RIDGELAND — Very early in July, 1863, an 18-year-old girl named Arabella heard her mother speaking with a visitor in the parlor of her home near Jackson. When her mother cried out in a loud and sorrowful tone, Arabella instantly knew that Vicksburg had fallen. Her immediate fear was that the South would now be “murdered as a nation.”
The immediate impact of Vicksburg’s fall was that the Union now had control of the Mississippi River, and the Confederacy was severed. Arabella was not alone in her fears of the ultimate consequences. The loss was critical, and many Southerners blamed John C. Pemberton, the commander of Confederate forces at Vicksburg. Much of the distrust in him was because he was a Pennsylvanian.
It is only in recent years that some scholars have come to lay blame on Gen. Robert E. Lee for the loss. It was known that reinforcements were needed to defend Vicksburg, and some Confederate officials had hoped Lee would move his troops there. Because of his arrogance and temper, even his superiors did not dare to order him. When asked if he would consider it, Lee declined, arguing that the action there would not continue long enough for him to arrive with fresh troops. Lee gave that reply in early June, nearly a full month before Vicksburg fell.
So why did the revered general not believe it important to help defend Vicksburg? Perhaps the most plausible reason was his “Virginia-centric” view of the war. He was the Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia and that area was his primary concern. He wanted to strike the Union from there or on their own ground and force an agreement for peace.
It was Lee’s obsession that caused his disastrous decision to attack Gettysburg. Supremely confident after his victory at Chancellorsville, he believed he could strike the decisive blow against Union troops and end the war. Surely, such an outcome would make a trip to Vicksburg unnecessary. Instead, because of Lee’s single-mindedness on northern Virginia, the South suffered a tremendous blow in Pennsylvania at the same time the fledgling Confederacy was split in two by defeat in Vicksburg.
On the 19th of this month, many Southerners will commemorate Lee’s birthday. I have no problems with that and believe some adulation of the man is justifiable. It is nonetheless time to reassess his overall legacy. For nearly 160 years, he has had the benefit of canonization without investigation. Eric Foner correctly dismissed Douglas Southall Freeman’s biography of Lee as a hagiography, and we Southerners have treated him more like a Catholic saint than the man whose troubled relationship with slavery has been hidden in fictional virtue.
Our image of Lee has been one of a wise and just man committed above all to duty. He did give the South hope with his victories on the battlefield. He also made bad decisions and missteps. These cost the Confederacy the Mississippi River and a decisive loss at Gettysburg. Although the South continued the fight for nearly two more years, Arabella’s fears of a nation suffering its own death were realized.
- Vincent J. Venturini, of Ridgeland, is a former associate provost at Mississippi Valley State University. Two of his great-great-grandfathers fought for the Confederacy.
