MALVERN HILL, RUN UP TO GETTYSBURG

THEY FOUGHT AND DIED

They advanced in line after line…and not a man shirked going through the extremely heavy barrage, or facing the machine-gun and rifle fire that finally wiped them out….the lines which advanced in such admirable order melting away under the fire. Yet not a man wavered, broke the ranks, or attempted to come back.

The recorder of these words from a now distant war went on to note that he had never seen or could he have ever imagined "such a magnificent display of gallantry, discipline and determination," noting in conclusion that hardly a man ever reached the enemy's front line. Writing about a British attack on that fate-filled day of July 1, 1916, on the plains of the Somme in northern France, he could just as well have been writing about Malvern Hill, Gettysburg, or Fredericksburg or any number of other battle fronts of the American War of Rebellion. "Some 20,000 to 30,000 Virginia soldiers were dead. Thousands of others hobbled along city streets and country roads with an arm or leg missing…two generations of Virginians were maimed beyond description….The future held no promise.

Malvern Hill, Run Up to Gettysburg is not a chronicle of events during a specific time frame but rather a chronicle of the unheeded prescription for disaster repeated over and over again during four grueling years of war by commanders on both sides. The soldiers in the field paid the price. Errors and missteps were borne patiently and unflinchingly as the count of dead and wounded continued to mount. A Massachusetts soldier wrote: "Our poppycock generals kill men as Herod killed the innocents." Some readers may be taken aback by some of the remarks contained here, as well they should. This book is intended, in part, as a critical analysis of war and of leadership and of suffering and blind faith. Twenty years after the end of the fighting, Confederate Major General David H. Hill, division commander and later corps commander, wrote: "The attacks on the Beaver Dam intrenchments [sic], on the heights of Malvern Hill, at Gettysburg, etc. were all grand, but of exactly the kind of grandeur which the South could not afford."

It was not just Lee at Malvern Hill and Gettysburg, from which this book draws its title, it was Grant at Vicksburg and Cold Harbor, Sherman on the Yazoo and at Kennesaw Mountain, Burnside at Fredericksburg, and Hooker at Chancellorsville, to name the most noted. At Vicksburg, it was Sherman who urged repeated and senseless attacks on Confederate fortifications until he himself finally recognized that it was nothing but "murder." Except for Albert Sidney Johnston and George McClellan, for whom avoidance of frontal attacks except under the direst of circumstances was gospel, it seemed most never learned. Add case shot and canister from artillery to the fortifications and place them on a rise or a hill, and the losses increased exponentially. Commanders look for a five- or six-to-one numerical superiority, with a minimum of a three-to-one superiority. Even then, the losses could expected to be high.

What was special from a historical perspective about Malvern Hill in northern Virginia on July 1, 1862, and Gettysburg in southern Pennsylvania on July 3, 1863, was that they occurred almost one year apart, to the day. In the first instance, the loss meant everything to the families of those who lost their lives and limbs but little in the larger scale of events. At Gettysburg, the Confederate loss was one of the most significant events of the four-year-long brutal war and took place during that seven-day period from July 3 through July 9, 1863, that marked the beginning of the end for the Confederacy, although the casualties would continue to mount for almost another two years. On the day of the surrender of Vicksburg, General Lee began his retreat from Gettysburg. Vicksburg and Gettysburg were followed by the fall of Port Hudson to General Banks on July ninth.

Vicksburg and Port Hudson gave the Union undisputed command of the Mississippi River, its environs, and the door to the West. "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea," wrote the President to his friend Conkling to be read at a rally in Springfield, Illinois. Ronald White, who reviews the significance of the letter in detail, sees Lincoln's words as used here not as a mere statement of tactical military successes but, by sharing with him the magnificence of the river, a metaphor for all those who contributed to make the Mississippi free again, a thanks to all for making a great republic.

Vicksburg broke the Confederacy in half and inflicted a wound that, militarily, would ultimately prove mortal. The Union victory at Gettysburg also destroyed the last vestige of hope in foreign recognition of the government of the Confederacy that for all intents and purposes had been doomed with the Confederate loss at Antietam and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Although there were spikes, the South was never able to recover from the downward slide in fortunes that began July 3, 1863. Confederate forces lost over one-third their number that marched into Pennsylvania only one month earlier; and, for the month, some sixty thousand men were removed from the equation.

Gettysburg was the largest battle of the war in terms of total troops employed and the aggregate total casualties. The following table shows the ten costliest battles of the war to the Union army based on the number of casualties, but these numbers are very elusive.