The Unknown Gettysburg
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For many people, the July 1863 battle of Gettysburg is about the only thing they know about the Civil War because, well, it was the only battle that mattered. This attitude has been prevalent in America's primary grades for decades, and in non-American schools it may forever be thus. But, even for those who know a great deal about the Civil War, or even about Gettysburg, there are probably a few minor facts that, well, many people just don't discuss for many reasons.
The Gettysburg We “Know”
First, there’s the convenient model that “everybody knows:”
Lee slips away from Hooker
Lee heads into Pennsylvania looking for shoes
Lee meets newly appointed Meade at Gettysburg by chance
Meade gamely holds on to his position at Gettysburg to save Washington or Baltimore
Lee commits Pickett to the Federal center out of desperation
Pickett’s Charge fails because of a lack of followup
Lee got away from Meade without pursuit
Meade’s failure lengthened the war by two years.
Gettysburg was the single most important battle of the Civil War.
Well, that’s, um…
The Gettysburg We Don’t Know
Lee Slips Away from Hooker
Not exactly: The Army of the Potomac, immobilized by early summer rains and a swollen Rappahannock, usually waited for Lee to move first. That Lee went into the Valley of the Shenandoah with this entire army was surprising, though the Union Bureau of Military Information knew roughly where Lee was.
Lee had several motives for doing this, and the first was the well-known: to engage the principal Federal army outside of Virginia. One reason for this was to relieve northern Virginia of Lee’s continual foraging expeditions to feed his troops and animals (much of his army was on half rations for most of May). Another was to win a victory on Northern soil in the dimming hope of gaining European recognition after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Finally, there had been voices in the Confederate Congress demanding that Lee send Longstreet’s Corps to aid Pemberton at Vicksburg. Lee thought, not unreasonably, that an easy victory in the east would free up a corps to send, and a hard-won victory or near-defeat could show the folly of such a redeployment. He apparently never considered the consequences, or even the possibility of, a decisive defeat.
Lee Heads into Pennsylvania Looking for Shoes
A most persistent and patently overstated motive. Yes:
Gettysburg was known for shoes.
There were handbills advertising ready-made shoes available at Gettysburg.
At least one Confederate commander mentioned this in at least one official communication.
Most of the time, parts of the Army of Northern Virginia went barefoot.
But...
Lee’s needs did not end with the army’s feet, nor did Gettysburg (or any shoe-producing town in the world in 1863) have anywhere near adequate supplies of footgear for an army of 70,000, or even a brigade of 1,000, and Lee was smart enough to know that.
Anyone studying a map of southeastern Pennsylvania then or now would note that several major roads join at Gettysburg (five in 1863, even more now), making it an important junction. Since the Army of Northern Virginia had to move as corps to feed itself, joining the army at Gettysburg was a very logical move, and would have been obvious to any military professional of the period.
Lee Meets Newly Appointed Meade at Gettysburg by Chance
This is the most persistent of the many myths surrounding the battle, and the most difficult to disprove. But given the myth of the shoes of Gettysburg and the truth surrounding it, this myth is less formidable.
In early 1863, Joe Hooker, recently appointed to command the Army of the Potomac after Burnside’s removal, formed the Bureau of Military Information, the first all-source intelligence collection center ever (though it wouldn’t be called that for another century). Headed by Colonel George Sharpe, the BMI collected reports from deserters, prisoners, cavalry scouts, civilians, newspapers, signal stations and mail and wire intercept operators to build a most intimate picture of the Confederate Army.
Unfortunately, history has largely forgotten the details of the Bureau of Military Information, even the fact of its existence. The record of this remarkable pioneer in intelligence work mostly ignored, or at least unexploited. That an intelligence operation as sophisticated as Sharpe’s could even exist in 1863 has been unrecorded and unremarked on for so long that today the typical reaction to the evidence (first published in 1995) is incredulity or disbelief.
In the confusion that followed the battle at Brandy Station, a slave named Charley Wright escaped into Federal lines. Wright had been a servant in several Confederate divisions and corps headquarters. He and another “contraband” told Sharpe’s men intimate details of Lee’s forces south of the Rappahannock, including that a planned major movement.
For some time, the Federals had been expecting a large-scale raid by J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry (based on information from Confederate deserters), and initially Sharpe thought Wright confirmed this. But Wright insisted it was not just Stuart but the main army that was about to move.
Within days, sources saw Longstreet’s and Ewell’s corps moving west by north of Culpepper, Virginia, outflanking the Rappahannock line. This was no cavalry raid, but a major movement, probably of the entire army. This conclusion confirmed Wright’s information that the Army of Northern Virginia would strike north through the Shenandoah Valley. Pennsylvania was the target, the best sources said, and so the Army of the Potomac cautiously moved northward.
Civilian scouts in Maryland, western Virginia, and southern Pennsylvania, reporting to the BMI, confirmed the movement of Lee’s headquarters north into Pennsylvania's farm country. With each sighting, scouts noted and reported state and corps flags, regimental guidons, and any other identifying markers. By the time Meade had taken command and reached his forward headquarters outside Gettysburg, Sharpe had prepared an Order of Battle indistinguishable from any made by a US-trained All-Source Production Center yesterday, and that was accurate for Lee’s strength to within 2,000 muskets. He even accurately reported the reorganization of Jackson’s corps into two more corps under AP Hill and Ewell after Jackson’s death: remarkable primarily because the armies had not fought a major engagement since Chancellorsville. In sum, whatever else Gettysburg was to Meade, it was not a chance encounter. He knew Lee had to gather his forces together somewhere, and Gettysburg was a likely place to do so. Given the positioning of the four Confederate corps in late June, Gettysburg made the most sense.
Lee, on the other hand, committed his army at Gettysburg without knowing where Meade was. One of several reasons for this was Stuart’s bruised ego. The Federal cavalry had badly surprised Stuart’s troopers at Brandy Station in early June, where, after three years of being severely outclassed by their Rebel counterparts, they had finally learned their trade. The battle was such a near-run thing that Stuart himself was, for a time, in some danger of becoming a prisoner.
Rankling under the insult, the flamboyant Stuart had gone off on another “run around” the Federal army. While spectacular in its implications, large scale raiding was not the only purpose of cavalry in 1863. Without his major cavalry force, Lee was essentially blind in hostile territory, with two new corps commanders in place of one of the better military minds of the era. Lee had little information, was getting none from the locals, and what he was getting he would have to process himself. Lee had no corollary organization to the BMI, and there is no evidence that he even suspected its existence or even thought to create such a thing.
And time has not been kind to Federal intelligence operations, either. The myth of the Lost Cause has romanticized so much of the Civil War that the uninteresting ways that the armies knew about each other (leave alone the far more romantic notion of a desperate fight by chance, of which more later), history has ignored or neglected the undignified idea of “gentlemen reading other gentlemen’s mail.” So no one even considers the truth, even though it's neither pleasant nor romantic.
Meade Gamely Holds at Gettysburg to Save Washington or Baltimore
This plays back to the chance encounter myth, and doesn’t last well. Further, it makes no sense when a look at the total Federal force reveals an army of 50,000 or more manning a string of forts around Washington that Lee’s agrarian army could never hope to overcome. Baltimore is on the far side of the Chesapeake Bay from Pennsylvania, and Lee would have had to perform a major river crossing to even consider attacking the city. Also, Federal commanders might have mobilized considerable available garrison forces to defend Baltimore and the rest of Maryland's eastern shore.
But all this presupposes that the Army of the Potomac isn’t available for the defense of either city, and that makes little sense. Army of the Potomac was twice the size of its opponent, and 19th century armies were very difficult to destroy in toto.
Furthermore, Meade realized that he did not have to fight Lee to defeat him in Pennsylvania. He knew Lee had to leave the state to be reinforced, that Lee could not stay in one place as an army for long, and that Lee’s very nature was to attack. All Meade had to do was not lose his army and stay at least parallel to his opponent and conditions as much as bullets would force his withdrawal. Meade gamely fought on at Gettysburg, but it was not as desperate a fight as it may have seemed.
This aside, Meade still had excellent information available to him on the condition and size of Lee’s army. By the night of July 2nd, the night of the famous and storied “counsel of war” at Meade’s headquarters, Meade knew that Pickett’s division was the last uncommitted (and thus unblooded) division in Lee’s army. Meade could just wait, since he had nearly four times as many men who had yet to fight at Gettysburg, and they all rested in the Federal center.
The First Day
First day Confederate operations were haphazard, at best. Ewell committed to combat north of the road junction at Gettysburg in part from inexperience, in part from ignorance of the field and the forces opposing him. His leading infantry had run afoul of some of the best-armed cavalry in the Federal Army. Buford’s two cavalry brigades, 8,000 troopers, were all armed with Spencer repeating rifles that could out-shoot their rebel enemies at a rate of three to one. Ewell, completely ignorant of Federal dispositions, thought he had engaged at least an infantry corps and deployed accordingly in very restricted terrain. As Buford inevitably pulled back through Gettysburg itself, Ewell, new at commanding a new corps that had just months before been part of an army commanded by a living icon, exploited no gains he made that could have benefitted Lee’s force.
The Second Day.
Lee’s senior corps commander, Longstreet, counseled disengagement and a flanking move around the Federal right. Lee could not see the value of any disengagement in hostile territory, and frustrated by not knowing where the Federal army was. Lee planned an attack requiring close coordination of corps and divisional movements against both Federal flanks that would have been a magnificent idea if communications were excellent and if the corps and division commanders could coordinate their activities.
Unfortunately, coordination was not a strong point of the newly reorganized Army of Northern Virginia. The poorly managed southern flank attack against the Round Tops started late. Even if the Federals had not got Strong Vincent’s brigade into position on Little Round Top, and the rest of V Corps had not fallen back through Devil’s Den in the front, it is unlikely that Rebel possession of the flank would have been of value. Further, the northern flank attack had so little utility that most histories make scant mention of it.
On the second night, while Meade’s corps and division commanders argued about retreating or standing still, Lee debated what to do with an increasingly insubordinate Longstreet, a befuddled Ewell, a gallant but almost arrogantly useless Stuart, and AP Hill who, though still full of fight, had no fresh troops to commit. Meade’s far larger army seemed just too big to envelop, so that, logically in Lee’s mind, Meade’s center was weak.
Unfortunately, this was a logical fallacy. The Army of the Potomac was nearly twice the size of his (Lee never knew exactly how big his opponent was except that it was always larger than his force), and with rail-borne logistics, could stay in one place indefinitely. It was against this backdrop that Lee committed his last fresh troops in a desperate bid to split his huge opponent.
Lee Commits Pickett to the Federal Center out of Desperation
Desperation, yes, but far more out of frustration, ignorance and arrogance. Lee was not well (he was 55 in an age when average life expectancy was forty) at Gettysburg, and that he was very frustrated with his senior officers, and may have spent much of his time on the latrine. Further, Stuart’s non-arrival exacerbated his anxiety. Finally, losing Jackson less than two months before had saddened him deeply.
Pickett’s Charge Failed Because of a Lack of Follow-up
The response to this requires resort to little-known facts. Pickett’s Virginia division of Longstreet’s corps were 9,000 of the best infantry in the South, backed by another 8-or-9,000 men of two divisions of Hill’s corps holding the flanks of the assault. A noisy and wasteful artillery bombardment preceded the attack by some 200 Confederate guns commanded by a willing but inexperienced artilleryman who did not understand the fundamental mechanics and physics of 19th Century artillery. Follow-up or no, Pickett’s Charge, doomed from the start, took place over a mile and a half of open ground, uphill, against well- placed Federal infantry and artillery on both flanks and the front. That it got as far as it did was a tribute to the courage of the soldiers.
Meade’s Failure to Pursue Lee Lengthened the War by Two Years
This is the most difficult to answer, not because it’s not true but because it’s indemonstrable. Meade moved after Lee, but Lee moved in unexpected directions, and with Stuart (who was a very good cavalryman) covering his movement. Further, Meade had over fifty thousand casualties on the field: probably thirty thousand dead and dying in a town of perhaps three thousand, counting refugees from nearby farms.
Further, in three days of brutal heat and fighting, the enemy inflicted heavy losses on his own army, even though three corps (about 15,000 men) remained largely unengaged. Compounding this, it had rained on the 4th of July (the day after Pickett’s Charge), turning the roads into a morass. Following Lee would have required that he move on essentially the same roads as Lee moved on after Lee used them. Meade had to use streams of mud for pursuit. Finally, in Meade’s defense, Stoneman’s cavalry corps was scattered across three states. The first day's delaying action destroyed Buford's division, leaving Meade with only three brigades to follow Lee. The rest were in pursuit of Stuart on the roads they could follow on.
Gettysburg Was the Single Most Important Battle of the Civil War
There is a great temptation to let this slide, but it simply isn’t true and besides, it’s a matter of perception.
It was important, but only really to the campaign of 1863 in the Eastern theater. Vicksburg, which fell the day after Gettysburg ended, opened the Mississippi River and thus the Midwest to European trade again. Europe and Asia again enjoyed Midwestern grain again, a far more important trade than Southern cotton.It has been called the High-Water Mark or the High Tide of the Confederacy, but there is little real reason for this description aside from Park Service hyperbole. Gettysburg was the largest battle yet fought in the hemisphere (probably about 160,000 men engaged) and was the bloodiest of the Civil War (some fifty thousand casualties), but the scale of a battle is often mistaken for importance. In terms of sheer magnitude, the gristly slugfests of 1864 would equal and exceed Gettysburg, but over weeks, not days, and spread out over much larger areas.
It was important, but it did not prevent Europe from supporting or recognizing the Southern Confederacy. The labor unions of England would not support any actions that would tacitly back chattel slavery. Without longshoremen, miners, and ironworkers, the Disraeli government could hardly displease the Americans, let alone go to war. Without British support, France would do nothing. And so went Europe. Europe would trade with the Confederacy, but recognition would not follow and, besides, wasn’t what the South needed.
It was important, but not for the reasons so often stated. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia suffered their first decisive defeat in open combat at Gettysburg, a defeat unlike Antietam and the Seven Days, which are open to interpretation. It was a decisive defeat by an army immediately after a decisive victory, but both were territory-neutral. It showed that the revered Lee and the Virginia Army could lose, and as such, it was a tonic for the North and the Federal soldiers. Yet it is the most studied battle in American history, the second most studied in the 19th century (after Waterloo), and it is a pivotal moment in American history. But perceptions, nearly a century and a half after the fact, are often misguided. Gettysburg has much to boast of, but it also is the stuff of legend. Santayana said that history is part fact, and part legend, but mostly interpretation of those who have gone before us. Our interpretation of Gettysburg has changed over the years. Perhaps in the future it may not be as colored by myth.
The Devil’s Own Day: Shiloh and the American Civil War
A year and a half before Gettysburg, there was Shiloh, which decided the pace and scope of the conflict.
And Finally...
On 3 May:
1469: Niccolo Machiavelli is born in Florence, Italy. Best known for his political treatise, The Prince (Il Principe), not published until five years after his death, “Old Nic” has often been called the father of modern political philosophy and political science.
1942: The sea and air battle that became known as the Coral Sea begins off the eastern coast of Australia. The tactical draw (but strategic American victory) is best known as the first major naval battle in which the opposing fleets never saw each other, except from the air.
And today is WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY, proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1993, honoring journalists who have lost their lives in the line of duty, and those who risk their lives to inform the public, from those covering wars and riots to wildfires, storms, and earthquakes.