(This is Part 5 of a series. Go back to Part 4.)
On July 3, 1863 General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia (the Confederate army) in the U.S. Civil War, made a fatal miscalculation which cost the South the war.
The most important battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, was raging. The Union army of 90,000 under General George Meade was dug in along Cemetary Ridge, in a field just outside the town. Lee's 76,000 soldiers were arrayed along Seminary Ridge, a ridge parallel to Cemetary Ridge and about a mile away.
The battle was not going well for Lee. The day before, on July 2, Lee had made his first miscalculation, ordering General James Longstreet to attack the Union's left flank in a direct frontal assault.
Longstreet, who well understood that frontal assalts were suicidal, protested this order but was overruled. Accordingly, in the late afternoon of the 2nd, Longstreet's soldiers frontally attacked the Union left flank and, with great loss of life, were repulsed.
Now, on July 3rd, Lee made his second miscalculation. He ordered a division commanded by George Pickett to frontally assault the Union center, an attack forevermore known to history as "Pickett's Charge." General Longstreet tried to argue Lee out of this order also, but Lee remained unmoved. "The enemy is there," Lee said, "and I am going to attack him there."
At 3 pm, therefore, 15,000 rebel soldiers began to make their way across the open field toward the waiting guns of the Union Army. As they advanced they were first decimated by a fierce artillery of 200 cannons, and then, as they got within range, by barrage after barrage of musket shots.
Pickett's division, shattered, staggered back to the rebel lines. Less than half of the soldiers made it back—and were met by Lee, who said, "I'm sorry. It's my fault." Indeed it was. Lee used extremely poor military strategy, and as a result lost not only 23,000 men in the battle, but ultimately, the Civil War itself.
This charge at the Battle of Gettysburg is considered by historians to be the "high tide of the Confederacy." Though the war would drag on for two more years, the end was effectively written. Because the South would never again be strong enough to mount an offensive campaign against the North.
Another example of the folly of direct frontal assaults is the trench warfare of World War I. Soldiers were dug in behind long trenches a few hundred yards apart. From time to time, soldiers would be ordered to charge forward into this "no man's land" between the trenches. They would invariably be met by withering machine gun fire and slaughtered.
Yet this mass slaughter did not stop mediocre generals in WW1 from ordering frontal assaults again and again. None of these direct assaults ever worked. The only result was that ten million men were lost—ten million. Such is the folly of direct frontal attacks.
It's a fascinating fact that, throughout history, the greatest generals have tended to avoid direct frontal assaults. They know that they tend to produce a great loss of life with—at best—inconclusive results. On the occasions when they have used such frontal attacks, they've normally used them as a diversion from a more lethal attack occurring somewhere else.
So if you are conducting a "frontal assault" on some problem in your life and it's not working, ask yourself if there isn't some more indirect way to approach it.
(This is the end of Part 5. Go to Part 6.)
—jim sloman, 7.11.03 for 11.28.03
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