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Saturday, October 29, 2011

RANDOM THOUGHTS #64

Steve Cole was thinking the other day about the things most people do not know about the Battle of Gettysburg.

1. Nobody at the time thought it was a decisive battle that changed the Civil War. It kept Lee from attacking some large northern cities, but that was really about all. It wasn't so much a matter that Lee lost; the point was that he did not win the desired victory on Northern soil. (Lee, in fact, lost the only two battles he fought on Northern soil.)

2. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was actually strung out in a column walking east toward Philadelphia when the Union Army of the Potomac (marching north) ran into the middle of it. Some of the Confederate troops east of the battle had actually marched through the town of Gettysburg earlier in the week.

3. Everyone knows that with Stuart and the Confederate cavalry off on a joyride, Lee was blind, but few understand just what that meant. Lee had no idea that the Union Army of the Potomac was moving toward him until a spy told him just before the Union troops ran into his. Even after the battle started, Lee had to leave some desperately needed infantry troops outside of the battle area to watch his flanks because he had no cavalry to watch those directions for any approaching enemy. (Few civilians understand that the general fighting the battle does not have those pretty maps that were published after the battle showing where everybody was.)

4. Lee's biggest problem was that he was running out of generals. Without Stonewall Jackson (who was killed a few weeks earlier) Lee had to divide the Army of Northern Virginia into three parts because the available three-star generals were not good enough at their jobs to handle as many troops as Stonewall usually commanded. Those two replacement three-star generals were simply not up to their jobs. Ewell had lost a leg in an earlier battle, was arguably tired of getting shot at, and threw away Lee's first chance to win by not taking Cemetery Hill on the first day. A P Hill was sick and just not up to the job. (There simply wasn't anyone else to promote.) Of the nine two-star division commanders, one (Harry Heth) was the best of the one-star generals who were NOT good enough to be two-star generals, and another (Anderson) failed to do his job on the second day (throwing away Lee's second chance to win the battle). Isaac Trimble (a very good two-star general who had just returned from medical leave) was with the Army but was not given a job until the third day.

5. Invading Pennsylvania was only one of the Confederacy's choices after the smashing victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville two months earlier. One option was to stay where they were and let the Union attack him, but northern Virginia was out of food and Lee's Army would have starved if it stayed in place. Another option was to send half of Lee's army to prevent Grant from taking Vicksburg, but only Lee (or Jackson) could have won that battle -- and Lee refused to leave Virginia. It's unclear if even Lee could have defeated an attacking Army of the Potomac with half of his troops gone.

6. Contrary to the movie, the Battle of Gettysburg was not won when the 20th Maine kept the rebels from getting around the Union left flank at Little Round Top. That was only the first part of Lee's attack on the second day of battle. Lee's plan had all of his units attacking in sequence from south to north. The battle continued to move to the north (Union right, Confederate left), with Confederate units defeating one Union division after another. (Meade was robbing his right-north flank to reinforce his left-south flank, and had run out of troops he could move.) Lee might well have won the battle but (at the critical point) the next scheduled brigade to attack (Posey) was out of ammunition due to a bungled prior skirmish. The next brigade commander (Mahone) simply refused to attack, and the next commander in line (Pender) was hit by a cannonball before he could give the order to attack. Meade was in the process of giving orders to retreat when he noticed that the Confederate attack had stopped coming.

7. Contrary to the axiom that you have to attack at 3-to-1 to achieve success, the troops of Longstreet's two divisions (Hood and McLaws) crushed the left wing of the Army of the Potomac on the second day and they were actually out-numbered when they did it. (True, they didn't destroy that wing, just defeated it, kicked it back a mile, and left those units too shaken to fight for another month.)

8. Pickett's Charge is the famous part of the battle, taking place on the third day. Few know that Pickett only commanded a third of the troops that took part. (After the war, Pickett wrote a number of thrilling magazine articles about the event and made sure that his name was the most prominent one mentioned.) The charge might have worked except that Lee (who ordered it) went back to his headquarters, leaving it in the hands of Longsteet (who openly said he didn't want to do it). Longstreet never sent the second wave of the attack, which in all certainty would have broken the Union line. This threw away Lee's third chance to win the battle.

9. Union commander Meade never wanted to fight the battle where it was fought. When the battle started, Meade was surveying battle positions at Pipe Creek (where he expected Lee to attack, but Lee was never headed for Pipe Creek) and he decided to hurry the back part of his army north and join the battle rather than call his advanced troops back to Pipe Creek.

10. In the end, even a victory by Lee would have made no real difference. England was not going to openly help the Confederacy as long as slavery remained in place and a victorious Lee (with an exhausted and shot-up army that was out of artillery ammunition) would still have had his path to key Union cities blocked by the survivors of the Army of the Potomac (which would have been at least half or more of the troops). Washington (surrounded by forts and heavy guns) was not really vulnerable, although Philadelphia was. Before Lee could get moving again (more artillery ammunition was on the way to him) the Union would have called in other troops to bring Meade back up to strength, and it was unlikely that Confederate President Davis would have sent Lee the five brigades he took away from Lee's army just before the campaign began. Such a campaign would have put Lee deep in enemy territory with extremely long supply lines vulnerable to Union flank attacks. He was, perhaps, more likely to have had his army wiped out in the never-fought Battle of Philadelphia than at any other point of the Civil War.