High Water Mark: Discussing the Impacts of National Power on Confederate Military Strategy through the Lens of the Gettysburg Campaign
Tyler Koteskey
The John Near Excellence in History Education Endowment Fund
Mr. Fowler and Ms. Wheeler
April 22, 2011
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank the Near family, Ms. Donna Gilbert, and the John Near Excellence in History Scholarship Fund for their generous support of my research in Pennsylvania. Writing this paper has been an eye-opening experience for me both in the study of the Civil War and in Historiography itself.
I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Captain William J. Tyson, USN (Ret.) for his copious assistance in making this project a success. I profited immensely from his numerous services, including battlefield tour guide, interview arranger, role model historian, mentor, Civil War firearms instructor, and all around neat guy to learn from.
To both of my interview subjects, Col. Leonard J. Fullenkamp, Professor of Military History and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and Dr. Richard J. Sommers, Senior Historian at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, I would like to thank you both for giving your time to a fellow Civil War enthusiast. Your perspectives completely changed my mind on a number of issues as I researched this paper.
To both of my Faculty mentors, Mr. Ray Fowler and Ms. Julie Wheeler, I would like to thank you for your assistance in helping me crystallize a topic and for always lending your opinions to discuss the ever-nagging Civil War what-ifs.
Finally, to my family, thank you for your support of my goal over the past 12 months. It’s been smooth at times, rocky at others, but definitely worth every minute throughout.
Koteskey 3
National Power and the Civil War
In its study of warfare, the U.S. Military characterizes the decisions of belligerent powers through a variety of precepts known as the elements of national power.1 While several organizational iterations of the national power theme exist, this paper will focus on the concept as it relates to a nation’s economic, diplomatic, political, and military capabilities. Examining the American Civil War in the context of national power sheds light on many otherwise enigmatic command decisions.
The strategic choices of the Confederate Government during the spring and summer of 1863 are among the most debated Grand Strategy decisions of the conflict. Given the benefit of hindsight, it is easy for historians to criticize the Davis Administration and General Robert E. Lee for choosing to invade the North that summer rather than diverting troops for the relief of the deteriorating Western theater. Nevertheless, after analyzing the options available to the Confederacy from a national power standpoint, it becomes clear that the South made the best possible decision given the circumstances of its strategic situation and relative Economic, Diplomatic, Political, and Military strengths and weaknesses.
Economic Capability: A War of Attrition
By any standard, the material resources of the South were lacking compared to those of the North. With a population of 9 million, 3.5 million of which were slaves, the South only had around 1.6 million white men of military age available to muster against the approximately 5.25 million draftable Northerners, of whom their were 21 million total.2 From these figures alone, it is clear that the Southern states were not disposed to fight a drawn-out war of attrition, which
Koteskey 4
was the primary long-term Union Strategy formulated in the Anaconda Plan. As a result of this deficiency in the ability to sustain a long-term war against the North, the Confederates hoped to achieve victory by compelling the Union to give up; creating an atmosphere in which the Republicans would be discredited and the Northern Democrat peace agitators would be strengthened.
With a primarily agrarian-based economy, the South additionally lacked the manufacturing capability necessary for military self-sufficiency. Though it boasted vast resources in livestock and crops, these staples made the CSA especially vulnerable in war-time as they were subject to easy destruction from passing armies whose foraging parties swarmed the countryside like locusts. That the war was fought mainly on Confederate soil only compounded these effects of attrition. Over 40% of the Southern gross national product (GNP) was dedicated to staple production, with a mere 20% devoted to manufactures.3
The agrarian ideal of the Gentleman farmer was such that the “social prestige of planters pulled other occupations into their orbit rather than vice versa. ‘A large plantation and negroes are the ultima Thule of every Southern gentleman’s ambition.’” The consequences of such a system severely limited pre-war Southern industrialization, as the merchant and manufacturing sectors were looked down upon as “lowly calling[s] fit for Yankees, not for gentlemen.”4
Confederate economic vulnerability was only increased due to the location of close to or more than half of many of its key products, including pigs, sheep, wheat, oats, corn, and tobacco in the Border States, within close reach of Union troops.5
Koteskey 5
Unlike the North, which had a well-connected railroad system used to enhance trade and communication, the Southern states possessed an ineffective, multi-gauged rail networks which was primarily built to ship cotton to ports rather than facilitate travel between cities.6 Compared to the North’s 22,085 miles of railway, the South had only built 8.541 by the war’s beginning. This infrastructure disparity limited the ability of Southern commanders to transfer and concentrate troops to strategic rally points in order to meet the advances of Union forces.7
Confederate armies faced another mobility handicap in livestock. Draft animals, especially horses, were crucial to any 19th Century army, servicing the artillery and cavalry corps, medical wagons, and supply lines.8 The South had about half the number of draft animals the North did, again with signification portions located in the Border States where they were in constant danger of Union confiscation.9 This resource base had to supply the Army of Northern Virginia, for example, with over 20,000 horses at any given time in 1863.10 The burdens of these demands became clear by mid-war when:
“the growing scarcity of horse-flesh . . . exemplified the general erosion of Southern resources so obvious by 1863. Not only did many horses become worn out and useless from the hardships of campaigning, but lack of fodder in areas close to the army, due to inadequacies in rail transportation, forced the military to keep large numbers at distant places.”11
Koteskey 6
Beyond the sheer number of horses needed in support of the army, each one had to be shod daily. Due to the lack of Southern manufacturing centers, Confederate supply lines struggled to meet the day-to-day shoeing needs of Confederate armies or to provide portable
smithies for the armies to use on the march. When troops moved farther away from railheads, already strained supply trains were not always able to keep up. In these situations, horse-shoe shortages plagued Confederate armies, which had to leave behind already precious livestock that went lame and caused traffic jams after walking a few miles unshod.12
Southern Financial Capacity
Probably as a consequence of Southern Jacksonian-Democratic distrust of lending institutions, the Confederacy had far fewer banks within its territory than did the Union, which significantly reduced its economic capabilities. With access to just 16% of the America’s bank branches and 21.8% of available capital, the CSA was at a severe financial disadvantage when it came to procuring funds domestically. The Confederacy was also handicapped trying to support its currency and obtain foreign loans because Northern banks held nearly twice the amount of specie as the Confederacy. Additionally, Southern banks kept their gold to deposits ratio an average 10% higher than Northern banks. This practice limited the amount of lending Southern banks were able to engage in compared to their Union counterparts. To make matters worse, relatively large concentrations of banking capital in border states once again constituted a vital potential Southern asset that the Confederacy stood to lose in a long war.13
Koteskey 7
Economic Impacts of the Blockade
While some debate exists as to the efficacy of the blockade on the Confederacy, the general consensus among historians is that the Union Navy severely reduced Southern shipping revenue. 14 While 20,000 vessels sailed in and out of Southern ports in the four years before the
war, only 8,000 ran the blockade from 1861-1865.15 The presence of the Union fleet and the inability of the Confederates to offer any meaningful naval resistance only exacerbated the supply problems caused by the CSA’s dependence on imports. Despite initiating the blockade with only 90 warships in 1861, the North had deployed over 700 by war’s end.16 The gradual ratcheting up of Union naval presence, combined with Army cooperation was such that by April 1862, the Union had blockaded or captured every major Confederate Atlantic Harbor except Charleston and Wilmington. The threat posed by the blockade, regardless of its actual effectiveness, was sufficient to deter potential Southern shipping traffic to the extent that only specially-designed, light, fast blockade-runners attempted to slip through the Union fleets. These ships had smaller hulls compared to heavier trading ships, which reduced the amount of cargo they could carry into Southern ports. Though to some extent, blockade runners were able to use inland rivers to travel between ports, these voyages only shifted resources from one part of the South to another and did not alleviate shortages by bringing in goods from outside of the blockade.17 The Army and Navy remained a nuisance on the Southern coastline throughout the
Koteskey 8 war, capturing Southern ports and dividing the Confederacy into smaller economic units as Union forces advanced further South.18 The problem of Northern naval mobility further reduced the South’s ability to shift supplies from one region to another to meet threats from Union field armies advancing from the North.
The CSA depended in large part on an imported supply of British Enfield rifles to equip its armies. Despite Confederate organizers’ successes in managing to procure these modern rifled muskets, the risk of importing them through the blockade made the process of armament supply more costly and less reliable than it was for the North. Southern troops were ultimately to rely in
part on captured Union Springfield rifles to arm themselves. The threat of the blockade also made it riskier for the Confederate emissaries to seek financing abroad. Most banks would only loan to the financially untested CSA with the guarantee of specie as collateral, compelling the South to ship its coin reserves through the blockade at the risk of capture.19
Finally there was the problem of government income. In keeping with the conservative traditions of the South, many governors outright refused to tax their citizens. The alternative was printing paper money. A list of Confederate income sources through October 1864 states that paper money accounted for 60% of all government revenue, while taxes contributed about 5%.20
Incompetent officials such as Treasury Secretary Christopher Memminger made no contingency plans to remove resources from vulnerable Border States and failed to keep track of the long lists of debts the Confederacy owed as more suppliers were purchased.21 The inherent inferiorities in Southern material resources, financial capacity, and trade capability forced the CSA to adopt a Koteskey 9 strategy that accommodated its inability to fight a prolonged war, as the Gettysburg decision demonstrated.
The Burden of the Confederate Constitutional Framework
U.S. Army War College Military History and Strategy Professor Leonard J. Fullenkamp described the Confederacy as being “at war with itself as much as much as it was with the North.”22 Constrained by the desire to preserve the states’ rights ideology that constituted its very reason for existence, the Confederacy was forced to weigh war time pragmatism against its founding principles. Unlike the North, which could more easily launch national initiatives to advance its strategies on a unified front, the decentralization of the Southern government was counterproductive to its war effort.23 In the North, political parties encouraged legislative
discipline. Republicans had an incentive to pass Lincoln’s proposals because they were party platforms. In Richmond, an essentially one-party government existed without an opposition for it to unite against. Therefore, no sense of legislative discipline materialized, and there was little incentive for the Confederate Congress to show administration loyalty. Confederate political discourse ultimately reduced itself to personality contests and increased state-based sectionalism.24 The principles which brought the Confederacy together also kept it apart, because the CSA was an association of like-minded, very different states, not a nation-state with a long common cultural tradition different from that of the North.25 Individual states opposed Confederate national legislation on the grounds that it infringed upon their local sovereignty. In a Koteskey 10 typical example of Southern internecine conflict, Georgia Governor Joseph Brown appointed several thousand new state clerks to protect his constituency from the impending draft in 1864.26
The South’s lack of political cohesion portended grave military consequences as well. The highly regionalized nature of the Confederate Congress ensured that every representative would call for his state to be defended from the North. Because Davis had to build up disparate coalitions to support his programs, he adopted a “cordon-defense” policy to gain the political favor necessary to keep the government functioning. This policy spread out the South’s troops across the entire South diluting their already inferior strength in the face of superior Northern numbers and resources. Given the circumstances this strategy placed Confederate commanders in, it was bound to fail at some point.27
The lack of common nationality and revolutionary fervor, caused in part by the conservative nature of the Southern secession movement, kept much of the energetic initiative
out of the government which had characterized other revolutionary states. Confederates believed that they were protecting rights that already had existed, upholding the status quo from the Northerners who wanted to turn the social order on its head. While the Confederacy was certainly seen by its inhabitants as something worth fighting for against the invading Yankees, many disagreed on secession’s purpose or justification.28
Southern Unionists
The collection of states that comprising the CSA were a motley crew with different expectations of what the Confederacy was, why it existed, and what it should be. Contrasting the Koteskey 11 ardent fire-eaters of South Carolina, states like Florida and North Carolina expressed more moderation and often conflicted with national war aims. There was a well-founded feeling among many yeoman farmers that the aristocratic planters had dragged them into secession and where now making them fight their war as well. In areas with comparatively lower percentages of slaves, such as Western North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, Northern Alabama, and Western Virginia, Unionist sentiment ran high. In these locations, the Confederacy was seen at best as a lesser evil than the invading Northerners, but hardly a positive good or a voluntary choice.29 In Western Virginia, pro-Union sentiment was so strong that the counties seceded in 1861, forming the state of West Virginia in 1863 and contributing their own regiments to the Northern cause.
It is clear that the political situation in the Confederacy was not conducive to effective domestic governance or internal cohesion against the Northern threat. Born from the flames of dissension, it was not long before the Confederacy turned on its self in counterproductive ideological battles. The need to defend the entire Confederacy, as opposed to concentrating at a
few strategic points greatly limited the South’s ability to effectively contest Northern invasion, encouraging Unionist sentiment.
Confederate Diplomacy
The Diplomatic efforts of the CSA were rooted in exploiting its supply of cotton to secure recognition from the European powers. Confederate envoys Mason and Slidell attempted to convince England and France that the US blockade was illegitimate, under the 1856 Treaty of Paris of 1856 treaty of Paris, which stated that a blockade had to be “effective.” Despite the Koteskey 12 ambassadors’ figures describing the numbers of ships that had made it through the blockade, foreign powers did not budge because the Confederates entirely misread the situation.
To begin with, Confederate envoys did not appreciate the complex balance-of-power politics of Europe. Emperor Napoleon III’s France, for instance, would not intervene on behalf of the Confederacy without the support of Britain. Despite France’s interests in its Mexican colony, it was pre-occupied, in 1863, for example, with the fallout from the Polish uprising against Russia. Napoleon III had accidentally alienated himself from the Prussian and Russian governments, both of which possessed Polish territory, by expressing support for the rebels. Out of concern for his country’s security, Napoleon would not commit to intervening on behalf of the South (especially given Russia’s support of the North) without multi-lateral support.30 Therefore, the main task was for Confederate envoys to convince Great Britain to come to their aid.
Confederate diplomats did not grasp Britain’s own vested interest in having the U.S. blockade maintained. The South saw Britain’s non-interference with the initially ineffective “paper blockade” as a violation of the Treaty of Paris. But the British themselves viewed their
neutrality as a valuable naval precedent which could be cited against the US in future wars to prevent its interference with British naval operations. The UK, well-known for its powerful navy, did not want to risk limiting its future operations by breaking the American blockade through force or mediation. Were this to happen, the UK would be open to future interference from the Americans if their roles were reversed. Rejecting Southern entreaties, British Foreign Secretary Lord Russell argued that the mere escape of ships through the blockade did not invalidate the overall justification for its presence. For a blockade to be legal, a nation only had to ensure that
Koteskey 13 enough ships were deployed “at the entrance of a port sufficient really to prevent access to it, or to create an evident danger of entering it or leaving it.”31
King Cotton
Beyond naval capabilities lay the question of cotton. Southern planters informally embargoed the cotton crop in 1861, caught up in the delusion that, faced with a Confederateinduced shortage, the rest of the world would only react by complying with whatever the South wanted to protect its steady supply. The embargo certainly did have its affects, in England and France, leaders openly worried that workers in textile mills would revolt if put out of work for too long. Nevertheless, in England, the cotton manufacture base was centered in the city of Lancashire. The concentration of cotton workers in one city reduced their Parliamentary clout, which was further dissipated by Lancashire’s 12-16 Liberal-Tory split. England simply increased its Poor Law Charity Spending for the cotton-workers until a regular supply was secured by late 1862. The cotton industry was losing its importance in Britain anyway as the economy underwent a structural shift towards the iron, ship-building, and armaments industries.32
Reflecting these changes, the percentage of the British population in the cotton trade fell from 19% to 14.6% from 1853 to 1860.33
Conflicting priorities also mired diplomatic efforts. Confederates tried to maintain that the blockade was ineffective and illegitimate while cutting off Europe from its cotton supply. This lead the CSA’s friends in Europe to the logical conclusion of asking where all the cotton was if the blockade was so ineffective. Confederates also seemed to forget that the world could
Koteskey 14 obtain cotton from outside the South. Being the most efficient cotton producer did not make one the world’s sole cotton producer. As Southern cotton exports fell, non-American cotton producers increased their deliveries to Europe, with the British colonies of India and Egypt making up much of the difference.
Confederates did not count on their own ideology undermining itself either. Southern cotton production reached its height from 1857-1860, when the “King Cotton” fever reached its peak. Three years of huge harvests gave Britain a massive surplus that it could not process quickly enough. When the shortage arrived, British cotton mills dipped into their surplus supply to offset its effects for a time. (BCRY 385) A littler known force working against “King Cotton” was “King Corn.” Undoubtedly crucial to British refusal to break the blockade were the European crop failures from 1860-1862. During this time Britain imported almost half of its grain from the United States. If a cotton shortage had caused British anxiety, its leaders were not about to risk a crucial component of the food supply.34
With Emperor Napoleon III unwilling to act alone, and British Prime Minister Palmerston reluctant to commit to intervention before the Confederates were able to destroy Northern Armies, it was up to the CSA to increase its standing in the world through their own
military victories. The lack of more forthcoming foreign assistance forced the Confederacy to consider bolder measures to create the diplomatic favor necessary for recognition and intervention.
Koteskey 15
Confederate War Aims and Limitations
The South enjoyed the advantage of a more limited war aim entering into the conflict. While the Union was tasked with doing whatever necessary to destroy the Confederate government, the CSA only had to stave off defeat and secure its secession by outlasting the Northern will to fight.
Early 19th Century military theorist Carl von Clausewitz was a pioneer in describing war’s function as a tool to achieve political objectives. His work has been widely used to study the interactions of different elements of national power with decisions on the Grand Strategy level. Describing how the value of continued struggle in belligerents’ eyes is closely related to the initial political goals of a given conflict, Clausewitz states that, “since war is not an act of senseless passion but is controlled by its political object, the value of this object must determine the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in duration.”35 The Confederacy’s goal was to ensure that the duration of its struggle would endure too long for the Union populace to continue to sacrifice for. By making the Union’s war aims too painful to achieve, the Confederates could claim victory by not being defeated.
Jefferson Davis’ “cordon-defense” framework, though impractical, was a similarly consequence of the Confederate political objective. The states’ rights-centric tone of the
Confederate Congress forced Davis to spread troops across the Confederacy in order to ensure continued political support for pursuing the war effort. Forcing the necessity of the cordon system, the lack of Confederate naval power enabled Union troops to land virtually anywhere on Koteskey 16 the Southern shoreline. This coastal vulnerability required sufficient troops, which could otherwise be used in field armies, to be kept as fort garrisons to protect rivers and cities.36
The Strategic Situation: Spring 1863
By the start of its second year the Civil War was shaping up to be longer and bloodier than most had originally conceived. In the Western theater, the South was on the defensive; Ulysses S. Grant’s Union army had been working its way down the Mississippi since 1862, gradually capturing Confederate strongholds. Now Grant besieged Vicksburg, the South’s last city on the Mississippi (see Figure 1). To make matters worse, the Northern presence on the river interfered with Southern supply efforts in the West and endangered the plantations and infrastructure of the Deep South.37
In the Eastern Theater, the Confederates had encountered more success. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had dealt the Army of the Potomac several major defeats over the past year, halting Union offensives at the Seven Days, 2nd Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and at Chancellorsville in May. But despite repeated Confederate tactical victories, the South had not been able to exploit them for their strategic worth. Even after Lee’s dramatic victory against a force twice his size at Chancellorsville, Confederate leaders knew that they had to act decisively. After cutting off Vicksburg, Grant’s advance would lead only to the city’s capture and a vital strategic loss for the Confederacy unless his forces could be diverted.
President Davis, Secretary of War James A. Seddon, and General Lee met as an informal council to discuss the Confederate strategy moving forward.38 Davis and Seddon had suggested Koteskey 17
diverting some of Lee’s troops to the West during the winter of 1862-1863. The troops could either reinforce Confederates General Braxton Bragg in Tennessee or relieve General John C. Pemeberton in the Vicksburg vicinity. Assisting Pemberton could ease pressure on the West and potentially enable a reopening of the Mississippi for Southern trade, while reinforcing Bragg could break its stalemate with William Rosecrans’ Army of the Cumberland in Northern Tennessee and potentially enable the invasion of Missouri and Kentucky. Lee countered in a letter to Seddon that the “uncertainty of [the reinforcement’s] arrival and the uncertainty of [their] application cause me to doubt the policy of sending [them].” Influenced by the Confederacy’s lack of Economic Power, manifested in its deficient Southern rail system, Lee was concerned whether the reinforcements would even arrive in time to be useful. Additionally, the General felt concern that the troops would not amount to a significant difference in Western Confederate fortunes under indecisive commanders, while they would leave the Army of Northern Virginia undermanned against the more formidable Army of the Potomac. If anything, Lee argued, his army should be strengthened, for “unless we can obtain some reinforcements, we may be obliged to withdraw into the defenses around Richmond.” Posing a difficult but fundamental strategic question to Seddon and Davis, Lee compelled the cabinet to “decide whether the line of Virginia is more in danger than the line of Mississippi.” 39
Contemplating the Confederate course of action, Davis’ cabinet was influenced by the environment that the South found itself in by the spring and summer of 1863. By mid-war, food
and war materiel shortages caused by the blockade were reducing the CSA’s ability to carry on the fight both physically and psychologically. Incentivized by a fiercely conservative Congress
Koteskey 18 reluctant to raise taxes for the war, runaway inflation worsened the hardships of an inadequate food supply. In The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy, Charles M. Hubbard discusses how, in 1863 dollars, “flour, when available, was $30 per barrel. Butter cost $3 per pound, eggs were $2 a dozen, a turkey was $15, and bacon and beef were unattainable.”40 In April, the women of Richmond took to the streets like latter-day sans-culottes, demanding fairly-priced bread. Only Jefferson Davis himself, who threw his own money to the crowds, could disperse the mobs.41 Given this slow decay from within, it was becoming clear that the South beginning to lose the domestic battle. The diplomatic situation only appeared to offer hope if the Confederates could win more battlefield victories—“King Cotton” had failed to compel independent European action.
The Case for Invasion
Clausewitz described a nation’s “center of gravity,” as “the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends. That is the point against which all our energies should be directed."42 In the spring of 1863, the Union center of gravity was undoubtedly Northern public opinion. Though few Union victories had been forthcoming since some Western successes in 1862, Lincoln and a Republican-controlled Congress would unquestionably continue to pursue the war while in office. No matter the South’s prowess in defending its territory, continued Northern attacks would ultimately lead to the Confederacy’s capitulation through simple economic attrition.
Koteskey 19
A commander with a Clausewitzian mindset, Lee understood the intimate relationship of politics and warfare, recognizing the importance of the Northern public to achieving Southern war aims. In a letter to Jefferson Davis, Lee recognized that:
“We should not . . . conceal from ourselves that our resources in men are constantly diminishing, and the disproportion in this respect between us and our enemies, if they continue united in their efforts to subjugate us, is steadily augmenting. . . . Under these circumstances we should neglect no honorable means of dividing and weakening our enemies that they may feel some of the difficulties experienced by ourselves. It seems to me that the most effectual mode of accomplishing this object, now within our reach, is to give all the encouragement we can, consistently with truth, to the rising peace party of the North.”43
Lee knew that discrediting the Northern political establishment, and most importantly, Lincoln, was the most important strategic goal the Confederacy could work toward. The General understood the potential power of the growing anti-war movement to attack the Northern center of gravity. The peace Democrats, or “Copperheads” were gaining strength throughout the North, especially in Ohio, Indiana, and New York, as the draft was set to be enacted in 1863 despite vigorous protests.44 A Confederate victory on enemy soil would decrease the Union’s political unity by convincing Northerners that its armies could not protect them, and that preserving the Union was worth an unacceptable amount of sacrifice. This sentiment would in turn elect more
Koteskey 20
Copperhead Democrats into office, and increase the Union’s likelihood of suing for peace. Of all the commanders at the South’s disposal, Lee had the greatest reputation for success. Given his defeat of an army twice his size and Chancellorsville, what would be possible with a reinforced army in Pennsylvania?
Given Southern circumstances at the time of the strategic decision, it appears that Lee’s proposal to invade the North promised a more decisive outcome. Early primary evidence suggesting Lee’s intention to invade the North comes from his February 1863 dispatch to Stonewall Jackson’s chief cartographer, Jedediah Hotchkiss, requesting a map of the Valley of Virginia “extended to Harrisburg Pa. and then on to Philadelphia—wishing the preparation to be kept a profound secret.”45 Dr. Richard J. Sommers of the U.S. Army Military Heritage and Education Center references North with Lee and Jackson, by James A. Kegel, to suggest that Lee and his most-trusted lieutenant had been planning a second invasion of the North as early as the winter of 1862. Sommers contends that Lee and Jackson looked to Pennsylvania to deny the North the region’s vast reserves in anthracite coal, which produced over half the nation’s supply.
Depriving the Union of these mines would shut down Northern arsenals and munitions factories and deprive Union Navy steamships of their fuel supply, rendering the blockade truly “paper” for the first time. A presence in Pennsylvania would also enable the Confederates to sabotage the rail lines leading to the Western Theater from the North. Cutting these supply routes would surely hamper Northern activities in this beleaguered sector.46 Davis, Seddon, and the Confederate cabinet ultimately agreed with Lee. They felt it was better to reinforce the Army of Northern Virginia for an invasion that would pursue a decisive Koteskey 21
purpose, relieving Virginia and attacking the Northern center of gravity with potentially warending results. Despite the protests of Western commanders, Lee had convinced the cabinet that simply meeting and fending off Union threats to the West with more troops preserved an unwinnable status quo and sapped the ability of the Army of Northern Virginia to act as a decisive Grand Strategy instrument. The Confederacy’s strengths and weaknesses in national power largely made the decision for the leadership. As Lee pointed out in his letter, the effects of the smaller Southern population and weakening economy were translating themselves into a progressively weaker Army of Northern Virginia. At 75,000 men, Lee’s reinforced army was at its largest size of the war, and contained extremely confident and battle-hardened veterans.47 If there was any time for a bold move, the time was now, as Confederate military capacity would only diminish for the remainder of the war. Similarly, with the growing anti-war movement in the North, the Confederacy’s power to inflict political damage on the North to bring the war to an early end was reaching an apex.
Judging the Decision
Many scholars have criticized the Confederacy’s choice to invade, arguing that going to Pennyslvania set the stage for Vicksburg’s fall. But regardless of what hindsight may tell us, we can judge neither Lee nor the Confederate government for their decision to invade the North simply because we now know that the invasion was ultimately unsuccessful. In his Overview of the Gettysburg Campaign, Col. Fullenkamp quotes Cecil Battine’s The Crisis of the Confederacy: “No sort of education in troop-leading is more valuable than a close consideration of the mistakes and failures of great generals, together with an attempt to form the mental picture
Koteskey 22
which presented itself to them and on which they acted at the time.”48 Had the Confederacy possessed a more resilient economy and a higher population to supply its armies and replace its casualties, long-term attrition may not have necessitated the need for invasion. Had the power of “King Cotton Diplomacy” accorded the Confederacy a more receptive welcome in Europe, foreign intervention may have been more forthcoming and the step of invasion may not have been necessary to curry foreign favor. And had Confederate politicians not been as staunchly defensive of their individual states, the CSA may have been able to shift troops from lessthreatened coastal departments to replace the troops Lee could have given to Western commanders.
If any of these factors were the case, then sending a portion of the Army of Northern Virginia for the relief of the West would have been the better option given the Theater’s danger. But with its specific deficiencies in national power, the CSA was forced to take the risk of going on the offensive to bring about an early political end to the war. In 1863, the South was most able to impact the North’s national power by reducing its political capacity to carry on the fight.
Despite the risk of the invasion, Lee’s proposal was an excellent strategic move given the situation the Confederacy found itself in. And the General was almost successful too. Though Lee was not supplied with all of the troops he wanted due to regional bickering, Lee’s army almost prevailed at Gettysburg at several junctures. With a Confederate battlefield victory, the campaign and the war could have ended very differently.
Koteskey 23
After Gettysburg, Lee wrote Davis responding to a newspaper article criticizing his leadership and the army’s conduct during the battle. Written less than a month after the
conclusion of the campaign, and before the significance of its loss was realized, the letter can be seen as an objective self-evaluation of Lee’s performance:
“I still think if all things could have worked together it would have been accomplished. But with the knowledge I then had, and in the circumstances I was then placed, I do not know what better course I could have pursued.”49 Though Lee refers to his decisions during the battle, the same words apply to the choices of the entire Confederate leadership during the buildup to the Gettysburg Campaign.
The summer of 1863 was the high water mark of the Confederacy. Southern leadership knew that it represented their last opportunity to cut the war short by launching a decisive offensive against northern public opinion. That the Gettysburg Campaign resulted in failure for the Confederacy stemmed not so much from inherent flaws of its objectives as it did from operational twists of fate and unforeseeable battlefield developments—known to Clausewitz as “friction”—which can frustrate even the best-laid plans.50 By authorizing the 1863 invasion of Pennsylvania, the Confederate government chose the most strategically sound option available to them at the time. Though the high water mark of the Confederacy receded at Gettysburg, it reached much further there than it could have anywhere else.
Koteskey 24
Figure 1: The Strategic Situation: June, 186351
Koteskey 25
Notes
1 Leonard J. Fullenkamp, interview by author, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA, August 8, 2010.
2 Fullenkamp, interview by author.
3 Douglas B. Ball, Financial Failure and Confederate Defeat (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 24.
4 James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 99.
5 Ball, Financial Failure, 21.
6 Ball, Financial Failure, 21.
7 Donald Stoker, The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 24.
8 Edwin B. Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command (New York: SImon & Schuster, 1968), 16.
9 Ball, Financial Failure, 53.
10 Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign, 23.
11 Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign, 16.
12 Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign, 23.
13 Ball, Financial Failure, 23.
14 Frank O. Owsley’s famous work, King Cotton Diplomacy, contains an entire chapter titled The Ineffectiveness of the Blockade, arguing that a large majority of Confederate blockade runners that attempted to slip past the Union fleets were successful, well into the later years of the war. Nevertheless, it is important to note the effects of the fleets’ deterrence on the numbers of ships that attempted to travel between Europe and the South, as well as the reduced cargo capacity of those ships that did make the passage.
15 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 386.
16 Richard E. Beringer et al., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1986), 55.
17 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 381.
18 Beringer et al., Why the South Lost the Civil War, 63.
19 Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign, 253.
20 Stoker, The Grand Design, 25.
21 Ball, Financial Failure, 72.
22 Fullenkamp, interview by author.
23 Fullenkamp, interview by author.
24 Ball, Financial Failure, 32.
25 Fullenkamp, interview by author.
26 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 433.
27 Stoker, The Grand Design, 26.
28 Beringer, et. al., Why the South Lost the Civil War, 68.
29 Beringer, et. al., Why the South Lost the Civil War, 71-72.
30 Charles M. Hubbard, The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1998), 142.
31 Frank Lawrence Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931), 451.
32 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 386.
33 Ball, Financial Failure, 66.
34 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 385-386.
35 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, 1989 ed., ed. Michael Howard, trans. Peter Paret (1832; repr., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 92.
36 U.S. Army War College Strategic Leader Staff Ride--An Overview of the Gettysburg Campaign with Selected Correspondence, comp. and ed. Leonard J. Fullenkamp (Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College, 2008), 41.
37 WIlliam J. Tyson III, Gettysburg Strategic Background (Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College, 2010), 1.
38 Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign, 5.
39 Robert E. Lee to James A. Seddon, May 10, 1863, in The Wartime Papers of R.E. Lee, ed. Cllifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961), 482.
40 Hubbard, The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy, 135.
41 McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 617-618.
42 Clausewitz, On War, 586.
43 Robert E. Lee to Jefferson Davis, June 10, 1863, in The Wartime Papers of R.E. Lee, ed. Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961), 508.
44 Tyson, Gettysburg Strategic Background, 1.
45 Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign, 8.
46 Richard J. Sommers, interview by author, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, August 11, 2010.
47 Fullenkamp, Overview of the Gettysburg Campaign, 7.
48 Fullenkamp, Overview of the Gettysburg Campaign, 1-2.
49 Robert E. Lee to Jefferson Davis, July 31, 1863, in The Wartime Papers of R.E. Lee, ed. Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961), 565.
50 Peter Paret, "The Genesis of On War," introduction to On War, by Carl von Clausewitz, 1989 ed., ed. Michael Howard, trans. Peter Paret (1832; repr., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 17.
51 Fullenkamp, Overview of the Gettysburg Campaign, 11.
Bibliography
Ball, Douglas B. Financial Failure and Confederate Defeat. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
Beringer, Richard E., Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still, Jr. Why the South Lost the Civil War. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1986.
Clausewitz, Carl von. On War. 1989 ed. Edited by Michael Howard. Translated by Peter Paret. 1832. Reprint, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976.
Coddington, Edwin B. The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command. New York: SImon & Schuster, 1968.
Fullenkamp, Leonard J. Interview by author, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA, August 8, 2010.
Hubbard, Charles M. The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1998.
Lee, Robert E. The Wartime Papers of R.E. Lee. Edited by Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961.
McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Owsley, Frank Lawrence. King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931.
Paret, Peter. “The Genesis of On War.” Introduction to On War, by Carl von Clausewitz 1989 ed., edited by Michael Howard, translated by Peter Paret, 1-27. 1832. Reprint, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Sommers, Richard J. Interview by author, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, August 11, 2010.
Stoker, Donald. The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Tyson, WIlliam J., III. Gettysburg Strategic Background. Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College, 2010.
U.S. Army War College Strategic Leader Staff Ride--An Overview of the Gettysburg Campaign with Selected Correspondence. Compiled and edited by Leonard J. Fullenkamp. Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College, 2008.