"Failure to Pursue: How the Escape of Defeated Forces..." Topic

… Prolonged the Civil War.

"Was the Civil War preordained to last four years or were there reasons why neither side could land a knockout punch? From the outset, both North and South anticipated a brief conflict but despite more than 50 bloody battles neither could force a decisive conclusion. For most of the war, these battles followed a pattern: the victors claimed the field and the vanquished retreated to rest, resupply and fight another day"

See here
link

Question:
If most Generals of ACW were enthusiastic students of the Napoleonic Wars and usually mimicked the tactics and strategy of the Armies of Napoleon and his opponents, why then after a good victory, they didn't aggressively pursue and envelop until exterminate whole Army Groups of their Adversaries?…

Amicalement
Armand

Because it's a whole lot easier said than done! Even Napoleon only pulled it off a couple of times.

Ditto. What comes of software engineers thinking they can "do" military history in a few weeks. Vast distances, next to no trained cavalry, troops run away faster than they advance--and I think 1806 was about the only time a defeated army was ever pursued to death. (Howe chasing Washington in 1776 comes close.) I don't think even Napoleon could have pulled it off if he hadn't started already east of the bulk of the Prussians.

If you want to destroy an entire army, you have to box them up in something--oh, like say Forts Henry and Donelson, Harper's Ferry or Vicksburg. Or you have to just flat surround them like Appomattox. So that's--oh, dear. That's three armies and a strong division for the poor dimwits who fought the ACW vs two--Ulm and the pursuit in 1806--for the Great Captain. And I think I'm being fairly stingy in not counting the pursuits after Nashville, Cedar Creek and Waynesboro as pursuits to destruction. All three are better than anything Napoleon pulled off except 1805 and 1806.

Send that book back for an upgrade.

One of the reasons why fresh units were considered necessary for a successful pursuit is that the formations actually involved in the fighting were usually exhausted, short on ammunition, had wounded to care for, stragglers to rally back to the colors and supply trains to locate and link up with.

One of the problems with many wargame rules is that "soft", cumulative effects like fatigue are not often modeled.

B

Meade was unable to pursue Lee after Gettysburg be

cause,except for 6th Corps, the AoP was basically wrecked.

The QM for the AoP requested some 35K pairs of shoes, alog with trousers,shirts and coats. 3 Days of combat, after some 30days of marching and maneuvering had seen men literally walk out of their shoes. The shoes,along with pants and shirts, especially, were just wore out.

There was also a need for cleaning weapons, resupplying ammunition and rations, and the best place for that was right there at the railheads of Gettysburg.

In addition, with 6th Corps the only reasonably intact and fresh unit available, meade needed to keep them to hand to counter any other move that Lee might make against Washington and, again, being at that rail junction meant it would be easier and faster to dispatch the Corps to DC via rail .

Meade sent cavalry after Lee, but mostly as a means of seeing that Lee really DID move south across the Potomac, and didn't turn unexpectedly elsewhere. It was, in reality, all the Meade could do until the rest of his army was brought back to lie through resupply.

Sometimes you have to think of your career ahead of say, ending the war.

The war wasn't going to be won in the East, only in the West. Any realistic chance of winning for the South was gone by July 1863 with the fall of Vicksburg.

Basic command and control issues caused Pemberton to escape from Champion Hill because of McClernand's ineffective attack. That was typical of most wars of the Horse and Musket period.

Lee's army was barefoot, too. But let's not forget what a command mess Meade had by the end of the battle, with brigades and regiments pulled out of "safe" sectors and jammed into threatened ones without regard for organization. The AoP looked like it had been tossed in a blender. A day to be sure Lee's going and it's safe to do a major resort. A day at least, I'd say to get the Corps reassembled, and possibly a third day to issue rations and ammunition.
And it was never a matter of simple pursuit. The ANV hadn't collapsed like the French Army at Waterloo. Lee had about five divisions which hadn't fought on the 3rd. They'd taken losses earlier, but they were in ranks, properly organized and supplied.
If you want to make a case for a botched pursuit, try either battle of Manassas or Shiloh, not Gettysburg. Lee was never going to be caught before he reached the Potomac.

Re Meade and Washington DC – it might be worth investigating exactly what Lincoln's instructions to Meade were in that regard. Meade's entire behavior in the Gettysburg campaign was governed by his desire to keep the AotP interposed between Lee and Washington. We know from the huge extent of defenses erected and maintained around the capital that Lincoln was very sensitive about protecting the seat of government.

Just sayin'.

B

A couple points:

• 
  Meade assumed command during the campaign. Kind of mid-stream so to speak. So he had not been "out generaled" by Lee in that mano-a-man sense.
  
• Even winning armies were wrecked and exhausted after a battle.
  
• The "knockout blow" kind of battle is much more an exception than the norm. Here's an exercise. Pick a war. Count up how many battles where the winner failed to pursue versus battles where they pursued effectively. Failures are a dime a dozen real successes are rare as hen's teeth.
  
• Weigley's "The Age of Battles" is a very well reasoned book about just this issue – how generals all aim for a Jena believing a huge win can end the war (and make he winner a hero!). But then examining how those kinds of wins are very, very rare indeed.

Motlke is considered great exactly because he was one of the few to pull off battles of annihilation. But even in his case the French Republican Armies escaped destruction time and time again. They mostly died due to been expended on attacks, with the exception of Bourbaki who was forced into internment. Once the theater of the war expanded beyond northern-western France battles of annihilation became rare. And the US is much bigger. Even 1866 Benedek's army escaped, but was wrecked.

Its really hard to pull this kind of battles off. The Ottomans planned most of their 1st Balkan War battles as battles of annihilation(see Ericksson). They failed in all of them. But even their opponents were unable to do this. During the War of 1897 the Ottoman commanders turned and turned the flanks of the Greek armies time and time again. However every time the Greeks, with an abysmal CnC system, were able to extract themselves. It was cumulative exhaustion that led to the armistice.

The more normal thing was that you would wreck an enemy army to the point that it threw the towel in even if not surrounded (Benedek 1866). The problem with this is that wrecking an enemy army usually meant wrecking your army to a point that usually precluded pursuit. Even the Prussians with their much more excellent armies in 1871 had a hard time pursuing the French Republicans.

In this sense Lee was right that to win you must be willing to destroy the thing you love. If you cannot gain annihilation via encirclement, i.e minimizing combat risk but inc erasing operational risk, you must wreck the enemy, maximizing combat risk but minimizing operational risk,and hope the wrecking you take is not worse than the one you give.

Many thanks for your good explanations my friends.

Still, taking this: "Even winning armies were wrecked and exhausted after a battle…"

Same thing in Napoleon Era… or in some cases because of weather … worst… and imho the persecutions of the loosers were very hard… don't see the same in the ACW…

Amicalement
Armand

As people pointed out even in Napoleonic era it was rare to prosecute the defeated enemy, or to be successful at it. Also better Cavalry in Napoleon's case. I mean to in the end make your case you need statistics, not anecdotal evidence. Considering a certain level of participants how often did victory follow pursuit in the Napoleonic Wars? 10% of battles? 20% of battles? Is that statistically significant?The Dupuy data might help. Pay me and I could do the work.

Another great missed opportunity in the Civil War was immediately after the Battle of Chickamauga. Nathan Bedford Forrest, pursuing Rosecrans with a small force found the army in total disarray and urged Bragg to launch an immediate all out pursuit and an attack to destroy the army before it could rally at Chattanooga.

Bragg squandered the opportunity. Forrest was furious and let Bragg know so in no uncertain terms. The dispute lead to Forrest resigning, which was refused by Davis who instead transferred him away from Bragg.

What the results of the Confederates being able to destroy the Army of the Cumberland would have meant has been a source of great speculation for many years.

Kim

+1 Robert piepenbrink, and further to your point:

Every senior general in the ACW tried continually to emulate the Napoleonic capture of an entire enemy army. It happened just three times in the entire war: at Fort Donelson, Vicksburg and Appomattox. And it was Ulysses Grant who pulled it off every time.

Bragg had the opportunity after Chickamauga, but just couldn't do it. McClellan had the chance handed to him on a platter at Sharpsburg, but was too intimidated by Lee to try.

Sam Grant did three times what no other contemporary American general could do even once, and by doing it he won the war for the Union. The excellence of his generalship is still under-appreciated.

I think one thing which is often overlooked is the exhaustion of the army commander. Not the troops, the commander. Take Meade at Gettysburg. He'd been on the go almost non-stop for days with the knowledge that the fate of the country was on his shoulders. By July 4th he was probably completely worn out. Most of his subordinates and staff probably were, too. Lee and the Confederates had the knowledge that if they didn't move they were doomed to keep them going, but it's completely unsurprising that the Union generals were a tad lethargic.

When I took a class with John Mearsheimer he used to tell us how one of his fantasies was a war pitting the IDF armored forces vs the Wermacht armored forces (equalized for technology).

I would say that a Moltke the Elder vs. Ulysses S. Grant would be an interesting match up.

After Waterloo wasn't the Armée du Nord destroyed and the Prussians pursued the remnants to Paris?

If you want to destroy an entire army, you have to box them up in something--oh, like say Forts Henry and Donelson, Harper's Ferry or Vicksburg. Or you have to just flat surround them like Appomattox.

And Appomattox was the result of an intelligent, vigorous pursuit.

What would Sherman have done, I wonder?

At Gettysburg? Can't say, but let's look at what Sherman did when in independent command of an army.

After defeating Hood in the battles around Atlanta and capturing that city, Sherman did *not* make the final destruction of the Confederate Army of Tennessee his top priority. Instead he began the March to the Sea, taking the opportunity to 'make Georgia howl' and to sack his way through a virtually defenseless Georgia and South Carolina. He expected by doing so to persuade the southern people to abandon their Confederate government, which could no longer protect them, and surrender, as many had already done.

Sherman expected Hood to follow him, but when Hood instead bolted north to threaten Federal communications and line of retreat, Sherman shrugged it off. He detached enough troops to contain Hood, and continued his design to burn out the heart of the Confederacy. He was entirely successful, although a weak Confederate Army was still in the field, ineffectually opposing him, when the war ended.

Sherman was not a conventional thinker. It's hard to say what he would have done had he ever taken command in the east.

Meanwhile Hood, following conventional Napoleonic thinking, focused his campaign on bagging Schofield's detached Union corps. Once again, he couldn't do it; Schofield escaped his clutches at Spring Hill.

As others have pointed out, it was usually futile in the ACW to pursue a defeated enemy with a victorious, but shattered army. The enemy was hot-footing away to safety and resupply, putting up a rear-guard defense with his remaining reserve, while the victor was disorganized, exhausted, out of ammunition and encumbered by tending to both sides' casualties.

The way to bag an enemy army was not to catch up with them running away, but to surround them before fighting them. Work one of those Napoleonic, semi-independent, all-arms army corps around a flank into their rear, onto their line of supply and retreat. Then, there would be no need even to mount an attack. Just establish a strong defensive blocking position, turn back their desperate attempts to break out, let them run out of beans and bullets. Then they have to surrender.

That was how to achieve a Sedan, a Stalingrad, to bag an entire army in Napoleonic style, as West Point trained American generals to do.

Over and over, the American generals on both sides tried to work around a flank, into the rear, surround and bag a detached corps or a smaller, outnumbered enemy army. Time after time they failed. Bragg at Perryville and Chattanooga, Hood at Spring Hill, blamed their subordinates for not following orders, their troops for not executing them. Hooker, after failing to bag the Army of Northern Virginia at Chancellorsville, had enough character to blame himself.

Sam Grant succeeded, three times. There was no other general in that war like him.

I am having difficulty with the "only Grant" argument. Between Donelson, Island Number 10, Harper's Ferry, Vicksburg, Port Hudson and Appomattox there were at least six different actions in the ACW where a large force was captured. Appomattox was the only one where the captured force did not choose to risk its existence by holding a fixed position.

In 1862 both Jackson and Lee unsuccessfully attempted to run down and/or cut off a defeated opponent. Part of the failure on both of these was due to what others have commented on, the condition of the victors. However part also is due to the ability of elements of the defeated army to pull itself together and mount a vigorous defense. You see the same thing in the aftermath of a number of other actions throughout the war.

…at least six different actions in the ACW where a large force was captured.

'A large force…", sure. But an entire army? Just three times.

I guess it comes down to how you define "entire" and "army" zippy.

The Confederate force at Donelson wasn't even an army. The bulk of the forces consisted of troops from A.S. Johnston's command which had been ordered to the fort a few days earlier. The Confederate force also was roughly the same size as the Harper's Ferry garrison so you cannot distinguish it from Island Number Ten and Port Hudson where the captured force was smaller.

As for entire, Grant failed to capture a force roughly two brigades strong at Donelson. A Confederate division of Pemberton's command avoided being captured as Grant closed in on Vicksburg. Even at Appomattox a couple of brigades of Confederate cavalry avoided being captured. However since they didn't fight again that isn't the same thing. On the other side a brigade of Federal horse did escape from Harper's Ferry as well.

Sometimes hagiographers' claims do not stand up to scrutiny. This is one of them.