CIVIL WAR COMMAND AND STRATEGY by ARCHER JONES

Author:ARCHER JONES
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: THE FREE PRESS
Published: 1992-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

THE MATURITY OF UNION OPERATIONAL SKILL

Chancellorsville, Vicksburg, Tullahoma, and Gettysburg Campaigns

Just as the soldiers became veterans, experienced in combat, inured to marching, and resourceful in caring for themselves, so also did the generals mature. Particularly did Union generals display a perceptiveness in their strategy and, in the case of Grant and Rosecrans, a virtuosity in execution which had far more to do with their victories than their slight numerical superiority. Grant commanding on the Mississippi and Rosecrans in Middle Tennessee were both veterans of the December offensives and each wiser for their experience. In Virginia, the Army of the Potomac had in Joseph Hooker, a new general, one brought up in McClellan’s army but receptive to the new ideas developed by Lincoln and Halleck and emanating from Army Headquarters.

To coordinate with the advances in the West, Hooker had to do more than wait for Lee to act and then try to hurt him if he made a mistake. To do his part Hooker had a plan of campaign from Army Headquarters. Originally sent to Burnside and drafted by Halleck’s brilliant collaborator, Quartermaster General Meigs, it offered the means for “a great and overwhelming defeat and destruction” of Lee’s army. Pointing out that “no battle fought with your back to the North or the sea can give you such a victory” because the enemy had “shown skill in retreat,” he prescribed a turning movement, by making “a march as Napoleon made at Jena, as Lee made in his campaign against Pope.” To do this, he should march “up the Rappahannock, cross the river, [and] aim for a point on the railroad between the rebels and Richmond.” Merging Napoleonic with Civil War lessons, Meigs’s sophisticated plan would require considerable talent in execution.

At the end of April, Hooker attempted just this. With Longstreet absent, the Federals had 133,000 against 60,000. Dividing his force, with General Sedgwick and 40,000 men crossing the river just below Fredericksburg to distract Lee, Hooker, carrying more than a week’s rations for the men, took most of the remainder upstream to ford the river above Lee’s line of fortifications. With a movement of his cavalry confusing and distracting Lee, Hooker had the essential element of success, a turning movement which surprised the enemy. But once he reached Lee’s flank, he halted rather than push on to try for the enemy’s rear (see diagram of Chancellorsville campaign 1 ). When he announced to his troops that the “enemy must either ingloriously fly or come out from behind his intrenchments and give us battle on our own ground,” he proved himself a disciple of McClellan as well as Meigs by understanding that the turning movement could induce an enemy to take the tactical offensive. But he understood the situation insufficiently because it called for him to continue his march into Lee’s rear, aided by Sedgwick’s simultaneous advance.

With his army between a halted Hooker on his flank and Sedgwick poised on the south side of the river, Lee resolved to exploit his interior lines rather than retreat.

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