"ACW question: How much damage did Lee's small staff do" Topic

… to his war effort?

"The purpose of this thread is not to discuss the ultimate outcome of the American Civil War. That topic has been debated endlessly on this board and elsewhere. Instead, I have a much more focused question in mind. I've often been surprised at the size of Lee's staff. My best efforts have only tracked down 6 officers (compared to Meade who had around 20). I suspect that at least some of Meade's staff were political appointees of marginal use but even so that's a massive difference in potential capability. Do you think this had a notable impact on outcomes of any campaigns/battles? Why or why not?

As a bit of background, let me start by saying that staff officers are the ones entrusted with both delivering commands and making sure the commander's intent is understood, as well as handling any variety of operational and logistical tasks. That said, Lee's staff was a very mixed bag; Lee's engineers were fairly competent, but William Pendleton in particular was widely considered incompetent for his post, and Chilton and Samuel Johnson were of questionable competence. For the most part, Lee's staff was used for little more than record- and housekeeping.

Let's review the action of Lee's staff during the Gettysburg Campaign. First, Lee's staff blundered in their wording of Lee's order to Stuart. The exact intention of Lee's order was lost in a complicated set of instructions written by Lee's officers (not to say that Lee and Stuart were blameless). This lack of clarity shows in a lot of Lee's orders. Prior to Gettysburg, Ewell received an order that told him to either go to Gettysburg or Cashtown with no clear indicator as to which town Lee preferred Ewell to go to. Ewell fumed at this lack of clarity and decided to use a route that let him move to both Gettysburg and Cashtown as circumstances demanded. On the 2d Day of Gettysburg, one of Lee's staff officer, a Captain Johnston who performed the earlier reconnaissance, was completely incorrect about the Union not being present on the Round Tops and Lee assumed that the route to the Union left was hidden, which it wasn't. By sheer coincidence, Longstreet's attack ended up being perfectly timed to smash Daniel Sickles' overextended III Corps…"
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Amicalement
Armand

There is an interesting amount of discussion at the link.

To my mind from my reading, I believe that Major General George Thomas probably had the best staff arrangement on either side.

Jim

I was surprised to realize that Lee didn't have adequate maps of the Virginia theater of war. His army sat behind the Rappahannock River from December, 1862, until May 1863, when Hooker began to move around his flank, and didn't use the time to map the line of the Rappahannock. The roads that Jackson used for his flank attack at Chancellorsville were brought to lee's attention in the week or so before the battle, when the Confederates realized Hooker was moving and they would have to do something to counter him.

Grelber

I was surprised to realize that Lee didn't have adequate maps of the Virginia theater of war.

Why do you say that?

My understanding was that the CSA in the east had very good maps for the time. This was mainly thanks to Jedediah Hotchkiss (see loc.gov/collections/hotchkiss-maps/?fa=location%3Avirginia&dates=1860%2F1869&sb=date for an online collection of his maps) and, probably my favourite, a map of the Shenandoah Valley loc.gov/item/99446754 which is 254cm long by 112cm wide (8.3 feet long and over 3.5 feet wide).

Jedediah Hotchkiss' memoirs, "Make Me a Map of the Valley" is excellent. He was so good that Lee tried to steal him from Jackson. Highly recommended.

@ Liliburlero

Thanks for the recommendation, you convinced me to get a book about Hotchkiss. However, I decided to order 'Mapping for Stonewall: The Civil War Service of Jed Hotchkiss' by W. J. Miller. [Mostly a price/availability decision although I felt I could check the Library of Congress website for any item I had a particular interest in as they have images of his many papers.]

I have no idea what maps Lee had access to in May of 1863. I find it doubtful though that Lee was unaware of the roads that Jackson used at Chancellorsville.

In 1864 Early had a decent set of maps available, not just for the Valley but also for northern Virginia.

So… he has a small Staff… but… was good?…

Amicalement
Armand

No question but that Hotchkiss was a very good cartographer. But it is a matter of one guy being stuck drawing maps of the entire state of Virginia. That's a fair piece of real estate! So, he tended to map whatever he was asked to map. In April, 1863, when it looked like Hooker might move west to get around Lee's army at Fredericksburg, Jackson asked him to make maps of the area where they might soon be campaigning. So he made these maps, and he kept updating them. For example, on May 1, a local forge owner told Hotchkiss he had recently built a new road, that wasn't on Hotchkiss' maps. He added it, and Jackson used this new found road to attack Howard's XI corps.
Going back to the original post, what Lee needed was not so much Hotchkiss as Hotchkiss and a cartography staff. Only there doesn't seem to have been much of one. Burnside's unfortunate Mud March indicated that the Union forces probably would try to move west and go around Lee's left flank. Hotchkiss and his boys could have been out mapping the area in February, March, and April, checking with locals for more specific information. That way, when the Confederates realized Hooker was going to go around them, Lee, Jackson, and company, could have reviewed the maps and decided exactly what to do. Instead, they marched west themselves, kind of hoping something would turn up to help them stop Hooker. It did, of course, but ultimately this sort of seat of your pants operating does catch up to you.
I'm sure Lee had some maps of Virginia. For that matter, I visited Virginia in 1999, and I still have my AAA highway map. It's a lovely map, and it got me to Washington, and North Carolina, Fredericksburg, and even Frederick, Maryland. But it would not have been what Lee needed. He needed much more detail. Hotchkiss could get it, for specific areas on demand. Being able to access data on this level for the entire state would have been very useful, and it didn't happen because of the small staff.

Grelber

By the way, this had been Captain Lee's job during the war with Mexico. General Scott knew the way from Veracruz to Mexico City via the main road. When the Mexican army blocked the way, Scott sent Lee out to find side roads and trails so the Americans could flank the Mexicans, rather than attack them directly in strong positions astride the main road.

Grelber

I do not think Hotchkiss was a one-man operation. I know he had staff reporting to him at the end of the war although I can not verify the exact staffing situation at the time of Chancellorsville. At the very least he would have been receiving information from others such as scouts. Additionally, at the time of Chancellorsville, Wikipedia (along with several other sources from a quick search) generally gives Hotchkiss credit as follows:
"At the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863, Jackson asked Hotchkiss for eight maps of the area west of Fredericksburg and, along with local residents, discovered the route that Jackson's corps took in the famous flanking march against the Union army."[Wikipedia credits this reference to James Robertson Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend. New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1997 by .][I also noticed that Wikipedia does get the size of the 'Shenandoah' map wrong and I'd prefer to rely on the dimensions provided by the Library of Congress.]
Additionally, Gen Lee would surely have had access to this map: loc.gov/resource/g3883s.cwh00058/?r=0.365,0.039,0.543,0.334,0;
probably this one loc.gov/resource/g3880.cwh00014/?r=0.389,-0.19,0.786,0.483,0 (yes, the critical portion is now missing); and
Incoming information from Gen Stuart's cavalry who then played a critical role in shielding Gen Jackson's movements. Also, Gen Lee had his own topographical staff.

Hotchkiss was clearly not idle during this period as the are numerous images from his sketchbook of the area around Chancellorsville (probably starting with this one loc.gov/resource/g3880m.gcwh0001/?sp=77. Also, when you examine his Preliminary Field Sketches for the Battle of Chancellorsville itself it is evident that he had a knowledge of who was where so it should be fair to say that Gen Jackson and Gen Lee were informed. Interesting to note is that, on 24 April, Hotchkiss notes in his Memoranda that "the enemy has a flanking column coming down the river" and then that "the Gen [Jackson?] sent me to look for a route for troops about 9pm and I was riding all night". [I find this interesting because this is earlier than I thought the USA began moving troops and earlier than the CSA realised and began to counter that movement.]

Yes, Lee did not seem to forget his past work.
Less than a week after Lee assuming command of the ANV he appointed A H Campbell to head the Topographical Department and a few days later field parties were organised and sent off to work.

Pretty sure Hotchkiss had people who could make copies of his maps, at least.

The top. engineer Lee sent to find the Union left flank on day 2 of Gettysburg (Capt. or Major Johnson, was it?) certainly did not do a good job, claiming to have gone all the way to the Round Tops without seeing any Union soldiers. (Sickles' corps hadn't advanced yet, but there were other troops around.)

The main problem, of course, was that his staff was so small, and yet Lee almost never wrote his own orders, either leaving to a staffer or, more likely, just giving verbal orders. Either is risky.

Grant almost always wrote his orders with his own hand, and his subordinates often noted that they were clear and precise, leaving them in no doubt as to what Grant wanted them to do.

A Clarification.
I've been concerned since writing above of the note made by Hotchkiss dated 24 April as it simply does not seem to align with any of the dates for Chancellorsville (e.g. Hooker didn't order his flanking attack until 26 April). All I can think of is that this relates to another matter (Port Royal troop movements) as an examination of Hotchkiss papers seem to be talking about Port Royal around that date.

While looking around to settle my mind over that note, I did notice something interesting in Shelby Foote's tome The Civil War. Foote is annoyingly sparse with dates but I took care to deduce the correct ones below.
Early in the morning of 2 May (0400) Lee met with Jackson (following a meeting the previous night when it had been decided that Jackson would march to flank Hooker, even though Jackson did not have an exact route of march). [The earlier maps I said Lee must have had do not show the roads Jackson eventually used for his flanking march.] While Lee and Jackson were talking, Hotchkiss
"approached the generals and spread his map on another hardtack box between them …[Hotchkiss] had found the route he had been seeking, and as he spoke he traced it on the map [I think it is probably this (undated) map loc.gov/resource/g3883s.cwh00059/?r=0.063,0.286,0.321,0.187,0] … Lee spoke … 'General Jackson, what do you propose to do?' Jackson put out his hand and retraced, with a semicircular motion, the route just drawn. 'Go around here,' he said. Lee kept looking at him. 'What do you propose to make this movement with?' he asked, and Jackson promptly replied: 'With my whole corps.'
… Lee absorbed the shock the words had given him. 'What will you leave me?' The question was rhetorical, he already knew the answer. But Jackson answered it anyway, as readily as before. 'The divisions of Anderson and McLaws.'"
The lead regiment of Jackson's corps set out at 8 o'clock. Jackson was in his new uniform, which Jeb Stuart had been glad to see him wearing the previous night as it had been a gift from him to Jackson.

OK I am confused.

First, looking at the first map you sited Quaama I see what appears to have been the route Jackson used for the first leg of his march. Even if I am reading the map wrong (or if that wasn't a map Lee and Jackson had available to them), there was behind Jackson the alternative, slightly longer but more substantial Catharpin Road which could be used to reach Brock Road, the second leg of Jackson's march.

Second, the critical information for Chancellorsville doesn't appear to me to be the existence of the forge road. Rather it is the knowledge that Lee and Jackson had on the eve of May 1 that Hooker's right flank is not anchored on the Rapidan or protected by a screen of U.S. cavalry, coupled with the knowledge Jackson gained while on the march on May 2 that he needed to launch his attack down the Orange Turnpike rather than the Orange Plank Road. This isn't information that could be gathered from maps. It was information derived from intelligence gathering.

I would guess that the Catharpin Road was not desirable to Jackson (probably considered too long and slow) as he "retraced … the route just drawn" (which is the one he took).

Yes, critical information was the intelligence gathering. This had already been supplied, in part, the previous night by Jeb Stuart who advised that "according to Fitzhugh Lee … Hooker's right flank was 'in the air' on the Orange Turnpike, wide open to attack. [Foote then goes on to describe Lee and Jackson's excitement at this news and Jackson asked about roads to which "Stuart replied that he did not know but he would do what he could to find out". However, without the map, Jackson was guessing he'd find a way that was relatively quick to get behind the Union. Regardless, he was heading off (and orders were issued for his troops to be ready to set off at 0400 the next day).

[I'm sorry, I take responsibility for contributing to your confusion as I left out a bit of the information [critical intelligence?] from Foote's book. Here it is:
"[Hotchkiss] traced it on the map: first due west to the furnace, then due south, away from the enemy, along a trail that gradually turned back west to enter the Brock Road, which ran northward to the plank road and the turnpike. However, he explained that the column must not turn north at this point, since that would bring it within sight of a Federal signal station at Fairview, but south again for a short distance to another road leading north and paralleling the Brock Road, which it joined a couple of miles above in some heavy woods just short of its junction with the plank road. That way, practically the entire route – some ten miles in length from their present position and firm enough throughout to support wagons and artillery – would be screened from the eyes of enemy lookouts."

After the battle when Hotchkiss had more time he did better maps of the area/battle, such as loc.gov/item/2005625038 which includes Jackson's route of march.

That makes sense. However I still see that more as an intelligence gathering success than as a cartographic failure. One thing we miss is that Jackson didn't just have access to Hotchkiss's maps. He had access to the man who drew them. This would allow him to obtain information that might not be available from the maps themselves.

Agreed.