Did the situation in the West force Lee's hand?

[Coffee Sergeant]

I was just wondering if anyone knew if Lee's decision to invade the North (in 1862 and 1863) was at all influenced by the defeats the CSA was experiencing in the West. This may be just speculation, but I'm wondering if Lee would have been content to fight a purely defensive war on the East if the Western theater had been going better for the CSA.

[runyan99]

And, to what extend did CSA misfortune in the west contribute to the reluctance of England and France to recognize the Confederacy?

[Le Ricain]

I do not believe that the 1862 invasion of the North was driven by events in the West. Lee had defeated the two standing Union armies in the region and an invasion of the North to end the war was a logical choice.

The 1863 invasion, on the other hand, may have had Western events in mind. This is certainly the view of Foote. A comprehensive defeat of the AOP leading to threats against Washington DC or Philadelphia would probably have forced the Union to transfer troops from the West. This might have caused the North to abandon the siege of Vicksburg. As it was, the North were able to contain Lee without disrupting their ongoing operations in the West.

[DirkX]

The 1863 invasion, on the other hand, may have had Western events in mind. This is certainly the view of Foote. A comprehensive defeat of the AOP leading to threats against Washington DC or Philadelphia would probably have forced the Union to transfer troops from the West. This might have caused the North to abandon the siege of Vicksburg. As it was, the North were able to contain Lee without disrupting their ongoing operations in the West.

if i am right its not only Foote's view but evidences exist.
On 15th May Lee was in Richmond to talk to Davies and his advisors and he explained the plan there.

not 100% sure.

[tagwyn]

I do not think France or Britain were ever going to join the Confedracy The French would not move without England and England would never support anything to do with slavery. L

[leanmeankillingmachine]

I do not think France or Britain were ever going to join the Confedracy The French would not move without England and England would never support anything to do with slavery. L

Certainly if things had gone better for the CSA at Shiloh and Antietam I doubt the North would have the willpower to continue a war. As for England supporting a side that had slavery, it was only Lincolns emancipation proclamation that made an alliance with the CSA impossible, maybe a CSA win at Shiloh and Antietam and he wouldnt have made the proclamation. I personally doubt that Britain would have actually allied with the CSA, however they would have played a major part in brokering a peace deal between the two sides.

[Le Ricain]

if i am right its not only Foote's view but evidences exist.
On 15th May Lee was in Richmond to talk to Davies and his advisors and he explained the plan there.

not 100% sure.

You are correct. I was stating the source of my statement and did not mean to imply that Foote's opinion was unique or unsupported.

[Brochgale]

I dont think based on my reading of the Civil War that Brits and French were going to get involved!

A CSA victory at Antietam would have been remarkable considering the numerical odds against them! Maybe if Feds had attacked on the second day something migt have happenned to swing battle in favour of CSA but if I read the accounts of battle correctly then they the CSA would probably have run out of Ammo anyway long before that day was out? Lee was lucky to escape Antietam at all?

I think at Shiloh if Feds had been under the command of anyone else but Grant then CSA might have won but again the odds were against them?

I believe Lee made a mistake with invading the North in 1963? Especially as he no longer had Jackson and Ewell was a less able Corps commander for what he had planned?

Davis should have insisted on the relief of Vicksburg being a priority and the way I see it - Grant could have been trapped possibly between 2 CSA armies and at least forced to withdraw at least? I believe that Longstreet would have made an able defesive commander in Virginia whilst Lee relieved Vicksburg?

I think the victory at Chancellorsville made it impossible for even Davis to argue agaist Lees foolhardy plan?

In the end Lee lost at Gettysburg and the CSA lost Vicksburg! So as far as I was concerned it was the wrong strategy - it bombed?

If they relieve Vicksburg then Gettysburg does not happen? History is great - you can speculate to your hearts delight?

[jeff b]

One of the big criticisms against Lee was his Eastern focus. Longstreet and others had long advocated for a transfer of forces from the ANV to the West to help there. Only after the collapse of the Gettysburg campaign was Longstreet sent West.

Lee argued that a successful Raid of the North would have forced the Union to send forces East from the West. From my reading of the situation the North would have to have suffered major reverses for that to happen.

The South would have been better served if they had sent men West sooner, and Lee prevented that. Failing that Lee should have avoided giving battle in his Raids in the North. At the very least he should have taken Longstreets advice to take the strategic offensive while fighting on the tactical defensive.

As a minor point. Shiloh took place in April - which put it more in the period of McClellan's Penninsula campaign. The True confederate high point was Lee's 1862 incursion combined with Bragg and Kirby Smith's Kentucky offensive. Had Bragg been able to achieve a strategic victory over Buell at Perryville, the War would have been dramatically different.

Kentucky could have yeilded strategic benefits for the south. Lee's campaigns in the North were never more than raids. They lacked staying power.

Bragg's failure in 1862 started a death spiral for the Army of the Tennessee. After Perryville, Bragg began fueding with his officers. The cancer that set in, made a bad situation Terminal.

[tagwyn]

I submit Bragg did win a strategic victory at Perryville! His problem was he failed to do anything about his victory. Lee beat Grant in the Wilderness; but Grant kept on moving. T

[jeff b]

I submit that winning a battle then failing to do anything about it, is the definition of a tactical victory. A strategic victory is one where long term results acrue.

Perryville was a strategic victory for the Union. Bragg failed to destroy Buell and abandoned Kentucky. Never again did the South seriously threaten the Union position in that state.

[DirkX]

Lee argued that a successful Raid of the North would have forced the Union to send forces East from the West. From my reading of the situation the North would have to have suffered major reverses for that to happen.

The South would have been better served if they had sent men West sooner, and Lee prevented that. .

Lee's argumentation wasnt bad, the problem was that he simply "only" had a fifty-fifty chance to achieve his goal.

it simply was a high risk chance to change the course of war, i wouldnt damn him for trying to take this chance.
Honestly , how much would detaching 1 corps of the ANV and sending it to the west stop Grant and change the war for better for the CSA ?

Its easy to blame Lee ( i blame him for other things, like fighting at Appomatox and killing thousands of people for a lost cause and destroying an "entire" army for example) for his decision , but his situation was much different than from the union generals. he was outnumbered, outsupplied and wouldnt do anything with "stalemating".
i think its rather simple, he problably was right in his plan, and probably he was not, he threw the coin and lost.

[DirkX]

You are correct. I was stating the source of my statement and did not mean to imply that Foote's opinion was unique or unsupported.

excuse my bad understanding of th english language then ^^

[jeff b]

it simply was a high risk chance to change the course of war, i wouldnt damn him for trying to take this chance.
Honestly , how much would detaching 1 corps of the ANV and sending it to the west stop Grant and change the war for better for the CSA ?

This is what makes Post-War analysis interesting. Would 1 corp have made a difference? It made a big difference to Bragg at Chickamauga. He came very close to annihilating Rosecrans.

Had the corp been sent west earlier - before the Gettysburg losses. Johnston might have been able to hold at Champions Hill. Grant may have been repulsed a Vicksburg. No Victory at Vicksburg, No Victory at Chattanooga, Grant might not have become the Overall commander. Without his driving will would the 1864 campaign, and Lincoln's reelection have come off?

The 1 advantage the South had was interior lines. Lee only took advantage of them to try to gather forces to reinforce the ANV. In 1862 and in 1864 Lee took advantage of those lines to beef up the ANV (1862) and to have an Army that stymied Butler in 1864. (Beauregard and his forces basically came from the Carolina's). He objected to any attempt to reduce his army and send it west. He also refused to serve in the West.

Whatever shortcomings Lee had, he would not have agonized over his position like J. Johnston did in 1863 as commander in the West.

I think Lee was an excellent General whose strategic outlook did not mesh with that of his government, or IMHO in the position of the South. Lee constantly sought the decisive victory, the Waterloo that would secure Southern Independence. He was correct, that only in the East could a decisive battle be fought. He was wrong to ignore the risk that the South could be ground down in the West. He failed to obtain the first, and caused the latter.

[tagwyn]

JeffB: You are right! It was a tactical victory for Bragg; Stones River was a tactical victory for Bragg. Chickamauga was a tactical victory for Bragg. Shiloh was a draw. Antietam was a tactical victory for AoP. Lee's strategy was correct. He wanted to DESTROY the AoP. What would have happpened next? See: Newt Gingrich's three volume guess at that. I was in general agreement with Newt until he politcally had one fresh Black division stop a charge by the entire 3rd corp of ANV. Sheer nonsense. T

[berto]

I'm of the minority opinion that Bragg deserves much more credit than he usually gets. By spring of 1862, the Union had won all of Kentucky and western Tennessee, and were in a position to make similarly rapid advances into the central South. But Bragg's Kentucky campaign drew the action northward for half a year and upset the Union timetable. Sure, Bragg really can't take credit for Rosecrans' near endless delay through the first half of 1863. But when Rosecrans finally did move, Bragg stopped him cold. Look at the strategic battle lines in the central South between spring of 1862 and autumn of 1863. They didn't move very much. I think that Bragg is largely responsible for delaying the Union juggernaut for that one year and a half. (Confederate cavalry raiders deserve their share of the credit, too.)

Johnston lost campaigns, but his army loved him. Jackson was a harsh disciplinarian who drove his men hard, but he won battles, and his soldiers loved him. Bragg was a cantankerous S.O.B. who won battles, but his army hated him. Go figure.

Aside from personality flaws, and all things considered, Bragg was actually a pretty good strategist and a decent general, among the South's best.

[Hohenlohe]

As I understand the southern situation,that after Jacksons Death at Chancellorsville this hampered Lees ambitions totally.No one could replace this loss.So it is important to acknowledge that without Jackson Lee had no heavy hammer to give his offensive the decisive touch.In the battles before Jacksons Death Lee was at an anchor position with the southern mainforce and Jackson successfully outflanked the enemy and give them the decisive beat.Remember what would have happened to the Union Army if Jackson was alive and present at Gettysburg.The outcome would be a total victory for the South and the recognition by the foreign powers UK and France.
Please excuse my bad school english.I have not enough vocabulary at hands.

greetings

Hohenlohe,a Stonewall Jackson Fan

[veji1]

I have often fantasized on Lee being sent to the West to replace AS Johnston after Shiloh.. Would he have been successfull, pulling a Bragg like Kentucky campaign but with more success, managing to taking the war away from Tennesse and Mississipi for a year ? But what would have happened in the peninsular campaign then ?

But it is true that for me the 2 keys of the war are Shiloh and the famous lost orders/Antietam sequence...

Had Shiloh been a decisive southern victory, with Grant's army sent packing reeling and many soldiers captured, unable to cross back the river, the Tennessee theater would have been stabilised till 1863.. And had the orders not be lost and a reb offensive up north been successful in the sense that it would have brought war to the north sustainably, isolating Washington from the rest of the country and if not taking it forcing an exodus of the local bourgeois scared by the prospect and of parts of the administration...

[jeff b]

See: Newt Gingrich's three volume guess at that. I was in general agreement with Newt until he politcally had one fresh Black division stop a charge by the entire 3rd corp of ANV. Sheer nonsense. T

I chocked some of Newt's book up to the requirement that it be a trilogy and not anything longer. Big problem with the whole series of books is that during the Civil War the only Army that was pretty much totally destroyed in the field (i.e. not surrounded in a seige) was John B. Hood's AoT after Nashville. Thomas managed to pursue a defeated Army unlike any other occurence during the war. The staying power of civil war armies is amazing. In Newt's books he destroys not 1 but 3 armies in pretty much 1 campaign season. That's the nonsense.

All in all, I enjoyed the books anyway. After all it was fiction!

[jeff b]

I'm of the minority opinion that Bragg deserves much more credit than he usually gets. ... But Bragg's Kentucky campaign drew the action northward for half a year and upset the Union timetable. Sure, Bragg really can't take credit for Rosecrans' near endless delay through the first half of 1863. But when Rosecrans finally did move, Bragg stopped him cold. Look at the strategic battle lines in the central South between spring of 1862 and autumn of 1863. They didn't move very much. I think that Bragg is largely responsible for delaying the Union juggernaut for that one year and a half. (Confederate cavalry raiders deserve their share of the credit, too.)

Johnston lost campaigns, but his army loved him. Jackson was a harsh disciplinarian who drove his men hard, but he won battles, and his soldiers loved him. Bragg was a cantankerous S.O.B. who won battles, but his army hated him. Go figure.

Aside from personality flaws, and all things considered, Bragg was actually a pretty good strategist and a decent general, among the South's best.

I would agree that Bragg was a better general than he is given credit for. Unfortunately after yeilding the field at Perryville the relations between Bragg and his generals was abysmal. When Davis came west he should have either releived Bragg or fired Polk & Hardee. It doesn't matter how good a strategist you are if you can't get your army to cooperate. See "Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West" by Steven Woodworth for an excellent treatment of Confederate command problems in the West.

As for Bragg vs Rosy. Rosy managed to manuever Bragg pretty much out of Tennessee in a masterful advance in the late summer of 1863. If it was not for Longstreet's arrival and Hoods fortuitous attack, Bragg would most likely have been unable to defeat him at Chickamauga.

My opinion of Joe Johnston is that he was the south's George B. McClellan. Neither liked to fight battles, neither could get along with their presidents, both were loved by their men. In their only head to head battle, Little Mac came out on top.

[jeff b]

[quote="veji1"]I have often fantasized on Lee being sent to the West to replace AS Johnston after Shiloh.. Would he have been successfull, pulling a Bragg like Kentucky campaign but with more success, managing to taking the war away from Tennesse and Mississipi for a year ? But what would have happened in the peninsular campaign then ?

But it is true that for me the 2 keys of the war are Shiloh and the famous lost orders/Antietam sequence...

QUOTE]
I beleive the really key campaign in the West was Ft's Henry & Donnelson. Had AS Johnston taken command their personnally or at the very least sent Beauregard or Hardee things might have been dramatically different. As Gen'l Halleck determined, it was the key to the entire Southern Defense.

As long as that position held, the Confederates had a stable line that ran from Columbus thru Ft's Henry & Donnelson to Bowling Green. After that position was taken, all the others along with Nashville were lost. The South never had as good a spot to defend again.

[Le Ricain]

[quote="Brochgale"]

Davis should have insisted on the relief of Vicksburg being a priority and the way I see it - Grant could have been trapped possibly between 2 CSA armies and at least forced to withdraw at least? I believe that Longstreet would have made an able defesive commander in Virginia whilst Lee relieved Vicksburg?

QUOTE]

I think that your assumption that Lee could have been persuaded to leave his beloved Virginia to assume command of the Vicksburg relief armies is suspect. IMHO, Lee would have declined the command.

[tagwyn]

I have never seen a scholarly treatment on this question. IMHO Lee would have never gone West, away from Va. T

[Hohenlohe]

I think that Lee would have sent Jackson if he was still alive.Jackson would have stopped Grant at Vicksburg and would have shown Grant where the real hammer hungs.In this way Jackson perhaps as an army commander in the west on the offensive and Lee in the East on the strategic defense and operational offensive this would have stopped the Union until the presidential election 1864 with McClellan for President and Southern Independance and recognition by foreign powers.So we had today two northamerican states and we in Germany would still have the German Empire with a William IV and had no Hitler by the way because there was no US intervention during worldwar I and the Emperor would have gained a "Siegfrieden" -a tremendous victory over the entente after the Russian revolution.*Sigh*its merely a dream:no Hitler,no Holocaust and even no Sovietunion... Sorry for offtopic...

greetings

Hohenlohe,still playing AACW,but now with the Union...

[tagwyn]

Dear H: Nonsense! Even as speculation. T

[Hohenlohe]

Dear H: Nonsense! Even as speculation. T

its only a silly dream*grin* dear tagwyn...

greetings

Hohenlohe

[jeff b]

I agree that R.E. Lee would never have left Virginia to lead an Army.

I think the South would have been better served if Bragg had been the theater commander and J. E. Johnston in command of the Army instead of the other way around. Bragg seemed to know what needed to be done, but couldn't get his subordinates to cooperate. I don't think he would have allowed the split of forces between himself and Pemberton that Johnston would have allowed.

I also do not know how well Jackson would have done in the West. He seemed to have half his generals under arrest at any given time. I don't think that would have gone over well with Davis's favorite and former room mate Leonidas Polk. Jackson very well may have quarelled with the Generals of the AoT even more than Bragg did.

It was unfortunate that Beuaregard and Davis just could not get along. I think that for the short time between AS Johnston's death, and his relief that he did a good job in the West.

[tagwyn]

Johnson ordered Pemberton to leave his defenses at V-berg and join him to fight Grant. Pemberton refused. T

[McNaughton]

Totally agree with tagwyn here, unless the Confederacy was perfect, they would never really have a chance to win.

Johnston really didn't lose campaigns, he was probably the south's greatest troubleshooter, as he secured situations after other's have blundered. What woudl have happened if Bragg or Hood were never relieved of command? Probably a quicker end to the war. What would have happened if Pemberton listened to Johnston? Well, the Union and Confederate forces around Vicksburg would have been at parity.

Johnston's strategy at the Peninsula was very sound. The closer he got to Richmond, the larger his force composition got, and the smaller that the Union force got (lines of communication). By the time of the major battles there, the forces were almost 1:1. Had Johnston engaged McClellan further down the peninsula, odds would have been easily 2:1. He effectively stopped McClellan's advance on Richmond and gained the Initiative for the South. Unfortunately he was wounded. I wonder what the CSA casualty lists would have been like had a more cautious Johnston been in command instead of Lee? Mentally, McClellan was already defeated by Johnston, Lee just pushed him off the Peninsula (at great cost).

[jeff b]

Totally agree with tagwyn here, unless the Confederacy was perfect, they would never really have a chance to win.

Johnston really didn't lose campaigns, he was probably the south's greatest troubleshooter, as he secured situations after other's have blundered. What woudl have happened if Bragg or Hood were never relieved of command? Probably a quicker end to the war. What would have happened if Pemberton listened to Johnston? Well, the Union and Confederate forces around Vicksburg would have been at parity.

Johnston's strategy at the Peninsula was very sound. The closer he got to Richmond, the larger his force composition got, and the smaller that the Union force got (lines of communication). By the time of the major battles there, the forces were almost 1:1. Had Johnston engaged McClellan further down the peninsula, odds would have been easily 2:1. He effectively stopped McClellan's advance on Richmond and gained the Initiative for the South. Unfortunately he was wounded. I wonder what the CSA casualty lists would have been like had a more cautious Johnston been in command instead of Lee? Mentally, McClellan was already defeated by Johnston, Lee just pushed him off the Peninsula (at great cost).

Pemberton was operating under the instructions that Davis had given him which were to hold Vicksburg at all cost. I agree that Pemberton made the wrong decision. The Army was more important than the city. Up until the point that Grant crossed the Mississippi below Vicksburg and ran the fort, Pemberton had managed to stymie Grant for about a year. Davis had placed Johnston in overall command in the West in order to have someone to coordinate the efforts between Bragg, Pemberton and the other forces in the West. The problem with J.E.J. is that he was the man on the scene, he had the authority to ORDER Pemberton to join him, but he did not do so. Davis was basically forced to play overall commander from Richmond a job which even he conceded was not possible.

Even the Bragg situation was not helped by Johnston. As theater commander he had the authority to releive Bragg. He failed to do so. He could have done as Grant did at Chattanooga and again later in Virginia. He placed his HQ at the most important point, and kept his subordinates doing what he wanted. At Chattanooga he releived Rosecrans.

McClellan was not defeated by Johnston. Fair Oaks was a mismanaged battle by Johnston all the way around. While he was commander in Virginia, Johnston on multiple occasions destroyed large amounts of war supplies that he had ample time to move. First at Manassas when the Army retreated and then again when he retreated up the peninsula.

The reason for Johnston's relief at Atlanta was Davis's fear that he was going to abandon the city without a fight. Granted I will concede that John Bell Hood was not a good choice of a replacement.