Introduction
The Retrospect section of the Australian Army Journal: For the Profession of Arms is designed to reproduce interesting articles from the Australian Army’s earlier journals, notably the Commonwealth Military Journal and the Australian Army Journal from the 1940s to the mid-1970s. In this edition of the journal, we are reprinting an edited version of the then Lieutenant Colonel John Monash’s winning entry in the inaugural 1912 Australian Army’s Gold Medal Military History Essay Competition. Monash was then serving in the Victorian branch of the Australian Intelligence Corps.
Monash’s winning entry on the American Civil War was originally published in the April 1912 edition of the Commonwealth Military Journal. The essay has been well described by Monash’s biographer, Geoffrey Serle, as ‘an illuminating original article, expounded with utter clarity in a moderate scholarly manner but drawing firm conclusions’. Monash used the 1864 Wilderness campaign to reflect on a range of military issues: the personal qualities of commanders, attrition and manoeuvre, the power of defensive entrenchments and the use of ground. Of particular interest to readers will be Monash’s perceptive comment that ‘the universal failure of the infantry assaults [in the Wilderness campaign] is undoubtedly to be found in the lack of proper fire preparation by both infantry and artillery. The necessity for close mutual co-operation between these arms in attack and defence is here forcibly illustrated’.
Monash wrote at a time of great change in warfare and on the eve of the 20th century’s first cataclysmic industrial war. In World War I, through military education and operational experience, Monash was to emerge as one of the greatest masters of 20th-century all-arms tactics, and traces of his thinking on the ‘orchestration’ of the combat arms can be found in his 1912 essay. At the beginning of the 21st century—a time of equally great change in tactics and strategy—readers may find much of interest in the early writings of the man whom A. J. P. Taylor described as ‘the only general of creative originality produced by the First World War’.
Lessons of the Wilderness Campaign, 1864
Less than fifty years ago—and so within the memory of men still living—there raged, in the then sparsely peopled, wild and broken region of Northern Virginia, a titanic struggle of armed forces. The campaign was sustained through many days of fierce bloodshed and grim privation, directed by the indomitable determination of great leaders and supported by armies actuated with the highest ideals of patriotism and of duty to their cause. Although in the short space of half a century much has changed in the details of war organisation, ordnance and material, the Virginian campaign continues to present many features of profound interest to the military student. The campaign affords numerous and pregnant illustrations of the fundamental principles of the science of war that a close study of these operations, and of the war of which they formed a part, is rightly deemed to be a profitable and necessary contribution to a sound military education.
The Virginia campaign is of especial application to the Australian student. Many aspects of the contest—including the character and training of the troops engaged, and that of their leaders, the topographical features of the theatre of war, and the circumstances that influenced its strategical and tactical development—bear a close analogy to Australian conditions of the present day. In this campaign, much can be found that will illuminate the problems that will confront the Australian soldier when called upon to uphold, in earnest, the integrity of his country’s interests.
The campaign that opened in the Virginia Wilderness in the early summer of 1864 was the turning point in the War of Secession and marked the first stages of the steady pressure that led to the final overthrow, a year later, of the Confederate resistance. From the outset of the war in 1861, the North held the advantages of greater numbers and of superior resources. Yet, when the winter of 1863 arrived, the North had not had any overwhelming success in crippling the pretensions of the Confederate States to independent sovereignty. Grave errors in the Union Government’s political direction of the war and a marked inferiority in military capacity on the part of the Federal generals contributed to the indecisive outcome of the military operations over the first three years of the war. Up to the beginning of 1864, the South had succeeded in maintaining its political, if not its territorial, integrity. The Confederacy’s prestige in the field remained unimpaired. There was high hope in the South that, if during another summer the Confederacy could ward off the menace of the extinction of its armed power, either the North would give up the weary struggle, or that England or France, or both, would intervene in its favour.
The Significance of the Wilderness Campaign
It was the Wilderness campaign more than any other phase of the war that was the determining factor in the struggle between North and South. This factor is not the campaign’s only claim to be regarded as important by the military student. Indeed, alongside an abundant illustration of tactical principles, there is a compelling interest in the spectacle of the heroic contest of two great military leaders, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. The former struggled with greatly inferior strength and resources to uphold a dying cause. The latter, although better equipped, faced enormous difficulties of mobility and supply, was weighted down by the heritage of the failures of his predecessors and needed to bring to his task a steadfast perseverance and a never-flagging determination.
The armies that opposed each other in this campaign were citizen armies. In substantial entirety they were composed of men without previous military training or traditions, unaccustomed to military discipline or to the self-suppression necessary for successful corporate action. They were men drawn from the ranks of a young, vigorous and high-spirited nation, bred in an atmosphere of personal liberty and independence. They were also men who were well qualified physically, and those large levies recruited in the rural districts of both the Union and the Confederacy for the arduous work of campaigning were skilled in bushcraft and horsemanship. In these and many other characteristics, the armies that fought in the American Civil War furnish an accurate prototype of any fighting force that could be placed in the field in Australia at present.
Most of the subordinate officers in the armies of the Civil War were, like the rank and file, without military training or education, and without war experience. There was, however, in the higher ranks a leaven of highly trained and experienced officers. America possessed in the West Point Military Academy an institution whose renown and utility stood in those days as high, and whose influence was as potent as it is today. Most of the superior commanders on both sides were graduates of that academy. A number that had taken up regular soldiering as a profession had war service in several Indian rebellions and in the Mexican War. While the training and experience of these officers was abundantly manifested during the Civil War, the lack of it in many of the commanders of detached forces and of subordinate units amply demonstrated the necessity for educated and competent leadership in all military undertakings. These American shortcomings constitute a striking lesson in one of the fundamental necessities of war organisations—a lesson that Australian statesmen cannot afford to disregard. There is a close analogy here with Australian conditions, possessing as we do few officers with war experience, or with high professional education, and fewer still with both qualifications in combination.
In the character of the terrain, the conditions prevailing during the war generally, and in the Virginia campaign in particular, approximate closely to those of any probable theatre of war in Australia—especially our populated eastern and southern seaboards. The density and distribution of population in the territories that lay between Washington and Richmond, the respective capitals of North and South fifty years ago, resemble closely the conditions that prevail today along the coastal districts between the Australian State capitals. The military resources of the district between Washington and Richmond—in supplies, transport and animals—were speedily exhausted, and the armies in the field had to depend on distant areas of collection and inviolable lines of communication. The difficulties of supply, effective reconnaissance, mobility and manoeuvre were thus of an extreme order. While such conditions were unlike those that prevailed in Western Europe during the wars of the 19th century, the description of them pertains to the greater portion of the inhabited Australian continent.
There remains yet one other analogy to be drawn with Australia, involving considerations more potent than any other in their influence on the conduct of war. Both the Federated and Confederated States were democracies governed by the majority vote of their peoples. The exponents of the popular voice were the political leaders who reflected in their own views the will of the electorate and often attempted to interfere in the direction of the war. Communities as a whole, however, are notoriously ignorant on questions of military history and policy, and on the basic principles of strategy. In a democracy, State administration stands in such close relationship with the people that the danger of the pressure of ill-informed public opinion is extreme. During the first three years, the Government of Abraham Lincoln on the one hand, and that of Jefferson Davis on the other, insisted on dictating the details of the strategy to be employed, and interfered with the discretion and freedom of action of their generals.
Disastrously for the South, this interference continued until the end of the war in 1865. By the close of 1863, however, Lincoln’s shrewd capacity had enabled him to learn the lesson of non-interference and to appoint Grant as supreme commander of the Union armies in March 1864. Grant was able to prosecute his plans without hindrance, and even without review, and Lincoln firmly insisted on supporting him through a storm of popular criticism and political assault. The result affords perhaps the most pungent and significant lesson of the Wilderness campaign. From the moment that the new Union policy of non-interference was invoked, the Federal cause marched steadily towards its victorious goal.
Existing Australian political conditions are not dissimilar to those of America. An Australian Government depending on a narrow majority might—in default of so instructive a precedent—find itself tempted, if not actually compelled, to yield to public clamour that demanded interference with the detailed conduct of operations of war. In this and other areas, the civil war was replete with situations and conditions that are likely to repeat themselves in an Australian campaign in our own time. Thus, a closer study of the development of such situations and of the influence of those conditions cannot fail to be of instructional value to us.
The Strategical Situation, 1863-64
An understanding of the strategical situation at the close of the winter of 1863–64, and of the outcome of the hostilities of the preceding three years, is essential to a proper appreciation of the causes and effects of subsequent events in the Wilderness campaign. Since early in 1861, the Federal Government had embarked on the task of compelling by force of arms the seceding States of the Southern Confederacy to submit to its sovereign power under the Constitution of the United States. The strategical conception that controlled these operations may be summed up thus: to preserve inviolate the seat of the Union Government in Washington and to capture Richmond, the seat of the Confederate Government. Every other consideration was subordinated to these main strategic objectives. Thus, very thoroughly and very persistently, was violence done to the fundamental principle of strategy, namely that the true objective of a belligerent is to seek out and destroy the armed power of his antagonist. For three years, Union armies marching to the capture of Richmond were checked in their advance. They were attacked in their flanks and hastily recalled to the defence of Washington, which was counter-threatened time and again by the brilliant manoeuvring of the South’s commanders, Robert Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
The advent of Grant as Union Commander-in-Chief in March 1864 resulted in several significant changes in the strategic methods of the Northern armies. In the first place, as supreme commander of the seventeen Federal armies in the field, Grant determined that these armies should no longer be employed on disconnected and independent enterprises. They should be used to prevent as far as possible any concentration of force by the Confederates. It is instructive to note that Grant’s calculations were realised to the fullest extent. During that long, sustained series of awful fighting in the Wilderness from the Rappahannock to the passage of the James, the Confederacy found itself unable to reinforce effectively Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The result was that Grant was free to deal with Lee in the strength with which he found him in his winter quarters on the Rapidan River. Grant’s general plan of campaign against Lee was based on a conception new to the war. The ulterior political objective still remained the capture of Richmond, but the immediate objective was to make Lee fight to prevent its capture by means of a continuously sustained threat of outflanking and of interposing between him and his principal base. 1
Grant knew and respected Lee’s energy, initiative and daring. He counted deliberately on Lee’s giving battle wherever and whenever the opportunity offered itself. Grant’s grim purpose in this was to wear out the Confederacy’s strength by a process of ‘attrition’—an expressive term, as used by himself, and one that tersely describes the actual course of events. Although the Federal losses were by far the heavier, the resources of the North enabled Grant to make good his wastage. The Confederacy, however, was unable, through sheer depletion of its fighting strength, to replenish the ranks of Lee’s decimated brigades. The result of the Wilderness campaign was therefore decisive in its influence on the war. It was, in the most literal sense, a process of destruction of the enemy’s armed resistance and in this way carried into effect a fundamental principle of strategy.
Yet this very campaign, the direct result of which was the ultimate victory of the Federal arms, was, when considered in detail, marked by a series of brilliant successes and sustained tactical victories on the part of the Confederates. Time after time, through forty days of almost continuous fighting, the Confederate troops outmanoeuvred and outfought their Union enemy. We have thus the curious and pitiable spectacle of a series of wonderfully sustained Confederate victories in detail, leading inevitably to the defeat of the Southern cause as the ultimate result of the whole of the operations.
The Lessons of the Wilderness Campaign
It would be impossible within the limits of an article to attempt even a brief narrative of the military operations that began on 3 May 1864. On that day, Grant, with an army of four corps—totalling some 119 000 men with 376 guns—plunged into that broken and tangled region of Northern Virginia lying west of Fredericksburg, known as the ‘Wilderness’.
Here Grant encountered the masterly Lee, with his rapidity of decision, his energetic execution and his wonderful capacity for choice of ground. With his outnumbered three army corps of only 62 000 men, Lee successfully and repeatedly interposed his forces between the Federal advance and Richmond. By his superior tactical handling to counterbalance the odds against him, Lee would have succeeded against any less indomitable antagonist than Grant.
This article is concerned less with a consecutive narrative of the operations themselves as with an attempt to draw from their results lessons likely to be instructive to us in Australia in the present day. Some striking analogies to Australian conditions in general have already been indicated. It remains to consider, however, what aspects of this campaign in the realm of grand and minor tactics, in the constitution of armies, the leading of troops, and of combined actions, serve to illuminate the problems of an Australian campaign in our own time.
The Quality of Leadership: Grant and Lee
In the view of the author, by far the most pregnant lesson of the Wilderness campaign is the vital influence on military operations of the personal qualities of the leaders. For the North, the main factor in the ultimate success of the Union cause was the steadfast determination of General Ulysses S. Grant to persevere in his plan of throwing his forces again and again on his agile and resourceful adversary. Checked in his marches, forestalled in his attempts to seize tactical positions, hurled back with enormous losses from fierce assaults launched against the Confederate defences, Grant endured in the field. He was a leader of grit and endurance and, as he declared in one of his letters to Halleck, he would persist in his line of operations, even if it took him ‘all summer’. Students of the war cannot help but appreciate the contrast between Grant’s attitude and that which characterised the Union commanders of the previous three years. Time after time in the Virginia theatre, a Federal invasion culminated in a great battle followed by defeat and retirement, leaving the assumption of the offensive to Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The new element in the situation in 1864 was the personality of Grant. Following a succession of defeated Federal leaders such as Hooker, Pope and McClelland, Grant inspired his own army with a capacity for sustained and concentrated effort. He held his troops inflexibly to one offensive purpose, never for a moment relinquishing the initiative, and raised their morale to enable them to sustain the rigours of an arduous campaign. At the same time, as Grant’s objective became clear, Lee was compelled more and more to act on the defensive and to abandon his favourite and often-successful expedient of a crushing counterstroke.
Nowhere was Grant’s dominant quality of determination evidenced more strongly than at Cold Harbor, the fourth and the last of the great pitched battles of the Wilderness campaign. It may be that Grant’s plan of battle was on this occasion unskilful and crude. 2 It may also be that Colonel G. F. R. Henderson’s taunt was justified that Grant ‘lost his temper’ at again finding strongly entrenched Confederate lines flung across his path. Yet, undismayed by previous failures in using his vastly superior numbers to overwhelm Southern breastworks at Spotsylvania, North Anna and Totopotany, Grant unflinchingly resolved at Cold Harbor to reattack vigorously, thereby pinning Lee to his positions and preventing him from assuming the offensive.
In General Robert Lee the Confederacy possessed a military leader of the highest calibre. Lee had entered on this campaign with the undimmed prestige of a general whose bold strategy, tactical skill, and enterprise had enabled him to achieve, with much inferior resources, a long and unbroken succession of victories. Lee’s very name was a terror to the Northerners, and even Grant himself was compelled to pay unwilling tribute to the reputation that Lee had earned for sudden attack from an unexpected quarter.
When moving the Union Army of the Potomac across the Rapidan River on 3–4 May 1864, Grant felt compelled to leave a whole army corps of 20 000 men under Burnside at Culpeper Court House lest Lee attempt to fall on his rear. Although Burnside then moved into the Wilderness fighting by forced march, he arrived too late to turn that series of indecisive and disconnected encounter battles into a victory for the North. As it happened, one of Lee’s three corps—the one under the command of Longstreet—lost its way on its long march from Gordonsville, not entering the battle till dawn on 6 May. If the Army of the Potomac had not on 4–5 May been deficient by a whole army corps, there is little doubt that Grant’s overwhelming superiority in numbers would have pinned Lee to his forest positions, leading to envelopment from the south. In this very direct way, it may be said that, to Grant, the known and recognised moral qualities of Lee were worth a whole army corps.
Admirable as was Grant’s quality of determination, what words can convey an adequate tribute to the moral qualities of Lee? In a lost cause, he preserved—in the face of a constant drain of losses, both of men and material—the solidarity, mobility and unity of action of his ragged and ill-fed regiments. To the very last, to his soldiers ‘Marse Robert’ remained the one general who was unconquerable. One may indulge in the reflection that the Wilderness campaign is destined to figure in history more by reason of the personal qualities of the two great leaders than in any other aspect.
Subordinate Commanders and Military Organisation
When we look at the subordinate commanders—the generals in command of corps and divisions—we find, at least on the side of the Federals, many instances of a lack of independent initiative. Whether these problems were due to Grant’s dominating personality or to the doctrines prevalent at the time, it is clear that the Federal brigadiers and generals of division had not learnt the value of mutual cooperation. Nor had they learnt the utility of exercising the independent local initiative that the Germans put into practice only six years later, and to which may be attributed, more than to any other circumstance, the success of German arms in the war with France [in 1870].
Grant’s generals habitually looked to him for definite orders before acting. Thus at Cold Harbor, where the Federals attacked with four corps in the fighting line, adjacent commanders failed in the exercise of initiative on the spot. There is little doubt that, both in the bush-fighting in the Wilderness and in the attempt to rush the Salient at Spotsylvania, a greater unity of action and cooperation between commands, and a readier aptitude for prompt and independent action would have operated to bring about very different results. It must now be recognised that, with the greatly extended battle lines of modern days, the man on the spot is in a better position to judge the changing needs of the situation before him than the Supreme Commander a considerable distance away. The true principle is that the subordinate should not be hampered by too precise or detailed instructions, but is to be encouraged to act according to local circumstances. He must, without waiting for orders from the rear, extend that cooperation to neighbouring bodies of troops. What is true of army corps is equally true of brigades and battalions.
While still considering the higher command some anomalous conditions in the organisation of the armies are worthy of notice. There was a wide difference in the constitution of the several corps on both sides. Thus, three Union corps were composed of four divisions each, while the fourth (Sedgwick) had only three divisions. There was an even greater disparity in the composition of the divisions, varying as they did from four brigades to only two brigades. In three of the Union corps, there was no divisional artillery but a separate artillery brigade as corps artillery. In Burnside’s corps (the IXth) each of its four divisions had its own artillery brigade.
Such irregularity of composition may, under some circumstances, be an advantage in deceiving the enemy as to the real strength and disposition of forces. The varying composition of the Japanese divisions in their last war [with Russia in 1904–05] has been cited in support of this view. However, in the author’s opinion, any such advantages are entirely overshadowed by the enormously increased difficulties of all staff work, administrative services and by problems in the handling of formations through wide disparity in numerical and tactical construction.
A second anomaly that cannot escape attention is the peculiar organisation of the chain of command, particularly on the Union side. Grant was Commander-in-Chief of the whole of the United States Armies. He elected, for the soundest of reasons, to attach himself personally to the army that was to operate against Richmond. This force was composed of the Army of the Potomac (three corps) under General Meade, the victor of Gettysburg, and an independent army corps under Burnside. It was not until Cold Harbor, some three weeks after the Wilderness operations began, that Burnside’s corps was merged with the other three corps of Hancock, Warren and Sedgwick into one compact army command.
The inconveniences of the earlier organisation must have been extreme, and the position of General Meade ambiguous and unfortunate. Grant repeatedly issued orders over Meade’s head while the corps commanders often found themselves under the immediate command of General Headquarters instead of Army Headquarters. Even after the reorganisation of the army just before Cold Harbor, conditions were aggravated by the bringing up of another independent army corps, the XVIIIth under W. F. Smith. Smith was assigned a position in the line of battle between two of the units of Meade’s army. The evil consequences of a loose and illogical organisation of this nature manifested themselves in a marked degree throughout the whole Wilderness campaign.
There was considerable confusion, miscarriage of orders, counter-orders, much personal friction and misunderstanding. Delays and difficulties also appeared in re-establishing the chain of command when casualties occurred in the higher commands (as when Sedgwick fell at Spotsylvania). Moreover, there were repeated failures to achieve unity of action between the corps, and all of these problems were traceable to the indefiniteness of the chain of responsibility. This same looseness permeated the ranks of the subordinate commanders, with the result that, at certain junctures, the confusion created bordered on the ludicrous. Often during the campaign, officers, merely by virtue of their seniority, assumed command of units not strictly within their commands at all.
Thus in the concluding phases on the second day of the battles of the Wilderness we find, on the Federal left, divisional and brigade commanders belonging to different corps exercising command over sections of the attack in which none of their own troops were engaged. At the same time their own commands were left without proper leaders. Although we are here discussing large formations, precisely the same dangers of a loose organisation of command are possible with smaller forces. The lessons are obvious and elementary. The author believes that there have been occasions in Australia during both peace manoeuvres and staff tours when a clear understanding of the chain of responsibility in forces comprising whole brigades with detachments from other brigades has not been achieved. The lesson of the evils that may result from a neglect of this consideration is one that can well be noted.
The Value of Field Fortifications
In one respect, the Wilderness campaign yields a lesson of very positive value to Australian soldiers, and that is in the extensive and successful use of field fortifications. In discussing the Wilderness, Colonel Henderson has pointed to the futility and danger of premature selection and deliberate fortification of a defensive position. 3 He has instanced Lee’s carefully fortified front along the Rapidan and Mine Run that Grant subsequently compelled him to evacuate by simply marching past his right flank. Although throughout the whole war both belligerents were prone to expending huge efforts in fortification work, much of it proved utterly useless.
Yet the skill and adaptability of the troops in this class of work was destined to play a very important role in the campaign. There are a number of excellent photographs in the Washington archives taken of the Federal and Confederate positions near the Wilderness Tavern, the Spotsylvania Court House, Mechanicsville, New Cold Harbor and other Virginian battlegrounds. Taken during the fighting and immediately after the evacuation of the entrenchments, these photographs explain the repeated failures in one battle after another of Grant’s fierce assaults on the Confederate positions.
Why was Grant’s imposing army of 100 000 fighting men—appreciably better equipped, better armed, and better fed and cared for than the soldiers of the Confederacy—unable by sheer pressure of numbers to sweep away little more than half its numbers in front-to-front encounter battle? It must be remembered that the bulk of the severest fighting took place in forest country. Lee’s hardy and experienced Southern bushmen used felled timber for the construction of formidable breastworks. Many of Lee’s tactical successes may be ascribed to the expertness of his troops in the use, not only of the pick and shovel, but also of the axe and saw. With surprising rapidity, the Confederates in defence erected formidable timber breastworks from which it proved impossible to dislodge them by frontal assault.
At Spotsylvania, Grant determined to test the vulnerability of wooden barriers that belched forth so deathly a fire. He very nearly succeeded by a carefully organised early morning attack on a tactically weak point in the line—a sharp, salient running northwards. It was at this point that the most awful hand-to-hand fighting of the whole war took place. Yet, although the Union assault resulted in the capture of practically the whole of the South’s famous ‘Stonewall’ division of Edward Johnson (of Ewell’s Corps), it failed for two reasons. First, there were no reserves to drive home the assault after it had been checked. Second, Lee, acting again with marvellous prescience, had prepared an interior position by constructing another line of breastworks across the southern base or ‘gorge’ of the salient. The course of events at the battles of the North Anna and Cold Harbor was identical to that of Spotsylvania.
In the Wilderness campaign, direct assaults by Union troops, of whose courage and élan there could be no question, failed. With all the assistance of covering fire and the concentration of artillery fire, Union assaults were impotent against field fortifications when manned by troops of equal calibre but only one-half in numbers. Although Grant attempted time after time to put into practice his favourite tactics of applying the maximum of force at the earliest possible moment, there is no single instance in the campaign of a successful assault against this class of defence.
The point to remember is that this fortification work was the result not of deliberate preparation and planning, and days of toil, but of spontaneous local conception involving the labour of only a few hours, generally in darkness, and often under fire. Given the similarity with the topographical conditions in the greater part of the inhabited Australian seaboard, it is evident that the training of Australian troops in the construction of field defences using bush timber is one well worthy of the close consideration of our engineering services. The suggestion may be ventured that the nature of the field works described and prescribed by the present service manuals may not necessarily be the best for Australian conditions, nor those that should be exclusively practised.
Infantry Tactics
Of the infantry tactics of the war but little can be learnt that is of any positive value. In this respect, progress in the effective ranges of the rifle and field gun has brought such a revolution that the methods of 1864 as regards battle formations can afford no guide to present-day practice. The breech-loader had not yet been generally introduced in the American armies and only the cavalry were regularly armed with that weapon. Yet, in the hands of the infantry soldier, the old muzzleloading rifle was already a deadly weapon at 500 yards. The day of open formations had not yet dawned, and the favourite battle formation was the attack in two lines, sometimes in four, in close order, varied occasionally by line-of-column masses. The attack was launched from within what are today effective ranges, and there was an almost entire absence of preparation by deliberate fire action for the final assault.
With respect to the overall plan of the attack, Grant made little use of a general reserve. This situation gave Lee the opportunity on several critical occasions during the campaign to deliver an effective counterattack, such as the one that achieved the recapture of the Spotsylvania salient on the afternoon of 19 May. This attack was the last occasion in the war on which Lee had the opportunity of adopting offensive tactics against Grant.
Nevertheless, insofar as the work of the infantry is concerned, the campaign aptly illustrates the characteristics of that arm—in particular its capacity to move and manoeuvre in every class of country, both in daylight and in darkness. The extraordinary mobility of the Confederates is demonstrated by the fact that, although on each occasion that Grant relinquished his attacks and resumed his easterly outflanking movement, he was able to choose his own time to do so. Yet, in spite of long hours, and of days of close-range and hand-to-hand fighting, Lee was able at the shortest notice to withdraw his divisions from their defensive positions. He was able to re-form them, and to move rapidly to a flank and effectively occupy fresh positions thrown across the path of the enemy.
For example, on 19 May 1864, when the two armies were still fiercely engaged at Spotsylvania, Grant began to move to his left while keeping the Confederates busy behind their breastworks. On 21 May, having penetrated Grant’s intentions, Lee ordered the Confederate Army to march south to Hanover Junction over 30 miles away. Hill’s Corps was there and entrenched the position that Lee had selected to the south of the North Anna River. On 23 May, Hill was joined during the day by the rest of the army. The Confederate forces had completely outmanoeuvred the Northern Army, which had marched via Bowling Green and arrived at Hanover Junction late on 23 May, only to find before them the now-familiar barrier of Southern breastworks.
Both the character of the country and the spirit and temperament of the troops contributed to the result that the infantry in this campaign made much more use of shock than of fire in action. Much of the fighting was literally hand-to-hand. Yet, with the single exception of the temporary capture of the salient at Spotsylvania, in the early dawn of 12 May, by 20 000 Federal troops of the Second Corps (Hancock), there is no instance of a successful assault on a large scale throughout the whole Wilderness campaign.
The Failure of Artillery
Apart from the influence of the liberal use of log breastwork, an explanation of the universal failure of the infantry assaults is undoubtedly to be found in the lack of proper fire preparation by both infantry and artillery. The necessity for close mutual cooperation between these arms in attack and defence is here forcibly illustrated. The lack of such cooperation explains much of the indecisive fighting that occurred. It may be admitted that, in the Wilderness itself, the close and often impenetrable scrub made artillery practically useless in the battles of 4–6 May. Yet this consideration does not seem sufficient justification for the extraordinary action that Grant took on marching south from Spotsylvania and ordering back to Washington nearly one-third of his available strength in artillery batteries. We might hesitate to attribute to so distinguished a soldier as Grant a failure to understand the use and value of the artillery arm. However, it remains a fact that he made little use of it, and in the detailed official reports of the battles, one finds only scanty references to the work of the guns. At any rate, there is no express mention on any occasion of a deliberate artillery preparation for the attack consonant with the teachings of the present day.
Before leaving the artillery, it is worthwhile to dwell in more detail on the diversity of its organisation already discussed. On the Federal side, in Burnside’s Corps (IX), there were two batteries to each division, and also corps artillery. In the other three corps, however, there was no artillery at all under the direct orders of the divisional commanders. The latter organisation prevailed also in the Confederate Army. There was in Longstreet’s Corps an independent division of fourteen batteries; and in Ewell’s, of eighteen batteries. In A. P. Hill’s Corps there were twenty batteries and five four-gun horse artillery batteries accompanying the cavalry. Such an organisation is not only inapplicable at the present time, but is one whose defects were plainly observable in several of the battles of the campaign.
With the extended frontages of modern times, it would be impossible to support infantry action with artillery, unless, at the most, each division had artillery at the direct disposal of its commander. For successful tactical handling in combined action, it is essential that such artillery should form part of the permanent composition of the division, as is now the case with the British divisions and in Australia with its brigades. To illustrate the evils that the author contends are apt to arise from the separation of the artillery arm from the divisional command, it is only necessary to cite the case of Johnson’s Division at the salient.
Johnson had been allotted five batteries for its defence, and these had rendered splendid service on 11 May in repulsing the attacks by Mott’s Division (II Corps). However, during the night, the corps commander withdrew the whole of these guns for duty on the left of his section of the defence. On the fateful morning of 12 May, Johnson found, at early dawn, the enemy massing at his front opposite the point of the salient, but the notice was so short that his brigades scarcely had time to man his defences. He sent urgent appeals for the return of the guns. It was then too late, however, and practically the whole division was overwhelmed and captured. The guns returned, only to be taken before they could unlimber. There is little reason to doubt that, if he had kept artillery at his own immediate disposal, Johnson would have been able to hold his ground. It was the tragic end of the now-historic ‘Stonewall’ Division.
The Use of Ground
As already mentioned, the principal element of success in Lee’s tactical dispositions in defence was his extremely skilful choice of ground. Lee’s skill manifested itself notably in two directions. The first was the security of his flanks and the second was his assurance of a clear field of fire, particularly at short ranges. Of all the desiderata of a good defensive position, the necessity for a clear field of fire dominates the whole problem of the selection of the lines to be occupied. This necessity was a consideration on which Lee always laid the greatest stress.
At North Anna, Lee formed his lines roughly in the shape of an inverted V, the apex touching the North Anna at Ox Ford, and the southern terminals of the two legs resting on the Little River. Hill held the west wing, Ewell the apex, and Longstreet (and then Anderson) the east wing. Owing to the wings being thrown back so sharply, such a disposition, viewed from the north, did not suggest to Grant that General Lee meant to offer any serious resistance to his passage of the North Anna. Grant fell completely into a trap. General E. McIver Law (who was at this time one of the brigadiers of Field’s Division of Longstreet’s Corps) has described Lee’s defence as ‘the most astonishing instance of military checkmate on record’. To quote Law again:
Grant had cut his army in two, by running it on the point of a wedge. He could not break the point, which rested on the river, and the attempt to force it out of place by striking on its sides must necessarily be made without concert of action between the two wings, neither of which could reinforce the other without crossing the river twice; while his opponent could readily transfer his troops, as needed, from one wing to the other, across the narrow space between them. 4
The Use of Cavalry
There remains to consider what, to the Australian student, is probably the most interesting feature of the whole campaign: the tactical employment of the mounted arm. Here we find a curiously anomalous feature. The cavalry on both sides were the most dashing, the most valorous, the most enterprising and resourceful, and the most brilliantly led of all the troops in either army. Yet cavalry was of the least tangible tactical value and cooperated least with the action of the other arms. The Wilderness campaign illustrated how the mounted arm neglected its true functions.
The cavalry on both sides were armed with the sword and rifle. Their mobility and range of action were of the highest order. They were, in personnel, in equipment and in training, the prototype of our Australian Light Horse. Yet, throughout the war, they were organised and employed in a manner that constituted them more an excrescence or an appendage of the army than an integral part of it. During the early years of the civil war, cavalry had seldom been used as a coherent whole. The custom was to split the mounted arm up into small units: as escorts to slow-moving transport columns, as gallopers, orderlies and guides. In the Wilderness campaign the opposite extreme was indulged, and it became the obsession of the leaders to employ cavalry mainly on raiding expeditions. Doubtless these raids were brilliant exploits in horsemanship and undoubtedly they effected enormous damage. However, they contributed little to the general development of the strategic plans, and brought about a dispersion of force that directly and adversely influenced the course of the campaign.
The Federal cavalry was organised as a separate corps of three divisions under Sheridan. The Confederate Cavalry Corps was also organised in three divisions and was led by J. E. B. Stuart, until he fell at Yellow Tavern on 11 May. There were no mounted troops with the infantry corps on either side and thus no possibility of the employment of cavalry on protective duty in the detailed sense of present-day activities. Mounted troops were only employed as independent cavalry. Beyond their occasional and rare use for strategic reconnaissance, they failed to fill any of the roles that are today considered their greatest attribute.
Cavalry raids were quite secondary, and this point must be dwelt on with some emphasis. There is an undoubted tendency among many senior officers of the Australian Light Horse to indulge in a disposition for the employment of mounted troops on independent enterprises while ignoring the relationship of their action and functions to those of the less mobile formations.
In short, during the Wilderness campaign, the mounted troops on either side proved of least utility. The cavalry did not play any serious part in the functions of extended reconnaissance, in protection on the march or in screening action. There were some exceptions. It is true that Lee was warned by his cavalry, which was watching Ely’s and Germanna fords on the Rapidan, that the army of the Potomac was in motion. However, the warning came too late to bring Longstreet’s Corps into the Wilderness fight in time to be decisive. It is also true that it was due to Stuart’s energy and his willingness to fight on foot that Lee was able to seize the Spotsylvania position in advance of Union forces. These are, however, isolated instances of timely information resulting from cavalry reconnaissance. On the other hand, the instances of either complete failure to gain, or absence of attempts to seek, information were numerous. Premature exposure by want of screening action over intended moves was so frequent that space permits mention of only a few.
On 4 May, Union forces marched in the direction of the Wilderness Tavern and Chancellorville respectively, and bivouacked there for the night. The greater part of Lee’s army lay within 3 miles of their right flank, ready to pounce on them at dawn next day. No Federal general had the slightest knowledge or suspicion of the presence of the Confederates almost within gunshot range. 5 Where was the Federal cavalry during that march? Some of them were away to the east, on the flank farthest from the known direction of the enemy while the remainder were looking after the wagon trains in rear!
At Spotsylvania, Grant was able to mass an attack of 20 000 men, through rain and mud in some enclosed and timbered country within 2000 yards of the apex of the salient, without Lee’s having the slightest information of the move. Where was Stuart’s Horse? Trailing 50 miles away after Sheridan, in an attempt to head him off from the Richmond railway! On each occasion that Grant resumed his movements to the left front, the absence of a mounted screen permitted Lee to gain some knowledge of Union intentions in sufficient time to effect a counter-manoeuvre. Again, Lee’s dispositions at Cold Harbor were sufficiently apparent to Grant to enable the latter to bring up reinforcements from the Union forces around Richmond, the Confederate capital.
For Australian Light Horse leaders, therefore, it would prove an instructive exercise to study carefully, with a good map, the development of this campaign, and to speculate on the variations likely to have been introduced by the correct application of the principles of cavalry action as they are understood today.
One final instructive lesson of the Wilderness campaign can be drawn from the consideration that war is, after all, not an exact science. In all phases, the application of fundamental principles of war are often affected to a vital degree by the disturbing influence of accident or chance. The turning point of the Wilderness campaign, if not of the whole war, was the moment when Longstreet fell seriously wounded while leading a flank movement around the extreme Federal left in the forenoon of 6 May. Longstreet was taking four brigades along the cuttings of an unfinished railway. He was just on the point of delivering a strong surprise attack on the extreme left and rear of Hancock’s line when—like Stonewall Jackson on this very battle ground a year before—he was struck down at the crisis of the battle by his own men. The confusion created by his loss caused the Confederate assault to be postponed till the afternoon. By then it was too late. By this accident Lee forfeited his last chance of repeating his victory at Chancellorville by rolling up the Federal line and driving it back across the Rapidan. It is at least probable that, had such a result been achieved in 1864, at this critical juncture, the Confederacy might have survived. 6
Again, during a critical point in the fighting at North Anna, Lee was stricken with a sudden illness and lay helpless in his tent for some hours, just at the time when his mastermind was indispensable to his cause. For Grant, heavy rains that commenced on 13 May, and lasted several days, paralysed his ability to manoeuvre in front of the Spotsylvania position. This situation allowed Lee to recover and reorganise after the heavy and disastrous fighting of the preceding two days.
It is hoped that enough has been said to warrant the contention with which this article opened: that the Wilderness campaign is especially deserving of close study by Australians. In it, we are able to contemplate the performance of a citizen soldiery coming from our own stock, speaking our own language, animated by our own aspirations for territorial integrity and individual freedom. It must be the hope of every patriotic Australian that, when the time of trial comes, the performance that will be yielded by our own people will be at least as earnest, as effective and as glorious. They will thereby realise the promise given by the comprehensive scheme of national preparation on which we have embarked.
Endnotes
1 Grant wrote to Meade on 9 April: ‘Lee’s army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also’.
2 In his memoirs Grant says: ‘Cold Harbor is the only battle I ever fought that I would not fight over again. I have always regretted that last assault’. In that assault he lost 10 000 men in twenty minutes.
3 Editor’s note: This is a reference to Colonel G. F. R. Henderson’s The Science of War, London, 1908.
4 In his report on the battle, Grant said: ‘To make a direct attack upon either wing would cause a slaughter of our men that even success would not justify’.
5 Some time before Grant had voiced to one of his staff the confident belief that ‘there was no more advance left in Lee’s army’, The Photographic History of the Civil War, New York, 1911.
6 Eggleston says: ‘Loud and irresistible would have been the cry for an armistice, supported by Wall Street and all Europe’.
