MAY 19, 1864:
The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House (Day Twelve) (The Battle of Harris' Farm (Day Two)):
Although Robert E. Lee can report to Richmond with complete honesty that he has repeatedly frustrated Ulysses S. Grant’s tactical goals in this Spring’s battles, Marse Robert’s conscience must be pricking him hard.
Lee is learning the awful truth of President Lincoln’s words after Fredericksburg, that if that battle could be fought “over again, every day through a week of days . . . the army under Lee would be wiped out to its last man, the Army of The Potomac would still be a mighty host, the war would be over, the Confederacy gone.”
For although Lee has inflicted over 20,000 casualties on The Army of The Potomac during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House and almost 18,000 during the Battle of The Wilderness immediately preceding it --- a total of almost 40,000 men rendered either dead or combat ineffective in just two weeks, a terrible toll --- The Army of The Potomac is still 85,000 strong.
Lee’s much smaller Army of Northern Virginia began the month with 65,000 effectives; it now has 40,000 fighting men.
And Grant has not been driven off. Yes, he disengaged in The Wilderness, and yes, he is disengaging at Spotsylvania Court House this very day, but the bitter Battle of Harris' Farm is a Union victory at the last; what’s worse is that Grant is maneuvering around Lee’s flank just as he did when he marched his men out of The Wilderness. Even as he disengages, Grant keeps up a harassing fire.
Moving south toward Richmond, the Union army is still on the offensive. Lee has no choice but to attempt to stop Grant. He moves. The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House comes to a sanguinary end.
While the recent bloody battles are tactical draws, strategically Grant is in control of the field. The Yankee and Rebel armies are like two pirouetting dancers, or perhaps two boxers in the clinches, holding on to each other and pummeling each other to gain an advantage. With every spin, Richmond, and the end of the war, comes closer.
Despite the agony he is inflicting on individual men and units in the Federal army, Lee is well aware he cannot keep up this relentless slugfest. Eventually, and far sooner than Grant, he will run out of troops, run out of supplies, and run out of weapons. In the end he will run out of options.
Although he is still, and will forever be, lionized by the South, and with good reason, Lee has not gone to war on a large scale since Gettysburg. His actions in the last winter’s Mine Run Campaign were tentative. Robert E. Lee is no longer the Lee of Chancellorsville or even Second Manassas. Historians speculate that he may have suffered a coronary sometime in the Spring of 1863, rendering him physically weaker, less decisive, and inherently more cautious. Lee’s health problems cannot be confirmed with absolute certainty. But what he has lost for a certainty is Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart.
While the Southern Command is still better far than most of the Northern Command, Lee is down to his second string players. At the very same moment in time that Lee is burying Jeb Stuart, Grant, Sherman and Sheridan are coming into their own as leaders of the Union armies.
Grant will never be beloved like Lee, Sherman is viscerally different than Jackson, and Sheridan is a paler version of Stuart. But Lee is no longer facing the gout-ridden Scott, the unlucky McDowell, the timorous McClellan, the arrogant Pope, the dull Burnside or the frightened Hooker. He is not even facing Meade, the victor of Gettysburg, as senior commander.
Grant may not be subtle. In fact, he has all the panache of a mallet. But Lincoln has found his General.
