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(Longstreet's Tidewater)

Jackson's Tidewater Campaign

In the late winter of 1862-63 Lee and Jefferson Davis had some hard facts to face.  The Army of Northern Virginia was short of rations and men; there were rumors of further Union amphibious moves on Richmond; there were threats from the Union garrisons scattered along the North Carolina coast.  Most obvious was Hooker's Army of the Potomac, encamped opposite Fredericksburg.

It was the most obvious threat, but how serious was it?  Hooker was new to army command, the weather was bad, and Lee had strong positions in case Hooker tried something.  So the threat from Hooker could be discounted to a degree.

Not so the threats further south, on the exposed coastal flank.  What if Hooker pinned Lee's army while new Union forces landed to repeat last spring's Peninsula campaign?  If that was the new Union strategy they wouldn't send McClellan back to do it slowly.  Also, the flexibility of seapower meant the Union could move troops to one of their North Carolina bases and move inland to sever the vital Weldon Railroad - the line that fed most of Lee's army.

To top things off, the Fredericksburg area had been picked over.  There wasn't enough food locally to feed the men - and especially the horses - of the Army of Northern Virginia.  And critically the railroads were overloaded, so they couldn't forward enough supplies to keep Lee's men in decent condition.

These factors swirled around Confederate strategy sessions.  The result was the unexpected.  Lee agreed to weaken his army, partly because he couldn't feed all of it, partly because he felt he was strong enough to defend, and partly because of the threats further south.  In mid-February most of Longstreet's corps was moved south by rail (it wasn't a problem to move men south cars that were empty after bringing rations and fodder forward) into North Carolina.

They had three purposes, as Davis made clear.  1)Longstreet was to keep himself in a position to cover Richmond in case the Union landed troops at Fort Monroe and moved up the James-York Peninsula again. 2)Be able to move back to Fredericksburg in case Hooker moved.  3)Push the Union troops back to their bases, capture any of those ports if possible, gather all the provisions and volunteers possible in the area, which had been under Union occupation for almost a year.  Goals 1 and 2 conflicted with 3, which itself was not terribly aggressive - Longstreet had to be careful not to get drawn into pointlessly bloody battles in this little campaign.  This may be why Lee chose Longstreet over Jackson, who had more experience of independent operations.  Jackson tended to fix on one objective and lose perspective; he might have launched a major attack on one of the small coastal garrisons and lost too many men.

Longstreet was made commander of all North Carolina (except around Wilmington) and south-side Virginia, with about 44,000 men under him - mainly scattered garrisons that had already been in the area.  Just over half were available for mobile operations.  Against him were roughly 50,000 Union troops, but they were far more scattered, with garrisons in most of the ports from Fort Monroe to Norfolk, Suffolk, Elizabeth City, Plymouth, Washington, New Bern, and Beaufort.

By early March it became clear that the Union troops detached from the Army of the Potomac were not moving by sea but to east Tennessee, a region Lincoln always wanted to protect (or liberate) for political reasons.  Now Longstreet's task was clearer: avoid casualties, but gather supplies and try and pick off a garrison.  Longstreet quickly pushed his forces into coastal North Carolina, probing around New Bern (mid-March) at FORT ANDERSON.

He cleared that area of supplies, then moved northward, and east because there was still no strong threat to either Richmond or Fredericksburg.  He had D.H. Hill besiege WASHINGTON, N.C. (late March to mid-April) with 12,000 men while he took the rest of the mobile troops (about 20,000) against Suffolk, Va. 
Major General John Peck had two divisions there (roughly 20,000 men) but believed Longstreet was much stronger, so he circled the wagons.  Longstreet started a SIEGE OF SUFFOLK only to buy time for his commissary officers (the Confederate dollar was still worth something); he had no intention of taking Suffolk, and little chance.  Various little actions took place during the siege, including one at the Norfleet House Battery, but with no effect on the outcome.

Longstreet successfully kept up the pretense.  Substantial quantities of supplies were obtained, and he began to wonder if he might gain some glory by capturing Suffolk (now reinforced so the defenders had more men than the besiegers).  But events around Fredericksburg intervened.  Hooker was moving; Longstreet was summoned back.  He dropped ideas of glory but still withdrew slowly enough to squeeze the last supplies out (and extract his wagons intact).  Even if he had abandoned everything, he still wouldn't have been back in time for Chancellorsville.

Page 10

(Longstreet's Tidewater)