Posted on 06/03/2018 4:42:36 PM PDT by Bull Snipe
Following General Grant's instructions, General George Meade orders three Corps of his Army of the Potomac to attack the lines of General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia near a crossroads named Cold Harbor. The attack is a failure, about 7000 Union soldiers are killed, wounded or captured within a short time. For the three days of combat around Cold Harbor, the Army of the Potomac has lost between 13 - 14 thousand men as casualties. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia has lost between 4500-5000 men.
He did.
Grant served in the west until 1864 and never lost a battle. He out-maneuvered and forced the surrender of two rebel armies. His Vicksburg campaign basically went against every established military maxim on supply and communications channels and wound up cutting the Confederacy in two. Grant's genius was well established before he came east.
I walked this battlefield 2 years ago in July. It was quiet and maybe one other car there. The only sound was that of birds.
It was very powerful being there knowing what happened on that piece of ground.
Some how or another, a lot of folks have come to believe that victory or defeat of the Confederacy rested solely on General Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. This is not the case. The war was fought over thousand of square miles and in most Southern states by thousands of soldiers not in the Army of the Potomac or the Army of Northern Virginia. Someone once stated the Lee’s defense of Northern Virginia was akin to saving the front porch, while the rest of the housed burned down. That may well be a very accurate appraisal of events.
Of course what you say is true, and the resources available to the North far outweighed those the South had available to them. The fact that they were able to extend the war as long as they did is a testament to their abilities even with those limited resources.
Correct, the casualty figures are all over the place.
Rhea’s estimates are very much lower than other historians of the subject. The 12-13 thousand figures are for the three days fighting at Cold Harbor. The 7,000 figure is for the casualties of three infantry Corps attack on the 3rd of June. That is about 19% casualties among the attack forces.
At Gettysburg, Pickett’s casualties in the attack on Cemetery Ridge was about 7000 men. This is about 55% of the Pickett’s force. Grant is called a butcher for the assault at Cold Harbor, while Lee gets a pass on the slaughter at Cemetery Ridge.
True.
The war was lost before the first shot was even fired. The only possible way of the rebels winning was if a foreign nation recognized and assisted them, specifically Britain. However, the slavocracy badly overestimated the power of cotton, and underestimated Britain’s anti-slavery sentiments.
With slavery so openly and brazenly enshrined in the confederate constitution there wasn’t a snow balls chance in hell of Britain siding with them. And none of the other great nations at the time would do anything counter to England.
And Malvern Hill. You would think that a general who had already done it once to his own troops and seen it done to Union troops by Burnside at Fredericksburg would have known better than to send his men up a defended hill.
I do agree the North was in no danger of being invade/occupied by the South. Even Southerners knew that was an impossibility from day one.
I hate that meme. Save what? The USA was not in danger at all. The CSA was in danger from second one.
The USA continued on during the war, railroads built, immigration, westward expansion. Albeit with fewer states but was in no danger.
One would think so.
General Longstreet said to General Lee before the assault “General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know as well as any one, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arrayed for battle can take that position.”
Following General Grant’s instructions,-hick up.
One historian, Shelby Foote I think said of the war, “the Union fought the Civil War with one had tied behind its back”
Grant was not a sophisticated opponent. It isn’t hard to fight a man that comes at you head on. Not much strategy in a forced war of attrition. Like the move Wales, Grant not a hard general to understand. He leaves his own dead and crushed army wherever he goes.
Like I said, not taking anything away from General Grant, as he truly was a man for the times, but how much of his success was due to the fact that he also had General William Tecumseh Sherman within his ranks? He was also a man of the times and a true leader, unabashedly brutal, as well as, a military genius.
Not really out of the Question in early 1862. Lord Palmerstone government was under considerable political pressure to recognized the Confederacy. The cotton embargo, did a lot of damage to the textile industry in England and France. This was translated into a call for the British government to intercede in our war. Palmerstone was seriously considering that action and was talking to the French about joint recognition of the Confederacy. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation proclamation, in late 1862,
the British and French Governments backed off due to strong anti slave sentiment in both countries. That, plus finding other sources of cotton for the textile industry pretty much insured that neither Britain or France would recognize the Confederacy or actively intervene in the war.
They were indeed incompetent, and it showed in spades. Like I said I take nothing away from General Grant, his leadership played an important part for sure. Once the right leadership was employed it made the resources available to him even more of an advantage for the North. Had he not had those resources available to him, we may well have seen a different outcome. One cannot separate his availability to resources, which I contend was the real deciding factor.
Grant’s use of those available resources was the real deciding factor.
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