Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  The rest of that day he stayed near the house, pleased at progress, but far from smug about what lay ahead. That evening he smoked cigars and talked until bedtime with his officers, some of whom felt uncertain that he was the right man for them. Instead of using the house, he slept in his tent; instead of a soft bed, he used a cot. Once he took off the finery Grant became again what he always was: a simple man of complex instincts. The man commanding half a million men across the continent washed in a tin basin precariously balanced on a tripod, with nothing more than a pine table and two folding camp chairs for furniture. Despite his almost meteoric rise, no one ever mistook Grant for a patrician.

  That could never be said of the man at that other campfire more than a dozen road miles west of Germanna Ford at Verdiersville. Lee embodied the Confederacy to millions of its soldiers and civilians by 1864. He was not just a Virginian; he was the Virginian. Unlike Grant, he could never be a face in the crowd. From youth he never looked anything but a man intended by nature to lead, the envy of all who served with him, surely destined to become the finest soldier of the land. On him a formal uniform was a second skin, not because he loved finery but because it is what he was born to wear.

  On this night any sense of occasion manifested itself not in his finest uniform, but in the preparations he had been making for more than two years as he faced one Union general after another. All that day he sent and received telegrams and hand-carried messages as he picked his ground for the contest to come, tried to divine Grant’s intentions, and shifted legions approaching 70,000 strong, an army that revered him above all men. At nightfall he, too, sat by a fire in front of his tent, though the owners of a nearby house would gladly have given up their parlor and a bedroom for General Lee. His was a soldier’s simplicity, as he sought to live in a manner that proclaimed to his soldiers, whose wisdom he did not always trust, that he was one of them, even if a general. Yet inside his tent visitors saw a marked contrast with Grant’s. If Lee did not live in luxury, still he had a folding iron bed with at least something of a mattress, and more furniture than Grant. Lee’s boots were always polished, his frock coat always an officer’s, even if the elbows were worn. If outwardly he showed only the three stars of a Confederate colonel on his lapel, his general’s insignia was still there beneath the lapel, immediately visible if he turned up his collar. Where Grant was a common man most comfortable as a common man, Lee was a patrician who knew the value of not flaunting his station.

  Late into that evening messages from other legends came to Lee’s campfire: words of encouragement from President Jefferson Davis and General “Jeb” Stuart’s report that Grant’s army was across the Rapidan, in the area near the scene of Lee’s greatest victory at Chancellorsville, which all Virginians knew as The Wilderness. By fire’s glow Lee read dispatches warning that other Union forces were advancing from east, northwest, and southwest into Virginia. He knew their goal was to cooperate with Grant to contain and then demolish his army, and he could not stop them all. Lesser Confederate commands must deal with them, for Grant was the main threat, and somehow Lee must stop him. If the mood was anticipation around that other headquarters fire that night, there was resignation at Verdiersville. Lee had been here before, not only in this situation but in this place, but never in as much peril. In the morning he would begin to learn just how much.

  They had met once before. In a few hours they were about to give each other their undivided attention. Both would remember it this time.

  Two days earlier Grant told Burnside that he intended to try first to get around Lee’s right flank by crossing the Rapidan River between the Confederates and Fredericksburg; he hoped to force a retreat, which would give him a chance of an inside track to Richmond.99 That meant Meade’s army would pass through The Wilderness. Despite Hooker’s experience, Grant seemed unconcerned about the terrain, probably because he half expected Lee not to fight. If he gained a one-day jump on Lee, he could be through The Wilderness and on better ground. Unfortunately, Grant was trying to funnel too many soldiers and supply wagons through too small an aperture. Late on May 4 two corps halted around Chancellorsville and Wilderness Tavern to wait for their supplies and much of their artillery. Worse, Grant and Meade failed to block the two roads leading into The Wilderness from the west.

  Lee did not ignore those roads, though he was also negligent by having no units at the Rapidan fords to slow enemy crossings and buy time for him to get his army in motion. Hence, he rushed to catch up. “The long threatened effort to take Richmond has begun,” he wrote Davis.100 He put Ewell and Hill on those two roads, and started Longstreet in the same direction. On the morning of May 5 Grant told Meade to pitch into the enemy “if any opportunity presents,” but Ewell opened the fight first when he collided with the Yankees west of Wilderness Tavern.101

  What followed was so confused that neither commander had a full picture of the situation, or an appreciation of enemy strength, and neither exerted real control. It became a series of isolated engagements in which the Confederates checked Union progress that day without gaining or losing much ground. Lee hurried Longstreet toward the scene all day, hoping to have him in line by morning to drive Meade’s left away from the road to Germanna Ford, cutting the Federal line of communications and isolating him in The Wilderness. Yet again Lee reacted to the unexpected by seeking to turn it to his advantage. Failing that, he determined to strike Meade’s left flank and push him across the Rapidan if possible.102

  Grant struck first with a predawn attack on May 6 that almost crumpled Hill’s corps on the Confederate right near Lee’s headquarters. As Hill’s line gave way, Lee rushed on foot and horseback to retreating groups trying to rally them, some thought with tears in his eyes. Just then he saw Longstreet arrive to send his brigades into the collapsing line. Lee came on the Texas brigade and broke his customary reserve to cheer them, then tried to ride just behind as they advanced, some thinking that he yelled for them to charge. Seeing the general about to risk his life, the veterans shouted at him to go to the rear, and grasped his horse’s reins to lead him back, where he met Longstreet again and continued sending in reinforcements.103

  By late morning both sides paused, and Grant sent word to Halleck that “there is no decisive result, but I think all things are progressing favorably.”104 That changed when Longstreet attacked Meade’s left flank and endangered the Federals until their line held. Then friendly fire hit Longstreet, and Major General Richard H. Anderson took over. By evening the exhausted armies bivouacked virtually on the same ground where the fighting began the day before. “We can claim no victory,” Grant reported to Halleck, but “neither have they gained a single advantage.”105 In fact, both commanders gained something. An ill-prepared Lee stalled Meade’s advance, and delay worked to Confederate advantage. Despite underestimating the obstacle The Wilderness presented, Meade stood his ground and Grant did not fight and fall back like his predecessors. He consciously intended to show the Army of the Potomac that there was a different regime now: one that would give it confidence in itself and in him.106

  The casualties in The Wilderness had been daunting, approaching 20,000 for Grant and 11,000 for Lee.107 The armies rested the next day, while Grant reacted typically. Stopped in his advance, he abandoned attacking Lee frontally and decided to shift Meade eastward toward Spotsylvania Court House to get around the Confederate eastern flank and put the army between Lee and Richmond, and closer to the junction with Butler. As usual, he made no detailed plans for his route, leaving himself free to adapt from day to day.108 When they saw that they were moving on south and not back toward the Rappahannock as so often before, Union veterans cheered Grant for the first time. Lee ably read the shift of pontoon bridges from Germanna Ford eastward to Ely’s Ford as a sign that the Federals were heading toward Spotsylvania or Fredericksburg, and ordered Stuart to reconnoiter the roads he might use either to meet the Federal advance, or to get around Meade’s flank.109 By the evening of May 7 Lee had Anderson in motion to get
to Spotsylvania first.110

  The Yankees’ leading elements were within three miles of Spotsylvania by eight that morning, but Anderson’s got there first. Hours passed as both sides brought up more units. Meade launched a limited assault late in the afternoon to try to push Anderson out of the way, but nothing came of it. Adding to Lee’s concerns now, Hill reported himself too ill to command. That meant two corps commanders lost in three days. Anderson had never exercised such command before, and Early only temporarily, while Ewell was already erratic at best. Indeed, a few weeks earlier Early had been under arrest after making a remark that Ewell found offensive, and Lee had to take the time to make peace between them so he could release Early to replace Hill temporarily.111 Still, Confederate resistance that day persuaded Grant not to advance on May 9, though that did not mean he would be idle.112 He promised Halleck, “I shall take no backward step.”113

  Instead, he reverted to the expedient that served him so well in the Vicksburg campaign, a cavalry raid around Lee’s army to draw away Stuart, and then ride south destroying anything of use to the enemy. He did not have Colonel Benjamin Grierson with him, but still he had the man for the job. Philip H. Sheridan was a mere quartermaster on Halleck’s staff in 1862 when Grant first met him near Corinth. They met again at Chattanooga where Sheridan, now commanding a division, stormed Missionary Ridge. Grant saw in him something he liked, and brought him east, not as an infantryman, but to command Meade’s cavalry. It seemed an unwise move so far, for Sheridan mishandled his troopers from the first, but he had an attribute that Grant valued. He was ruthless, his determination rivaling Grant’s.

  Sheridan had 10,000 horsemen ready within hours and left on May 9. That night they reached the North Anna River, and the next day cut the Virginia Central Railroad, broke up ten miles of track, destroyed rolling stock and supplies, and moved on to the South Anna River. Stuart followed with less than half their number, and on May 11 came up with them at Yellow Tavern ten miles north of Richmond. In the engagement Stuart fell with a mortal wound, and Sheridan rode on to threaten Richmond before he passed around the east side of the capital, then turned north to cross the James at White House in sight of Rooney Lee’s plantation. By the last week of May he was back above the North Anna. Grant had hoped Sheridan’s raid would create a grand diversion in Lee’s rear and destroy the Confederate cavalry. It failed to do either, but Stuart’s death was a hard blow to Lee. “I grieve the loss of our gallant officers,” he wrote Mary. “A more zealous, ardent, brave & devoted soldier than Stuart, the Confederacy cannot have.”114

  Meanwhile, Lee built formidable earthworks, and on May 8 Grant launched his first attack. This was the beginning of a series of battles that continued for ten days, the longest sustained engagement of the war to date. He tried to turn Lee’s left, and briefly succeeded on May 10, but then learned of large numbers of Confederates shifting toward the danger. As he did at Fort Donelson, Grant reasoned that his flank attack had compelled Lee to weaken his line elsewhere. A concerted attack on Lee’s center might split the enemy army and open the road to Spotsylvania and the James. When Grant’s attack went forward, Lee’s veterans and his excellent defenses repulsed it handily. Reporting that the fighting to date largely favored the Federals, for the first time Grant admitted that the campaign might not go as quickly as he had hoped, telling Stanton and Halleck that “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.115

  The Federals spent the next day preparing an attack on three sides of a salient in Lee’s line, and on May 12 it drove back Lee’s line in bitter combat, leading Grant to report that the foe “seem to have found the last ditch.”116 Once again in the heaviest of the fight Lee tried to lead an assault to stem the attack, and once more officers and men grasped his bridle and pushed his horse’s flanks to turn him around, accompanied by cries of “Lee to the rear.”117 Tardy corps commanders frustrated Grant, and he briefly considered relieving one on the spot. He did not appreciate that this army had never seen fighting like this. By May 12 it had been in action six out of eight days, often against strong defenses, and not in the sort of open countryside Grant knew from Mississippi. Still, he felt pleased with Meade, and their relationship appeared to be working, in part because Grant scrupulously refrained from issuing orders to anyone in the Army of the Potomac except Meade himself. He advised Stanton that Meade and Sherman “are the fittest officers for large commands I have come in contact with.”118

  Lee was tiring, and reacted slowly when Grant shifted two corps from the right to the left of his line, hoping to turn Lee’s right flank and push him away from Spotsylvania. Severe rain slowed the Federals long enough for Lee to shift his own lines in response. For the next three days both armies endured the rain with no major action, but Lee enjoyed positive gains when Major General John C. Breckinridge drove Sigel out of the Shenandoah Valley. That allowed Lee to summon Breckinridge and a few thousand infantry to him. Meanwhile, Beauregard had isolated Butler in a bend of the James from which he could not escape, meaning he would not be there to meet Grant if or when he arrived. Instead of holding legs, Sigel and Butler had been skinned. “He will do nothing but run,” Halleck said of Sigel when he informed Grant of the defeat at New Market. “He never did anything else.” All Halleck said for Butler was “dont rely on him.”119

  Lee addressed his army on May 14 hoping to boost its morale, citing all of the Yankee setbacks thus far. He even fudged in the interest of morale by calling Sheridan’s return ride from the outskirts of Richmond a repulse. “The heroic valor of this Army, under the blessing of Almighty God has thus far checked the progress of the principal Army of the enemy,” he congratulated them. “Your country looks to you in your gallant struggle with confidence and hope.” Every man now must “resolve to put forth his utmost efforts to endure all and brave all, until by the assistance of a just and merciful God the enemy shall be driven back.” They could win independence, he declared, and win “the admiration of mankind.”120

  If Grant was to best that determination, he must do it on his own, and now he had a fair idea of how difficult it would be. He agreed with Lee about the eyes of the globe. “The world has never seen so bloody or so protracted a battle as the one being fought and I hope never will again,” he wrote Julia. “To loose this battle they loose their cause,” he added. “As bad as it is they have fought for it with a gallantry worthy of a better.”121

  15

  “A MERE QUESTION OF TIME.”

  “WE ARE STILL hanging about Spotsylvania C. H.,” Grant wrote Julia on May 19. He had a plan to maneuver Lee out of his works, and as usual expressed confidence that his army could defeat Lee’s “with one arm tied but as the two armies now stand we have both Arms bound.”1 Before he could set the plan in motion, however, Lee struck Meade’s right flank such a blow that Grant delayed the advance. Once it launched, Lee withdrew to the south bank of the North Anna River, to defenses he had hoped to use before the battle at Fredericksburg. Just below the railroad crossing of the North Anna River the Virginia Central Railroad joined the Richmond & Fredericksburg at Hanover Junction, bringing the capital’s rail connection with the Shenandoah Valley. “I should have preferred contesting the enemy’s approach inch by inch,” Lee reported to the president, but concern for Richmond impelled him to pull back.2

  Grant and Meade soon followed, but not before Breckinridge arrived from the valley, and more Confederate reinforcements arrived from the James River where Butler was bottled up. It looked on paper like a classic concentration, smaller commands stopping or defeating the enemy’s peripheral threats, then joining the main army to face Grant. “Whatever route he pursues,” Lee informed Davis, “I am in a position to move against him.” He suggested that if Beauregard, commanding the forces containing Butler, could possibly leave a minimum there for that task and bring the rest of his command, the two of them might unite and possibly crush Grant. “If it is possible to combine,” he said, “I think it will succeed.”3 One benefit of pulling back was
that Lee shortened his own supply line and lengthened Grant’s. Writing to Mary, he added that “I begrudge every step he makes towards Richmond.”4

  Unfortunately, there was trouble in his army. Though Hill felt well enough to resume command of his corps, the mercurial Ewell approached collapse, while severe diarrhea virtually prostrated Lee, dulling his senses and forcing him to ride in a buggy. He remained indisposed until the end of the month, and his surgeon told him to drink wine to settle his stomach, which may have impaired his thinking a little more.5 Somehow, Lee or Hill was careless and left an upstream ford ill protected. When the Federals arrived two corps were able to move up the right bank and push across, brushing aside Hill’s tardy and inadequate defense. The next morning when Lee drove to see Hill, his foul mood was evident as he gave the corps commander a rare upbraiding in front of others.6

  The Yankee crossing allowed them to cut the Virginia Central and then move down on Lee’s left flank. That forced him to “refuse,” or bend, his left back to face the threat, while confronting Burnside at the river. Another Federal corps had easily taken the Richmond & Fredericksburg bridge and were able to cross and force Lee to refuse his right flank as well. Then, however, little happened. Grant had moved quickly, as usual, only to find that he had moved too fast, and now his forces were spread in a wide arc and scattered on both sides of the river. If Lee were able to concentrate against one of his flanks, reinforcements from the other would have to cross to the north side, march more than a mile, then cross again to the south side to reach the other flank. Meanwhile, after Hill’s recent performance, Lee apparently failed to trust Hill to strike effectively, or was himself too ill to think through a response to the opportunity Grant presented. Realizing his vulnerability, Grant corrected his mistake and on May 26 and 27 concentrated instead on tearing up the track of the two railroads.