The attributes of a man who can effectively lead
a Army Corps, Division, or Brigade in time of war are actually quite rare. The
Confederate States did not have a large enough population base to replace
losses among its top commanders in what, according to the technological
limitations of the time and current and rather curious combination chivalry and
old Cromwellian iconoclasm, became a war of attrition. Although at the
beginning of the Civil War the Confederacy had enough sufficiently proven
commanders, who understood the importance of discipline, drill and were capable
of learning on the job , their numbers gradually diminished and were difficult
to replace. ‘ If that question occurred to any besides General Lee, an
optimistic answer was taken for granted even after the death of Stonewall
Jackson at Chancellorsville. Neither the civil authorities nor the the press
said anything to indicate that they considered attrition of command in terms of crippling cumulative losses of the
bravest commanders’.
Furthermore, only weak efforts to train an officer corps were made, especially
in the crucial artillery and cavalry branches of the service, too much reliance
was placed on the infantry.
Of all branches of the Confederate Army
the infantry was strongest. Time and again, ‘All the men did more than it was thought possible for human beings to do. . . Usually if the soldier despaired, it was because
he did not get letters from home or else it was because those letters told of
sickness and misery. When, as more often happened, he endured cold without
complaint and short rations without grumbling, he had in his pocket a courageous message from a wife or mother or
sweetheart. Also, though difficult,
after seven decades (this book was published in 1941), for the contemporary
mind to understand, many of the men who appear in the pages of this book kept
religion in the same sanctuary of the heart with patriotism and love of home.
Acceptance of traditional Christianity was almost universal. Mild and reverent
deism was viewed with horror. Agnosticism was service to Antichrist. What was
believed was professed. The example of Lee and of Jackson in attributing
victory to God was duplicated in thousands of letters. Every escape from death
in battle was acknowledged to be a special mercy of a personal God.
Premonitions of the ‘inevitable end’ was regarded as a definite and not
uncommon reality. The dying soldier must
be warned unhesitatingly that his time was short and that he must ‘make his
peace with God’; the believing soul was encouraged to voice faith and farewell.
All the circumstances of a man’s last hours became later the subject of eager
review and, if they were edifying, often were the theme of letters and sermons’
When possible Sundays were reserved for Services and rest. Revivals were oft repeated events of camp
life.
The faithful and highly aggressive character of
their infantry battalions blinded commanders to the importance of proper
training and positioning of artillery in modern warfare. Cavalry was not always
put to its best use in reconnaissance, screening the movements of infantry divisions and
flanking maneuvers. Furthermore, especially in the latter stages of the war, it
led them to apprehend that decline in morale and increasing desertions were the
result of the moral failings of the ranks rather than their own administrative
failure to adequately supply front line troops. They had , much like the
Tsarist regime in W.W. I ,adequate material resources and men to prosecute and
even win the war, they simply lacked the administrative ability to consistently concentrate those resources at
crucial moments.
Between the two top Army Commanders ( not to mention the meddling of Jefferson
Davis and his Commissioners) there was a basic misunderstanding. While both
agreed on conducting the war on the basis of strategic offensives, ’In
Longstreet’s mind, Lee was committed morally to a tactical defense, which was Longstreet’s own
conception and, to his way of thinking, an essential of Confederate success’ :
position the Army so that the Yankees would attack rather than attacking the
Yankees, thus greatly reducing the chaotic disorganization and high casualty
rate that often accompanied movements against established positions. But Lee
never intended to commit himself to that tactical policy and did not know that
Longstreet considered himself so pledged. Not surprisingly, generals in both of
the 20th century’s great wars often disregarded this important
distinction, evidenced clearly in both the Battles of the Somme and Okinawa.
Countless lives were lost in futile frontal attacks in both these wars and the
same administrative failures to deliver
the overwhelmingly superior material forces the Allies commanded in a
timely fashion, as well as inferior training, had a such a negative effect on
the morale of its troops , it has been claimed, that the campaign against the
Nazis was likely prolonged a year or more! In fact, on D-Day, the historian
discovers Ike, in the Confederate tradition, praying that the fighting spirit of
the ranks would overcome the tactically disadvantageous position he had so
obviously placed them in. Likewise, at Okinawa, Lieut. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. futilely
bombarded deeply entrenched Japanese positions and then sent his troops into
bloody frontal attacks. [These latter observations are not in Freeman’s book].
Lee’s Lieutenants is a detailed month by month account, including all the major
battles, from the Confederate point of view. The advantages of approaching the
subject in this manner can be quite startling. The view thus given of the
character and actions of a figure like Stonewall Jackson seem superior than
those obtained from reading his biography, for example. Freedman also gives
brief accounts of the post-war lives of those commanders who survived and how
the war was viewed by Southerners in the immediate aftermath, the founding of
the myths of the Lost Cause in a similar fashion that Elizabeth Brown Pryor
‘rubs’ on the myths about Abraham Lincoln in ‘Six Encounters with Lincoln’ , Hans
L. Trefousse does in ‘Andrew Johnson’ and Robert Selph Henry does in ‘The Story
of Reconstruction’, (the last not yet recounted on my Blog).
‘A second surprise in studying the command of the Army of Northern Virginia,’
Freeman writes in the Foreword, ‘was something for which the writer should have
been prepared – the unhappy sharpness in contrasts of character in the men
portrayed. After the War between the States, the Southern code for the judgment
and treatment of soldiers and public men was explicit. President Davis, Cabinet
members, Congressmen and officers of the general staff, especially of the
quartermaster’s and commissary service, could be denounced freely; deserters
were shunned; men who had profited by the war and those who had dodged conscription
were avoided but not beyond the pale; notorious cowards were the subject of
jest, if they had not deserted, they were not barred socially, though rarely
approved politically. If any veteran went over to the Republican Party or consorted
with Negroes, that was never forgiven him. It cancelled his military record, no
matter fine that had been. A boastful Major might be ridiculed privately; on
rare occasions a politician might assert that a rival, though Confederate
veteran, ‘never smelt gunpowder’; former Generals, if necessitous, had first
all on all offices that paid well; one armed or one-legged men were preferred
for political sinecures and, when chosen, must be retained. Apart from these
distinctions, there was democracy in defeat. All ex-soldiers were to be rated
gallant and all officers able. Among the men who had lost everything,
comparisons were not in order. The sons and daughters of Southern soldiers were
reared in the unquestioning belief that Confederate soldiers were great
warriors who would never have been defeated had not the odds been overwhelming.
A certain sacredness that attached early to the name of General Lee came in
time to embrace the high command generally. As bickering and rivalries were
forgotten, the Army and the Southern cause took on a spiritual symbolism that
must be experienced to be understood. Criticism was disloyalty. To mock was to
betray.
On cold reappraisal, after seventy-five years, some generals have diminished in
stature. The failure of two or three of them is found to have been due to
definite and discoverable peculiarities of mind- Beauregard never could get rid
of his Napoleonic complex or be induced to shape his strategical demands in
terms of available forces and practical logistics. Hill, a fine combat officer,
would not accept the responsibilities of departmental command. Other men, in
unpleasant number, were boastful and willing to warp the historical verities in
order to glorify themselves or to extenuate error. Some of Lee’s Lieutenants
were jealous and some were stupid; some were self-seeking and many were
vaingloriously ambitious. In two or tree cases, the evidence is all too
explicit that men of honored name were physical cowards. Several military
blunders and no little of chronic inefficiency had their source in battle . . .In the
hearts of Lee’s subordinates were all the explosive qualities that existed
elsewhere . . .’
After Appomattox, Grant insisted that
the worn and weary Confederate troops in the vicinity were to go through the
last humiliation, that of surrender arms, cartridge boxes and flags. The
Confederate commissions had pleaded hard for permission to place the arms,
required accoutrements and standards on the grounds in their camps; but to this
General Grant would not consent, generous though he had been in every other
particular. The surrender would be simple: it had to be actual, not symbolic.
Major General Joseph Bartlett’s 1st
Division had been moved out at noon on the 11th to relieve Turner and to
prepare for the reception of arms.
The morning of the 12th, the last day of the Army’s life, was chill
and gray but without the rain that had fallen continuously since the surrender.
At sunrise, the Confederates began to stir in their bivouacs. The column soon
was formed on the high ground north of the little river. General officers
mounted; the regimental commanders took their stations; each man had his musket.
The Stars and Bars were at their proper place midway of some regiments, but a
few flag staffs were without standards. The men had torn the bunting to bits or
else entrusted the banner to some soldier who had folded it and had hidden it
under his jacket.
To escort the flags and to time the march, there were no bands. Most of the
instruments that had not been stored before the retreat had been lost on the
road. Without a beat of drum and in the silence of their black depression, the
men started down the hill. Some neat, in spite of rain and spring mud. Most of
the veterans were in tatters and unabashed. Their concern seemed to be only for
their mud-caked blankets, their oil cloths and their overcoats. Any other day,
the musket would have been their first care.
At the front of the Second Corps, which headed the column, rode John B Gordon.
His was the same, erect soldierly figure, but now his chin was on his breast,
his eyes downcast. Scarcely a career in the whole Army had been more remarkable
than his – from an inexperienced Captain
to Major General and corps commander. If the final order of march had been
arranged to honor those who had fought the hardest and with the highest distinction
during the last year of the war, Gordon rightly would have been put first.
Thirty-two regiments there were, the equivalent of eight Brigades. Now each of
the regiments occupied so little of the muddy road that they created a dramatic
illusion. Their flags appeared to be massed. The bloody bond of brotherhood encompassed
them. Federals who saw them coming to the Court House had to look a second time
to be sure what it was they beheld: ‘The regimental flags crowded so thick by
the thinning out of the men, the whole column seemed crowned with red’
Gordon’s men were obeying their last march the endlessly repeated command of ‘Old
Jack’, the command heard on the way to Front Royal, and in the Thoroughfare Gap,
and along the forest road that led through the Wilderness to Hookers flank- ‘Close
up, men, close up!’ As they closed now, they saw ahead of them, in line on the
left and on the right side of the road, two full Federal Brigades. At the right
of the line, the color guard carried the Stars and Stripes and the flag of the
1st Division of the V Corps. Under the colors was a little group of officers.
The central figure was General Chamberlain. Without a gesture of triumph or any
of the suffusion of pride, he was watching the column as it came nearer. Confederates
whose eyes were not on the road saw him and perhaps heard him speak a word to a
man by his side. A bugle rang out above the shuffle of muddy feet, Instantly,
regiment by regiment, as smartly as if on dress parade, the Union troops
shifted from order arms to carry arms, the marching salute. Gordon heard the
familiar sound of the shift and, half startled, looked up. His figure
stiffened; he turned his horse to General Chamberlain; he brought down his sword
in salute and, wheeling again to his own column, gave the command to carry
arms. Salute answered salute. Said General Chamberlain afterward: ‘On our part
not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; nor a cheer nor word nor whisper
of vain-glorying . . .but an awed silence rather, and a breath-holding, as if
it were the passing of the dead.’
The column moved on until the head of it
reached the Federal left. There it halted and faced South. Officers dressed
the line and took their post. Gordon and his few generals rode to the rear often
troops. At a word from officers, bayonets were fixed. A heavy pause ensued.
Then, in low voice, the last command was given to ‘Jackson’s foot cavalry’. The
men steeped forward four paces across the road and stacked their arms. Off came
the cartridge boxes. In a moment these were hanging from the muskets. The color
sergeants folded the regimental flags and laid then, too, on the stacks.
Silence held. ‘We did not even look into each others’ faces,.’ They turned;
they came back into the road, they marched ahead past the Court House. It was over.
As fast as the Divisions could- for waiting was torture – they moved up the
road and repeated the ceremony. . .
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