Confederate victory at the Wilderness, 1864

[History Learner]

In my personal opinion, this is one of the most underappreciated PoDs of the entire Civil War.

For those who don't know, the Battle of the Wilderness is the opening move of Grant's Overland Campaign with the Army of the Potomac, which sees the latter steal a march initially on the Army of Northern Virginia by crossing the Rapidan in the same vicinity that Hooker's effort the year previous had come to naught at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Lee, however, reacts decisively and effectively, counter-attacking and blocking off virtually all avenues of advance by Grant, most prominently with Longstreet's devastating assault on May 6th which even the Federal commander facing him later noted rolled his line up "like a wet blanket". However, and critically for the rest of the campaign, Longstreet is wounded during this and his Corps soon becomes disorganized thereafter, resulting in the Brock Road remaining in Union hands. On the 7th, Grant ultimately would elect to maneuver using this last remaining road, rather than attack the entrenched Confederates, ultimately setting the stage for the
Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.

Now, most AH treatment of the Battle focus in on Longstreet's wounding is the key point; that if he hadn't been, his attack on the 6th could've kept sufficient momentum to cut the Brock Road. There is, however, debate over how much of the disorganization was related to Longstreet's wounding, so as to avoid that argument I propose something different. Instead of the Pre-Battle dispositions of OTL, Lee elects to station Longstreet's Corps at either Orange Springs and Jackson’s Shop, which means it can arrive on scene sooner and in far better condition. It's certainly realistic for Lee to do this, as he had by April a pretty good understanding of Grant's likely plan of action but he (Lee) continued to overweight his left out of precaution in case Grant crossed around Culpepper, as Pope had tried in 1862 and Meade had done in the Bristoe Campaign the previous fall. The end result of this is that on May 6th, the Brock Road falls with all others as per OTL, and the end result on the 7th is that Grant has a very difficult decision to may. He can:

1) Attack the entrenched Confederates
2) Withdraw across the Rapidan

Now, as noted earlier, we know IOTL Grant elected to not do this but he also, unlike ITTL, had the ability to continue the forward movement that came to define his campaign by using the Brock Road; he could maneuver to a better position in the hopes of forcing an engagement on his own terms. Here, he can't, which makes each choice before him hard. To attack is, without a doubt, going to be costly even if it wins but it certainly fits Grant's (and Meade's) character at this time, given the hard fighting later shown at Spotsylvania and most infamously at Cold Harbor. It also fits into Grant's strategic object of the campaign, which is to destroy Lee's Army and Grant does, after all, have the larger Army. The question here, however, is whether he has more bodies than Lee's men have ammunition.....

Alternatively, he can withdraw across the Rapidan. The problem with that is that it derails the entirety of his campaign and will force him to re-plan it all, while giving the Confederates the opportunity to more effectively respond to Butler's efforts along the James as well as Franz Sigel's own campaign in the Valley, which are meant to be a part of a unified effort with the Army of the Potomac. If the Wilderness Route is out, that only leaves Fredericksburg and crossing from Culpepper as possible attack routes, with the former being obviously bad and the latter having shown no real luck for Union arms either. Perhaps equally important, a withdrawal from the Wilderness is a mark against Grant in Washington and among the wider public, which is only compounded when Sigel and Butler's efforts fail. Grant's entire strategic plan for Virginia in 1864 will have been for naught and, while efforts can be resumed shortly by the Army of the Potomac, it certainly is a setback against Grant which is also matched by the heavy casualties sustained even if he doesn't attack Confederate entrenchments. This same exact situation is what forced Hooker out the year before, it's worth noting, and 1864 is an election year.....

 

[History Learner]

So, I see the most likely course of action being Grant elects to attack the Confederate entrenchments. He certainly showed a willingness to do so repeatedly in 1864, so it already seems within his character, but there's also added strategic concerns here. If he withdraws across the Rapidan, no matter how temporary, it still creates a window of opportunity for the Confederates to focus their resources on defeating the Union's operations in the Valley and along the James. Such would in effect entail defeat by detail of Grant's entire planning framework for Virginia in 1864, as the failure of those efforts would also mean that Lee could marshal a unified response to the Army of the Potomac's late return. Given such a threat, and his own desire to at least make an effort before conceding defeat, it strikes me as likely he will spend at least a day or two bashing away at Lee's Army.

The problem here, though, is that this is the type of fight Grant never won in 1864 against Lee; arguably, no one but McClellan at Antietam or Grant in 1865 ever did, for that matter. The closest Grant came during the entire course of the Overland Campaign was at Spotsylvania, which still failed, as did efforts at Cold Harbor, the North Anna, and the various efforts after crossing the James River during the early stages of Petersburg. When the Army of Northern Virginia took up a position, the Union categorically failed to force it off said position by direct force, often incurring extremely heavy casualties in the attempts to do so. Grant's forward momentum thus always depended upon being able to leverage his larger force size and access to river-based resupply (Rapidan, York, James, etc) to enable him to return the campaign to one of maneuver, which was what would force Lee to move lest Grant position himself between Lee and Richmond. As mentioned in my earlier post, that is why Grant is effectively checked here, because without control of the Brock Road he can't maneuver around the flank.

With all that said, Grant is likely to attack and said attack is likely to fail. How bad would the end result be? If we assume OTL casualties up until May 7th, when Grant launches a day's worth of frontal attacks, I find it likely he will inflict a further 5,000 Confederate losses but take 14,000 or so in return; this is very close to what he took at Cold Harbor. Thus, total casualties come out to about 33,000 Union to 16,000 Confederate; these are unsustainable losses for the Army of the Potomac and will definitely force Grant to call off further attacks in favor of withdrawal across the Rapidan. Between such high losses and the failure to obtain any progress to show for the effort, I find it likely Grant gets the Hooker treatment, in that he is removed as soon as Lincoln has someone else in mind to replace him. Meanwhile, the Valley has failed and it's like the Army of the James has been compelled to evacuate from its own effort once Beauregard receives reinforcement from Lee.

 

[Geordie]

I'm interested in the answers, but too ill-informed to contribute anything of worth.

 

[History Learner]

I'm interested in the answers, but too ill-informed to contribute anything of worth.

30,000 casualties is the worst performance of the Union Army to date, with the Army of the Potomac's failures compounded by the setbacks on the James and Valley. I really don't see Grant being able to survive that on the political level, although I am not sure who Lincoln could replace him with; in a conversation with another user on CivilWarTalk it was suggested Lincoln might consider bringing McClellan back for another go at the Peninsula Campaign, although I am doubtful McClellan would accept such an offer; it'd be pretty clearly trying to get him out of contention for the Democratic nomination and McClellan has good political instincts to know where the wind is blowing nationally after these disasters. Whoever Lincoln does end up replacing Grant with will definitely have some difficult choices going forward. The Union has the resources and the campaign season is still young enough that the Union can resume the offensive come June or July at the absolute latest, the problem is one of strategy.

The Wilderness route has been tried by Hooker in 1863 and Grant too, with both failing disastrously. That leaves just the Fredericksburg route, which didn't work out too good for Burnside to say the least, and the Culpepper route. The latter is actually equally dangerous because it removes the ability of the Army of the Potomac to maneuver; they can't rely on river-based resupply to keep up the advance, so they are tied to extending the Orange and Alexandria railroad. Also, it obviously is an indirect path to Richmond which will eventually require the Army of the Potomac to take a significant risk of cutting lose from their supplies and hopefully either taking Richmond in less than two weeks or at least getting into contact with Union Navy via the James River. Grant considered this after the North Anna debacle and noted it was too high risk, because if the AotP failed to achieve either in a very short timeframe they would have to surrender due to supply exhaustion.