I want to thank all my readers (particularly those on facebook) for their criticism and encouragement about my blog post, "The Limits of Grant's Nerve." They led me to change my views a little. There follows what I intend to write about the attitude adjustments Grant and Lee underwent toward one another during 1864 from the Wilderness (May 5-6) through Jerusalem Plank Road (June 21-23):
Grant
and Lee underwent attitude adjustments during the 1864 campaign. They behaved more cautiously than before they
had joined battle. Each had entered the campaign
considering the other overrated. By
deceiving Lee at the Mule Shoe and during the James crossing, Grant had
convinced the Southern chieftain that he finally faced a foe whose movements he
could not predict. Lee entered
Petersburg on June 18 in such a state that he uncharacteristically declined to
counterattack the Union left on the spot as Beauregard suggested, but the
Virginian’s aggressiveness soon returned.
By
contesting almost every inch of ground from the Rapidan to the Weldon Railroad,
he disabused the Federal general-in-chief of the idea that he might maneuver
with impunity. After Grant's defeat in the battle of
Jerusalem Plank Road, he declined to cut loose from the City Point
bridgehead with the Army of the Potomac to sever Lee’s communications. Warren had suggested and Grant had considered
such a move.[1] The general-in-chief claimed to want to fight
Lee’s army outside its entrenchments, which cutting loose would compel.[2] Meade and Barnard persuaded Grant that such
an operation would be too hazardous.[3]
The Moment of Truth at the battle of Jerusalem Plank Road, 3:15 p.m., June 21, 1864
Map by Hal Jespersen
Sherman
has been criticized for lack of a killer instinct, but he cut loose in late
August 1864 from his bridgehead over the Chattahoochee River and forced the
Confederates to abandon Atlanta.[4] Sherman did not face Robert E. Lee and did not
have a corps of enemy infantry unaccounted for and possibly poised to pounce on
his flank or rear.[5] Early’s actual location proved even more
problematical. The unknown location of
Early’s corps justified the-general-in-chief’s prudence. Grant chose the right course in not cutting
loose.
Early’s
approach to Washington closed the window for cutting loose by drawing off
troops necessary for the operation.[6] The window did not reopen until the troops
sent in response to Early’s threat to the capital returned to Petersburg, but
that was after Lincoln’s reelection when it was unnecessary to take the risks attendant
on cutting loose.[7]
[1]OR 40, 1:26, 2:333-334, 477-478.
[2]Porter, Campaigning with Grant,
155.
[3]OR 40, 2:333, 478-479.
[4]Albert E. Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Lawrence,
KS, 1991), 485-486, 563-565; Richard M. McMurry, Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy (Lincoln,
NE, 2001), 169-171, 182-183.
[5]Castel wrote, “Had Sherman been the
one to have gone against Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia in the spring of
1864 (Meade, when Grant visited him in March of that year, assumed that Sherman
would be given command of the Army of the Potomac), in all likelihood he would
have cracked beneath their terrible hammer blows.” Castel, Decision in the West, 564. McMurry wrote, “Neither of [Sherman’s]
opponents was an especially able general nor received the wholehearted support
of his subordinates.” McMurry, Atlanta
1864, 182. Fuller, no partisan of
Lee, wrote that Grant was “faced not by a Pemberton or a Bragg,
but by Lee, the most renowned general of the day, and to be confronted
by a task which had broken McDowell, McClellan, Pope, Burnside, and Hooker, and
which had halted Meade.” Fuller, The
Generalship of U. S. Grant, 281 (emphases in original). Fuller further wrote, “As a general, Lee
must stand or fall by his last campaign; for[...], though he won no battle, it was
the most skilful, masterful and heroic he was ever engaged in.” Ibid., 381 (emphasis in original). This is praise indeed coming from a Britisher
so biased against the Virginian as to ignore Lee’s victories at Jerusalem Plank
Road and First Reams Station, among others.
Ibid., 445, 448.
[6]OR 40, 3:35-36.
[7]Ibid., 42, 3:865-867, 891-892. Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, the apostle of the indirect approach, who championed Sherman over Grant, would probably in principle have approved of cutting loose at some point. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (New York, 1991), 330-333.
