For the Confederacy to win the war it had to do more than fight defensive battles, as winning those only prolonged the war and a long war inevitably would be a war of attrition, which was a war the South could not win. Robert E. Lee saw that as clearly as did Ulysses S. Grant. After Lee’s greatest victory of maneuver, the Battle of Chancellorsville, the South rejoiced – but Lee’s emotions were much more measured. A larger host had indeed been forced to retreat in confusion, but the actual dead and wounded from the battle was just about the same for both sides – somewhat more than 10,000 for each – and the Virginia countryside continued to became even more depleted. To Lee, it was becoming clear that to win the Confederacy would have to break the Union’s resolve to continue the war, as only that would undermine the political power base of the Lincoln administration. Then, and perhaps only then, would the North be willing to consider and possibly accept the division of the country. The South could and did win some impressive victories in the West – such as Chickamauga, which left a Union Army routed and besieged in Chattanooga – but such victories were not on the doorstep of Washington and consequently did not produce the required political shock effect. At Chattanooga, the Union merely brought in a different general – Ulysses S. Grant – and provided the resources to lift the siege. For the Union, it was business as usual.
The charge of the 4th Texas at Gaine’s Mill, June 27, 1861, by Stephen Walsh © Osprey Publishing Ltd. Taken from Campaign 133: Seven Days Battles 1862.
The Confederates mass their guns on Herr Ridge and Oak Hill in preparation for a coordinated assault. (Patrick LeBeau & Chris Ward)
For the South to win and to force the Union to accept a political separation would require the humbling of the North’s premier military force, the Army of the Potomac, in a manner and location that would produce a political shockwave in Washington sufficient to fracture the administration’s congressional support to continue the war. For the Confederacy, this created the conundrum that while the North could eventually win the war by winning in the West, the South could only win it by winning in the East, and winning it in a manner that would be perceived as threatening Washington itself. This fact was not lost on President Lincoln and was a major factor in his almost paranoiac insistence that the first mission of the Army of the Potomac must always be that of shielding Washington from any possible Confederate threat. While Lincoln’s fixation on protecting Washington frequently made questionable military sense and resulted in a number of embarrassing setbacks, it did make perfect political sense, as Lincoln, perhaps more than some of his generals, instinctively knew what was at stake.
In an attempt to create the situation that could lead to a victory with political impact, General Robert E. Lee would directly threaten Washington or other significant northern cities three times: in 1862 with the Antietam campaign, in 1863 with the invasion of Pennsylvania and in 1864 when Lee sent Jubal Early north through the Shenandoah Valley. Each time, the Army of the Potomac responded to Lincoln’s exhortations to place sufficient troops between the Confederates and Washington so as to block any threat. In 1862 and 1863, while Lee was successful in forcing the Army of the Potomac to redeploy and protect Washington, the major battles that did result – Antietam and Gettysburg – were hardly the decisive victory Lee was hoping for. And while Jubal Early’s drive in 1864 did create some panic in the city, his 15,000 men were eventually checked by the Washington fortifications and the dispatch of three veteran divisions of the VI Corps from the Army of the Potomac. After the Union brought in even more troops, along with Major General Phil Sheridan, that was the end of any more threats from the Shenandoah Valley.
Of those three “invasions” the Gettysburg campaign was the most promising for Confederate hopes for a military victory that could translate into a political victory. The 1863 invasion came right on the heels of the Battle of Chancellorsville – yet another Union defeat in the East – and quickly drove through Maryland. Within weeks Confederates were in a position to threaten Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania. Unlike the 1862 invasion that culminated with the Confederates quickly going on the defensive around Antietam creek, this time it appeared to many in Washington that the rebels had free reign throughout southern Pennsylvania and a choice as to which northern city they would sack first. The truth, of course, was much more nuanced and complex – but wars are often decided not by reality, but by perception. On July 1, 1863 outside of Gettysburg the Confederates had the opportunity to turn that perception into reality. Historically, that did not happen. However, throughout that day and the days preceding and following it decisions were made, not made, or changed by both sides that shaped the battle. Given the potential impact of those days of decisions – both large and small – on the course of the battle and possibly the war, this scenario book dissects the First Day of Gettysburg using ten scenarios or scenario combinations reflecting both how it actually did and how it could have played out. In addition, a mini-campaign structure is included that can be used to play out one possible outcome of General George Meade’s initially preferred option of fighting along Pipe Creek. This first scenario set of ten different Gettysburg scenarios that can be played individually or joined together will enable the wargamer or amateur historian to explore many of the “what ifs” or “should have dones” of the First Day of Gettysburg in a playable wargame format.
The battles and campaigns of the American Civil War were fought across the entire scope of the United States and its western territories. There was not an area that was untouched and almost every battle would have a local, regional and national impact. That said, some battles had greater impact than others and some theaters were more politically important than others. It has been argued that for the North to win they had to win first in the West, starting with the opening of the Mississippi and then slice through the heart of the Confederacy from Nashville to Atlanta. Then with its transportation, industrial and agricultural sectors destroyed, occupied or broken up, the effectiveness of the Southern armies would inexorably decline and the Confederacy would inevitably implode. The erosion of the South’s military capacity would be accelerated by constantly opening new fronts, which in turn would stretch Richmond’s dwindling economic and military resources ever thinner. In essence, that was the core of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant’s overall strategic plan for 1864 – “attack everywhere.”
As long as the Union maintained the collective political will to continuously rebuild and expand its armies and to keep sifting through its generals until it found those that could win, while always looking for operations that could add another crisis requiring the Confederacy to find more troops to send to yet another front, then the North would prevail – if not this year, then perhaps the next. In this long view, the value of the Union’s peripheral campaigns becomes more obvious as each one represents yet another emergency that would further divert critical Southern resources, so that at some point there would be one too many holes in the southern dike. In that context, this scenario book will examine battles from two frequently overlooked campaigns which on the surface appeared to accomplish little, but in reality were very much a part of Grant’s grand strategy of “attack everywhere” and contributed in no small measure to the overextension of Lee’s army, which would finally lead to its surrender.
The 20th Maine’s stand on Little Round Top, by Adam Hook © Osprey Publishing Ltd. Taken from Campaign 52: Gettysburg 1863.
One was the Shenandoah Campaign in the late spring of 1864, which started with a Union Army under Franz Sigel marching south through the Shenandoah Valley – the agricultural breadbasket of the Army of Northern Virginia – that immediately prompted General Breckenridge to respond with 4,000 soldiers. Though Sigel’s force was soundly defeated at New Market, Breckinridge was promptly called east to assist Lee in countering Grant’s continuous southward movement towards Cold Harbor. Meanwhile, within two weeks, a revitalized Union Army of the Shenandoah now under the aggressive General David Hunter again rolled southward through the Valley, and after defeating a sizable Confederate force at Piedmont advanced into Lynchburg, one of the major rail centers for western Virginia. This was a situation that had to be addressed, and Lee diverted Jubal Early with 14,000 men to drive Hunter out. Though it worked and Hunter fled into West Virginia, Lee now had that much less as he faced Grant’s relentless assaults. Consequently, the two modest-sized battles of New Market and Piedmont would have a ripple effect beyond their local impact, and are the subject of two most elegant scenarios by one of this period’s most noted wargame scholars, Dean West.
The second often overlooked campaign was launched in September of 1864 by Major General Ben Butler’s Army of the James. Using a night march, Butler would take two corps across the James River and simultaneously launch two early morning attacks against two separate points of Richmond’s outer defenses. Those outer defenses at New Market Heights and Fort Harrison were breeched as the Confederates had too few units to properly defend either. However, since continued Union success might have broken through to Richmond itself, Lee had to pull 8,000 men that could hardly be spared from the Petersburg front to contain and attempt to roll back this latest threat. Butler’s offensive is represented by a scenario covering the attack on New Market Heights, which proved that the black soldiers of the United States Colored Troops (USCT) were the equal of any on the field. This little campaign, like the operations in the Shenandoah Valley in early 1864, constantly forced the Confederates to keep rotating fewer and fewer forces to more and more points of Union pressure. As Grant foresaw, it would be a process that, in time, could have only one inevitable result – Confederate military collapse and surrender.