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A Glorious Army: Robert E Lee's Triumph, 1862-1863 by Jeffry D Wert

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A Glorious Army: Robert E Lee's Triumph, 1862-1863 by Jeffry D Wert Empty A Glorious Army: Robert E Lee's Triumph, 1862-1863 by Jeffry D Wert

Post  Bookworm Fri Oct 11, 2013 6:02 pm

The Confederate victories in the Eastern, or Virginian theatre of the American civil war during Lee's initial two years as commander, were an eerie combination of the general's lack of battlefield coordination and the Union's tentative mismanagement. Every major battle of historical Southern significance during the Peninsular Campaign between the York and James River in Virginia, followed by the Fredericksburg fiasco on the Rappahannock in late December 1862 under General Burnside, rebuffed the Union thrust toward the capital of Richmond but were nevertheless considered victories for the forces of Union General George McClelland. Mechanicsville and Gaines's Mills, Malvern Hill, Glendale, and Cedar Mountain are not battle locales that come readily to mind in discussions of major encounters in 1862, but were massive slaughter pens when it came to tallying both Southern and Northern casualties totaling 55,000. Only the Battle of Antietam in Maryland, still called the single bloodiest day of the conflict, is rightly heralded as stifling the Rebel efforts for final victory.
Significantly, the stalemate at Sharpsburg as the South called Antietam Creek, negated any Confederate acclaim gained at the Second Battle of Bull Run at Manassas Junction nearly a month earlier.
Six months after the shooting gallery humiliation on Mayre's Heights at Fredericksburg, Lee's forces gained a stunning victory a few miles west on the Rappahannock at a one-tavern town called Chancellorsville where Lee and Stonewall Jackson turned the greatest flanking movement in military history while outnumbered easily by 62,000 troops. Lee gambled and won, lost Jackson to friendly fire, and began to think of his veterans as invincible, truly a glorious army.
Gettysburg, of course, changed all that. With victory in hand on the first evening of Wednesday, June 1, Lee did not follow through with orders to General Richard Ewell, who had just arrived from Harrisburg, to take Cemetery Hill, and later, nearby Culp's Hill. Mistake. On the second day, while Ewell and subordinate commanders Early and Johnson pondered and pried Culp's Hill, Lee's "Old War Horse", James Longstreet, failed until late afternoon to initiate the battle plan to wrap up the Union forces on Little Round Top and got involved in bloody miasmas at the Wheatfield, Peach Orchard, and Devil's Den, thanks also in large part to the foolhardy gain-for-glory efforts of Union General Dan Sickles. Another mistake, or mistakes. Surely, Lee still believed, his glorious army would prevail tomorrow.
And, of course, tomorrow came, and if Lee's persistence against the advice of Longstreet had not prevailed, we history buffs and school children would never have heard of George Pickett, whose valiant effort in no-man's land between Seminary and Cemetery ridges on Friday the 3rd, the third day at Gettysburg, were doomed to inglorious failure from the get-go.
We also may never have heard of another Confederate pretty boy in James Ewell Brown Stuart, JEB Stuart, widely regarded as the best cavalry leader ever to ride a horse but who got lost in his mission to guard the right flank of Lee's glorious Army of Northern Virginia in its purpose to end the war this horrible war in Pennsylvania.
This book is truly a glorious read.
Bookworm
Bookworm

Posts : 58
Join date : 2012-06-10
Age : 79

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