On To Richmond!

Our monthly speaker at the Scottsdale Civil War Roundtable this Tuesday was Ethan Rafuse, professor of military history at the US Army Command & General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  Dr Rafuse spoke on George McClellan and the Peninsula Campaign of March-July 1862, with a focus less on the tactics and specific battles of the campaign and more on the overall strategy and McClellan's concept of not only how to win the war, but what the war should be about.

(McClellan)

For those not familiar with the Peninsula Campaign, in late March 1862, General McClellan transferred the bulk of the Union Army from its camps around Washington DC to the tip of the Yorktown Peninsula.  From there he began an advance towards Richmond, the Confederate capital, the fall of which, he was convinced would end secession.  By the end of May the Union Army was within a few miles of the capital while the Confederate commander, Joseph E Johnston, had been wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines and replaced with Robert E Lee.  While McClellan continued his very slow and very methodical advance, Lee became the aggressor and, in what is known as the Seven Days, launched five attacks and pushed the Union Army away from Richmond to its base on the James River.  In August, Lee began a rapid advance into northern Virginia and, in response, the Union Army abandoned the peninsula, moving north and not returning to the Richmond area until June 1864.

(The advance on Richmond)

Dr Rafuse emphasized several key points in his presentation:

McClellan was a Unionist who wanted to bring the seceding states back into the Union and thought the best way to do so was to guarantee the status quo - preserving slavery.  He, and his mentor, General Winfield Scott, believed that this needed to be accomplished quickly because the longer the war went on, the more radicals (in their characterization) on both sides would be empowered, as casualties and destruction mounted.  McClellan believed a decisive victory and the capture of Richmond would bring about a quick end.

McClellan and Scott's observation regarding the implications of a lengthy war were accurate and reflected in American, and global, military history.  Wars tend towards more violence as they lengthen and both military and civilian leaders feel justified in the use of violent measures they might not have supported at the outset; a good example being the firebombing campaign against Japanese cities in the last months of World War Two.(1)  Indeed, the Civil War itself provides such an example as it would have been hard for anyone to contemplate something like Sherman's March to the Sea in 1861.  Its duration also resulted in  a more radical result as positions hardened on both sides.  President Lincoln spoke to both aspects in the sermon we know as the Second Inaugural Address, "Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained  . . . Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding".

Rafuse argued that McClellan's way of war also played to Union strengths and on Confederate weakness.  A student of the type of war practiced in Europe since the 17th century, McClellan followed a methodical approach, emphasizing siege tactics, artillery, and engineering, which along with the navy and greater manpower and economic resources were Union strengths.  He did not seek a war of maneuver which would play to the Confederate strengths in infantry and cavalry.   Indeed, his advance up the Peninsula, though agonizingly slow, forced General Johnston to acknowledge it played to Union strength, pinning the Confederates into a static defense around Richmond.  

Robert E Lee refused to play by McClellan's rules, taking the offensive, playing to Confederate strengths, and preying upon McClellan's personal weakness as a battlefield tactician, causing the Union army to fall back from the gates of Richmond.  McClellan would be relieved of his command by President Lincoln in the fall of 1862, run against the President as the Democratic Party candidate in the election of 1864, campaigning as the peace candidate, and decisively losing.

In recent years, Lee's generalship has come under increasing fire, being criticized for its aggressiveness and the high casualties suffered by the Army of Northern Virginia, with critics proposing that a defensive posture might have provided a path to victory for the South.  I took Dr Rafuse's point to be that while Lee might have made some tactical mistakes (for instance, at Gettysburg) his offensive strategy provided the only potential path to victory, as a permanent defensive posture would inevitably have led to the Confederacy being slowly ground down by the material advantages of the North.

In support of that thesis, Rafuse pointed out that the decisive moment in the war occurred in June 1864, when General Grant, reached the Yorktown Peninsula, though by a different route than McClellan, and crossed the James River, pinning Lee into a static defense of Richmond and Petersburg.  Though it would take nine months, Lee knew at that moment he'd permanently lost the initiative, and it was only a matter of time until the end.

Rafuse concluded by asserting that the Civil War actually ended on terms closer to those sought by McClellan than that of his opponents in the North.  With the end of Reconstruction in 1877, the white North and South began reconciliation, while the black population (95% of which lived in the former slave states) though free, was to remain under the control of whites. At the same time, much of the South was to be an economic backwater until well into the 20th century.

I enjoy speakers like Dr Rafuse who provide different and provocative views of the Civil War, demonstrating how even 150+ years later there is much to learn and think about those events and how they reverberate today.

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(1)  This is on my mind having recently read Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb, by James M Scott, a riveting account of those events.