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The Battle of Petersburg, June 15â"18, 1864

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS

From the Rapidan to the Chickahominy

March 10–June 3, 1864

Optimism, n. The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is held with greatest tenacity by those most accustomed to the mischance of falling into adversity, and is most acceptably expounded with the grin that apes a smile. Being a blind faith, it is inaccessible to the light of disproof—an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.

The Devil's Dictionary

The Dilemma of George Gordon Meade and the War in Virginia

Few armies in American history were as frustrated by politics, bad luck, and poor commanders as was the Army of the Potomac. By all accounts it should have been a great and successful army. It was at that time among the largest armies ever assembled, numbering anywhere from 60,000 to 130,000 souls in any one battle, although its strength was rarely fewer than 100,000 men. Many of the best and brightest of the prewar army were in its ranks. It was the best-equipped and organized force in the war. Its discipline and drill were such that its men could pull off complex maneuvers and sustain hellish fire without flinching, impressing even skeptical western regiments. Yet despite its precision in drill and its roster of what many considered the most able prewar commanders, the army had known mostly defeat and controversy since its inception.

Its commander as of June 28, 1863, was Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade. He tried to avoid promotion to army command. Yet against his wishes, there was a growing movement in the army to make Meade the commander. He had proven to be a tenacious warrior in both attack and defense, even in the midst of Union defeats at Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. At Chancellorsville he firmly supported battling it out when Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker decided to withdraw. Afterward men such as Brig. Gen. John Gibbon asserted that Meade was the only corps commander in the army who could whip Gen. Robert E. Lee. Even President Abraham Lincoln took note of Meade's abilities, though Lincoln did not seek out Meade at first. He instead offered the command to Maj. Gen. John F. Reynolds, Meade's close friend, but Reynolds turned the president down. Command of the army was, to quote Meade in a letter to his wife, "more likely to destroy one's reputation than to add to it." The previous commanders had been removed and derided. Reynolds, Meade, and others felt it was in part due to Lincoln's unwanted direct interference in the prosecution of the war in Virginia.

Shortly after Reynolds turned down Lincoln's offer, Meade was ordered to replace Hooker. The ever-dutiful Meade was not even given a chance to turn down the order, possibly because his unwillingness to command the army was well known. It came in the midst of General Lee's second invasion of the North, when Union hopes in Virginia were at their nadir. Meade, although new to command, led the army to victory at Gettysburg. Meade's well-positioned troops bled Lee of twenty-eight thousand troops from July 1 to July 3, the heaviest losses a Southern army had ever suffered. Furthermore Meade beat the Army of Northern Virginia when it was at its peak in terms of numbers and morale and, just as important, when Lee needed to win to offset Confederate defeats elsewhere. While Lee was marching north, Confederate forces at Vicksburg and Port Hudson were under siege, and in Tennessee the North was driving closer to Chattanooga.

By all rights Meade should have been hailed as a hero, but he was never to enjoy his hard-fought victory fully. Although he had won the battle only three days after assuming command, he did not strike at Lee at Williamsport, Maryland, as the Confederates waited for a bridge to be repaired. Lee, who knew he had a strong position on Salisbury Ridge, hoped that Meade would attack. A victory would at least dampen Union morale after Gettysburg. By July 14, however, the bridge was ready. Fearing that Meade would not strike his men but instead push into Virginia and drive south, outflanking the Confederate army, Lee withdrew.

Although Lee and Meade were sure that any attack would have been a slaughter, Lincoln was convinced that Meade would have been successful. Lincoln was in anguish after Gettysburg. He declared, "We had them in our grasp. We had only to stretch forth our hands and they were ours." It was a dubious assertion. Lincoln did not see the heavy rains that slowed the army's march and turned the fields into mud. Lincoln also did not hear the officers protest Meade's attack plans. Nor did he gaze upon the thin ranks of the Army of the Potomac, which had lost some twenty-three thousand men, including an unprecedented three corps commanders, in three days of battle. Gettysburg may have been a victory, but the losses suffered were almost catastrophic. A defeated enemy is still a dangerous one, and victorious troops are often just as battered as the army they have recently defeated. Such was the case after Gettysburg.

Lincoln based his judgment of Meade's hesitation upon personal experience. Maj. Gen. George Brinton McClellan had failed to follow up his victories, in particular at Antietam, and Hooker had withdrawn from Chancellorsville only a few months prior to Gettysburg. So in a sense, Meade seemed similar to the other generals but with two differences. On the one hand, he had few friends in Washington DC, so his removal from command would hardly anger any of the factions that Lincoln had to consider. Indeed, although Meade kept quiet about politics, he was known as a conservative and a supporter of McClellan's, who by now was seen by many as a traitor who was unwilling to win the war. On the other hand, unlike Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell, Maj. Gen. George McClellan, Maj. Gen. John Pope, Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, and Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, Meade had actually defeated Lee in a straight fight. This achievement was worth as much to Meade's position as having any number of senators in his corner. Lincoln captured his personal ambivalence when he discussed Meade with Alexander McClure, a Pennsylvania political operative, staunch Lincoln ally, and one of Meade's few political friends. Lincoln said, "I am profoundly grateful down to the bottom of my boots for what he did at Gettysburg, but I think if I were General Meade I would have fought another battle." In the end, Lincoln blamed Meade for failing to destroy Lee and thereby prolonging the war. Lincoln cried when he heard that Lee had made it back to Virginia, and he told his son Robert that if he had been in command, the war would have been won that day. When Lincoln wrote a short and awful poem about the victory at Gettysburg, Meade's name was nowhere to be found. So it was that Meade found himself as both a hero and a pariah.

Regardless of Lincoln's feelings, he was happy at least to have a victory and a commander who suffered few open dissensions from his subordinates. Meade was popular with most of the army's best commanders: Gibbon, Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick, and Maj. Gen. Gouverneur Kemble Warren. Except for Gibbon, any of these men might have replaced Meade, but none of them were willing to intrigue actively against a commander who had shown he could at least outfight Lee. Unlike Burnside and Hooker before him, few of the generals in the army were openly bitter about his command decisions.

Meade's current professional enemies were mostly among the unemployed generals: Hooker, Brig. Gen. Daniel Butterfield, Maj. Gen. Abner Doubleday, and Maj. Gen. Daniel Sickles. Most of these men were unsavory characters overall. Hooker had been a brilliant combat commander and administrator, but his defeat at Chancellorsville and shameless machinations made him one of the most despised men in the army. Maj. Gen. Darius Couch and Maj. Gen. Henry Slocum, neither known for their fiery tempers, both refused to serve under him. Sickles was a politically corrupt womanizer who murdered his wife's lover only to be cleared on the defense of temporary insanity, a first in America. Although brave and competent in brigade command, he had been promoted beyond his abilities. Meade rightfully blamed Sickles for nearly losing Gettysburg with his inept handling of the III Corps; consequently, Meade had earned the lifelong hatred of a powerful politician who dined with the Lincoln family. Butterfield, Meade's former chief of staff and a friend of Hooker's, told all who would listen that Meade wanted to withdraw from Gettysburg on July 2. Doubleday, though, had the only real grievance. After capably commanding the I Corps at Gettysburg, Meade sacked him out of spite. Now Doubleday stalked about Washington DC, looking for a new command and to end Meade's tenure. Last was Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton, Meade's cavalry commander. Although a good leader of horse, Pleasonton was a shameless liar who sought command of the army. Meade, for his part, treated Pleasonton with contempt even before he was made army commander. In such an environment, Meade's margin of error was low after Gettysburg, and he knew it. The army's high command had been a revolving door for longer than a year. Meade was fearful that the door would revolve once more, shoving him out.

Much of the command tension had to do with old antagonisms. West Point was often derided as a den of nascent military aristocracy in the antebellum days. As such, professional officers often felt like a band of misfits; they were called to serve but rarely honored by the nation. In the Civil War this caused a rift between the officer class and many of the leading politicians. The officers were mostly politically conservative and yet called upon to fight a war that became slowly more radical in its conduct and implications. The split in the Army of the Potomac was also a political split. Meade and his allies were mostly Stephen Douglas Democrats who saw the preservation of the union as the war's real goal. Many welcomed the end of slavery but only insofar as slavery threatened the union and ex-slaves could aid the army. To these officers, Hooker, Burnside, and Doubleday had betrayed their comrades by seeking the aid of Radical politicians in advancing their careers.

In the Virginia theater, politicians and military men were in close proximity, and both fought to decide strategy and operations. As such, politicians often distrusted regular army men, who in turned disliked interference from Washington. Lincoln wanted a general who was willing to fight Lee and to destroy him in battle north of Richmond either by attrition or, preferably, in a battlefield victory in the tradition of the Duke of Marlborough and Napoleon. Yet the overland route involved crossing several rivers. The terrain was filled with thick forests, and supplies had to be transported on a single, vulnerable railroad line. Although this line of advance protected Washington DC from attack, it also restricted options and played into Lee's strategy, which called for the use of maneuvering room to create battlefield advantages and, barring that, the use of naturally tough terrain to stymie Union advances on Richmond. What Lee feared most, and exactly what Lincoln wanted to avoid, was a siege of Richmond. The irony was that in the western theater great victories were being won through operational maneuvers that targeted cities and not armies. Combined with some key battlefield victories, the war out west was mostly one of unending Union triumphs. It was also the region where the men in Washington offered only broad directives rather than the micromanagement they now inflicted upon Meade.

Meade followed Lee after Gettysburg, but he received no direction from Washington. Maj. Gen. Henry Wager Halleck, ostensibly the commander of all Union armies but actually little more than an adviser, openly scorned Meade. Halleck had shown early promise as a strategist and organizer, but his battlefield tactics were conservative. Although often derided as an ineffective general in chief, he was also hampered by Lincoln, who often bypassed him in official correspondence. As such Meade and Halleck had a difficult relationship, which made the already prickly Halleck even more churlish.

Halleck, who had once been a supporter of Meade's, now offered advice that was pedantic and condescending. Meade knew Lincoln wanted Lee's army destroyed, but Meade wryly observed that if Lee did not want a battle, he could avoid it. Indeed, Lee was mostly busy rebuilding his army after Gettysburg and would have avoided an engagement with Meade except on the very best terms. Meade wanted to flank Lee either by marching on Fredericksburg or by trying to move up the peninsula. Lincoln rejected both plans, for he wanted Lee destroyed before he could withdraw to Richmond and its entrenchments. In this determination Lincoln played into Lee's hands. Lee feared a slow, grinding campaign at Richmond, where Union superiority in numbers and siege guns would eventually win. So long as he could keep the Army of the Potomac north of Richmond, Lee was sure he had a chance to win the war or at least to prolong it until the North's will was sapped.

Meade, his plans having been ignored, became sullen. Generals out west were allowed to use maneuver to achieve results. Lincoln never told his western generals that the Army of Tennessee had to be destroyed in battle. Meade, by contrast, was placed in a strategic straightjacket, and he remained inactive. The defeat at Chickamauga prompted Lincoln to send the XI and XII Corps out west. Lee, sensing Meade's weakness, made a bold march to cut Meade off from Washington. The operation ended in a minor Union victory at Bristoe Station on October 14. In the aftermath Lincoln described Meade's handling of the army as an example of "imbecility" and "inefficiency," but he doubted if a better general was on hand. On the contrary the lopsided victory increased Meade's prestige in the army. At this point Meade offered more plans of maneuver, but Lincoln and Halleck blocked them while offering nothing but the vague desire that something be done to damage Lee. Meade carried out Lincoln's wishes and pressed south, winning another small but lopsided victory at Rappahannock Station and then driving Lee south to the Rapidan River. Lincoln was pleased, and for a time hopes were high in Washington. At Mine Run Meade's grand maneuver failed due to bungling by Maj. Gen. William H. French. Then on General Warren's advice, Meade canceled a suicidal attack, bringing sighs of relief from his men but derision from Washington. Lincoln was upset that Meade had neither fought a major battle since Gettysburg nor changed the strategic situation; the war in Virginia was a stalemate. Meade, for his part, was upset with Washington, for he believed in maneuver and his own strategic plans received no support from Lincoln, Halleck, or Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Meade had retained his command owing to his victories at Gettysburg and Bristoe Station, but he now felt his time in army command was running out.

Winter brought Meade no respite. When Congress issued its thanks to several generals for Gettysburg, Hooker was mentioned before Meade in a well-placed insult. It was a prelude to official investigations into Meade's part in the battle, in which Hooker's friends and vengeful newspapermen portrayed Meade as cautious and favoring retreat during the battle. The attacks usually came from Radicals. Meade even feared he might be arrested. In February 1862 Brig. Gen. Charles P. Stone had been thrown in jail without trial. In January 1863 Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter was court-martialed and stripped of command. The New York Times was upset with the verdict; the editors wanted Porter to be shot. Neither general deserved this kind of treatment. Their only real sin was being loyal to McClellan and supporting a moderate war. Meade always feared this fate. When the courier came to make him commander of the army, he thought the courier was there to arrest him. He feared Hooker was going to blame him for the defeat at Chancellorsville after the two had argued bitterly on May 19. Unlike Porter, Meade was cleared of the charges. Most of his fellow officers backed him up, and only Butterfield and Pleasonton testified against him. Lincoln, meanwhile, offered Meade no aid during the investigation. Furthermore, the ludicrous idea that Meade had almost lost Gettysburg long outlived the failed machinations of Hooker and Pleasonton.

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Excerpted from The Battle of Petersburg, June 15â"18, 1864 by Sean Michael Chick. Copyright © 2015 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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