Lee Lead The Army Of Northern Virginia

When General Joseph E. Johnson was badly hurt the command of his army was given to Robert E. Lee by Jefferson Davis. In Lee’s Eyes a good defense is a good offense. Lee’s army had a good offense so they attacked places under Union control like Beaver Dam Creek and Gaines. Joseph Davis and his friend Robert E. Lee talked to each other and thought about a second invasion to the north. General Jackson General Lee and General Davis all invaded Pennsylvania through a river that they

General Lee’s Army had been in mainly defensive positions and he wanted to surround Washington, because he believed if he could capture it then he could end the war. General Lee had also begun reorganizing his Army and in doing so, he gave a great unbalance to the experience in his command positions. Of the forty-nine command positions 14 on them were in experienced in the position in which they held. The planning required at the corps level was remarkable different from the planning required at the division level. In addition, the planning at the

On September 13th, 1862, McClellan’s Army intercepted Special Order 191, a misplaced Confederate order which disclosed the location of much of the Confederate Army including Lee’s position

When Lee headed North and started invading he had been checked again at Gettysburg. The assault was called Pickett's Charge that had a wide spread which cost the South badly. The musket was replaced by the rifle which made attacks much more hopeless. Lee had failed to notice how well the effect was. Lee fought again to try and regain power back but could not succeed. President Davis wanted Lee to become general in chief in the confederate armies. By that time had come around the Confederates had lost the war. Many people had thought that Lee was to bloody minded for wanting to keep fighting and keep putting his army on the line. Lee did not want to accept that he had lost. People say what the mind knows the heart might not except. He was not alone when he was fighting, his crew was fully ready to fight with him until they ended up having to surrender. After the war was all over he became president of Washington College. “He applied to have his application restored but his application was [lost]” (History www.history.com). Lee had died in 1870 of heart disease. His last words were “strike the

The first shots fired in the Battle of Antietam were fired by Artillery on September 16 1862. After the Surrender of

The book Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, was written by James M. McPherson to argue why the Battle of Antietam was the battle that changed the cause of the Civil War. While McPherson argued this he also argues that the Civil War had many other turning points and was not settled by just one battle. McPherson’s targeted audience would have to be those interested in the Civil War and the events that led to it. McPherson wrote this great book which came to be an important contribution to our collective historical knowledge and understanding because this book explains the important arguments that took place and made the Civil War happen and stop.

McClellan’s caution in waging war is evidenced clearly in the Army of the Potomac’s Peninsula Campaign. McClellan was charged with leading the assault on Richmond, delivering what could have been a fatal blow against the Confederacy. During the Army of the Potomac’s movements towards Richmond, McClellan repeatedly delayed, believing he had inferior numbers to his initial adversary, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston. Johnston knew the caution McClellan was prone to, and slowly drew McClellan closer to Confederate forces defending Richmond. At the Battle of Seven Pines, Johnston reinforced the idea in McClellan’s mind that caution was necessary. (McPherson, 1988, p. 461) The surprise attach by Johnston’s forces, though ultimately defeated by the Army of the Potomac, delayed McClellan’s advance as he called for more reinforcements from Washington. Johnston was wounded in the battle, and replaced by General Robert E. Lee. Lee, whose prowess as a tactician bordered on legendary, led a series of surprise attacks against McClellan’s Army of the Potomac in the Seven Days’ Battle. McClellan’s forces were pushed back, and he was relieved of duty as commander of the Army of the Potomac, until later in 1862. (McPherson, 1988, pp. 462-470)

The Commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was General Robert E. Lee. General Lee graduated second in his class from West Point in 1829 and served throughout the country, but is best known for his leadership during the Mexican-American War. General Lee believed in unity but when the state of Virginia decided to secede from the Union in April 1861, Lee decided to stay with Virginia. Confederate president Jefferson Davis asked Lee to serve as his senior military adviser and General Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia on June 1, 1862.

Civil War historians view the Battle of Chancellorsville as General Robert E. Lee’s “greatest and most remarkable” victory (Sears 1). Lee, facing an army twice his size, defies all military doctrine and divides his army multiple times in order to out-maneuver and surprise the Union forces. The daring maneuver succeeds and ultimately forces the Union’s Army of the Potomac to retreat. The victory was another major blow to Union troops, but it came at a huge cost to the Confederacy: the loss of General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. By evaluating the battle through the lens of the mission command activities, one can see how Lee’s daring maneuver was actually very calculated and his only option for victory. Throughout the rest of this paper, I will describe the timeline of the battle and how General Lee used the mission command activities of understand, visualize, assess, and lead to ultimately achieve victory at Chancellorsville.

On November 14th the 50th New York engineers reported the pontoons were ready to move besides the lack of 270 horses needed to move them. At first Lee anticipated that Burnside would beat him across the Rappahannock and that to protect Richmond he would assume the next defensible position would be the south the north Anna river but then he saw how slowly Burnside was moving and he directed all of his army towards Fredericksburg. By November 23rd all of Longstreet’s crops had arrived and lee placed them on the bridge that was known as the Marye’s Heights to the west of town, Andersons division was on the far left and directly behind that was McLaws with that in mind Picket’s and Hoods was to the right of that. Then on November 26th he sent out for Jackson but his second corps commander had anticipated the need and began forced marching his troops from Winchester on November 22nd covering as much as 20 miles a day. When Jackson arrived at lees headquarters on November 29 his divisions were deployed to prevent Burnside crossing downstream from

The civil war was a conflict about the expansion of slavery into western territories. The compromise of 1820 and 1850 tried to maintain an unbalanced government between free and union state. The southern states seceded from the union because they feared Abraham Lincoln in 1860 when he got elected. The war started 1861 through 4 long 4 bloody years later. The Northern Union states fought against the southern Confederate states. The northern Union won the civil war. Their was 620,000 death toll. The battle of Antietam took place in Sharpsburg, Maryland. The battle of Antietam was the first battle in the civil war to be fought on northern soil. The impact of Antietam was that it turned out to be the bloodiest day in American History.

Nonetheless, Lee saw a glimpse of hope to end the war, as he noticed the stage was set to launch an offensive campaign. Union’s large-scale effort to seize the rebel’s capital, led by McClellan, ended in a great failure. McClellan quickly lost the initiative, as Lee boldly attacked invaders in a series of six main

The Battle of Antietam could have been a devastating and fatal blow to the Confederate Army if Gen. McClellan acted decisively, took calculated risks, and veered away from his cautious approach to war. There are many instances leading up to the battle and during the battle in which he lacks the necessary offensive initiative to effectively cripple and ultimately win the war. This paper is intended to articulate the failure of Mission Command by GEN McClellan by pointing out how he failed to understand, visualize, describe and direct the battlefield to his benefit.

In late June 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia passed through western Maryland and invaded Pennsylvania. General Lee believed that by invading the North, he could draw the Union Army of the Potomac away from their defenses and force them to come after him. He also assumed the people of the North would be so demoralized if the Union were to lose another major battle, especially if it was fought on Northern soil, that President Abraham Lincoln would be forced to negotiate a settlement of the Civil War. On 01 July 1863, then Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, and his 20th Maine received word to begin movement to

The Confederate invasion of the North in September of 1862 was an attempt by Robert E. Lee to swing the war in favor of the South. The main reason for the Confederate invasion was that the British were on the verge of recognizing the Confederacy if they could show it could hold its own, and Lee was anxious to provide a cornerstone for the Confederacy to build upon. The Battle of Antietam was the bloodiest day in American history and was a major blow to the Army of Northern Virginia and the morale of the south. This is the tableau against which our story unfolds.