Post this on the Military History forum and you'll get great analysis from some dedicated, well informed military historians like AlbanyRifles, or karl. . I do not have their professional education, but here is what I have read: 

 

1) Washington, D.C. was just as close to Confederate armies as Richmond, Virginia was to the Army of the Potomac. This meant that any attack on Richmond could be aborted by a corresponding attack on Washington. Lee and Jackson exploited this many times.

2) Firepower (artillery and rifled muskets) tended to favor the defensive. In addition to this, the area around Richmond was very heavily fortified. Attacking forces suffered horrendous casualties (400,000+ Union dead, versus 200,000+ Confederate). It took iron-willed ruthlessness to persevere in the face of those casualties. Many generals simply couldn't do this (McClellen comes to mind).  

3) The Union had to attack in order to win the war,  the Confederacy only had to survive the attacks. Confederate generals had a simpler task

4) It took a  first rate combination of generals (Grant and Sherman) to cut through this Gordian knot, and an iron-willed commander-in-chief to keep feeding them the resources they needed. 

 

 

All of that plus incompetent generals, using the wrong tactics, and micromanagement from Washington. 

 

McClellan was too afraid that his precious Army of the Potomac might get, y'know, hurt kept him from taking Richmond when he was within 20 miles of the place.  Lee saw the weakness and masterfully exploited it; despite the fact that Lee's army took proportionately more casualties in the Seven Days' Battles, it was McClellan that hauled ass.  At Antietam, McClellan allowed himself to be fought to a draw against an army trapped against a river and one that he outnumbered at least 3 to 1.  Pope was worthless, and easily outmanuevered by Stonewall Jackson.  Burnside at least admitted he was incompetent, and then went out and proved it at Fredericksburg.  Hooker was a fine corps commander and came up with a brilliant plan, then got frightened by his own success.  Lee was able to move faster at Chancellorsville, but the battle never should have been fought there.  (I give Meade a break because he was thrown into command in a defensive battle, and it was Grant's overall direction he followed for the rest of the war.)

 

Grant recognized something that no Union commander in the east apparently did: Richmond was nice to have, but it was Lee's Army of Northern Virginia that was the target.  Destroy Lee, you get Richmond.  Napoleon would've seen it instantly.  Lincoln saw it before most (which was why he blew his top when McClellan didn't seal the deal at Antietam and Meade didn't pursue after Gettysburg).  Grant didn't get any closer to McClellan to Richmond before February 1865, but by that time the AoNV had been crippled through constant battle.

 

Poor tactics was partially to blame too.  Everyone was trying to make like Napoleon on a tactical battlefield that now included rifles, and on a strategic level in an area much bigger than anyplace Boney ever campaigned on, with the exception of Russia.  A Prussian army couldn't recover from a disaster like Jena-Auerstadt, because there weren't many places to run in Prussia.  A Confederate Army could suffer a defeat like Gettysburg, retreat 100 miles, and still be in position to cover Richmond and resupply as needed.  Grant and Sherman threw out Jomini and did their own thing, and were probably closer to what Napoleon would've done anyway.

 

Finally, while Lincoln proved to be a quick study in strategy and eventually cured himself of the micromanagement bug, Stanton and the other Radical Republicans never did.  There was way too much pressure put on Union generals to produce instantly or suffer the consequences.  When Stanton bitched about Grant's casualty rate, Grant ignored him and trusted Lincoln to back him up.  (In the Union's defense, Jefferson Davis was just as bad at micromanaging.  Lee was generally able to ignore him as well, but it wasn't from a lack of trying on Davis' part.)

 

And naturally we should also mention that Robert E. Lee was just a damned fine general, and had some great subordinates in Jackson, Longstreet, and Stuart to back him up.

 

 

Lincoln was a master strategist but he was no Winfield Scott. He did not realize that his generals had to worry about Human fatigue, supply and movement factors. McClellan's army was shot up at Antietam, out of ammunition, he was low on horses, his cavalry just showed him that they were no good, the infantry were totally exhausted, and he had twenty thousand wounded on his hands. There was no gung ho left.

 

 Meade at Gettysburg faced far worse factors. This does not excuse their  final shove failures, but it does explain about what those AoP generals actually thought when they sat on the battlefield and let the ANV get away.  Lee, you must remember, for example, simply  abandoned many of his wounded to Union care as an impediment many times to slow the Union down. At Malvern Hill McClellan fought to recover his casualties before he evacuated. Lee would have abandoned like he did at Antietam. Real nice bastard, that guy, Lee, turned out to be.

Not bloody likely. Sherman was a Clauswitzian, and Grant sort of stumbled into the guy when Sherman introduced Grant to the author's books. The real strategist of the Civil War besides Lincoln was Winfield Scott, who sort of laid out the Anaconda Plan and educated Lincoln enough to use it. Before Seapower was even a concept to Mahan, an ARMY general and a President used it. Scott could also read a map and he knew war economics. Very modern Am

I'm not a history guru, but wasn't the last attack on Richmond, the one that almost made it, pulled back because Lee kept dressing his smaller units in different uniforms  and flags and marching around in a loop to make the Union think that the force was much larger?

Actually, no.  That was Magruder at Yorktown.  McClellan dithered in front of Richmond long enough for Lee to attack him first.

 

Some interesting points, Hamlicar.  I can tell you're no fan of Marse Robert!  Personally, I think Lee was a superb defensive commander, but not suited to offense: whenever he was confronted with an enemy on better ground, he just charged straight at them.  When the attack invariably failed (Malvern Hill, Pickett's Charge), he would say "God's will" as if that excused poor generalship.  (Though in his defense, he did initially claim correctly that Pickett's Charge was his fault.)  Lee also suffered from strategic myopia--the CSA would've been better served if Lee had sent a corps or two to go relieve Vicksburg, rather than invade Pennsylvania.

 

Disagree with you on Longstreet, who I think is underrated.  He knew ground, which was why he spent most of the second day of Gettysburg trying to talk Lee out of attacking. 

 

Agree with you on Stuart, who I think is overrated.  While Stuart could and did manuever cavalry quite well (and wasn't a half bad corps commander either; he took over for Jackson at Chancellorsville and did pretty good), he was also an egomaniac who was more concerned with publicity-grabbing stunts than doing his job.  Hampton was good; Forrest may have been the best, though Forrest's reputation has been deservedly tarnished by the fact that he was also a racist SOB who should've been shot for war crimes.

 

Agree with you to a certain extent on Winfield Scott.  The Anaconda Plan was brilliant, but it rested too much on the idea that the South really didn't want to secede and would quickly pack it in once the blockade was enacted and the Mississippi taken.  He reflected the views of Jomini that geometry and logic would win a campaign, when Napoleon held that the target was the enemy's army.  All that aside, Scott gets overlooked far too often--even Wellington didn't think he had a prayer of taking Mexico City.

 

Strongly disagree with you on Antietam, agree completely with you on Gettysburg.  McClellan had two entire corps that were untouched and fresh, which he could've sent in either late or the next day, crushing Lee; he didn't use them because he thought Lee outnumbered him (as usual).  Lincoln removed him for that mistake.  Meade really didn't have anything left after Gettysburg, so I think he can be excused for not pursuing Lee.  I think Lincoln realized it too, which was why he never sent the scathing letter to Meade he had intended to.  Still, I think Lincoln was a better strategist than people give him credit--he was far better than Jefferson Davis, anyway.

 

He was too much cavalier and not enough cavalry I think. Hampton was a professional. Again that is my opinion. He could command if someone watched him like Lee did at Chancellorsville, but you couldn't give him an independent command at all. All you could do with him was babysit him and keep him close where you correct hos mistakes. Its not like he could conduct independent operations in support like Grierson or Forrest or conduct a proper campaign like Jackson or Sheridam.

Exactly how effective was Anaconda Plan? CSA's major military equipment and supply were made in England then smuggled into Southern States. Given the duration of the conflict and the intensity of each campaign, they must have required huge amount of artillery pieces and ammunition. How did they get that amount of war supply with meager "smuggle" through the blockade?

It took a long time to build the river flotillas and blue water navy. Plus, the start lines were the Tennessee, Cumberland, Ohio and Missouri Rivers. The southern coastline held some two hundred working ports which the Union Army proceeded to reduce one by one by amphibious assault or overland attack. Try imagining blockading the Mediterranean European coast  starting with 30 ships and 30,000 troops, and conducting a land war down the Dauube River with the goal of reaching Vienna so that you can invade northern Italy and take Florence when your start position geographically and technologically is 1860 Russia.

 

Scott to McClellan ...