It nearly prevailed anyway, but at last was beaten gorily back. So Lee was forced to improvise. Confederate artillery would soften it up, and Longstreet would direct a frontal assault across a mile of open ground against the center of Missionary Ridge. Before Gettysburg, Lee had seemed not only to read the minds of Union generals but almost to expect his subordinates to read his. He was not in fact good at telling men what to do. His usually cheerful detachment patently covered solemn depths, depths faintly lit by glints of previous and potential rejection of self and others.
It all seemed Olympian, in a Christian cavalier sort of way. As a father Lee was fond but fretful, as a husband devoted but distant. As an attacking general he was inspiring but not necessarily cogent.
At Gettysburg he was jittery, snappish. He was 56 and bone weary. He did have rheumatism and heart trouble. He kept fretfully wondering why Stuart was out of touch, worrying that something bad had happened to him. He had given Stuart broad discretion as usual, and Stuart had overextended himself. And he had not sent word of what he was up to.
Light-Horse Harry, had defined himself. A bond of implicit trust had been broken. Loving-son figure had failed loving-father figure and vice versa. In the past Lee had also granted Ewell and Longstreet wide discretion, and it had paid off.
Why did Lee stake everything, finally, on an ill-considered thrust straight up the middle? Evidently he just got his blood up, as the expression goes. And why should Lee expect his imprudence to be any less unsettling to Meade than it had been to the other Union commanders? Acouple of hundred Confederates did break the Union line, but only briefly.
Someone counted 15 bodies on a patch of ground less than five feet wide and three feet long. It has been estimated that 10, Johnny Rebs made the charge and 5,—roughly 54 percent—fell dead or wounded. As a Captain Spessard charged, he saw his son shot dead. He laid him out gently on the ground, kissed him, and got back to advancing. I had a foolish horse, once, and kind treatment is the best.
Too bad! Perhaps it was because Meade and his troops were so stunned by their own losses—about 23,—that they failed to pursue Lee on his withdrawal south, trap him against the flooded Potomac, and wipe his army out. For months Lee had been traveling with a pet hen. Meant for the stewpot, she had won his heart by entering his tent first thing every morning and laying his breakfast egg under his Spartan cot.
Life goes on. After Gettysburg, Lee never mounted another murderous head-on assault. He went on the defensive. Grant took over command of the eastern front and , men. Lee had his men well dug in. Grant resolved to turn his flank, force him into a weaker position, and crush him.
On April 9, , Lee finally had to admit that he was trapped. By the end they had inflicted 63, Union casualties but had been reduced themselves to fewer than 10, Lee cut off any such talk. The remainder of was spent on the defensive, parrying Union thrusts at Fredericksburg and, in May of the following year, Chancellorsville. The masterful victory at Chancellorsville gave Lee great confidence in his army, and the Rebel chief was inspired once again to take the fight to enemy soil.
In late June of , he began another invasion of the North, meeting the Union host at the crossroads town of Gettysburg , Pennsylvania. For three days Lee assailed the Federal army under George G. Meade in what would become the most famous battle of the entire war. Accustomed to seeing the Yankees run in the face of his aggressive troops, Lee attacked strong Union positions on high ground. This time, however, the Federals wouldn't budge.
The Confederate war effort reached its high water mark on July 3, when Lee ordered a massive frontal assault against Meade's center, spear-headed by Virginians under Maj. George E. The attack known as Pickett's charge was a failure and Lee, recognizing that the battle was lost, ordered his army to retreat. Taking full responsibility for the defeat, he wrote Jefferson Davis offering his resignation, which Davis refused to accept.
Grant assumed command of the Federal armies. Rather than making Richmond the aim of his campaign, Grant chose to focus the myriad resources at his disposal on destroying Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
In a relentless and bloody campaign, the Federal juggernaut bludgeoned the under-supplied Rebel band. In spite of his ability to make Grant pay in blood for his aggressive tactics, Lee had been forced to yield the initiative to his adversary, and he recognized that the end of the Confederacy was only a matter of time.
Despite the fact that seven of eight Civil War frontal assaults failed, Lee just kept attacking. The North had more advanced weaponry and had it earlier in the war.
Its Model Springfield rifle, with an effective range of — yards, could kill at a distance of 1, yards or more. Demonstrating this trend, Rhode Islander Elisha Hunt Rhodes experienced an improvement in weaponry during the war. I have borrowed these guns from the 37th Mass. Appreciation of the great reliance upon rifles by both sides in the conflict can be gleaned from the following estimates provided by Paddy Griffith in his thought-provoking Battle Tactics of the Civil War.
He estimated that the Confederate Government procured , smoothbore muskets and , rifles and that the Union obtained , smoothbores and an astounding 3,, rifles, including , breechloaders and , repeaters. The increased effectiveness of breechloaders, rather than muzzleloaders, was demonstrated by Union cavalry on the first day at Gettysburg July 1, and by Union defenders on the second day at Chickamauga just two months later.
The improved arms gave the defense a tremendous advantage against exposed attacking infantry or cavalry.
0コメント