America At War - Concise Histories Of U.S. Military Conflicts From Lexington To Afghanistan

by Terence T. Finn

  One last aspect of the conflict at sea is worth noting. Of the more than 170,000 men who served in the Union navy during the War Between the States, 18,000 were black Americans. Ten times as many served in the Union armies, but, unlike those soldiers, these black sailors were assigned to units in which white Americans served. Thus the Union navy, to a degree, was an integrated force. Congress recognized that black citizens represented a valuable pool of manpower. So in 1862 it authorized military service for African-Americans by passing the Second Confiscation Act in July. This act and other steps led to a large number of blacks donning the blue uniform of the Union army. By war’s end there were 166 black regiments in the army’s Order of Battle. More than a few were given secondary or menial tasks, yet when called upon to fight they performed well.

  When General McClellan withdrew from the Peninsula, contingents of the Army of the Potomac were detached for service with a newly established Union army. Its commander was Major General John Pope, an officer who had had success in the West. He would not have much in Virginia. Abrasive and conceited, he was an unpopular choice. But Lincoln wanted a general who was eager to do battle, and Pope, for all his faults, was that.

  Late in August Pope’s army met that of Lee. The result was a victory for the South. The battle again took place at Bull Run in Virginia. Union casualties were high: some thirteen thousand soldiers were killed or wounded.

  Several of Lincoln’s advisors urged him to sack both Pope and McClellan, as neither general had distinguished himself. The president agreed that this was so, but dismissed only Pope. The general’s army became part of the Army of the Potomac. Thus this latter army was now a substantial military force. It required a commander who could restore its pride and prepare it for battle. Lincoln knew, better than anyone else, that McClellan would do both.

  Meanwhile, in Richmond, Jefferson Davis devised a strategy he believed might win the war. A West Point graduate, the Confederate president planned an invasion of the North, In fact, he set in motion two such endeavors. One in the West would strike into Kentucky. The other would take Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River into Maryland. Kentucky and Maryland were border states with residents sympathetic to the Southern cause. Success likely would bring them into the Confederacy.

  Robert E. Lee was fully supportive of this plan. He wanted to relieve his beloved Virginia of the hardship of war. He wanted Northerners to experience firsthand the destruction that accompanies military conflict. He wanted to engage the Army of the Potomac in a decisive battle, one he believed he would win. And, along with Jefferson Davis, Lee wanted a victory up north that might persuade Abraham Lincoln to sue for peace. Moreover, both Lee and Davis were convinced that such a victory would cause Great Britain to recognize the Confederate States of America. Such recognition would enhance the chances of gaining Southern independence, much as victory at Saratoga in 1777, by bringing about recognition from France, had aided the American rebels.

  The advance into Kentucky began late in August 1862. Commanded by Braxton Bragg, thirty thousand Confederate soldiers moved from Mississippi to Tennessee, then into Kentucky, a state Lincoln believed had to remain in Union hands. Defending Kentucky was Major General Don Carlos Buell, whose Army of the Ohio outnumbered that of Bragg. Buell was a military professional who rarely moved with speed and lacked an aggressive approach to war, much like McClellan. The two armies clashed at Perryville on October 8. Neither appeared to win, but with Confederate setbacks at Iuka and Corinth, Bragg wisely decided to return home. Buell did not pursue him and was relieved of command. But, as he no doubt said to himself more than once, he had kept Kentucky in the Union.

  The advance into Maryland began in September 1862, when lead elements of the Army of Northern Virginia began crossing the Potomac River. Numbering approximately forty-five thousand, the army was structured as two corps. One was commanded by Jackson, the other by James Longstreet, both extremely capable senior officers. Lee sent Jackson and his men to capture the federal garrison at Harpers Ferry. Longstreet was to continue north. Once reunited, the army either would head into Pennsylvania or turn and fight the Union army that Lee expected would be in pursuit. Thus Robert E. Lee had split his army in two, a tactic military experts say is often unwise.

  If McClellan and the Army of the Potomac could fall on each of the Confederate corps separately, they could destroy the South’s principal military force. Such an outcome became a realistic possibility when Union soldiers found a copy of Lee’s orders describing his plan. To succeed, McClellan had to move quickly. He did, but not quickly enough.

  Troops belonging to Longstreet delayed the Army of the Potomac in battles at South Mountain in which each side suffered more than twenty-two hundred casualties. Soon thereafter, Stonewall Jackson took control of Harpers Ferry, taking twelve thousand prisoners along with much needed supplies. Learning that McClellan was aware of his intentions, Lee ordered Jackson to promptly link up with Longstreet, which he did. Lee then placed his entire army just outside Sharpsburg, Maryland, and prepared to fight. Close by flowed Antietam Creek.

  When McClellan arrived at Sharpsburg, his army was a powerful force, comprising some eighty thousand soldiers. His plan of attack was to have three assaults in sequence, on the Confederate left, center, and right. This would prevent Lee from moving troops from one spot to reinforce another. The plan was sound, but it required clear communication, constant pressure on the enemy, and precise timing. These three goals the Union army and its commander could not deliver. What the soldiers in blue could deliver was raw courage and murderous firepower, and on that day, September 17, 1862, the Army of the Potomac brought with it plenty of both.

  The Union attack began shortly after sunrise. The Union I Corps, commanded by Major General Joseph Hooker, struck hard upon the Confederate left. Across a cornfield they marched, suffering heavily, as did their Southern cousins. A second federal corps entered the fray and it too paid a heavy price. Then to the south, in the middle of the Confederate line, other Union soldiers advanced against the rebels, who were entrenched along a sunken road. There the fighting was furious and long, lasting beyond three hours. The soldiers in blue prevailed, though the cost—on both sides—was high. Further south, on Lee’s right flank, a small narrow stone bridge crossed Antietam Creek. McClellan’s IX Corps, commanded by Major General Ambrose Burnside, was to cross the creek, push the Confederates back, and envelop Lee’s forces to the north. However, Burnside launched his attack late and, instead of fording Antietam Creek in several places, concentrated his men at the bridge. The result was heavy casualties and time lost in crossing the creek. Eventually, his men pushed the defenders back and were able to move north. But not very far north, for his soldiers were exhausted and unable to breach A. P. Hill’s division, fresh troops that had arrived from Harpers Ferry truly in the nick of time.

  So the Battle of Antietam came to a close. It had been a day unlike any other in American history. From McClellan’s army the number of dead totaled 2,108. For Lee, 2,700. Soldiers listed as wounded or missing numbered 10,302 for the North and 11,024 for the South. Thus the butcher’s bill at Antietam added up to 26,134. September 17, 1862 was—and still is—the bloodiest day in American history.

  Several of McClellan’s corps commanders urged him to continue the fight. They pointed out that Lee’s army had been hit hard and that their army had fresh troops available to strike again. But McClellan said no. He was satisfied with the results of September 17 and wanted the Army of the Potomac to regroup. Thus the Union army rested as Robert E. Lee took his men back to Virginia.

  McClellan claimed a victory. He had confronted the best the South had to offer and had done well, forcing the Army of Northern Virginia to give up its invasion of the North.

  Lincoln too saw Antietam as a victory. He had been waiting for such an outcome in order to issue a document of considerable importance. This was the Emancipation Proclamation. One page in length and dated September 22, 1862, it freed the slave
s in those states that were in rebellion. Many Republicans wanted a stronger statement. Many Democrats spoke out in opposition. They did not see emancipation as a legitimate goal of the war and they believed that the proclamation would stiffen Southern resistance.

  Along with other steps taken by Congress and the president, the Emancipation Proclamation changed the character of the war. No longer just an effort to preserve the federal union, Lincoln’s proclamation transformed the American civil war. It was now a crusade. The objective was to rid the United States of an evil that, since 1777, had made a mockery of Jefferson’s words that all men are created equal.

  If Abraham Lincoln the politician was satisfied with the steps taken to free the slaves, Abraham Lincoln the American commander in chief was not satisfied with the progress of the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln wanted McClellan to pursue Lee aggressively. But that was not the general’s modus operandi. Before campaigning again, he wanted more troops and more time. Finally, at the president’s direct urging, he marched his army south in search of Lee and the Southern army. But, as usual, he did so at a deliberate pace. Speed was not an attribute of McClellan’s leadership.

  By late June, Lincoln had had enough. He wanted a commander eager for combat, willing to fight. McClellan, he concluded, was not that man. So he sacked George B. McClellan. In his place, the president appointed Ambrose E. Burnside, one of the Army of the Potomac’s senior commanders.

  Burnside had several strengths, but high command was not one of them. He himself thought he was unequal to the task, a view shared by many in the army. Their judgment was vindicated when Burnside bungled the battle with Lee’s army at Fredericksburg. In that debacle, for that’s what it was, the Army of the Potomac suffered approximately twelve thousand killed or wounded and gained no advantage either tactical or strategic. Confederate casualties on December 13, 1862, were slightly more than fifty-two hundred.

  Nothing Burnside did after the battle restored Lincoln’s confidence. So, to the surprise of no one, Ambrose Burnside was dismissed. The Union army’s new commander was Major General Joseph Hooker. Like Burnside, he had been one of the army’s corps commanders, though, unlike Burnside, he had done well at Antietam. Ambitious and aggressive, Joe Hooker intended to give his Confederate counterpart a solid thrashing. But Lee on a bad day was a better general than Hooker on a good day, a point proven at the Battle of Chancellorsville. There, not far from Fredericksburg, Robert E. Lee outmaneuvered a Union army twice the size of his own. For the South, it was a dramatic victory, though costly, for among the dead was Stonewall Jackson, brought down by friendly fire. For the North, it was a humiliating defeat. Once again, the mighty Army of the Potomac had failed, or at least its commander had.

  Heartened by his victories, Lee once again turned north. Battle-tested and accustomed to winning, the Army of Northern Virginia swept through Maryland into Pennsylvania. Lee was confident of victory, perhaps too much so.

  Once the Army of the Potomac learned of Lee’s movements, it followed in pursuit. However, Joe Hooker no longer was its commander. Lincoln had replaced him with George Meade. Major General Meade was a respected officer, a career military man who understood the art of war.

  Standard practice with both the Union and the Confederates on the march was to send cavalry forward with an assignment of determining the whereabouts of the enemy. Meade had done so, and, on June 30, 1863, two brigades of federal cavalry led by Brigadier General John Buford rode into a small Pennsylvania town. Buford soon spotted a large formation of Confederate infantry advancing from the west.

  The town was called Gettysburg.

  Buford realized that he had bumped into the lead elements of the entire Army of Northern Virginia. Calling for reinforcements, he understood the imperative of preventing the rebels from securing the high ground south of the town. Additional Union troops soon arrived. The next day, the battle began in earnest as Lee’s men attacked. In furious fighting, the Confederates pushed the Union back through the town. But, in a strategic blunder, they failed to take control of the heights.

  By the second day, July 2, Meade and most of his army had arrived on the scene. They were deployed along the ridges and small hills outside of Gettysburg. Their position resembled that of a fishhook, with hills at each end. In between lay a ridge, Cemetery Ridge, south of which a peach orchard and wheat field spread out on relatively flat land. The overall shape of the Union army was that of a shallow convex line. This enabled Meade to move reinforcements back and forth as required. It was a very strong defensive position.

  Lee’s army was spread out. It also was smaller, comprising approximately 75,000 men against Meade’s 112,000. Moreover, Gettysburg was not where Lee had planned to fight. Yet the town was where the two armies had crossed paths. Lee felt he had to attack and so, on three successive days, he did.

  On July 2, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the Southern commander launched a full-scale assault on both ends of the fishhook, starting first with the southern tip. Across the peach orchard and wheat field the men in gray advanced. The fighting was fierce. Union soldiers held fast, then gave ground, then held again. At the southernmost point in the Union line, there was a small, tree-lined, stony hill named Little Round Top. If the Confederates could take it, they would be able to swing around and hit Meade’s men from the rear. For the Army of the Potomac, holding Little Round Top was vital. The task of doing so was assigned to a brigade of 1,336 men commanded by Colonel Strong Vincent. He ordered one of his regiments, the 20th Maine, to defend that part of the hill that represented the absolute end of the Union line. With fewer than five hundred soldiers, the regiment held fast, rebuffing repeated attacks by men from Alabama and Texas. When the regiment ran low on ammunition, its commander, Joshua Chamberlain—who, three years earlier, had been a professor at Bowdoin College—issued a command of “fix bayonets.” He then led his men down the hill into the attacking Confederates and stopped them once and for all. It was a defining moment in the battle, one of the great actions in American military history, and yet, for all the courage it entailed, it was but one event in a day when courage was common and gunfire left oceans of blood on the ground. Two-thirds of the casualties at Gettysburg occurred on July 2.

  On the next day, Lee ordered an attack on the Union center. It was to be a massive assault. More than 150 Confederate cannons would bombard the Union line. Then, General George Pickett’s division plus men from A. P. Hill’s corps, some twelve thousand men in total, would hit the enemy where Lee believed Meade’s forces were weakest. General Longstreet thought the attack unlikely to succeed. He preferred an assault on the Union flanks. But Robert E. Lee insisted that the attack on the center be carried out as planned.

  At one o’clock in the afternoon the rebel artillery opened fire. The bombardment lasted for two hours. When it ceased, the Confederate infantry moved forward. For sixteen minutes they marched across an open field, twelve thousand men with guns at the ready. An impressive sight, it marked the high tide of the Confederacy as the men in gray advanced into both battle and legend. But the soldiers in blue were ready. The rebel bombardment had failed to dislodge them, and they and their artillery poured such fire into the Southerners as to shred their ranks. Meade’s men held their ground. In less than an hour the Confederate assault disintegrated and with it the Confederate hope of victory. Some six thousand Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured. What became known as Pickett’s Charge was more than a failure, it was a disaster, for the Army of Northern Virginia as well as for the Southern cause, a disaster for which Robert E. Lee alone was responsible.

  The failure of the July 3 attack meant Lee had lost the Battle of Gettysburg. The outcome gave hope to the North and to the Army of the Potomac, which now realized that in future engagements it could more than match its vaunted opponent. For Lee, Gettysburg meant a severe and undeniable defeat.

  At Gettysburg, the Confederate army suffered 22,874 casualties, of whom 4,637 were killed. The Army of the Potomac li
sted its dead at 3,149, with 19,664 men wounded or missing. For those three days in July 1863, 45,687 men were either put in the hospital or never left Gettysburg alive. The number bears repeating: 45,687. Never has the United States of America witnessed such bloodshed.

  On July 4, Lee began his retreat, marching south, back into Virginia. He moved as quickly as he could, though speed was difficult, as the army’s wagon train of wounded soldiers extended seventeen miles. Meade took up the pursuit and battled with the Confederate rear guard, taking some fifteen hundred prisoners. But the bulk of Lee’s force escaped. The result was that the war would continue.

  Lincoln was displeased that Meade had allowed Lee to get away. The president wanted the Army of Northern Virginia to be destroyed, not just defeated. He realized that once Lee’s army ceased to exist, the Confederate cause would collapse, much as the American fight for independence would have fallen apart had the British been able to destroy Washington’s Continental army. Nevertheless, Lincoln retained Meade as the commander of the Army of the Potomac.

  Because of Gettysburg, George Meade’s place in American history is secure. Yet in his day, he did not gain the fame his success in that battle warranted. One reason was Lincoln’s dissatisfaction. Another was that he soon became overshadowed by another general. But the principal reason was newspaper reporters. According to historian Brian Holden Reid, General Meade, in 1864, had humiliated a reporter who had written an insulting article about him. The press retaliated by no longer mentioning Meade when writing about the war. As a result he all but disappeared from public view. Perhaps Meade did not care. He had accomplished something significant: he had beaten Robert E. Lee in battle, winning a victory of immense importance. And he had done so while in command of the Army of the Potomac for but three days, having relieved Hooker on June 28,1863. His was an outstanding performance.