In my opinion Lee never really had the possibility of obtaining a great strategic victory in Pennsylvania. No doubt he might have won another tactical victory (as he did two months earlier at Chancellorsville or before that at Fredericksburg and Mansassas) but there was no way that he could effectively destroy the Army of the Potomac. Frankly, Civil War armies lacked the ability to destroy each other. The two sides would come together, butt heads, inflict hideous casualties on each other, limp away, regroup and fight again. Even had the Pickett-Ptttigrew-Trimble assault on July 3, 1863 broken through, there was no where for them to go and they would all eventually become rounded up or destroyed. The Confederate assaults of July 1, 2, 3 were heroic and on July 2 they came close several times to shattering the Union lines, but the attacks were made in echelon by brigades and were uncoordinated and the great Union tactical leadership (particularly by Major General Winfield Scott Hancock the II Corps commander) was able to eventually blunt all threats. For example late in the afternoon of July 2 a Georgia brigade under Brigadier General Ambrose R. Wright of Richard Anderson’s division (A.P. Hill’s III Corps) actually broke through the Union center but being unsupported it was beaten back. That largely was the story of the Confederate effort. The day after the battle ended, Vicsksburg on the Mississippi River surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant.
That Gettysburg was fought at all was due to the force of one man’s will. Robert E. Lee wanted to invade the North and fight an epic and conclusive battle there. His superiors in the Confederate government were skeptical and thought it might be wiser to husband resources in the East and fight in the West, where Vicksburg was hanging by a thread. Lose the West, they believed, and the cause was doomed. Lee convinced them otherwise. His stature was such—especially after his splendid, if costly, victory at Chancellorsville—that his will could not be resisted, even by the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis.
But if Lee’s will was strong enough to force the battle, he could not impose that will upon his own subordinates. Not, at least, with enough urgency to make them accomplish his aims and win what he, and many historians, believe might have been his final and finest victory. The question has been posed in most accounts of the battle: “Why did the South lose?”
Several explanations have been proposed. Lee himself believed that if he’d had Stonewall Jackson with him, things would have gone the other way. In the end, George Pickett may have come up with the best answer: “I always thought,” he said, “that the Yankees had something to do with it.”
by Geoffrey Norman
A Great Battlefield
Gettysburg: an epic tale of not quite enough and just in time
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/great-battlefield_738049.html
by Mackubin Thomas Owens
Robert E. Lee’s smashing victory against Major General Joseph Hooker’s Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville in May 1863 provided the Confederacy with three strategic options: shift resources from Virginia to Mississippi in order to revive Vicksburg, the Rebel redoubt on the Mississippi River; reinforce Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee, enabling him to reprise his 1862 invasion of Kentucky and maneuver the Union Army of the Cumberland under William Rosecrans out of its position in central Tennessee; or invade Pennsylvania.
But after Chancellorsville, it was probably too late to affect the outcome at Vicksburg, because the siege was already under way. (Vicksburg would fall on the Fourth of July.) And it didn’t make sense to detach forces from the Confederacy’s only successful field army, the Army of Northern Virginia, under its only successful general, Lee, and send them to other generals whose competence was questionable. In the end, Lee effectively made the case to Confederate president Jefferson Davis that the best use of limited Confederate resources was to invade Pennsylvania. As he had done in the fall of 1862, Lee intended to effect a strategic turning movement, draw the Yankees out of Virginia, and annihilate a Federal army on Union soil, forcing Lincoln to sue for peace.
After the Seven Days’ Battles on the Virginia Peninsula in June 1862, Lee had organized his Army of Northern Virginia into two corps, the first commanded by General James Longstreet and the second by General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson. After Jackson’s death at Chancellorsville, Lee reorganized the army into three corps: I Corps under Longstreet, II Corps under James Ewell, and III Corps under Ambrose Powell Hill. The latter two had been excellent division commanders. However, their elevation to corps command was an example of the “Peter Principle” at work: promotion to a level above one’s competence. Lee would sorely miss Jackson in Pennsylvania.
The Campaign Begins
On June 3, Lee slipped out of his base at Fredericksburg and headed west into the Valley of Virginia. Ewell led the way, with Hill and Longstreet in trace. Unsure of Lee’s intentions, General Joseph Hooker, commanding the Union Army of the Potomac, ordered his cavalry commander, General Alfred Pleasonton, to conduct a reconnaissance across the Rappahannock. On June 9, Pleasonton’s cavalry surprised Jeb Stuart at Brandy Station. The ensuing battle was the largest all-cavalry engagement of the war. Although the Yankees were eventually driven from the field, the battle embarrassed Stuart. It also illustrated the strides made in the quality of Union cavalry under Hooker. But perhaps most important, it alerted Hooker to Lee’s movement north.
On June 13, Hooker began to move north in an attempt to keep his army between Lee and the Federal capital. The next day, Ewell routed a Federal force at Winchester, and on June 15, Lee crossed the Potomac. [.......]
From the beginning of the campaign, Lee was unsure of the precise location and disposition of Hooker’s army. Stuart’s cavalry was supposed to provide such information, screening Lee’s advance into Pennsylvania, operating east of Blue Ridge between Lee and Hooker, and finally reuniting with Lee around York, Pa. Unfortunately for Lee, the encampment of the Army of the Potomac lay astride the route Stuart was to follow, forcing the latter to swing farther to the east, thereby placing Hooker between Lee and Stuart’s cavalry, which could not provide Lee with the location of the Union army.
For the next week, Stuart was unable to “turn the corner” because the Army of the Potomac was moving much faster than it had in the past. The main reason for this was that Hooker had reduced its baggage train.
On June 28, Hooker threatened to resign if his demand to assume control of the Harpers Ferry garrison was rejected. The general in chief, Henry Halleck, accepted Hooker’s resignation, much to the latter’s surprise, and replaced him with George Meade, a Pennsylvanian who had formerly commanded the Union V Corps.
All Roads Lead to Gettysburg
A glance at a map of south-central Pennsylvania reveals that “all roads lead” to Gettysburg. The town resembles the hub of a wheel with spokes converging from all directions: from the southwest, the Hagerstown Road; from the northwest, the Cashtown Pike; from the north-northwest, the Mummasburg Road; from the north, the Carlisle Road; from the northeast, the Harrisburg Road; from the east, the Bonaughtown Road and the York Pike; and from the south, the Emmitsburg Road, Taneytown Road, and Baltimore Pike.
Each of the two armies was operating in ignorance of the other’s location, but on June 30, Lee ordered Ewell to move south from Carlisle, and Hill to move east from Cashtown.
Meade’s plan was to assume a defensive position behind Pipe Creek in Maryland, just south of the Pennsylvania line. But Major General John Reynolds, commanding the Army of the Potomac’s I Corps, ignored the “Pipe Creek Circular” and moved northeast to occupy Gettysburg. The earliest Reynolds could do so was mid-morning of July 1, so on the evening of June 30, John Buford’s cavalry division moved into position on the high ground west of town to hold on until Reynolds’s arrival.
Stuart’s absence was a severe handicap for Lee. He discovered the proximity of the Union army only because of information provided by a spy that Longstreet had hired. But once he got a sense of the enemy’s location, Lee adopted a characteristically aggressive concept of operations. [.......]
Still, Lee wished to avoid a general engagement until he had concentrated his army. Although two of his corps were converging on Gettysburg from the north and the west, Longstreet would not be up until late the next day. But as Napoleon is reputed to have remarked, “A dogfight can initiate a battle.” At 5:30 a.m. on the morning of July 1, the lead element of Hill’s corps (Henry Heth’s division), approaching from the west on the Cashtown Pike, clashed with Buford’s cavalry on McPherson’s Ridge west of town.
The Battle of Gettysburg was on. Meade now had no choice but to abandon his Pipe Creek defensive plan and push the Army of the Potomac north toward Gettysburg.
Heth’s division deployed from column into line and advanced against Buford’s dismounted troopers on McPherson’s Ridge. Despite being outnumbered, the cavalrymen, armed with repeating carbines, were able to deliver a high volume of fire and gave ground only grudgingly. Heth nonetheless pushed forward to McPherson’s Ridge, where he encountered Reynolds’s I Corps, which checked his advance. Around 10:30 a.m., Reynolds was killed by a Confederate sniper, and command of I Corps fell to Abner Doubleday. There followed a lull in the battle as I Corps redeployed to Seminary Ridge and both sides awaited reinforcements.
At about noon, Major General O. O. Howard’s XI Corps arrived and deployed to Doubleday’s right, facing north to deal with the approach of Ewell’s corps from Carlisle. Lee also reached the field about this time. Without intelligence from Stuart, Lee still did not know the full disposition of the Federal army. [......]
At about 2:00 p.m., Rodes’s division of Ewell’s corps, joined by Heth, struck the right of the Federal I Corps. About an hour later, Jubal Early’s division of Ewell’s corps attacked down the Harrisburg Road, smashing the exposed right of the XI Corps, a repeat of that unfortunate corps’ experience two months earlier at Chancellorsville when Jackson’s attack had routed the corps and rolled up the entire Union line. The routed Federals retreated through Gettysburg to Cemetery and Culp’s Hills, the high ground south of the town. Meanwhile the Federal I Corps on Seminary Ridge also gave way before Hill’s assault.
Lee ordered Ewell to press the attack against the new Union position “if practicable.” Proving he was no Stonewall Jackson, Ewell declined. Meanwhile Major General Winfield Scott Hancock arrived on the field in advance of his approaching II Corps. [........] Howard accepted the slight and worked with Hancock to strengthen the Union position while Hancock pressed Meade to bring up the rest of the Army of the Potomac as quickly as possible.
During the first day of battle, Lee had shattered two Union corps, inflicting 9,000 casualties, including 3,000 captured, while suffering 6,500 of his own. The Union I Corps alone lost some 5,700 soldiers, including 1,500 captured. Some units bore the brunt of the battle: for instance, the 24th Michigan, a regiment of the famed “Iron Brigade,” the only all-western brigade in the Army of the Potomac, lost 399 of its 496 soldiers. Although the Union position on Cemetery and Culp’s Hills was strong, the soldiers of the I and XI Corps were demoralized. Had Ewell proven to be as aggressive as Jackson, it is likely that the Confederates would have carried the Federal position on the evening of July 1.
Lee and Longstreet: On the Cusp of Victory
Both armies were reinforced during the evening of July 1. Longstreet arrived with two of his three divisions (George Pickett’s division was still a day’s march away), and three more Union corps reached the battlefield. (It should be noted that Union corps were about half the size of Confederate corps at that time.) The Union position began to assume the shape of a fishhook, with the barb and bend running west from Culp’s Hill to Cemetery Hill, and the shank running south along Cemetery Ridge toward two rises, Little Round Top and Round Top.
Encouraged by his success on the first day, Lee resolved to renew the attack on July 2. An early-morning reconnaissance revealed that the Union line extended about halfway down Cemetery Ridge, short of the high ground of Little Round Top. Lee ordered Longstreet to take his two present divisions under major generals John Bell Hood and Lafayette McLaws and attack the Union left.
While Ewell demonstrated against the Union right on Culp’s and Cemetery Hills, Longstreet, supported by a division of Hill’s corps on his left, was to deliver a flank attack on the Union line. However, Lee was informed that the Union line on Cemetery Ridge had been extended south, so he modified his original plan and directed Longstreet to attack en echelon from south to north.
While it seems to violate the principle of mass by attacking piecemeal, an echelon attack is designed to force the defender into mistakes by getting him to create gaps in his line while trying to plug others. Thus Longstreet was to take advantage of any opportunities to unhinge the entire Union position on Cemetery Ridge.
It took Longstreet some time to reach his line of departure. Accordingly, his attack did not begin until about 4:00 p.m. Just as Longstreet was about to initiate his assault, Hood informed him that the way was open to the Union rear if he could swing his division farther to the south. [.......] Longstreet now initiated his echelon attack by releasing his rightmost division under Hood against the Union left. Major General George Sykes’s V Corps was just now arriving on the battlefield, and a brigade was rushed forward to occupy Little Round Top and a jumble of rocks known as Devil’s Den in order to secure the Union left. The leftmost regiment of the brigade was Colonel Joshua Chamberlain’s 20th Maine, whose desperate defense of Little Round Top is immortalized in Michael Shaara’s historical novel Killer Angels and in the film Gettysburg, which is based on the novel.
While Hood was attacking Little Round Top and wresting Devil’s Den from the Yankees, Longstreet launched the second phase of his echelon attack by releasing the right wing of McLaws’s division. As McLaws’s brigades advanced toward Cemetery Ridge, they encountered Major General Daniel “Democrat Dan” Sickles’s III Corps in a wheat field and peach orchard just east of the Emmitsburg Road. Earlier in the day, Sickles, dissatisfied with his position at the base of Cemetery Ridge, had advanced without orders to this location. In so doing, he not only formed a salient but also created a gap between his right and Hancock’s II Corps to his north. [.......]
The fighting was brutal, but McLaws’s attack eventually unhinged the Union salient by sweeping the peach orchard and the wheat field. Meade and Hancock tried to stem the Confederate tide by feeding troops into the gap created by the destruction of Sickles’s corps, but they created weaknesses elsewhere in the Union line. The echelon attack was on the cusp of success when it broke down, just as Major General William Pender’s division from Hill’s corps was to take it up. For some reason, his rightmost brigade refused the order to advance. Despite what Longstreet called “the best three hours’ fighting done by any troops on any battlefield,” the attack ground to a halt.
One episode stands out on the second day at Gettysburg. At the height of the fighting, Cadmus Wilcox’s fresh Alabama brigade of 1,500 men, pursuing the shattered remnants of Sickles’s corps, was on the verge of penetrating the Union defenses on Cemetery Ridge. Union commanders including Hancock rushed reinforcements forward to plug the gap, but at a critical juncture, the only available troops were eight companies — 262 men — of the First Minnesota Volunteers. Pointing to the Alabamans’ battle flags, Hancock shouted to the regiment’s colonel, “Do you see those colors? Take them.”
[.......]
The Minnesotans did not capture the colors of the Alabama brigade, but the shock of their attack broke the Confederates’ momentum and bought critical time — at the cost of 215 killed and wounded, including the colonel and all but three of his officers. The position was held, but in short order the First Minnesota ceased to exist, suffering a casualty rate of 82 percent, the highest of the war for any Union regiment in a single engagement. All told, some 9,000 troops on each side became casualties on July 2.
That evening, Meade called his corps commanders to his headquarters and polled them regarding a possible pull back to the Pipe Creek line. Meade seems to have preferred withdrawal but most of his commanders favored standing and fighting. “Let us have no more retreats,” advised Hancock.
The Third Day: “Pickett’s Charge”
In 1877, a former Confederate colonel in the Army of Northern Virginia, Armistead Lindsay Long, wrote that “the attack of Pickett’s division on the third [of July] has been more criticized, and is still less understood, than any other act of the Gettysburg drama.” What was true then remains true today. Why did Lee launch an attack that today seems to be nothing short of a senseless waste of life?
First, Lee had a great deal of confidence in the offensive power and élan of the Army of Northern Virginia. As Napoleon observed, “In war, moral considerations account for three-quarters, the balance of actual forces only for the other quarter.” And as Henry Heth, the only officer in the army whom Lee addressed by his surname, later wrote, “The fact is, General Lee believed the Army of Northern Virginia, as it then existed, could accomplish anything.”
Critics then and now have contended that Lee failed to recognize the power of the defense. But in fact, the relationship between the offense and the defense depends a great deal on the élan and striking power of the attackers. Hooker, who as both a corps commander and an army commander had experienced the offensive prowess of the Army of Northern Virginia, remarked that Lee’s army did not merely attack but struck with “blows.” [........]
[.........]
Finally, Lee believed he had inflicted a great deal of damage on the Army of the Potomac. Indeed he had. He had shattered three Union corps — Doubleday’s I, Sickles’s III, and Howard’s XI — and mauled many other regiments. On July 2, his forces had penetrated the Union line at several points. As Scott Bowden and Bill Ward observe in their excellent treatment of Gettysburg, Last Chance for Victory: Robert E. Lee and the Gettysburg Campaign — a book that has greatly influenced my understanding of Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania –“only a breakdown in the [July 2] echelon attack’s execution had spared Meade a disastrous nighttime retreat and defeat.”
In addition, Lee had received fresh troops during the evening of July 2: Pickett’s division of Longstreet’s corps had arrived, and Jeb Stuart’s cavalry had finally been able to rejoin the army. Lee believed that Meade had weakened his center to reinforce his flanks. Under the circumstances, Lee believed, not unreasonably, that a concerted infantry attack, led by his ablest corps commander, and preceded by a massive artillery bombardment, could crack the Union center on Cemetery Ridge. Lee had seen his soldiers accomplish such a feat — without artillery support — during the Seven Days’ Battles of June 1862, when the Confederates cracked a strong Union position at Gaines’s Mill.
[..........]
Two events created problems for Lee. First, Meade preempted Lee’s attack just before dawn on July 3 by launching an attack to dislodge those elements of Ewell’s corps that had gained a foothold on Culp’s Hill. Second, Longstreet had planned a maneuver that did not conform to Lee’s orders to him concerning the plan of attack on July 3. Longstreet was planning to “pass around [Round Top] and to gain [the Federal position] by flank and reverse attack.” But two brigades of Sedgwick’s VI Corps were already in position across the Taneytown Road to prevent just such a maneuver.
This was part of Longstreet’s grand vision for the Pennsylvania invasion. Indeed, Longstreet had proposed that, once in Pennsylvania, Lee should maneuver his army in order to find and occupy a strong defensive position that would require Meade to attack Lee. But this was never a serious option. While Lee knew northern Virginia like the back of his hand, he was unfamiliar with the military geography of Pennsylvania. He had to avoid cutting himself off from the Cumberland Valley, which constituted his only line of communication and supply back to Virginia.
Although it has gone down in history as “Pickett’s Charge,” the attackers on July 3 included elements of two divisions from Hill’s corps — those of Major General Isaac Trimble and of Brigadier General J. J. Pettigrew, who had replaced the wounded Henry Heth. Indeed, Pickett’s Virginians provided only three of the nine brigades that made the assault. The attackers would have to cross nearly 2,000 yards under enemy fire. They would have to climb over a rail fence along the Emmitsburg Road, an obstacle that would break the momentum of the attack. From that point, depending on where they crossed the Emmitsburg Road, the attacking Confederates would have to advance another 200 to 500 yards to reach the Union position. As they advanced, their ranks would be ripped apart by musket fire and artillery.
As we know, the attack failed. As had been the case the previous day, Ewell was effectively AWOL. A weak cavalry demonstration against the Union rear was beaten back. And the main attack on Cemetery Ridge was repulsed, with staggering losses for the Confederates. Nonetheless, a small number of Rebels led by one of Pickett’s brigade commanders, Lewis Armistead, penetrated the Union line. By this time, the attack had lost momentum and lacked any support, so the survivors withdrew, leaving behind the mortally wounded Armistead. Nearly 5,600 of the 12,000 attackers became casualties.
Gettysburg remains the greatest battle ever to occur on the North American continent. Meade suffered some 23,000 casualties over the course of the battle, while Lee lost between 20,000 and 25,000 of his irreplaceable soldiers. On July 5, Lee moved south. Meade did not pursue the Rebels, much to the consternation of President Lincoln. But Meade was in no condition to pursue. The Army of the Potomac was only in marginally better shape than the Army of Northern Virginia. As the Duke of Wellington observed, “The only thing worse than a battle won is a battle lost.”
Read the rest - The Great Battle of Gettysburg
George Gordon Meade (1818 72) was the real hero of Gettysburg. he took command of the Army of the Potomac only three days before the battle began and showed great courage, common sense, and tactical skill in fighting the battle. However Meade never rose to great heights in the public’s affection. A large part was due to the fact that he had a nasty temper ” He was referred to as a “goddamned old goggle-eyed snapping turtle” probably due to his many physical ailments (he was very near sighted and suffered from “dyspepsia” or chronic indigestion), and the fact that he was not flamboyant or physically impressive. However Meade was a cautious, careful, well prepared commander (experienced as a Brigade, Division, and Corps commander) who would never be brilliant but was competent and would never make a rash mistake. The superiority of the North’s resources allowed it to only need a competent commander in order to obtain a victory. Meade had competence in abundance 9as well as courage in a crisis) and frankly he out generaled Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg. Was he a better general overall than Lee? No, but he did not need to be.
By the way I diasree with Peters that Meade is the most under appreciated general in U.S. military history. I would say that fellow Civil War commander Major General George Henry Thomas (a Virginian who remained loyal to the Union) and Korean War commander Matthew B. Ridgeway are the two most underrated.
by Ralph Peters
One hundred and fifty years ago tomorrow morning, two great armies slammed into each other outside a crossroads town in Pennsylvania. Neither army’s commander intended to fight at Gettysburg, but the battle took on a life of its own as reinforcements rushed to the sound of the guns. Soldiers in blue and gray would fight for three days, leaving almost 7,000 Americans dead and 30,000 wounded.
At the close of the battle on July 3, 1863, the Army of the Potomac, led by Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade — the most underrated soldier in our history — had won the Union’s first indisputable victory in the east. With Gettysburg’s strategic effect compounded by news of Grant’s capture of Vicksburg, Miss., on July 4, the Confederacy was left with no realistic chance of winning the war militarily (although the South’s valiant, stubborn troops would fight on for two more years). The secessionist government in Richmond could only hope to conjure a political settlement.
Revisionist historians question Gettysburg’s decisiveness, given that the war continued. They fail to note the consequences, had General Robert E. Lee and his boys in gray won: In less than a week, Lee’s ferocious ragamuffins would have marched down Broad Street in Philadelphia; the North would have been pressured to sue for peace; and England and France would have found the excuse their social elites longed for to intervene on the South’s behalf.
Gen. Meade and his soldiers in blue saved our Union on those blood-soaked fields.
UNDERDOGS
The North had the greater population, wealth and industrial might at the war’s beginning in 1861, yet poor generalship and poisonous politics led to one humbling Union defeat after another — especially in Virginia, where Lee took command in 1862 and scored astonishing victories.
[.......]
As Lee’s army’s rampaged through southern Pennsylvania and threatened Harrisburg, a frustrated President Lincoln sacked Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker (who had failed miserably at Chancellorsville). Lincoln ordered the relatively junior Meade to take command.
Awakened in the middle of the night three days before the first shots at Gettysburg, Meade initially thought he was being arrested because of a spat with Hooker. Instead, he learned that he was to take the reins of a dispersed, defeated army and stop Robert E. Lee.
It was one of those instances of the right man in the right place at the right time. A West Point-trained engineer and personally courageous, Meade promptly set about concentrating his forces, inspecting the terrain for the best fighting ground and pushing out his cavalry to find Lee. Thanks to his slovenly predecessor, he didn’t even have a map of southern Pennsylvania.
Called upon as the president’s last resort, George Gordon Meade would become the first Union general to defeat Lee in a fair fight on open fields. Southerners and jealous Northerners alike would never forgive him.
AN OVERCONFIDENT ARMY
Robert E. Lee had begun his invasion of Pennsylvania by making one mistake after another. His string of resounding victories had led him to believe that his Army of Northern Virginia was invincible and, over-confident, he allowed his dashing cavalry commander, Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, to take most of his horsemen off on a useless raid, leaving Lee blind to his opponent’s whereabouts and actions. Lee also permitted the dispersal of his three mighty corps over hundreds of square miles, leaving his army divided by South Mountain and its narrow passes.
As a result, when one of his corps’ forward elements marched down a country road toward Gettysburg from the west on the morning of July 1 — under stern orders not to become “decisively engaged” — its officers thought they only faced ill-trained militia. Instead, they blundered into Brig. Gen. John Buford’s seasoned cavalrymen — who knew how to take advantage of the terrain when fighting dismounted. And Buford had reported diligently on the Confederates’ locations before the fighting commenced.
Meade force-marched his nearest corps to Buford’s support. Still unsure of whether Gettysburg was the right place to give battle, Meade further tightened his grip on his forces. At the same time, he resisted the temptation to hurry to the battlefield himself. He had the professionalism to grasp that, as an army-level commander, he had to maintain control of his entire force and not become enmeshed in actions best left to subordinates. Until he was sure that Gettysburg’s situation favored his army, he meant to remain flexible.
Lee did the opposite. Rushing to the sound of the guns, he found a failing chain of command launching piecemeal attacks. Throughout the battle, Lee would discover too late that subordinates had ignored or amended his orders — with fateful consequences. Much of the fault lay in Lee’s gentlemanly habit of couching orders almost as suggestions. [.......]
Meade, by contrast, insisted on disciplined staff work, prioritization and teamwork: By Gettysburg, the Army of the Potomac was on the verge of becoming the first truly modern military organization. In so many ways, this war was a struggle between a romanticized past and a modernizing world. In retrospect, the outcome seems inevitable.
VICTORY, DEFEAT, STALEMATE
Despite the death of one of the North’s most-admired officers, Maj. Gen. John Reynolds, the men in blue had badly stung the Confederate all morning, devastating proud regiments. The battle expanded from the west to the north of town, as the Union I Corps filled in on the left and the XI Corps curved over the fields on the Union right. The “meeting engagement” appeared headed toward a Union victory.
Then tragedy struck.
Brig. Gen. Francis Channing Barlow, Harvard valedictorian of the Class of 1855 and kin to New England’s “best” families, was a rising star who would go on to become the Union’s most-savage division commander of the war. But at Gettysburg, Frank Barlow would have his worst day of the conflict.
When Barlow, newly appointed to division command, arrived on the Union’s right flank, he didn’t like his assigned position. Without notifying his superiors, he moved his men forward a half-mile to what he believed was better terrain. Promoted too swiftly, he failed to grasp how his division’s mission supported the overall plan.
Barlow’s blunder opened two wide holes in the Union line — just as Confederate reinforcements poured in on that flank. The result was a collapse of the Northern defense. [........]Instead, the scapegoats were the German immigrants in the XI Corps, even though Southern memoirs describe them as fighting harder than Yankees had ever done.
As the Union right disintegrated, Rebel blows directed by Lee against the Yankee left punched through that flank, too. Soon, Union troops were retreating madly through Gettysburg’s streets, with hundreds captured by advancing Confederates. It appeared that Gettysburg would be another one-day victory for Lee.
Beyond the town, the key position was a hilltop cemetery and the ridge running southward from it — the last, best defensible terrain. As the afternoon smoldered into evening, Lee directed his left-flank corps commander to seize Cemetery Hill and finish things.
Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell ignored the order. And Union reinforcements raced to the high ground. [........]
THE SECOND DAY
Arriving on the field after midnight to inspect the ground himself, Meade decided that Gettysburg was a promising place to fight. Now it was a race to see which army could concentrate first. Meade believed he could win it.
As for Lee, his pride was up, deepened by anger over missed opportunities. But his intelligence was poor; he never gathered all of his subordinates together to issue clear orders (Meade did); and his staff officers let him down repeatedly. On top of all that, he was ill and cranky, dismissing the concerns of his senior corps commander, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet. Lee believed valor could overcome any obstacle.
It almost did. Despite more blundering and a late start to Lee’s key attack, the Rebels came close to shattering Meade’s defense, fighting deep into the evening. The combat was close and vicious at such now-famed sites as Little Round Top, Devil’s Den, the Wheatfield and Culp’s Hill. As each side piled on more men, the day’s outcome veered back and forth.
In the dying light, Meade faced a crisis. After his plan had been all but wrecked by the incompetence of Maj. Gen. Dan Sickles — a Tammany Hall politician who’d wangled a corps command — Meade had shifted troops brilliantly, plugging one gap after another, parrying each Rebel thrust. Now he was out of men and anxiously awaiting the arrival of his last reinforcements. He found himself on horseback in mid-battlefield with just four aides and couriers beside him.
A full Rebel brigade emerged from the smoke, heading straight for Meade and the stripped-bare Union center. Instead of running, Meade drew his sword, ready to charge that entire brigade and die fighting. Just as he was about to give the order to gallop forward, Union banners crested the darkening ridge behind him. And the last Confederate hope for the day was crushed.
[........]
PICKETT’S CHARGE
July 2 should have taught Lee the limits of valor, but his pride swelled into arrogance: He was not going to be defeated by upstart George Meade. In one of his worst decisions of the war, he ordered over 12,000 of his soldiers to attack across a mile of open fields against the Union center. Accustomed to defeating the men in blue, he convinced himself that one more blow would bring him victory.
Meade sensed what was coming and reorganized his lines to face the blow. Then he waited. Shortly after noon on July 3, the Rebels began a deafening bombardment — answered in careful measure by the Yankees. When the guns fell silent and the smoke thinned, long lines of men in gray and brown emerged from the trees, flags flying.
Doomed from the beginning, what should rightly be called the Pickett-Pettigrew Charge became a much-romanticized disaster: A handful of brave Confederates survived the crossfire of massed Union guns and the rifle volleys to reach the Union lines. But they were too few.
Tears in his eyes, Lee rode out into the field to greet the retreating survivors. Along the Union line the troops began cheering: [.......]
AFTERMATH
After Meade failed to oblige him with an equally doomed counterattack, Lee retreated back toward Virginia. Terrified just days before, Washington responded to Meade’s stunning victory by criticizing him for not destroying Lee’s army — an army with plenty of fight left in it, as the next two years would show. The gratitude of politicians was as slight then as it is now.
Meade organized a pursuit of Lee as quickly as he could, slowed by his own severe losses, the tens of thousands of wounded left on the field, and troops who were out of food and ammunition. He had just done the impossible and was damned for not doing the impossible twice in a row.
Still, Meade would be the only commander of the Army of the Potomac never dismissed. He would serve until the last victory. Those who mattered knew his worth.
Perversely, after the war it was Lee who’d be lionized. Meade died only a half-dozen years after the peace, while his arch-detractors, North and South, lived into the 20 century — not least Dan Sickles, who had almost lost the battle for the North.
Sickles spent decades belittling Meade and claiming that he was Gettysburg’s real hero. Worst of all, Meade never pandered to the press — and suffered the consequences.
But the man ordered to take command of a defeated army three days before the war’s decisive battle had done his country an immeasurable service — outfighting the South’s greatest soldier when it counted most. [.......] But the truly amazing thing is that, on this 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, this great American is slighted when not forgotten.
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