Our Three Equally Important Union Armies

I have driven throughout the southeast United States. Not just interstate, but many local routes. In doing so, it has helped me grasp some of the difficulties faced by both sides.

Today’s US95 pretty much runs the land route that Grant took towards Richmond(as did all Army of the Potomac leaders through the course of the war, other than McClellan’s one lost opportunity). He had no choice because east of that is disrupted by lowland and rivers, an ideal right flank for the southern forces.

Some argue had the Confederacy played defensively, closing itself off from Fredricksburg west to the Shenendoah Valley, that it would have kept the Union at bay, closed up tight with no choice but frontal flanks against well entrenched defenders. Defenders who had to do little but create a strong front flank because the east topography of rivers and wetland and the west topography of mountain wall made the Confederate necessity of diverting resources there not needed.

The Union knew this. And this is why Rosecran’s Army(and other middle Armies) proved so vital. However, looking at the map, this army simply could not cut due east over the mountains and strike that way.

Mother Nature, in the guise of multiple slanting mountain ranges parallel and always slightly south and west of each other forced Rosecran(and successors) to slide always south and a little west. One look at maps makes it clear that the focal point for an army having any hope of turning east then back up north to confront Lee had to be Northern Georgia.

This confluence of states: Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina makes for the southern end of that great stretch of Appalachian mountains. Yet enough terrain exists there for Union forces having to make it necessary, as it was, to go south to Atlanta before such a hooking east and north can begin.

it is easy to see why Sherman went there, other than the vital reason to capture a main enemy city and supply route. Once he did that, he knew very well that simply heading northeast would prove fruitless. It would lead him to Grant and Lee, but why, when with a bit more distance, he could head far east then north nearer the coast, while capturing and damaging other important southern cities, and destroying any remaining supply bastions like Wilmington, North Carolina-Lee’s and Richmond’s lifeline.

Backtrack: before he could do that, the Union needed the vital Rosecran Army to drive Bragg’s rebel forces towards Georgia in order to swing under those mountains. We can see how Chicamauga and Chattanooga played such roles, and Murfreesboro and Stones River, and the other battles in that critical area were needed.

Chattanooga to Atlanta provides the last slanting southwest mountains in support of southern positions. It is a triangle of rugged, forested, mountainous terrain. The Union army(now under Sherman) deserves tremendous accolades in assaulting these near impregnable positions…positions that with foresight could have been made more impregnable had Pres. Davis been inclined. yet in hindsight who knows because by then Richmond was under the grinder and getting priority.

General Winfred Scott, old and irrascible, devised the perfect plan when he thought up Anaconda. Closing off southern ports on the Atlantic and Gulf was critical. As was the taking of the Mississippi. And this made Grant’s Army of the West as vital as all others.

The Union needed not only to cut off Confederate ports, but they needed to isolate the producing states that fed the Mississippi river because the river provided access to the goods which, if unable to be sailed around to Atlantic ports, could be carried by railroad, wagon, or small river craft up through Alabama into Georgia, into North Carolina to Virginia. Along the way, they could supply Bragg’s army when they reached that critical Northern georgia area.

By the Grant’s army seizing forts, capturing cities like  Vicksburg and supporting generals and admirals capturing New Orleans and mobile, they began the final crippling of the South. By armadas of iron working in close tandem with troops, they controlled waterways. in doing so, they brought any production in that portion of the Confederacy to a stage, where if they weren’t producing…and they were for a long while, they couldn’t move the stuff. The end result is the same whether they destroyed production or kept it in place.

We see how vital all three Armies were to the Union cause. Yet once the Western army successfully stymied the Mississippi area we can understand why Lincoln moved Grant to Chattanooga. Had Rosecrans not faulted at Chicaumauga and defeated Bragg there, it is not too off the mark to say that he could very well have somersaulted to the fame that Grant finally achieved. Rosecrans came up so, so short of full glory.

Nevertheless, he failed and Grant had the opportunity of the second to last vital attack on the Confederacy, that of moving from Chattanooga south to Atlanta. Fortunately Lincoln again knew he needed him for the final showdown in Richmond, and equally fortunate that Grant appreciated and rewarded his subordinates. Thus he gave Sherman command over tRosecran’s old Army and allowed Sherman to reap laurels of history by completing the hook into the underbelly of the Confederacy.

So complete did Rosecrans/Grant/Sherman defeat the western and mid-western theaters, and then roll up the North Georgia theater, that Sherman exhibited his commanding general’s sense of command and sent other generals off to defend Kentucky with the not so sublte provision of destroying southern general Hood.(I believe that they knew Hood had some serious mental issues and would destoy himself by his tactics, which he did).

So it can be argued, that while Gen. Thomas, the rock of Chicamauga, and a favorite of mine, was one of our finest, that the defeat of the remaining Confederate army at Nashville was a necessary but not critical sideshow.

Grant’s Army and Rosecran/Sherman’s Army had completed their mission by December 1864. All that remained was the final assault by the Army of the Potomac to defeat Lee.

While the Army of the Potomac suffered in terms of both losses and publicity, they really had no choice. In front of them was the best supplied, most mobile Confederate army led by its most capable commanders, most always fully entrenched.

The Confederacy, as said, had walls of mountains and oceans of water working for them. The Army of the Potomac didn’t have the luxury or leisure of manuever. They attacked entrenchments, or shorter lines of battle-ensuring Confederate reinforcements reached critical points before Federal ones could. And warfare dictates that assaulting forces, standing and not under cover will suffer far more proportionally than forces in trenches, behind fixed cover, and waiting for them.

So the Grant’s (Meade’s) Army of the Potomac mets its goals as surely as had Grant’s Western Army or Rosecrans(Grant’s/Sherman’s/Etc.) Army.

The Union strategy depended on three weapons of a street fight: Grant and associates jabbed their way down the mississippi just like a boxer…pop…pop…pop..keeping the Confederacy flatfooted and off balance.

Rosecrans and those who benefitted by following him(Sherman for one) slugged it out down mountainous terrain, delivering and receiving thunderous hooks into their vitals, each side but a hook away from final knockout; yet each sucked it up and each hooked and hooked, until North Georgia when the Union’s hooks became telling and the Confederacy gasped for air. In effect, the Union had battered the rebel boxer’s arms down by its side, leaving the body defenseless.

And so it was, the final body of the Confederacy at Richmond/St. Petersburg, limp, laying on the ropes, occasionally throwing a telling right that stunned Grant and his men, but so out of air, out of resources. The Union shook off the blows like a healthy enraged grizzy that smelled, sensed, and tasted the weakening of its foe. The Union pummeled with straight rights, crashing into the body of the south, over and over and over and over…and up to the head and the final thunderous knockout at Appomatox.

This ended in a grand victory, one we owe to Scott, among others, including our generals, who we owe to Lincoln for sorting out the hesitating generals. The war could not have been completed any differently if we had wanted the results that we got.

And we got them: we got a unified America after that; and an America that was embraced again by the Southern States. If we had beaten them earlier, leaving them not as we did at Appamatox-thoroughly beaten, bloodied, and battered; thoroughly spent and thoroughly knowing they had fought their best-we might have wound up with a guerilla war for years fought by Southern men with enough resources to eventually compell negotiation.

Thankfully a tremendous strategy, fulfilled by three great armies, led by men born for that particular mission and place in time, won the war the only way it could have been won if we had desired the future we eventually got.

Three cheers for those three great Union Armies.