dave
Brigadier General
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Post by dave on Dec 5, 2017 21:26:30 GMT
Mac Just a quick note as my computer has suffeered a stroke and is being repaired by young children who utter unknown incantations over the poor ole girl.
Just wanted to mention that Lee was ill at Gettysburg with the onset of heart disease that spring and suffereing from agenia and had a probable heart attack. This condition would have affected his thinking and decision making abilities.
In a couple of days I will get back to this subject but I betcha QC is rearing to get into this question. Regards Dave PS Congratulations on a successful Australian Open. The young man who won has a great future
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Post by quincannon on Dec 5, 2017 22:12:06 GMT
I think it generally a very bad mistake to ever say that one side could have never won any battle Mac. There are just too many variables to ever make such a bold statement.
Lee invaded the North on three occasions, one in 62, one in 63, and the final one being with Early in 64. Each of those times it was an operationally offensive move, for a strategically defensive purpose, those being to clear the enemy from your own territory(62-63) or to take pressure off of yourself by operational distraction. Neither of those motives bodes well for the force that is forced to adopt them. You win wars by being on the strategic offensive, and your operational moves must compliment and fulfill those strategic intentions.
Lee given the above must also seek battle on his own terms and never that of the enemy. At Gettysburg he did the antithesis, and let the time and place of battle be chosen for him by the other guy. Lee was consolidating his army against Buford's cavalry division and I and XI Corps much faster than the Union Army could bring up troops (which was essentially over one road). Had he fought them, beat them as he did, then withdrew back from whence he came, Gettysburg would have been considered a confederate victory, and he could have then sought ground which would force the Union to seek him again, and attack him under less than favorable circumstance.
Gettysburg from a Union perspective on that first day though was a textbook example of the use of cavalry screening forces, handing off the battle to a larger and more capable covering force, and at the end of the day falling back on the assembling main body. Their combined efforts bought a full day of time, and Lee ignored just how good they were in doing what they did.
Longstreet remarked to Lee at the end of that first day that if Meade was up on that ridge in the morning he want's you to attack him. Maneuver counseled Longstreet, maneuver (or get your army's ass kicked).
I did not even go into the logistics of this affair, but safe to say when you go into Pennsylvania, it is best not to be beholden to a two hundred mile long very vulnerable supply line.
So could the confederates have won Gettysburg? I would say yes. Could the confederates have won Gettysburg with Lee commanding? Given his "mindset for battle" I would rate it somewhere between highly doubtful and virtually impossible. In that campaign and on that evening of the critical first day he was playing sandlot ball with the New York Yankees.
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mac
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Post by mac on Dec 6, 2017 1:34:40 GMT
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Post by quincannon on Dec 6, 2017 17:20:36 GMT
Dave spoke earlier about Lee having complete confidence in his army, and pointed to that fact as being one of the reasons he chose to continue to give battle to Meade on 2-3 July, after driving two of Meade's corps from the field on 1 July at Gettysburg.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Dave is correct in this, and virtually all historians agree with this sentiment. The question is for me is should Lee have had such confidence given his, and his army's track record?
From the Seven Days onward through Chancellorsville. the Army of Northern Virginia two characteristics. They were always on the strategic defense, and they never either learned how or were capable of closing and decisively killing their adversary. Look at every battle they ever fought under Lee's leadership and they will tell you the same story - We have them by the short hairs, but somehow they managed to get away. They,in boxing terms, were superb at the left jab, but could not manage to throw the right cross, the knockout blow. So no matter how many wins they put up on the board, it does absolutely no good if you can't put the enemy down and stomp the life out of him.
It is exactly like some American telling General Giap, that we won all the battles, and Giap saying - Yes, but we won the war.
So the first question then is not what Lee believed, but rather did he have any right to believe it?
Followed by the second and most important - Had Lee somehow won Gettysburg, what would his follow up be? Could he pull it off with forces available? Would he have still withdrawn from Pennsylvania on 4 July? No follow up, or being incapable of follow up means all you did was waste lives that you and the confederacy could ill afford to lose.
Battle is not just the tactical employment of troops on some godforsaken field. It must have operational and lead toward strategic purpose. There was no strategic purpose in fighting at Gettysburg, unless you had the capability to both win that battle and continue on toward a strategic goal. Lee had neither sufficient combat power to decisively win or carry on. All he did do is incur losses for nothing gained.
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mac
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Post by mac on Dec 6, 2017 20:55:44 GMT
Good point QC! I am admittedly fairly ignorant on the detail of the CW but I cannot see how the south ever had the resources to win. Their best hope was to have some foreign intervention, say France (?) which would then seem counter productive to liberty. Cheers
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dave
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Post by dave on Dec 6, 2017 22:55:19 GMT
Mac I honestly believe had no chance to win the victory at Gettysburg he desired and the Confederacy needed. I state my case with the following reasons:
1) Lee assaulted an enemy with the high ground, compact interior lines with an intact supply line. 2) Lee had neither the men or supplies for a long campaign and battle 3) Lee had neither the size of staff or ability to provide clear concise orders to his subordinates 4) Lee's number of artillery pieces and quality and amount of ammunition was far inferior to that of the Union army 5) Lee lacked the information about the enemy he needed due not to the lack of cavalry---he had about 5,000---but Stuart. He simply missed Stuart. 6) Lee expected far more than his men could deliever
The one question I have for QC is, What would Lee have if he had won at Gettysburg? Would it have been a Pyrrhic victory? Regards Dave
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Post by quincannon on Dec 7, 2017 2:55:12 GMT
Then one would suspect Dave given the reasons you state and which I agree with, why he ever attempted to invade that deep into the North.
Lee had what we refer to today as a hollow army, paper painted to look like steel.
To answer your question, had he won Gettysburg, he had no choice but to turn around and go home. Victory or defeat made no difference. A wise commander says to himself before battle - What will happen if I win? What can I do tomorrow? If he has no tomorrow envisioned, then the best course is not to fight today.
When one sets out to plan a campaign, he takes out a map, and points to various places in the campaign battle space, and concludes what he will have to fight for, where he can maneuver, and not have to fight to achieve his objectives, and what steps he must take to connect those dots. His next step is to determine if he can sustain himself for the totality of that campaign. If through this analysis he determines that he cannot do what he needs to do, then he scraps the whole effort, and looks for another opportunity down the line that he can accomplish with the totality of his available resources.
Any commander that depends upon the enemy, or enemy territory, to supply his army is a goddamned fool.
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dave
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Post by dave on Dec 8, 2017 3:28:36 GMT
QC The aura of "The Marble Man" has started to decrease in both size and intensity since Ken Burn's opus "The Civil War" in 1990. Prior to that program Freeman's version of Robert E. Lee was the standard and in fact Shelby Foote was the first prominent author/historian that I had ever heard that believed Lee was a mere mortal man.
This was an unfair standard to hold Marse Robert to and he would have been the first to object to such veneration. Dabney H. Maury the founder of the Southern Historical Society along with Jubal "Old Jubilee" Early, his henchman, used Lee as a club to assail anyone who dared to question the leadership of the Army of Northern Virginia. James Longstreet was assaulted verbally on a continual basis for daring to criticize Lee's decisions as was Jeb Stuart who was assigned blame for the defeat at Gettysburg.
As to Mac's question regarding if the South ever had a chance to win the war, I honestly believe Shelby Foote provided the best answer to that question that I know of: "The North fought the war with one hand tied behind their back. If there had been more southern victories, and i mean a lot more, i think that the North would have just took that other arm out from behind their back. I don't think that the South had any chance to win that war."
A possible topic for future discussions on a Civil War thread would be "Did the South lose the War in the West?" Regards Dave
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Post by quincannon on Dec 8, 2017 4:09:52 GMT
I so not care for either Burns of Foote. I despise Early. I don't even know who that piece of southern trash Maury is, and don't care to find out.
I think you correct about Freeman in R E Lee, but was forewarned that it was a petition for sainthood rather trhan an objective biography. Freeman though did very valuable work in Lee's Lieutenants, and I value those three books for their lessons on how to and how not to command. I am particularly fond of how he shows growing maturity on the part of many of the confederate notables, and I also feel he is honest in his evaluation of many who fell to the way side, as not being able to cut the mustard.
In reading of the inner workings of the confederate army I much prefer reading what the junior officers have to say, guys like Douglas, McClellan, and others. That is where, with few exceptions you get the unvarnished truth.
All too often we get the personality and gentlemanly qualities of Lee commingled with his performance as a soldier and commander. That is a fault on the part of either the reader or those who seek to personally evaluate the man purely as a commander. The problem is that you cannot help but like the man. We cannot seem to get past this, but honest evaluation must, I feel, ultimately lead to the conclusion that Lee was quite ordinary in terms of tactics, quite good at operational concepts, and one piss poor strategist, who did not have the balls to stand up to Davis and that band of treasonous cutthroats he surrounded himself with. He knew he had screwed the pooch at Second Manassas, Fredricksburg, and Chancellorsville, and by the time his all hat - no cow was showing at Gettysburg, it appears that he was just going through the motions thereafter.
How did he screw the pooch you ask? He let them get away, when on each of those occasions he was handed the Cannae battle he always sought gift wrapped with a bow on it, and he was not able to close with and kill. That was Lee.
Did the south lose the war in the west? No, they just lost the war, a fact that still has not sunk in, in many places in this land of the free and home of the brave.
Great countries, which I presume the south wished to be, must first be good countries, led by men who serve the people that are their ultimate masters. The south was not led by good people, in terms of the fact that they all attained positions of power standing for human chattel slavery, which is the most inhuman crime, next to child molestation, seen and judged by the Eyes of God. They were in fact the antithesis of good, pure evil. So given those underpinnings the south was predestined to lose as they were an obnoxious stench invading the air of free men.
If you would like to rephrase that question and state it somewhere along the lines of - Was the overall piss poor performance of the confederate army in the western theaters the proximate cause of overall southern defeat, then I would still answer no, in that when you only have the ability to wage total war on a par with the Little Sisters of the Poor, you don't give the finger to the guy who can crush you without much of a second thought. Take heed to what Foote said, as you reported above.
The west was a relatively easy theater. All you need do is divide then subdivide. It does help when you're fighting a bunch of dummies leading sheep like crackers, but still relatively easy.
The southern confederacy was a huge con job perpetrated by the landed elites for their own financial benefit, who were slippery enough of tongue to make the ignorant (meaning unknowing of the facts) populace believe that their rights guaranteed them by the U S Constitution were in jeopardy. They were not, they are not today, and still the fiction continues, lapped up by the ignorance that is the south.
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dave
Brigadier General
Posts: 1,679
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Post by dave on Dec 8, 2017 5:04:06 GMT
QC Surely during your long journey on this mortal coil you are familiar with the Southern Historical Society and have read many of their published papers. I have listed the site below which will take you the following: Richmond, Va. August, 1876 General J. E. B. Stuart's Report of Operations After Gettysburg. We are indebted to Mrs. Stuart for the following rough draft of the report of General Stuart of his operations subsequently to the battle of Gettysburg, and his resume of that important campaign. The MS. is written in pencil, in General Stuart's own handwriting, and was evidently the first rough draft, corrected carefully. So far as we know this report has never been published, and ours is the only copy in existence. We give it in full as follows:You need to visit their site and feats on the materials available. I believe Edward Alexander Porter wrote one the finest individual book dealing with life among the troops and views of the elite of the Army of Northern Virginia in Military Memoirs Of A Confederate. The other absolute must read is Company Aytch or a Side Show of the Big Show: A Memoir of the Civil War by Sam Watkins. Regards Dave PS Aytch is pronuced as H en.wikisource.org/wiki/Southern_Historical_Society_Papers/Volume_02/August/General_J._E._B._Stuart%27s_Report_of_Operations_after_Gettysburg
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Post by quincannon on Dec 8, 2017 6:23:20 GMT
Watkins' book is one of my son's favorites, but keep in mind he is an unrepentant hillbilly.
I want nothing to do Dave with anything that glorifies the south. I know you had the best of intentions in mentioning the Southern Historical Society, but I just cannot in good conscience have anything to do with a bunch of neo-secessionist pig shit.
We are one country under one flag Dave. If we allow that country to be divided by ethnic, political, or religious tribalism we will surely fall, and the danger today is greater than when Mr. Lincoln spoke of a House Divided cannot stand. The forces abroad today drive our country further apart each passing moment, and it does not matter two hoots in hell if those divisive voices are heard from the pulpit, on Main Street, the halls of Congress, or a certain address on Pennsylvania Avenue. They dishonor the Flag, They dishonor the Constitution. They dishonor our ideals as a nation, and where did those voices originate - the south and treason against the United States. You. nor any of us, can serve two masters. You either serve what is right, or you are by default serving wrong, and the forces of inherent evil that do not recognize the dignity of all mankind.
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Post by deadwoodgultch on Dec 8, 2017 15:37:07 GMT
Dabney Herndon Maury (May 21, 1822 – January 11, 1900) was an officer in the United States Army, instructor at West Point, author of military training books, and a major general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
There is Maury St and Dabney Rd in Richmond. Also, MLK Boulevard and an Arthur Ashe Statue.
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dave
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Post by dave on Dec 8, 2017 17:49:57 GMT
Perhaps we might ought to move on along to another battle where terrain played a very significant part in the outcome. In January of 1944 the US 36th Division had to cross a swollen river in its assault upon the German lines at Monte Casino in Italy. As the Germans held both the mountain and the flooded valley, the American, British, French and Polish forces were at a great disadvantage. Regards Dave
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Post by quincannon on Dec 8, 2017 17:58:30 GMT
The street in Richmond is named for Mathew Fontaine Maury USN/CSN the father of modern oceanography. Three U S Navy ships have been named for him. He is from Spotsylvania County right next door to you Tom, and he went on after the ACW to lead a productive life including holding the Chair in Physics at Virginia Military Institute, and not stirring up hate among the southern riff raff.
Why shouldn't there be a MLK Boulevard and a statue of Ashe. Ashe was from Richmond, and both were men of the south who did good with their lives, and did not commit treason.
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Post by deadwoodgultch on Dec 9, 2017 11:47:49 GMT
Was just sayin the world moves on, and rightly so. By the way Mathew was Dabney's uncle. Dabney's father died young, also a USN officer. After the war Dabney served the US Government under President Cleveland as Minister to Colombia, wrote "Skirmish Drill" for Mounted Troops, and established an academy in Fredericksburg to teach classical literature and mathematics.
Regards, Tom
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