paul krugman highlighted this too on his blog, a bit less hot-button than his articles usually are, heh heh.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
Mar 31 7:56 am Mar 31 7:56 am 40
The Road to Five Forks
Today in my Civil War obsession: some readers may recall that I’m a big U.S. Grant admirer; the scene at Appomattox, where the dashing cavalier Lee surrendered to the stumpy, grimy Grant, marks the coming of the modern era. I also find the campaign that led to that moment fascinating. And that campaign began in earnest 150 years ago today.
What happened was that Grant sent a force around Lee’s right, to threaten his lines of communication. What strikes me on reading accounts of how this played out are two things. First, Grant really was wasting no time — he moved as soon as the weather permitted, and actually a bit early. If you read the linked piece, you see that Union cavalry had to make heroic efforts simply to move across the flooded landscape, building corduroy roads as it went.
Second, we’re still talking about very hard fighting — as far as I can tell, precisely because Grant was aggressive about moving even in dubious weather. That temporarily left the Union cavalry in front facing a counterattack from a much larger force of Confederate infantry. The battle of Dinwiddie Court House was a nail-biting fighting retreat on the Union side, with heavy casualties all around.
The next day, of course, the Union infantry came up, and things got decisive.
====
Apr 1 8:27 am Apr 1 8:27 am 60
Five Forks Day
Whoops: almost forgot to do my followup to yesterday’s Dinwiddie Court House post.
I am, again, a big U.S. Grant admirer. One interesting thing about his record as a general, which I don’t fully understand myself, is that he was more or less unique in that war in his ability to win decisively.
Here’s what I mean: in the Civil War, by and large, even the bloodiest battles generally left both armies able to fight again. Soldiers would be mowed down in the thousands, some would flee in panic, but at the end of the day the losing side would limp away with its cohesion intact. In fact, often the army that ended up in possession of the field would take heavier casualties than the army that retreated.
There were no doubt reasons for this. One obvious one was that rifles meant an end to the kind of saber-swinging cavalry pursuit that had turned defeat into destruction in previous wars.
But Grant repeatedly succeeded in bagging whole armies: Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and of course Appomattox. And for that matter the battle of Five Forks, fought 150 years ago today, was far more decisive than other Civil War engagements.
The story on March 31 was that a Confederate counterattack against the cavalry leading Grant’s left hook around Lee’s defenses pushed the cavalry back, but failed to achieve anything decisive. The Confederates (under George Pickett) then pulled back to the crucial junction at Five Forks, where they were attacked both by the cavalry and by infantry pushing into the gap between Pickett and the rest of Lee’s army. There was a lot of fog-of-war confusion, with much of the infantry marching into empty space for a while, but eventually enough came to the right place to rout Pickett — and the lost units arrived in Pickett’s rear, effectively bagging a large part of his force.
When report of the victory reached Grant, he asked an interesting question: How many prisoners? My guess is that he wanted a clear measure of two things: the reality of decisive victory, and the size of the force that had just been defeated. When he was told that there were thousands, he knew both that the just-beaten force wasn’t going to reappear on the battlefield and that Lee must have stripped his defensive lines to make that effort. So he ordered an attack all along the front.
There’s a passage in Bruce Catton, I think, describing how one observer saw it: a line of twinkling lights in the pre-dawn darkness — Confederate rifles firing — then gaps appearing and spreading, and suddenly the whole line going dark.
The war was almost over.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
Mar 31 7:56 am Mar 31 7:56 am 40
The Road to Five Forks
Today in my Civil War obsession: some readers may recall that I’m a big U.S. Grant admirer; the scene at Appomattox, where the dashing cavalier Lee surrendered to the stumpy, grimy Grant, marks the coming of the modern era. I also find the campaign that led to that moment fascinating. And that campaign began in earnest 150 years ago today.
What happened was that Grant sent a force around Lee’s right, to threaten his lines of communication. What strikes me on reading accounts of how this played out are two things. First, Grant really was wasting no time — he moved as soon as the weather permitted, and actually a bit early. If you read the linked piece, you see that Union cavalry had to make heroic efforts simply to move across the flooded landscape, building corduroy roads as it went.
Second, we’re still talking about very hard fighting — as far as I can tell, precisely because Grant was aggressive about moving even in dubious weather. That temporarily left the Union cavalry in front facing a counterattack from a much larger force of Confederate infantry. The battle of Dinwiddie Court House was a nail-biting fighting retreat on the Union side, with heavy casualties all around.
The next day, of course, the Union infantry came up, and things got decisive.
====
Apr 1 8:27 am Apr 1 8:27 am 60
Five Forks Day
Whoops: almost forgot to do my followup to yesterday’s Dinwiddie Court House post.
I am, again, a big U.S. Grant admirer. One interesting thing about his record as a general, which I don’t fully understand myself, is that he was more or less unique in that war in his ability to win decisively.
Here’s what I mean: in the Civil War, by and large, even the bloodiest battles generally left both armies able to fight again. Soldiers would be mowed down in the thousands, some would flee in panic, but at the end of the day the losing side would limp away with its cohesion intact. In fact, often the army that ended up in possession of the field would take heavier casualties than the army that retreated.
There were no doubt reasons for this. One obvious one was that rifles meant an end to the kind of saber-swinging cavalry pursuit that had turned defeat into destruction in previous wars.
But Grant repeatedly succeeded in bagging whole armies: Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and of course Appomattox. And for that matter the battle of Five Forks, fought 150 years ago today, was far more decisive than other Civil War engagements.
The story on March 31 was that a Confederate counterattack against the cavalry leading Grant’s left hook around Lee’s defenses pushed the cavalry back, but failed to achieve anything decisive. The Confederates (under George Pickett) then pulled back to the crucial junction at Five Forks, where they were attacked both by the cavalry and by infantry pushing into the gap between Pickett and the rest of Lee’s army. There was a lot of fog-of-war confusion, with much of the infantry marching into empty space for a while, but eventually enough came to the right place to rout Pickett — and the lost units arrived in Pickett’s rear, effectively bagging a large part of his force.
When report of the victory reached Grant, he asked an interesting question: How many prisoners? My guess is that he wanted a clear measure of two things: the reality of decisive victory, and the size of the force that had just been defeated. When he was told that there were thousands, he knew both that the just-beaten force wasn’t going to reappear on the battlefield and that Lee must have stripped his defensive lines to make that effort. So he ordered an attack all along the front.
There’s a passage in Bruce Catton, I think, describing how one observer saw it: a line of twinkling lights in the pre-dawn darkness — Confederate rifles firing — then gaps appearing and spreading, and suddenly the whole line going dark.
The war was almost over.
Comment