Aftermath Confederate Victory at Gettysburg Question

TFSmith121

Banned
Meigs was QM; his responsibilities did not include ordnance

I highly doubt that. If you are going to blame anyone who is not a line commander, it would be Montgomery Meigs, the Quartermaster general of the Union Army. What Northrup was to the South, Meigs was to the North. Though at least Meigs could feed the Union Army and keep up the flow of weapons and ammunitions. But the greatest indictment against him was the near-impossibility of getting what were already proven weapons in Europe introduced into the USA. Mainly on the basis that they were too wasteful of ammunition. You know...machine guns.:mad:.


Meigs was Chief of the Quartermater Department, and he did an excellent job; his responsibilities did not include ordnance, however.

The chiefs of the Ordnance Department were:
Henry K. Craig (to April 23, 1861);
James W. Ripley (to September, 1863)
George B. Ramsay (to September, 1864)
Alexander B. Dyer (to postbellum)

Ripley gets some criticism regarding his focus on what was in production (M1861) and available (various rifled versions of previous standard designs and what could be acquired in Europe, both for the US forces and to deny said material to the rebels). Given the realities of the 1861-62 mobilization, I don't really see that the US had any options but standardizing on muzzle-loading rifles in 1861-62, whether .54, .577. .58. or .69 caliber. Arming more than a million men required praticality, period.

Best,
 
Meigs was Chief of the Quartermater Department, and he did an excellent job; his responsibilities did not include ordnance, however.

The chiefs of the Ordnance Department were:
Henry K. Craig (to April 23, 1861);
James W. Ripley (to September, 1863)
George B. Ramsay (to September, 1864)
Alexander B. Dyer (to postbellum)

Ripley gets some criticism regarding his focus on what was in production (M1861) and available (various rifled versions of previous standard designs and what could be acquired in Europe, both for the US forces and to deny said material to the rebels). Given the realities of the 1861-62 mobilization, I don't really see that the US had any options but standardizing on muzzle-loading rifles in 1861-62, whether .54, .577. .58. or .69 caliber. Arming more than a million men required praticality, period.

Best,

Apologies to Meigs:eek: Don't know where that came from then.

BTW? What about the refusal to employ Gatling Guns, and were breech-loading cannon available from overseas sources?
 
The only one on this list I would quibble over is 1st Bull Run, I don't think McDowell was organized enough to march on Richmond in the aftermath. Otherwise I'd say the list is spot on.

Except I should point out you might want to remove Gettysburg from the list since it was already a Union victory and did lead to game over :p

We'll never know how a Union Victorious result of First Bull Run would have worked out. You could have seen Jackson either killed or humiliated, while the CS Army has failed to get the mystique it enjoyed for the rest of the war. At best, its more Monty vs. Rommel than Ritchie vs. Rommel:rolleyes:

As to Gettysburg, that was a defensive victory, strategically it was a failure to bag Lee's army north of the Potomac. That would never happen again. No Game Over there.:(
 
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I think he's referring to Hooker's decision to stop the advance on May 1 and fall back into a defensive position, thus surrendering the initiative to Lee. And I would agree that it was a form of cowardice. Hooker had put together a good plan and had executed it well up to that point, but when Lee showed up, Hooker simply got scared. He was a physically brave man, but there is a difference between physically bravery, where you only risk your own life, and command bravery, where you have to risk the lives of thousands of men, as well as your own reputation.

Lee was a brilliant tactician, but half of his strength lay in his reputation. You could almost hear Hooker think, "What happened to McClellan, Pope, and Burnside is about to happen to me! Maybe I'm not good enough."

Even Grant, the most "command courageous" general in the war on either side, was not immune to the Lee mystique. At the end of the first day in the Wilderness, he sat down on his cot and cried. Again, you can almost hear him thinking, "Maybe all that I've been told about Lee is true. Maybe I'm not good enough."

Hooker and Grant faced the same crisis in confidence when they first came up against Lee. They both got scared. But Grant, unlike Hooker, was able to overcome his fear and keep moving forward.

Even by Grant's standards, Day One of the Battle of the Wilderness was the worst ever in his career regarding casualties up to that date, and Cold Harbor was yet to come. Lee didn't scare, but his greatest weakness was overconfidence that was all but indestructible. Not Hood's overconfidence, but Jackson's. Though not as severe as Stonewall's. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if early in the war Lee had died and Jackson took command of the AoNV.

I don't think it was so much a momentary fear of Lee as being extremely overwrought over his command circumstances. He was warned in advance the notorious political nature of the AotP, and tried to arrange for the best corps commanders to step forward. Yet once again, Lee had his triumph.

I wonder, that night? Did Grant know that Longstreet had fallen?
 
All in all, it sounds to me as though Lee was right when he said that they had to choose between the possible loss of Mississippi or Virginia. But OTOH, Bruce Catton was also right in saying that this was bad news for the Confederacy, as it could not afford to lose either.

The Union also had the problem of politically directed campaigns that didn't help Union victory, like the invasions of Arkansas, Western Louisiana, and Knoxville. Though the Confederacy's invasions of Kentucky, Missouri, and New Mexico/the Arizona Territory helped to balance those off.
 
We'll never know how a Union Victorious result of First Bull Run would have worked out. You could have seen Jackson either killed or humiliated, while the CS Army has failed to get the mystique it enjoyed for the rest of the war. At best, its more Monty vs. Rommel than Ritchie vs. Rommel:roll eyes:

Didn't the CS Army really only win its mystique during the Seven Days? Neither army was in good condition after the battle. Can't really see it ending the war immediately.

I grant you that there are some good POD's which could shorten the war there (early death of Jackson for one) but I usually have trouble looking at the battle as ending the war early since the "Onwards to Richmond" attitude was what forced the poorly organized force into battle in the first place, and doesn't speak well for sound decision making in the aftermath.

As to Gettysburg, that was a defensive victory, strategically it was a failure to bag Lee's army north of the Potomac. That would never happen again. No Game Over there.:(

Ah so you mean offensive victories over the CSA only then.

Well one way to look at this is to ask how we can get the Union back on the offensive quickly in the Gettysburg Campaign.
 

fred1451

Banned
Too many times in the ACW the Union army indeed got very close to victory, when time and time again it was incompetence (Patterson, who was supposed to come to McDowell's aid at First Bull Run), cowardice (McClellan, at the Seven Days AND Antietam), incompetence again (Burnside at Fredericksburg (1)), and incompetence AND cowardice (Hooker, at Chancellorsville) that led to Confederate victory where there should have been none.

1) Though at Fredericksburg there never really was a chance of Union victory short of the employment of Maxim machine guns.

For the CSA, they had to win on the defense every single time. They never lost on the strategic defensive until Lee's lines at Petersburg were broken. For the USA, if ANY of the following battles yield a Union victory, its Game Over for the South:

1st Bull Run
The Peninsula Campaign/Seven Days
Antietam
Gettysburg
Spotsylvania
The initial advance on Petersburg

The outcomes of every one of these battles/campaigns can be drawn specifically to Union command failure, even Meade's, in his following the advice of his councils-of-war, rather than following his own council.
The only problem is any of those battles were Union victories we would have saw a guerilla war in the Deep South. Again, it would not be a war the South was going to win, but if it had gone down that way there would probably be places in the Deep South that it would be unhealthy for a northerner to travel through even today. Please understand, I'm not saying the North didn't have to try, just that it really didn't matter what they did, the war would not be won or lost between Washington and Richmond.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I wonder, that night? Did Grant know that Longstreet had fallen?

That's a very good question that I admit I had never thought of. Rumors certainly would have reached him from prisoners captured in the latter part of the day's fighting, since word of Longstreet's wounding passed quickly throughout the First Corps. Longstreet and Grant were good friends and perhaps he had been misinformed that Old Pete had been killed.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
The Gatling was only patented as such

Apologies to Meigs:eek: Don't know where that came from then. BTW? What about the refusal to employ Gatling Guns, and were breech-loading cannon available from overseas sources?

The Gatling was only patented as such in the winter of 1862-63; production, trials, and IOC is probably a multi-month process in its own right, and Gatling was not a manufacturer, he was a designer (and self-taught, meaning even his inspired design had to be standardized to be ready for industrial production).

As such, it was in battery-level service by 1864-65, and was used at (for example) Petersburg. Useful as a defensive weapon when dug in and with its crew protected from small arms and sniper fire, it was far less useful than artillery on the offensive because of range and sighting issues.

Breech-loading artillery was available (the Armstrong pattern adopted by the British Army and RN, and the Whitworth designs which were not adopted officially by the UK) but the technology was very immature, to the point that within ten years of the original orders of Armstrong's designs in 1855, both the Army and the Navy had converted back to rifled muzzle loaders. The Armstrong designs, although impressive in many ways, were deemed unsatisfactory by both the British Army and Royal Navy, reduced to scrap, and replaced by weapons that were operationally useful - i.e. "soldier and sailor" proof.;)

Sort of an early "Queen's Bad Bargain."

Some of the above types were imported, by both the US and rebels, but given the realities of 1861-62, the same number of 3 inch ordnance rifles or light 12 pounders (i.e, Napoleons) would have been more useful, and given the cost, pound for pound, more of either could have been procured for the cost of the flawed breechloaders.

Again, considering the scale of the forces the US mobilized in 1861-65, the pattern of the "the best is the enemy of the good" was a very real threat to readiness; given the size of the war, 500,000 men in the winter of 1861-62 with muzzle-loaders, both rifles and muskets, was far more useful than 50,000 men armed with breechloaders every would be...

God is, almost always, on the side of the bigger battalions.;)

Best,
 
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