Gettysburg’s Southern Front: Opportunity and Failure at Richmond by Hampton Newsome published by the University Press of Kansas (2022)
I am very familiar with Gettysburg historiography. The first full history I read of the battle was Edward Coddington’s classic. The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command. Since then, I have read nearly a hundred books on the Gettysburg Campaign and related actions in the early summer of 1863. I first visited the battlefield as a child in 1969 with my dad and mom and my sister Barbara. I have been back at least six times, most recently in 2021. I have driven the route J.E.B. Stuart took in his controversial expedition to Gettysburg, and I have brought students to visit the battlefield. My nephew, Pat Young, was so engaged by my trip with him to the site that when he became a history teacher, he too brought students to Gettysburg. While I know a lot about Gettysburg, until a month ago I knew next to nothing about what was going on around the Confederate Capital in Richmond in June and July of 1863.
The movement of nearly the entirety of Lee’s army into Pennsylvania, followed by the Union Army of the Potomac, left Richmond uniquely vulnerable to attack. I knew a bit about the operations there, but until I read Hampton Newsome’s new work Gettysburg’s Southern Front: Opportunity and Failure at Richmond I really only had a vague sketch of what when on in Central Virginia. Newsome’s new book is a marvellously researched history of five weeks of Union and Confederate maneuvering to control the Confederate capital. Nearly everything I read in it was new to me, and I am sure it will be so for most readers of Civil War history.
When Union Major General John A. Dix, after whom Fort Dix is named, found out that after Chancellorsville Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was heading North he was not sure what was expected of his small 20,000 man army concentrated at the eastern end of Virginia’s Peninsula near Fortress Monroe. He only knew he had to do something, but his superiors in Washington were understandably focused on the emergencies created by the Union defeat at Chancellorsville and the Confederate invasion of the North. Should Dix send his troops North to reinforce the Army of the Potomac, move immediately on Richmond, or try to cut Lee’s supply lines north of the capital.
One problem in making a decision about what course to follow was complete uncertainty about how many Confederate soldiers Dix’s men would face. Union leaders in Washington like Henry Halleck assumed that nearly all full-time Confederate soldiers were now in Pennsylvania and that whatever small collection of office clerks and merchants left behind could be easily overcome. Dix worried that a much larger force of Confederate soldiers were defending one of the most fortified cities in North America. Both views were wrong.
D.H. Hill, who competently commanded the Confederate defenders, had three full brigades of seasoned troops who had more fighting experience than Dix’s mostly untried men. He also had the support of a fair number of reserve troops making the Confederate force equal to 13,000, fewer than the Union force, but with the advantage of fighting behind entrenchments, with railroad transport to move within their lines.
Newsome gives a detailed examination of the Union and Confederate decisions and moves during this “Second Peninsula Campaign.” While this is described a “Gettysburg’s Southern Front” in the title, the fighting described is not a small-scale Pickett’s Charge. Most readers will be unfamiliar with the June and July action on the Virginia Peninsula because the scope of action was so limited, the accomplishments of the Union force pale in comparison with those of General George Gordon Meade in central Pennsylvania, and it remains unclear as to what could have been accomplished with a more decisive commander than Dix.
Still, I was very happy to read Hampton Newsome’s thorough account of this campaign. He made it easier to understand both side’s actions. His description of D.H. Hill’s creative response to Dix’s moves just a few miles from Richmond is a major contribution to understanding this controversial Confederate’s military career. While Newsome does not assign all of the blame for Union failures to Dix, he does show where the long-time career army officer’s experiences behind a desk did not equip him to take bold action at a time of unexpected opportunity. Newsome also faults several of Dix’s subordinates for not following his directives to strike at Lee’s supply lines.
Newsome does give the Union raiders credit for the liberation of large numbers of enslaved Blacks. He writes:
The Confederates filled their newspapers and diaries with accounts of African Americans walking off their plantations to join Spear’s column. Many insisted they had not left voluntarily. But neither Spear nor any of his men mentioned slave liberation as a goal of the enterprise; given the stated aim of the mission (the destruction of the bridges), they had other matters to attend to. In his report, Dix confirmed that a “large number of slaves (men, women, and children) followed Colonel Spear’s train.” One Federal soldier, in listing the results of the raid in his diary, finished by noting the column had brought “lots of negroes” back to White House. Not surprisingly, the refugees sought to remain with the Union forces. Accordingly, Dix decided to put the men to work at his temporary base and send the women and children east to Fort Monroe. (p. 122-123)
Since the Union commander appeared uninterested in reporting on the emancipatory results of his campaign, Newsome does admirable work in getting the information from other sources, including the Confederates, that did write about it.
I think this book will be popular with readers already familiar with the existing histories of Gettysburg who want to know what was happening in the place Lee left behind as well as those interested in the social impacts of an at times uncoordinated series of less than effective raids.
I highly recommend this new work.
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