Contrary to both contemporary popular opinion and enduring
myth, Lee was hardly at his tactical best in the Seven Days, but he did reveal
himself as an inspiring commander with an ability to extract the utmost
aggression from his men. The Battle of Oak Grove (June 25) ended inconclusively
and with relatively light casualties on both sides, but it put Lee in position
to seize the initiative on the following day at the Battle of Beaver Dam Creek
(Battle of Mechanicsville, June 26). While Lee suffered a tactical defeat—1,484
casualties versus 361 for the Union—he set up a major strategic triumph by
forcing McClellan to withdraw from the Richmond area.
The Battle of Gaines Mill (June 27) on the next day again
resulted in heavier losses for Lee (7,993 killed, wounded, missing, or
captured) than McClellan (6,837 killed, wounded, missing, or captured), but so
unnerved the Union general that he began the retreat of the entire Army of the
Potomac all the way back to his supply base on the James River. For his part,
Lee was not about to let him go. He engaged portions of the withdrawing Union
forces at Garnett’s & Golding’s Farms (June 27–28) before mounting a major
attack at the Battle of Savage’s Station (June 29), exacting more than a
thousand casualties. By noon on June 30, most of the battered Army of the
Potomac had retreated across White Oak Swamp Creek. Lee hit the main body of
the army at Glendale (June 30) while his subordinate Stonewall Jackson attacked
McClellan’s rearguard (under Major General William B. Franklin) at White Oak
Swamp (June 30). By the numbers, both engagements were inconclusive, but the
humiliating “optics” were incredibly damaging to the Union and just as incredibly
inspiring to the Confederacy. Lee was driving McClellan away, whipping him as a
man might whip a dog.
The final battle of the Seven Days, at Malvern Hill (July
1), was evenly matched, pitting 54,000 men of the Army of the Potomac against
55,000 of the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee suffered 5,355 casualties to
McClellan’s 3,214, but persisted in pursuing McClellan. Concluding that
McClellan was unwilling to use his army effectively against Lee, Lincoln
ordered him to link up with John Pope’s Army of Virginia to reinforce him at
the Second Battle of Bull Run (August 28–30, 1862).
It was at this battle that Lee revealed the tactical daring
absent from his action at the Seven Days. He attacked the Army of Virginia
before the slow-moving McClellan arrived in to consolidate with it his Army of
the Potomac. In this attack, Lee purposefully broke one of the supposedly
inviolable military commandments by dividing his forces in the presence of the
enemy. He sent one wing under Stonewall Jackson to attack on August 28. This
deceived Pope into believing that he had Jackson exactly where he (Pope) wanted
him. The Union general could taste victory. But, in fact, it was Jackson who
was holding Pope, so that Longstreet, leading Lee’s other wing, could launch a
surprise counterattack on August 30. This attack, 25,000 men brought to bear
all at once, was the single greatest mass attack of the Civil War, and it
brought about a second Union defeat at Bull Run that was far costlier than the
first. Pope lost 14,642 killed, wounded, captured, or missing. Lee lost half
that number.
The Second Battle of Bull Run made Robert E. Lee the general
to beat. Pope had been fired, and McClellan was recalled to lead the Army of
the Potomac against the ever-aggressive Lee, who had decided to take the war to
the North by invading Maryland. McClellan fought him at Antietam in that state
on September 17, 1862.
At the beginning of the Seven Days, the battle line had been
some six miles outside of Richmond. Three months later and thanks to Lee, it was
at Antietam, just twenty miles outside of Washington. At the end of the day,
McClellan had suffered heavier losses than Lee (12,410 to 10,316 killed,
wounded, missing, or captured) but he had forced Lee to withdraw back into
Virginia. President Lincoln used this narrow Union victory to launch his Emancipation
Proclamation, but, privately, he was bitterly disappointed—heartbroken,
really—that McClellan had failed to pursue the retreating Lee in the way that
Lee had earlier pursued the retreating McClellan.
Abraham Lincoln removed George McClellan from command of the
Army of the Potomac and replaced him with Ambrose Burnside—despite Burnside’s
own protests that he was not up to commanding a full army. At Fredericksburg
(December 11–15, 1862), Burnside proved his self-appraisal to be correct.
Although substantially outnumbered (78,513 to 122,009), Lee dealt Burnside and
the Army of the Potomac a catastrophic defeat, inflicting 12,653 casualties for
his own losses of 4,201 killed, wounded, or missing.
Lincoln replaced Burnside with Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker,
who proclaimed, “May God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none.”
Hooker commanded an Army of the Potomac that now mustered nearly 134,000 men,
whereas Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia amounted to no more than 60,298.
Lopsided though the numbers were, the Battle of Chancellorsville (April 30–May
6, 1863) was Lee’s tactical masterpiece—arguably the tactical masterpiece of
the Civil War itself. Once again, Lee divided his forces in the presence of the
enemy, dispatching his cavalry to control the roads and bottle up Union
reinforcements at Fredericksburg while 26,000 men under Stonewall Jackson
surprised Hooker’s flank even as he, Lee, personally commanded a force of
17,000 against Hooker’s front. The result stunned the Union general into utter
confusion. Jackson’s surprise attack routed an entire corps and drove the
principal portion of Hooker’s army out of its well-prepared defensive
positions. By May 2, the Army of the Potomac, though it outnumbered the Army of
Northern Virginia two to one, had been sent into headlong retreat.
Yet Lee understood that he was in no position to bask in his
triumph, great as it was. Hooker had suffered 17,287 casualties, but he himself
had lost 13,303 killed, wounded, captured, or missing—all out of a much smaller
force. Hooker’s casualty rate was roughly 13 percent, whereas his own was a
staggering 22 percent. Despite the victories he delivered, Lee was convinced
that the Confederacy could not endure such attrition much longer. He therefore
resolved to once again invade the North. This time, his objective was
Pennsylvania. Not only did he want to raid the countryside for much-needed
provisions, Lee believed a successful invasion would utterly demoralize the North
and erode its will to continue the war while also opening up an avenue for an
assault on Washington itself. This, he believed, would cost Lincoln reelection
and bring into office a Democrat willing to conclude a negotiated end to the
Civil War.
The grim fate of Lee’s aspirations for the Battle of
Gettysburg. Defeated badly here, Lee was nevertheless able to withdraw back
into Virginia, his army diminished but still very much intact. He would lead it
next against his most formidable adversary, Ulysses S. Grant, in the Civil
War’s culminating Virginia battles. In many of these engagements, Lee would, in
fact, beat Grant. But, unlike the other Union opponents Lee had confronted,
Grant responded to defeat not with retreat, but with continued advance toward
Richmond. Each advance forced Lee to pit his dwindling Army of Northern
Virginia against Grant’s continually reinforced army. The Union general
understood and embraced the ultimate calculus of the Civil War, which was that
the North could afford to spend more lives than the South and could replenish
most of its losses.
Lee’s objective in the final months of the war was to make
his own increasingly inevitable defeat so costly to the Union that the people
of the North might demand a negotiated settlement after all. Costly he did make
it, but, in the end, Robert E. Lee felt compelled to admit defeat. In this
admission was perhaps the most profound and enduring significance of his
elevation to top command of Confederate forces. For as he had been
uncompromising in his quest for victory, so he proved equally uncompromising in
his manner of surrender. He secured from Grant the best terms possible, namely
the right of his men to return to their homes unmolested and without loss of honor.
In return for this, he exercised his character and influence to ensure that the
war would in fact end rather than devolve into a long and lawless guerrilla
struggle, which is the fate of so many civil conflicts throughout history.
