HOW ROBERT E. LEE LOST THE CIVIL WAR by Edward H. Bonekemper, III
Published in 1998 by Sergeant Kirkland's Museum and Historical Society, Inc.
Bonekemper lived the dream of most students of the Civil War - once he retired as an attorney, he created a second career as a Civil War author, college lecturer and a frequent guest on C-SPAN to talk about leadership in the Civil War. He also gave 10 lectures at the Smithsonian!
Bonekemper is an unabashed fan of the Union side in the war, especially General Grant. I reviewed a book he wrote about Grant here. As Bonekemper loves to point out, only 4 armies were captured during the Civil War and Grant captured 3 of them Grant's subordinate Sherman captured the fourth after Lee had already surrendered his army to Grant. The only general on the Confederate side that can compare to Grant is, of Course, Robert E. Lee. Lee is generally celebrated as the best general in the war and Bonekemper dedicates How Robert E. Lee Lost the Civil War to proving that wrong.
Bonekemper ignores the easiest place to go after the iconic image Lee - his betrayal of his oath as an officer of the U.S. Army to go fight for the Confederacy. Literally, no human being is responsible for more deaths of American soldiers than Robert E. Lee. Instead, he goes after Lee's record as a general on the battlefield - the part that is supposed to be unassailable.
Bonekemper doesn't argue that Lee's tactical skills on the battlefield weren't formidable and sometimes even brilliant.
Instead, Bonekemper argues that Lee was a failure when it came to national military strategy for the Confederacy. Lee spent most of the war as CSA President Jefferson Davis's main military advisor - oftentimes the only one Davis took seriously. At the end of the war he commanded every soldier in the entire Confederacy.
Yet, he never left the Army of Northern Virginia to see what else was happening. He never demonstrated that he understood the value of any army other than his own except that they might send him extra troops (which they did on a regular basis. The exception was when he loaned out a chunk of his army with Longstreet for a few months to Braxton Bragg in Tennessee and Georgia. Within a few weeks Lee was lobbying to have them returned)
All Lee had to do was not lose. This sounds obvious, but it is much easier than the North's goal. The North had to actually conquer the South - defeat all of its armies, stop it from operating as a government and take away its ability to keep on fighting. Lee's model should have been George Washington in the Revolutionary War. Washington hung around long enough that the British home front got sick of the war and agreed to terms.
But, instead of fighting for time and playing defense, Lee acted like he was trying to conquer the North. Twice he invaded the North (Antietam and Gettysburg) and twice he was defeated and came back to Virginia with nothing to show for it except the worst losses he suffered in the war. After Gettysburg he never was able to gather enough troops to go on the offense in any meaningful way again.
Bonekemper lived the dream of most students of the Civil War - once he retired as an attorney, he created a second career as a Civil War author, college lecturer and a frequent guest on C-SPAN to talk about leadership in the Civil War. He also gave 10 lectures at the Smithsonian!
Bonekemper is an unabashed fan of the Union side in the war, especially General Grant. I reviewed a book he wrote about Grant here. As Bonekemper loves to point out, only 4 armies were captured during the Civil War and Grant captured 3 of them Grant's subordinate Sherman captured the fourth after Lee had already surrendered his army to Grant. The only general on the Confederate side that can compare to Grant is, of Course, Robert E. Lee. Lee is generally celebrated as the best general in the war and Bonekemper dedicates How Robert E. Lee Lost the Civil War to proving that wrong.
Bonekemper ignores the easiest place to go after the iconic image Lee - his betrayal of his oath as an officer of the U.S. Army to go fight for the Confederacy. Literally, no human being is responsible for more deaths of American soldiers than Robert E. Lee. Instead, he goes after Lee's record as a general on the battlefield - the part that is supposed to be unassailable.
Bonekemper doesn't argue that Lee's tactical skills on the battlefield weren't formidable and sometimes even brilliant.
Instead, Bonekemper argues that Lee was a failure when it came to national military strategy for the Confederacy. Lee spent most of the war as CSA President Jefferson Davis's main military advisor - oftentimes the only one Davis took seriously. At the end of the war he commanded every soldier in the entire Confederacy.
Yet, he never left the Army of Northern Virginia to see what else was happening. He never demonstrated that he understood the value of any army other than his own except that they might send him extra troops (which they did on a regular basis. The exception was when he loaned out a chunk of his army with Longstreet for a few months to Braxton Bragg in Tennessee and Georgia. Within a few weeks Lee was lobbying to have them returned)
All Lee had to do was not lose. This sounds obvious, but it is much easier than the North's goal. The North had to actually conquer the South - defeat all of its armies, stop it from operating as a government and take away its ability to keep on fighting. Lee's model should have been George Washington in the Revolutionary War. Washington hung around long enough that the British home front got sick of the war and agreed to terms.
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| Lee's surrender at Appomattox in April of 1865. |
The Battle of Chanecellorsville is symptomatic of the problem with Lee. Lee was outnumbered by more than 2 to 1 and still won the battle with a combination of speed, daring and confidence. It is an impressive victory by any standard. But it came at a massive cost. The Union had 17,000 casualties out of 130,000 (13%) that were replaced within weeks. Lee had 12,000 casualties out of 60,000 (20%) that were only replaced by pulling troops away from other fronts and causing them to lose.
If it costs you a greater percentage of your force to win battles and you have the smaller army you cannot win. Almost every battle Lee fought in could be described in that way.
Bonekemper argues that Lee ground his army to dust, refused to consider the needs of other theaters and kept fighting for months after it had become obvious that he had no hope of winning the war, costing the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides.
The research is impeccable and the facts become overwhelming as the pages go rolling along. It almost becomes tedious - another battle, another costly win (usually) that bled away irreplaceable men for a win that did little to further the war effort. Meanwhile, Generals Grant, Sherman and Thomas chewed up every army in the West, conquered or cut off every state except for Virginia and North Carolina until Lee finally surrendered.
Ironically, if Lee had stayed with the Union, the rumor was that he would have been offered the command of Union forces. He would have been the general that that army desperately needed - not afraid to attack, not afraid to strike the enemy to win the war and he would have had the extra men and resources that his fighting style required. It might have been a short war.
5 stars out of 5 because it proves a long-needed point.
This book can be found on Amazon.com here: HOW ROBERT E. LEE LOST THE CIVIL WAR by Edward H. Bonekemper, III.
If it costs you a greater percentage of your force to win battles and you have the smaller army you cannot win. Almost every battle Lee fought in could be described in that way.
Bonekemper argues that Lee ground his army to dust, refused to consider the needs of other theaters and kept fighting for months after it had become obvious that he had no hope of winning the war, costing the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides.
The research is impeccable and the facts become overwhelming as the pages go rolling along. It almost becomes tedious - another battle, another costly win (usually) that bled away irreplaceable men for a win that did little to further the war effort. Meanwhile, Generals Grant, Sherman and Thomas chewed up every army in the West, conquered or cut off every state except for Virginia and North Carolina until Lee finally surrendered.
Ironically, if Lee had stayed with the Union, the rumor was that he would have been offered the command of Union forces. He would have been the general that that army desperately needed - not afraid to attack, not afraid to strike the enemy to win the war and he would have had the extra men and resources that his fighting style required. It might have been a short war.
5 stars out of 5 because it proves a long-needed point.
This book can be found on Amazon.com here: HOW ROBERT E. LEE LOST THE CIVIL WAR by Edward H. Bonekemper, III.
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