John C. Carter
Tactics
Fri Jul 6 16:40:10 2001


Jim...

I would have to answer your question by looking at the Army of Northern Virginia and Robert E. Lee, not that the war revolved around them, but because I am more familiar with them than other Confederate armies. I would agree with my former colleague at George Mason University, Joseph Harsh (author of "Confederate Tide Rising"), that Robert E. Lee had developed a grand strategy during 1862 to seize the offensive and maintain the initiative against the Army of the Potomac. His objective was always to engage and to attempt to destroy major parts of the AOP, while keeping the war away from Richmond and off of Confederate soil. His tactics of offensive assualts and fighting offensive battles out of defensive positions were an integral part of that strategy.

Lee knew he had a short window of time to be able to win a major victory (preferably on Union soil) and perhaps force an end to the war by breaking the North's will to fight. He also understood that once he went to fighting a defensive war around Richmond (as he did during the Seven Days Campaign) that the end of his army would be near. Despite his biggest victories at Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville; Lee had been unable to deliver a "death blow" to the AOP. He was very disturbed after Fredericksburg that he was unable to destroy Burnside's army and that in the end, the Union army just walked away. Maybe that's why he was so aggressive at Gettysburg.

Because of Lee's overall strategy of aggressively maintaining the initiative, there was no tactical option for a defensive battle, or for going into a defensive position in the trenches. Had he done so, two very large Union armies would have slowly crushed him sometime in 1863 on the outskirts of Richmond. After Gettysburg, Lee continued his strategy, but Grant made it virtually impossible for him to duplicate his previous northern campaigns. He had fewer strategical and tactical options in 1864 when he was forced into the trenches to defend Richmond and Petersburg. If the Army of Northern Virginia was at its best when it fought in the open field, why not keep it out there? There seems to be two options.

One possibility, raised by Historians, was whether it would have been better for Lee to have reverted to guerrilla warfare during late 1864 and 1865. First, I don't think Lee or Jefferson Davis would have championed the idea. Second, it would have been very difficult to maintain and supply a large force that focused on hit and run tactics- maybe not actual guerrilla warfare, but more in the style that George Washington used during the American Revolution. Third, the guerrilla tactics of even Col. John Mosby were becoming less effective as the war went on, mainly due to the way Phil Sheridan was waging war against him. Which leads to the fourth reason why guerrilla warfare wouldn't work- the exhaustion and low morale of the civilians. The Southern homefront and the economy were already collapsing faster than the troops in the trenches. Total warfare had been waged in many areas of the South, especially against the Shenandoah Valley and parts of Northern Virginia, and Athens, Alabama- part of that was in retaliation for men like Mosby and Forrest waging guerrilla warfare.

The other strategic possibility was for the Confederacy to give up Richmond and the other major cities, like their ancestors had done during the American Revolution, and just fight on. It worked for Washington, so why not for Lee? But if you were a soldier in the 9th Alabama at Petersburg in 1865, your home back in Limestone County had been occupied by Union troops for the last two years, you were also one of the last of about 90 men still left in your regiment, and you were wondering if there was going to be anything left to go home to. Many said at that point they were mainly fighting for each other and for Robert E. Lee. But if Richmond w