his advancing corps, telling Hillyer that speed was everything.83 May 6 found him on the Black River sixteen miles below Vicksburg, waiting for the next wagon train, and again he issued three days’ rations for the men to stretch to more.84 He knew he could not keep his legions fully supplied, but he expected to get as much hardtack, coffee, and salt as possible, “and make the country furnish the balance.”85 No wonder Grant was irritated when he rode past McClernand’s men and saw officers, enlisted men, and contrabands riding mules that should have been drawing supply wagons. When McClernand complained he did not have enough transportation to carry rations, Grant reminded him what those mules ought to be doing, chiding the general that “you should take steps to make the means at hand available.”86

  As he often did, Grant in his optimism believed he could move faster than he did, and expected he might take Vicksburg by the middle of the month.87 Indeed, he became so confident that on May 9 he told Julia he expected the battle for Vicksburg to start in another three days, and for the first time mentioned the question of what assignment there might be for him after its fall.88 To boost morale he issued a congratulatory order to the army on progress thus far. “Other battles are to be fought,” he added, but they were only a few days from the “crowning victory over the rebellion.”89 By May 11 he had advanced almost thirty miles inland, attenuating his line of communications with Grand Gulf to the point that it was seriously vulnerable to enemy raid, so he simply closed it down. “You may not hear from me again for several days,” he wrote to Halleck.90 His men had about two days’ rations and he warned corps commanders that they might have to last seven. “We must fight the enemy before our rations fail,” he told McPherson, “and we are equally bound to make our rations last.”91 He still hoped to be in front of Vicksburg in a week. There he could extend his lines to the Yazoo River to open a new supply line.

  A day later, however, Grant abruptly changed their objective.92 McPherson took the town of Raymond in a sharp fight and exaggerated Confederate strength, so when they retreated to the northeast toward Jackson, Grant faced the prospect of a substantial enemy force on his right flank and rear if he continued in his course north. On the spot he made Jackson the next objective, but instead of McPherson, who was closer, he gave the assignment to Sherman, in whom he had more confidence.93 Sherman moved quickly and on the afternoon of May 14 the capital fell, its defenders commanded by Joseph E. Johnston withdrawing to the north, but Grant suspected that they meant to move west to reinforce the Vicksburg garrison.94

  When he decided to go for Jackson, Grant had sent McClernand’s corps to Edwards’ Station on the Vicksburg & Jackson Railroad, about twenty-eight miles west of Jackson and eighteen miles east of Vicksburg. He did it in part to get McClernand out of the way, expecting no action, but also as a feint to distract Pemberton.95 Less than forty-eight hours after taking the capital, however, Grant learned that Pemberton had moved much of his army out of its defens
es and was approaching the station.96 After destroying anything of military use to the Confederates, Grant prepared to move west, buoyed by the prospect of catching Pemberton in the open field. His sense of urgency was evident when he sent a note to Sherman at five-thirty on the morning of May 16 to get every man in the field immediately, saying “the fight may be brought on at any moment.”97 Grant told McClernand to wait. He did not want him to bring on an engagement he could not handle. Before Sherman reached the field, other elements of McPherson’s Corps came up with McClernand and found the Confederates in line across the road to Vicksburg, their center planted atop Champion Hill.

  Grant arrived and ordered an attack. Hours of severe combat followed before overwhelming Union numbers put the Confederates to flight. In fact, Grant came close to destroying Pemberton on the spot. The Confederates lost almost 4,000 of 25,000 engaged, and made a scramble to get back to Vicksburg before the Federals cut off their retreat. “I am of the opinion that the battle of Vicksburg has been fought,” Grant told Sherman. “We must be prepared however for whatever turns up.” Pursuing as far as Edwards’ Station that evening, he gave orders to advance again at dawn.98 Speed, always speed.

  The next day the Federal advance came upon Pemberton in line just east of the bridge over the Big Black River and put them to flight with another 1,800 casualties. In two days the Confederates had lost more than a fifth of their army, and Grant felt confident enough to tell Sherman to push into Vicksburg if he thought he could do so, and if not then to extend his lines facing its defenses, thinking he might still take it the following day.99 On the morning of May 19, Grant gave orders for his entire line to move as close as they could to the defenses east of the city by two o’clock when, at a signal, they were to launch a general assault. At the same time, he asked Porter to commence a bombardment from his fleet on the river.100 Only Sherman advanced at the signal, dooming the assault to failure, yet he did achieve one thing. With his lines reaching almost to the Mississippi north of town, he could now open a supply line via the Yazoo River. On May 11 Grant had hoped to be in front of Vicksburg within a week with his supply link renewed. It took him eight days, and but for hardtack and coffee his men never went hungry.101