The Battle Of Allan Pinkerton 's Human Intelligence On The Enemy 's Position And Troop Strength Essay

The three day battle was action packed from start to finish. It all started at about 5:30 am, with a single shot fired over Marsh Creek. After a single shot, all hell broke loose. The Union suffered important losses, most notably the loss of General Reynolds. General Lee arrived on the battlefield near noon, after receiving word of the battle. A single Confederate division drove back two Union brigades, who retreated to Cemetery Hill. General Lee decided to attack the Union soldiers at Cemetery Hill to prohibit reinforcements. General Ewell declined the option to attack, and the first day of battle came to an end. Meanwhile, the Union gathered reinforcements as General Lee feared.

The second phase of the Battle of Shiloh starts as reinforcements from General Buell’s Army of the Ohio and a unit of Grant’s own reserve division joined the Union Army now positioned at Pittsburg Landing. These reinforcements added over 22,500 men to the Union lines13 bringing the total number of Union forces to over 45,000, which is more than they had on 6 April, the first day of fighting.14 On April 7, General Grant renewed the fighting with an aggressive counteract.15 Greatly outnumbered (Confederate forces now around 25,000) and disorganized the Confederate forces now under General Beauregard fought hard but eventually had to retreat to back Corinth.16 The second phase of the Battle of Shiloh was won by General Grant and his Union forces due to two main reasons. The first, Union troop numbers greatly outnumbered their enemy, over 45,000 to 25,000 respectively. And secondly, the reinforcements received by General Grant had not fought the day before and were fresh and excited to fight, unlike the exhausted remaining Confederate troops.17 This was the bloodiest battle fought on American soil up to that point, with 23,746 casualties (Union: 13,047; Confederate: 10,699).18 The Union lost more men but claimed the victory because the Confederate Army retreated back to Corinth, Mississippi.

and consisted of 16,500 IX Corps Union soldiers and approximately 9,500 Confederate soldiers.1 Ambrose E. Burnside lead the IX Corps soldiers but

The focus of this investigation will be, “To what extent was Robert E. Lee an effective leader of the Confederate Army?” The investigation will analyze Lee’s strengths and weaknesses that contributed to his effectiveness and the overall loss of the Confederacy in the Civil War. The overall character of Lee throughout his lifetime is too broad, therefore, this investigation will focus solely on the testimony of his military background, and the personality traits that led to Lee’s decisions during the Civil War. As a result, Lee the American by Gamaliel Bradford Jr. and Robert E. Lee: The Soldier by Sir F. Maurice are important sources to this investigation, due to the background they give on Lee’s military training, personality, and victories in the battles leading up to Gettysburg.

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)

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.

After the loss at Manassas, Lincoln looked for another leader to replace McDowell, and some consideration settled on General McClellan. McClellan was at his best when he was organizing armies, not leading them into battle. Lincoln wanted the army to take over eastern Tennessee for political reasons, and McClellan for fairly sound military reasons wanted the same thing. The task was given to General Buell; it did not matter to McClellan that the area was impossible to take from the north, not to mention holding it.

The Battle of Fredericksburg falls in a long list of failures of the Army of the Potomac during the first year of the American Civil War. Following the Battle of Antietam the Northern Army had the opportunity to defeat Lee’s army. However, Northerners, were shocked by Lee’s escape following this battle on 17 September 1862, and were further upset by Major General George B. McClellan’s procrastination in pursuing Lee and allowing General J.E.B. Stuarts daring cavalry raid into Pennsylvania around Gettysburg (10-12 October 1862). McClellan’s failure to pursue Lee’s Army is mainly due to his own lack of confidence, believing that he doesn’t have enough men or material in order to defeat the Army of Virginia. President Lincoln had finally

General Lee and his army were on a winning streak from the beginning of the Civil War to the Battle of Chancellorsville. The Unions have not won a battle until the Battle of Gettysburg. While General Stuart crossed Potomac to find Lee and his army, Lee discovered things had gone terribly wrong. He found out Union general, Joseph Hooker, crossed the Potomac. Lee's plan to defeat the Union again was going well until that moment.

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.

Although Lee was mistaken in his assessment of the tactical leader of Union forces on July 1, he understood the operational leader, McClellan, very well. Throughout the entire Peninsular Campaign, McClellan had been easily fooled into believing that the Confederate army was considerably larger than its actual size. Throughout the Seven Days Campaign, he had been repeatedly driven back, from the threshold of the Confederate capital to the coast of Virginia, despite any substantial victories by the Southern forces. He would fight a battle to a standstill or even a Confederate defeat but would fall back once the battle was complete. (Longstreet, 398) In short, he was intimidated by Lee's aggressiveness.

On June 3rd of 1863 Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. This would be his second campaign into the north. If he could get Maryland he would have the upper hand on Baltimore, the District of Columbia, and Philadelphia. Lee headed into the campaign with 72000 men. Union Major General George Meade's Army of the Potomac had over 100000 men. Lee eventually pushed his way up through Virginia to meet the Union army at Gettysburg. The commanding officers of the Union army were Major General George G. Meade, Major General John F. Reynolds, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, Major General Daniel E. Sickles, Major General George Sykes, Major General John Sedgwick, Major General Oliver O. Howard, Major General Henry W. Slocum,

Sears uses language that most all of us can understand, and clearly it is a very well researched work. He supports his claims in the book with a copious amount of facts and yet still keeps the course of the book moving forward. He draws on a variety of sources including diaries and letters of the participants to produce, arguably, his definitive work. Sears thesis is actually two-fold; one that McClellan missed countless opportunities to defeat Lee and two that McClellan was an incompetent commander who missed several instances to take initiative and win the battle decisively. The young Napoleon, as McClellan was known, often waited an inordinate amount of time before making a movement with his troops. For me, reading the details (with heavy emphasis to the Union story) was captivating. No recon, no communication, egotistical leadership, timidity, and procrastination all combined and helped the Union snatch defeat (or, at the very least, a draw) from the jaws of victory. This battle, like others before and after it, could have really shortened the Civil War.

On December 12 , they crossed over and on the 13, mounted a series of futile frontal assaults on Prospect Hill and Marye’s Heights that resulted in staggering casualty Union generals C. Feger Jackson and George Bayard, and Confederate generals Thomas R.R. Cobb and Maxey Gregg were killed. There was nearly 200,000 combatants it was the largest amount of concentration of soldiers. Burnside’s plan at Fredericksburg was to use the nearly 60,000 men in Maj. William B. Franklin’s Left Grand

The shocking battle that left many wounded or even dead on July 21, 1861 is said to be the beginning of the American Civil war. Just miles from Washington D.C in Manassas, Virginia, this bloody battle left nearly 460 Union soldiers dead and about 1,124 wounded, as well as 387 killed for the Confederacy and 1,582 wounded. The soldiers that were interviewed were saying that “ The battlefield was a bloodbath!”. More than 28,000 Union troops were pushed down into Virginia by President Lincoln to attack the Confederacy. The Union troops arrived in Manassas on July 18, Gen. McDowell (Union) had already set up two columns to attack. He planned to strike the Confederates troops left flank while a third circles the far right flank and south to create