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(Mine Run)

Mine Run

Meade had deflected Lincoln's pressure to do things fast all through the summer and fall.  He had refused to push hard during Lee's retreat from Gettysburg, and even after Longstreet was sent west Meade did little except improve and train the Army of the Potomac.

Yet at the same time he had a perfect record against Lee: Meade won at Gettysburg, and he certainly won the Bristoe Station campaign.  He had pushed across the Rappahannock, and even had outposts across the Rapidan rivers - without having to fight.  Now, in late November, he had good intelligence that Lee only had 40,000 men - while the Army of the Potomac was about 84,000.  (Actually the intelligence wasn't perfect.  Lee had over 48,000, but Meade still had around 2:1.)

So he would strike.  On the day before Thanksgiving he warned his Corps commanders to move half an hour before dawn the next day.  The men were to take 8 days cooked rations with them, saving the trouble of supply wagons and cooking as well.  This was because Meade was relying on speed.  Lee's line was 30 miles long, and Meade intended to cross the Rapidan beyond Lee's flank and march swiftly west to crumple the Confederate right.

Morning fog on November 26 (Thanksgiving Day) favored the Union move, but Samuel French, commander of III Corps, snarled things from the start.  He was slow in beginning, and slow in the middle, and called a rapid halt to movement on the first day.  He'd also made things difficult for his neighbors by sending some of his troops to cross at someone else's fords.  Then on the second day he took the wrong turn, and had to march his men back, then forward up the right road.  All this cost time, time Meade didn't have.

Lee had learned that the Union troops were to move - 8 days rations meant something was up.  Early (substituting for a sick Ewell) moved his men east, and before long there was a heavy skirmish between French's lead troops and Early's men.

Union numbers told initially, and the Confederates fell back behind the MINE RUN.  But dark intervened, and Lee put the time to use entrenching.  A.P. Hill also arrived and extended the Confederate left.  By morning Meade had his men deployed, but against nearly-impervious positions.  The stream covered the Confederate front, they were on a ridge, and dug in.  For two days Meade and his men scouted the line while the Confederates dug deeper.  He planned his attack for the 30th, after a heavy artillery bombardment.  The infantry prepared to obey, but also to die: many wrote their names and addresses so that word could be sent to next-of-kin.  Then, after the artillery had finished, word came that the attack was cancelled.  Warren convinced Meade that the attack that might have succeeded on the 29th wouldn't on the 30th.

Lee did more than dig; he wanted to attack.  But he wouldn't spoil the probability of a defensive victory with the chance of a spoiling attack and waited, even after Wade Hampton had found the opening for an attack. 

But Meade's time was up.  He'd issued 8 days rations on the 25th, and he hadn't brought more forward.  On the night of 1-2 December he silently pulled back.  He was back where he'd started but with roughly 1,300 fewer men.  Nor had he impressed Lincoln.

Page 15

(Mine Run)