Robert E. Lee's Mistakes
The Hero of the Confederacy Made crucial Errors
Civil War, Battle of Antietam, Robert E. Lee, George McClellan
Robert E. Lee’s Mistake at Antietam
General Robert E. Lee, hero of the Confederacy, and soldier of the old school, was a remarkable military leader. Outgunned, with far fewer resources in manpower and material than the powerful juggernaut of the North, he fought the Federal forces to a standstill for four years, and he nearly won independence for the Southern Confederacy.
Lee, of course, was the beneficiary of a succession of weak and inept Union generals who drove President Abraham Lincoln to distraction through what Old Abe called “the slows,” or failure to press those relatively few battlefield advantages where in at least two instances, Lee’s army could have been destroyed if the Federals had pressed the matter.
The Confederate forces were, in the end, destined to lose. Lincoln’s final appointment of General Grant, summoned for his victorious record in the West, gave the Union the resolute, fighting leadership it needed to bring the North’s advantages to bear in winning a war of attrition. Lee’s genius in outmaneuvering and surprising his enemies prolonged the inevitable as Grant moved inexorably towards the destruction of the Confederate army.
Before that destruction, however, General Lee, as stated above, was nearly victorious. Had his two invasions of the North during the 1862 Battle of Antietam and the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg been successful, the Confederacy would have had a protected food supply in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and an open road for a southern occupying army and a threat to Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, which could have resulted in the Union’s suing for peace.
General Lee was, of course, only human. Despite his remarkable success in delaying the inevitable, he made several mistakes that were costly to the Confederacy in lives, material, and ultimately in the South’s effort to become an independent country. His first was at the Battle of Antietam, where Lee’s ignorance of the lay of the land and flow of the Potomac River “brought disaster to the Confederate cause.” (See Bevin Alexander’s Robert E. Lee’s Civil War, P. 93)
Against the advice of his subordinate generals, Lee made one of the worst mistakes of his military career. He chose to fight in an area with the Potomac River at his army’s back and insufficient room to maneuver and totally outnumbered. Lee’s bad luck was that Union General McClellan knew the Confederate plans. (Someone in Lee’s army had lost a copy of the Confederate battle orders.) However, Lee’s good luck was that General McClellan was in command of the Union Army, and McClellan suffered from what Lincoln called “the slows.”
McClellan waited a full day before he pressed his attack and allowed the Confederates to consolidate their forces. The Confederates fought McClellan to a bloody stalemate, but could not win, because Lee left no room to march his forces to the Union left and dislocate them.
The Battle of Antietam was a draw. The Union army lost one-fourth of its force (12,410, killed, wounded, or missing); the Confederates lost an irreplaceable 31 per cent (10,300) and was forced to withdraw. Most importantly, the aura of invincibility and inevitability of Southern independence were gone, and to the world this would spell defeat. Antietam, along with other Union gains in the West, was the success Lincoln was waiting for to release The Emancipation Proclamation and achieve a political and public relations victory over the South.
Lee made two other major errors, and they were similar to Antietam. One was at the Battle of Fredericksburg, where despite defeating Burnside, Lee chose the wrong battlefield, allowed Burnside to move back north, and achieved no decisive victory. The other was during the Battle of Gettysburg when he ordered a ruinous charge against entrenched Union forces up Missionary Ridge. His errors were, in the end, though, part of his greatness as a general.
Wherever he saw the enemy, he chose to fight.
