I have often been fascinated by the decisons made by Robert E Lee and his fellow officers to turn away from their alliegance to the Union and support the Confederacy. It could not have been easy. I sometimes consider whether their sense of loyalty to the South was truly strong enough to enable them to fight whole-heartedly against the Union to the point that, if they succeeded, their would be a permanent seperation. For years they must have believed in the Union, expanding it in the MexicanWar and devoting themselves to its preservation.
I ask myself: was Lee able to think decisively at Gettysburg (as it was without doubt a decisive battle); did he truly wish the South to suceed?
His objective was: to destroy the Army of the Potomac; march on Washington, and force Lincoln to accept terms which would allow the Confederacy to become permanently independant of the Union.
Lee had been successful fighting defensive battles in the south, allowing the Union forces to waste themselves at places such as Chancellorsville and Fredricksburg. However, invading the North, which he was reputedly against, was a whole different prospect. He might have succeeded if he had fought yet another defensive battle and once again allowed Union forces to waste themselves, but, instead, he became drawn into an encounter-battle situation and it was he that was having his forces drained at a higher rate of attrition (we’re probably all familiar with Little Round Top, Seminary Rige and Willoughby Run)
Should he have broken contact and withdrawn to ground of his choosing, or did he do the right thing?
I would say he fell foul to overconfidence. He hadnt been beaten and had inflicted a fair few short sharp defeats on the Union. He just believed that his boys could do anything. They almost did and had it payed off, who knows. Shelby Foote said that Gettysburg was the price that the South paid for having Lee and from my reading on the subject, I have to agree with Mr Foote.
Incidentally his 3 volume epic of the US Civil war is amoungst the best you can read of this conflict.
I have to say that there is a perception that the Confederate soldier was qualitatively superior to his Federal counterpart “man-for-man.” There is also a perception that the South enjoyed better leadership in their Army. While these may have had some basis in truth, people tend to forget that the confederacy tended to enjoy a massive advantage in tactical intelligence as the Union Armies operating in the South were in a land of informants typically, with some notable exceptions.
Gen. Lee had grown used to having an advantage in real time battle intelligence and information on his enemies troop movements. When the Army of Northern Virginia went north across the Mason-Dixon line into Pennsylvania, they lost this critical advantage when facing a hostile populace, and were almost blinded in comparison to operations in Virginia against what were effectively Union invaders. This loss of a key advantage coupled with hubris, and the fact that Lee lost contact with his “eyes and ears,” Gen. Stuart’s cavalry that went galloping around southern Pennsylvania rather than coordinating with Lee and Pickett, cost Lee the battle…
I also have Camfire & Battlefields - An Illistrated History of the Campaigns and Conflicts of the Great Civil War by Rossiter Johnson, first published in 1894. My Aunt brought this when she came visiting from the States, she must have paid a small fortune for the excess weight. However, if you’re able to get hold of it, it’s well worth it.
This is no bedtime reading, as it’s a huge oversized hardback.
Gettysburg was not the first time that Lee went on the offensive on northern soil. In 1862, during his Maryland Campaign he was fought to a standstill at the Battle of Antietam, which was the bloodiest single-day battle of the American Civil War. It was a strategic victory for the Union.
IIRC, copies of his invasion plans had been discovered by Federal soldiers from Indiana at an abandoned Confederate campsite wrapped around some cigars (apparently dropped from a Confederate officers pocket).
The Battle of Antietam (also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, particularly in the South), fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, as part of the Maryland Campaign, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with almost 23,000 casualties.
Result: Tactical: inconclusive; strategic: Union victory
While McClellan’s 90,000-man Army of the Potomac was moving to intercept Lee, two Union soldiers (Corporal Barton W. Mitchell and First Sergeant John M. Bloss of the 27th Indiana Volunteer Infantry) discovered a mislaid copy of Lee’s detailed battle plans—Special Order 191—wrapped around three cigars. The order indicated that Lee had divided his army and dispersed portions geographically (to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and Hagerstown, Maryland), thus making each subject to isolation and defeat if McClellan could move quickly enough. McClellan waited about 18 hours before deciding to take advantage of this intelligence and reposition his forces, thus squandering an opportunity to defeat Lee decisively.
No other campaign and battle in the war had such momentous, multiple consequences as Antietam. In July 1863 the dual Union triumphs at Gettysburg and Vicksburg struck another blow that blunted a renewed Confederate offensive in the East and cut off the western third of the Confederacy from the rest. In September 1864 Sherman’s capture of Atlanta reversed another decline in Northern morale and set the stage for the final drive to Union victory. These also were pivotal moments. But they would never have happened if the triple Confederate offensives in Mississippi, Kentucky, and most of all Maryland had not been defeated in the fall of 1862.
On balance, would you not say that, once they got themselves going, the Union Army was a much more disciplined and better trained ‘War Machine’ than that of the South, which appears to have never developed beyond that of an enthusiastic militia?
He twice ran for governor of Texas, unsuccessfully in 1857 and successfully against Hardin R. Runnels in 1859 as a Unionist, making him the only person in U.S. history to be the governor of two different states. Despite Houston’s being a slave owner and against abolition, he opposed the secession of Texas from the Union. In 1860, he offered the following prediction: “Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives you may win Southern independence, but I doubt it. The North is determined to preserve this Union.”
Despite Houston’s wishes, Texas seceded from the United States on February 1, 1861, and joined the Confederate States of America on March 2, 1861. This act was soon branded illegal by Houston, but the Texas legislature nevertheless upheld the legitimacy of seccession. The political forces that brought about Texas’s secession also were powerful enough to replace her Unionist governor. Houston chose not to resist, stating that, “I love Texas too well to bring civil strife and bloodshed upon her. To avert this calamity, I shall make no endeavor to maintain my authority as Chief Executive of this State, except by the peaceful exercise of my functions…” He was evicted from his office on March 16, 1861, for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy, writing,
“Fellow-Citizens, in the name of your rights and liberties, which I believe have been trampled upon, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the nationality of Texas, which has been betrayed by the Convention, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the Constitution of Texas, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of my own conscience and manhood, which this Convention would degrade by dragging me before it, to pander to the malice of my enemies…I refuse to take this oath.”
“To secede from the Union and set up another government would cause war. If you go to war with the United States, you will never conquer her, as she has the money and the men. If she does not whip you by guns, powder, and steel, she will starve you to death. It will take the flower of the country-the young men.”
“In the name of the constitution of Texas, which has been trampled upon, I refuse to take this oath. I love Texas too well to bring civil strife and bloodshed upon her.”
“I declare that civil war is inevitable and is near at hand. When it comes the descendants of the heros of Lexington and Bunker Hill will be found equal in patriotism, courage and heroic endurance with the descendants of the heroes of Cowpens and Yorktown. For this reason I predict the civil war which is now at hand will be stubborn and of long duration.”
Governor–In 1859, two years before the start of the War Between the States, Houston ran for Governor of Texas on an antisecession platform, which meant he was opposed to having Texas secede from the Union. However, in 1861, Texas voted to secede anyway. Houston refused to take an oath of allegiance to the new Confederacy, and he was removed as governor. There were rumors that Houston would fight to keep Texas in the Union. Abraham Lincoln wrote him to say that Federal troops could be transported to the Texas coast to support his cause. But he refused Lincoln’s offer.
Some of you laugh to scorn the idea of bloodshed as the result of secession, but let me tell you what is coming…Your fathers and husbands, your sons and brothers, will be herded at the point of the bayonet…You may after the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, as a bare possibility, win Southern independence…but I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of state rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction…they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South.
[Sam Houston, with a prophetic warning at the time of the secession of Texas from the Union]
Pretty prophetic wasn’t it. A pity that he didn’t live long enough to see his words come to fruition.
From my limited knowledge of U.S. history, I would think it was a part of the natural progression from a group of independenten states to the United States. Those poltiicians of the time, with vision, must have seen the inevitability of struggle for Federal supremacy. Hence my argument that issues of slavery were merly the trigger, much the same as the assassination of that individual in the balkans was the trigger for WW!, but not the cause.
Only after about 1863. No one would call the rabble routed at Bull Run a “disciplined and better trained War Machine” than the Confederates…
But what I am saying is that the Union forces fought much of the war with a handicap the South did not have, as they had the advantage of the defender and that the Union Army tends to be overly criticized while the Confederates where overrated…
Well, I did speak of when the Union got themselves going.
There appears to be one or two parallels with the English civil war, in as much as the landed gentry (Royalists) were much more competent in the early days on account of hunting and riding skills etc. However, once the Parliamentarians got their act together and formed a better trained and better equipped ‘New-model Army’ things began to turn around.
The aforementioned Shelby Foote, says that the North fought with one arm behind their backs throughout the duration of the war, and implied that if the North got really serious, they’d have trounced the South in no time?
University superintendent
In 1859, Sherman accepted a job as the first superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy in Pineville, Louisiana, a position offered to him by Major D. C. Buell and General G. Mason Graham. He proved an effective and popular leader of that institution, which would later become Louisiana State University (LSU). Colonel Joseph P. Taylor, the brother of the late President Zachary Taylor, declared that “if you had hunted the whole army, from one end of it to the other, you could not have found a man in it more admirably suited for the position in every respect than Sherman.”
[b]On hearing of South Carolina’s secession from the United States, Sherman observed to a close friend, Professor David F. Boyd of Virginia, an enthusiastic secessionist, almost perfectly describing the four years of war to come:
“ You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you’re talking about. War is a terrible thing!
You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it …
Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth—right at your doors.
You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail."[/b]
In October, 1861, Sherman relieved Anderson. Filling quotas for Kentucky volunteers was extremely difficult. The State was split on their beliefs and where their allegiance should be placed. Later that month, Sherman told Secretary of War Cameron that if he had 60,000 men, he would drive the enemy out of Kentucky, and if he had 200,000 men, he would finish the war in that section. When Cameron returned to Washington, he reported that Sherman required 200,000 men. The report was given to newspapers and a cry of indignation arose from the public. A writer of one of these newspapers even went as far as saying that Sherman must be “crazy” in demanding such a large force. The public accepted this insinuated statement as a valid one, thus writers have always declared that he was crazy. Due to the pressure of the press and politicians that believed the insinuation, on November 12, 1861, Brigadier-General Don Carlos Buell relieved Sherman of his command, and Sherman was assigned to the Department of the West, in St. Louis, Missouri under Major-General Halleck.
General William Tecumseh Sherman is famous for his March to the Sea in the Civil War, and for burning Atlanta and everything else in his path. He followed, if not perfected, the concept of total warfare. He believed you waged war not only against the opposing army, but that you did everything possible to eliminate the enemy’s will to fight. He is famous for the quote, “War is Hell”.
Prior to his destruction of Atlanta, he sent the following message to its inhabitants, “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it”. Many thought Sherman crazy at the outbreak of the war when he stated the war would last for many years and lead to hundreds of thousands of casualties. Most thought it would be over in a matter of months.
On the issue of the abolition of slavery, many of the Federal soldiers had volunteered for the purpose of preserving the union. After the Emancipation Proclamation was anounced in 1863, there were some cases of resentment among the troops who felt that they were fighting to preserve the union, not free the slaves. But others were inspired by it.
In July 1862, Congress moved to free the slaves by passing the Second Confiscation Act. The goal was to weaken the rebellion, which was led and controlled by slave owners. While it did not abolish the legal institution of slavery (the Thirteenth Amendment did that), the Act showed that Lincoln had the support of Congress in liberating slaves owned by rebels. This new law was implemented with Lincoln’s “Emancipation Proclamation.”
Lincoln is well known for ending slavery in the United States. In 1861 – 1862, however, he made it clear that the North was fighting the war to preserve the Union, not to abolish slavery. Freeing the slaves became, in late 1862, a war measure to weaken the rebellion by destroying the economic base of its leadership class. Abolitionists criticized Lincoln for his sluggishness over slavery per se, but on August 22, 1862, Lincoln explained:
“ I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” … My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”
The Emancipation Proclamation, announced on September 22 and put into effect on January 1, 1863, freed slaves in territories not under Union control. As Union armies advanced south, more slaves were liberated until all of them in Confederate hands (over three million) were freed. Lincoln later said: “I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper.” The proclamation made the abolition of slavery in the rebel states an official war goal. Lincoln then threw his energies into passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to permanently abolish slavery throughout the nation.
In September 1862, thirteen northern governors met in Altoona, Pennsylvania, at the Loyal War Governors’ Conference to discuss the Proclamation and Union war effort. In the end, the state executives fully supported the president’s Proclamation and also suggested the removal of General George B. McClellan as commander of the Union’s Army of the Potomac.
For some time, Lincoln continued earlier plans to set up colonies for the newly freed slaves. He commented favorably on colonization in the Emancipation Proclamation, but all attempts at such a massive undertaking failed. As Frederick Douglass observed, Lincoln was, “The first great man that I talked with in the United States freely who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color.”
In the military, the reaction to this proclamation varied widely, with some units nearly ready to mutiny in protest, and desertions were attributed to it. Other units were inspired with the adoption of a cause that seemed to them to ennoble their efforts, such that at least one unit took up the motto “For Union and Liberty”.
I recall reading about something of a yacht or rowing contest at Harvard University that would have taken place about 1864. The story goes that someone expressed a slight disgust that the young, healthy (presumably well off) men were engaged in a frivolous contest while their countrymen were fighting in the south, and the retort was that they basically weren’t needed and that the Union Army already had enough men, if they didn’t have too many…
Really, despite the fact that many criticize Meade or McClellan for not being aggressive and ruthless enough, they certainly took their time to train and produce a pretty good Army of the Potomac which would later set the stage for successive commanders like Grant and Sherman.
My understanding is that Arlington was Lee’s home and it was the price he had to pay for his treason?
‘Taps’ As I recall (somebody told me this story a few years ago), was written by a young man serving in one of the armies, and his father (I think) was on the opposite side. One day they came into contact and father killed said son. He then found the composition for Taps in his dead sons pocket.
Summary of eRumor:
A Union Captain in the Civil War named Robert Ellicombe hears the moan of a soldier in the distance one night near Harrison’s Landing in Virginia. He decides to investigate and discovers that the solider, who is wearing a Confederate uniform, has died. By the light of his lamp, he realizes to his surprise and horror that the dead solider is his own son. The son had studied music in the South and without telling his father, had enlisted in the Confederate army. The grief-stricken father requests a military burial for his son, complete with an army band. His superiors decline, however, because his son was an enemy soldier, but give him the choice of one musician. The caption chooses a bugler and using a short piece of music he found in his son’s uniform, the tune for “Taps” comes into being and has been used ever since for military funerals.
The Truth:
According a researcher at West Point, there is no historical evidence that anyone named Robert Ellicombe even existed in the Union army. Master Sergeant Jari Villanueva is a part of the United States Air Force Band and is not only a historian about the tune “Taps,” but is working on an exhibit for Arlington National Cemetery about bugle calls. Both he and Kathryn Shenkle, Historian for Arlington National Cemetery, agree that “Taps” came from Brig. General Daniel Butterfield at Harrison’s Landing in Virginia in 1862. Sgt. Villanueva has found correspondence from both General Butterfield and a bugler which confirm the origins, although there are some minor discrepancies in their letters.
In England, we still have the death sentence for treason. Cromwell’s decomposing corpse was dug up and hung, a year or so after his death.
(If you’re interested in British history, try the film 'To Kill A King!".
