Meade Goes Nowhere
July 1863: The Army of the Potomac’s Strategic Odyssey Between Gettysburg and Wilderness
William Terdoslavich
Major General George Gordon Meade just won the Battle of Gettysburg.
Now what?
Yes, Meade won a great victory against an overconfident General Robert E. Lee. It was an unimaginative battle of repeated Confederate frontal assaults against Union troops posted on defensible hilltops and ridges. Meade was competent, but not brilliant. He did not follow up his victory by crushing Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
And this vexed his boss, President Abraham Lincoln. Meade’s victory note about “driving the enemy away from our soil” ruffled Lincoln’s sensibility. Even though the southern states had seceded from the Union, isn’t it all “our soil”? Thus Meade burned a measure of goodwill with the president in the first weeks of his command. This would later grow into doubts and second-guessing as Meade spent the rest of 1863 maneuvering and countermaneuvering against Lee all over central Virginia without triggering a major battle.
What happened?
Or better yet, what did not happen?
Lee Retreats, Meade Advances
July 5, 1863, found two mauled armies staring down each other at Gettysburg. Federal losses were about 23,000, roughly 25 percent of the Army of the Potomac. Confederate losses ranged from 20,000 to 28,000, roughly one-third of Lee’s force.
(Casualties represent the total number of troops not available due to all losses. At Gettysburg, the Union lost 3,185 killed, 14,529 wounded, and 5,365 missing, while Confederate losses were 3,903 killed, 18,735 wounded, and 5,425 missing. Death rates for the wounded in the Civil War averaged about 14 percent.)
Meade had spent a good part of the battle busting up corps and divisions to fill his line and avert crisis. Those units had to be resorted and reunited with their parent formations. The Army of the Potomac also had to be reinforced and resupplied before pursuing the Army of Northern Virginia. Even though Lee’s army was just as banged up as Meade’s, it was still Lee who was first off the mark retreating back to Virginia.
By July 7, Lee’s columns reached Williamsport, Maryland, in desperate straits. He only had 35,000 men left, given battle losses, desertions, and straggling. A Union raid destroyed Lee’s pontoon bridge over the Potomac at Falling Waters, about eight miles to the west of Williamsport. Lee’s engineers improvised the construction of a pontoon bridge, cannibalizing the town’s buildings for lumber. The alternative was being pushed into the river by Meade’s force of 85,000. It would be like the risk taken at Antietam, only with a better chance for Union success. Unlike the slow and indecisive McClellan, Meade never took counsel of his fears. Meade could usually be counted on to make the right decision most of the time and be pretty dogged about getting the job done. If only his subordinates could be as quick or sure!
Come July 12, Meade was within striking distance. Attack? No. His remaining corps commanders counseled caution. (Meade knew he was cursed with a lack of decent corps commanders. All the aggressive ones were killed or wounded at Gettysburg.) Lee used that pause to slip his army across the Potomac on the night of the 13th, sacrificing his rear guard to aggressive Union cavalry probes that came the next day.
Meade was not giving up that easily. He crossed the Potomac farther south and quick-marched his army east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. On the other side, Lee’s columns plodded down the Shenandoah Valley. At Manassas Gap on July 22, Meade pushed a corps west to strike Lee’s force in the flank. This attack needed the leadership of an aggressive pit bull, but sadly it was Major General William French, a cautious poodle, who commanded. His force only tangled with Lee’s rear guard. Meade had hoped to force a battle the next day, but by then Lee was gone.
By late July, the Army of Northern Virginia reached its base at Culpeper Court House, smack on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, south of the Rappahannock River. Meade’s army stayed north of the river, dispersed to cover all crossings.
Lee felt he had failed his cause after Gettysburg, and now Meade was occupying the same lines that Major General John Pope did the year before. Lee tendered his resignation to President Jefferson Davis, who declined to accept it.
Lee Advances, Meade Retreats
The Confederacy faced some serious strategic dilemmas after suffering summer defeats in the east and the west. By September, Jefferson Davis signed off on “the western concentration,” a plan that drew reinforcements from other Confederate armies in the field, sending them to General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee. The goal was to defeat the Army of the Cumberland as it advanced out of Chattanooga into Georgia.
Lee had to send the corps of Lieutenant General James Longstreet to aid the effort, leaving the Army of Northern Virginia with 47,000 men split into two corps to face Meade, who had 77,000. Worse, Meade got wind of Longstreet’s absence and crossed the Rappahannock in force on September 13, capturing Culpeper while Lee slipped away south across the Rapidan. But Meade’s plan to march around Lee came to a halt. Rosecrans was beaten at Chickamauga, and now Meade had to send two corps to reinforce the Army of the Cumberland in Chattanooga.
Meade was aware of Lee’s dangerous talent for maneuver. He always kept the Army of the Potomac concentrated, and never took a position where Lee could march around him. The Army of the Potomac managed to stay between Lee and Washington, slowly retreating north toward Manassas. On October 14, Lieutenant General A. P. Hill attacked one of Meade’s columns at Bristoe Station, only to see one of his divisions chewed to pieces. Meade entrenched around Centreville, just twenty miles west of Washington, D.C. Lee declined the chance to repeat Pickett’s charge. The daring march north had tricked Pope into giving battle the year before, but it didn’t work on Meade.
Meade Advances, Lee Retreats . . . Again!
Without a rail line to supply his army, Lee could not tarry long in barren Virginia. He retreated more than forty miles south toward his base—and supplies—all the while tearing up the Orange & Alexandria rail line. Meade followed, his support troops re-laying rail line almost as quickly. By November, Lee was back across the Rappahannock. Only this time, he left a small force to cover a bridgehead north of that river at Kelly’s Ford. A surprise attack led by a then unknown brigade commander named Emory Upton captured the bridgehead, bagging two Confederate brigades.
It was now November. The Army of the Potomac crossed the Rappahannock in force . . . again! Lee crossed south of the Rapidan . . . again! It was now late November, and all this marching around was not leading to a decisive battle . . . again!
Meade was not leaving without a fight. He had to do something. Lincoln and the War Department were demanding action. So Meade played the last card up his sleeve. He planned to march east and cross the Rapidan at a pair of fords to get between the two corps of Lee’s army and hopefully destroy them one at a time. Speed being of the essence, the wagon trains would be left behind. Each man carried rations for ten days.
The plan looked good on paper, but Meade forgot to factor in extra time to cover the unexpected, in this case the unexpected failure of French’s corps to pack enough pontoons to bridge the Rapidan. A day was lost, and things only worsened when French’s corps finally crossed and took a turn down the wrong road. Nevertheless, this was a crisis for Lee. He pulled back the corps of Lieutenant General Richard Ewell to Mine Run, a small creek that flows north to the Rapidan. Hurriedly, A. P. Hill’s corps advanced to take position beside Ewell. By the time Meade got his mistakes sorted out, his army faced a very strong enemy position.
The victor of Gettysburg was not foolish enough to launch his own version of Pickett’s Charge. Taking his last chance, Meade planned to attack with two corps on November 29. One corps would pin Lee’s army, while the other would march around Lee’s right flank. That morning, Union guns boomed on Meade’s right, signaling the pinning attack. But nothing was heard on Meade’s left. Riding there, Meade saw his corps commander, Major General Gouverneur Warren, sitting tight. Lee expected the outflanking attack and reinforced his right. The position was too strong to attack or turn, Warren concluded. Meade concurred.
That did not end the “battle” just yet. Lee planned to launch an attack to go around Meade’s left. When the move began on December 2, it hit thin air. Meade had “disappeared,” pulling his army north of the Rapidan.
Meade and Lee Stare at Each Other
Now that winter gripped Virginia, both armies went into winter quarters—that long pause until spring when troops traded tents for cabins and the lousy weather made it too difficult to campaign. Lee was no longer able to pull off acts of strategic magic that produced victories. When facing timid and incompetent commanders, Lee could get away with dividing his forces in the face of a larger enemy army, marching his corps to a position that threatened it, and fighting at a time and place of his own choosing. But the Union had pretty much run through its sorry stock of mediocre generals, each one getting fired after losing to Lee. Eventually competent Union generals had to rise to the top. Meade was one of them, not brilliant, but good enough.
But good enough for the Army of the Potomac was not good enough for Lincoln. He needed generals who could win battles and destroy armies, for once a Confederate army was destroyed, the land would fall under the control of the United States by default. Meade didn’t get this. He still thought in terms of taking Richmond, preferably by way of the Peninsula southeast of the Confederate capital. (It almost worked for the timid Major General George McClellan.) Meade judged the overland route a waste since Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia could only strengthen as it retreated toward its base, while the Army of the Potomac only weakened as it detached brigades to protect its supply line.
Meade’s relationship with his superiors was further degraded by his attitude. A professional soldier, Meade believed civilians had no place dictating strategy or demanding action. A general’s professional judgment should rule. But that made Meade’s task of “managing up” more difficult, depriving him of any benefit of the doubt when plans produced barren results. In the end, Meade could not bring Lee to battle, rendering the previous five months of maneuver a complete waste of time. Historians sometimes refer to the closing act of this phase of the war as “the Mine Run Campaign,” but the whole thing might as well be called “the Nowhere Campaign.”
Disappointed by the lack of victory, Lincoln ordered Major General Ulysses S. Grant to turn over his command in Tennessee to William T. Sherman and come east to take charge of the war, and in turn the Army of the Potomac. And Grant would do what Meade could not—go around Lee’s flank and bring him to battle.
In the campaign to come, that would happen again, and again, and again.