Gettysburg

  The same evening, in the same mood, Meade acknowledged a letter of congratulations for Gettysburg from General McClellan. He took little credit for himself, he told his former commander, “and am perfectly prepared for a loss of all my rapidly acquired honors the first time the fortune of war fails to smile on me. Already I am beginning to feel the reaction, Lee having crossed the river last night without waiting for me to attack him in one of the strongest positions he has ever occupied.“2

  That evening, too, Mr. Lincoln sat down and wrote a letter. It was addressed to General Meade, and as with previous such letters, particularly those to McClellan and Hooker, he sought to reason with his general, and as commander-in-chief to explain without artifice his views on issues between them. “As you had learned that I was dissatisfied, I have thought it best to kindly tell you why,” he wrote.

  He began with praise: “I am very— very —grateful to you for the magnificent success you gave the cause of the country at Gettysburg; and I am sorry now to be the author of the slightest pain to you.” He went on to review the enemy’s retreat and Meade’s pursuit, at least as they were seen by him from the War Department’s telegraph office. He described his “deep distress” at what appeared to be evidences “that yourself, and Gen. Couch, and Gen. Smith, were not seeking a collision with the enemy, but were trying to get him across the river without another battle….

  “Again, my dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely…. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasureably because of it.”

  Then the president put the letter in an envelope that he endorsed, “To Gen. Meade, never sent, or signed,” and tucked it away in his desk. It would not be seen in his lifetime, or in Meade’s. Perhaps just the writing of it furnished relief from his sore disappointment. He clearly recognized that sending it to his army commander would have done only harm. A few days later, speaking to John Hay, he repeated his metaphor of Meade having the enemy in his grasp and failing to close his fist, but by now he had apparently come to terms with events: “Still, I am very grateful to Meade for the great service he did at Gettysburg.“3

  To be sure, it had all looked easier from the perspective of the telegraph office or when tracing the movements on a map. In truth, Meade was not alone in speaking of the “impossibilities” he had faced. Those lieutenants who afterward inspected Lee’s Williamsport lines were strongly impressed; Howard and Warren both recanted their earlier support for an attack. Artillerists Hunt and Wainwright, who had the eyes for such things, expressed themselves relieved no assault had been attempted. After studying the Rebel works on his front, Wainwright wrote, “These were by far the strongest I have seen yet; evidently laid out by engineers and built as if they meant to stand a month’s siege.”

  Another factor, quite unappreciated by Washington, had dampened Meade’s enthusiasm for taking the offensive at Williamsport—the sadly diminished state of his officer corps. To his plaintive cry, “I want Corps Comdrs,” he added, “The loss of Reynolds & Hancock is most serious—their places are not to be supplied.” Newton of the First Corps was a competent but conservative engineer and no John Reynolds. William Hays was a nonentity, an inexplicable choice to head the Second Corps when Alexander Hays in that post would at least have echoed Hancock’s aggressiveness. William French was far beyond his depth commanding the Third Corps. Sykes of the Fifth Corps and Sedgwick of the Sixth were trustworthy enough but excruciatingly cautious. Howard had demonstrated (again) that neither he nor his Eleventh Corps could be trusted. Slocum of the Twelfth Corps had shown himself spiritless at Gettysburg.4

  Finally, there were the casualties in the fighting forces to consider, and their implications. At Gettysburg the Army of the Potomac had suffered a total of 22,813 casualties, including 3,149 dead. This was about one-quarter of Meade’s forces on the battlefield, but that statistic did not tell all the story.

  The First and Third corps had been wounded in body and soul, so to speak, and were in need of resuscitation. In the First Corps, John Reynolds was dead and five of his seven brigade commanders were wounded. Seventeen out of thirty-seven regimental commanders in the Third Corps were casualties. The Second Corps had been gravely wounded in the fighting on the second and third days of the battle, losing Hancock, Gibbon, and six (three of them dead) of ten brigade commanders. No one (including General Howard) any longer had any faith in the Eleventh Corps. That left only the Fifth and Twelfth corps as reasonably battle-ready, plus of course the big Sixth Corps, virtually untouched at Gettysburg. The Sixth, however, was not in the van of the pursuit and therefore not readily available for action. (The additional losses—in the march north, in Milroy’s debacle at Winchester, and in the pursuit after Gettysburg—came to perhaps 7,300, raising the total of Union casualties for the campaign to some 30,100.)5

  Contrary to critics in the capital and in the press, it had been simply not possible for the Army of the Potomac, on July 3, to switch from defense to offense immediately following Pickett’s Charge; and probably not possible for a mentally exhausted General Meade to have turned his mind abruptly to the aggressive the next day. Perhaps the Yankees’ best chance offered on about July 8, when a bold dash by, say, the First and Second corps toward Williamsport might have caught the Rebels before they were firmly dug in. Yet this would have involved a considerable gamble for a general wary of gambling. Furthermore, Meade may be excused if he did not regard John Newton and William Hays as the right commanders to lead so daring a strike.

  Presently the prospects for a successful offensive against the completed Williamsport lines grew decidedly dim. It may be, however, that Meade might have enhanced his reputation, so far as Washington was concerned, had he made an effort to at least test those lines—had he followed his initial instinct to ignore his generals and order a reconnaissance in force for July 13. Perhaps he was even right in suspecting there was a weak point to be found that day.

  However that might be, Meade was prompt to get the army moving again, and on July 17 he started it across the Potomac, at Harper’s Ferry and downstream at Berlin. While Lee moved slowly up the Shenandoah, Meade kept pace east of the Blue Ridge. On the 23rd he took the aggressive, sending William French and the Third Corps as a spearhead through Manassas Gap in the Blue Ridge to attempt to cut off a sizable portion of Dick Ewell’s command. But it was too much of a challenge for the bumbling French. Ewell slipped away and followed the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia to safer ground.

  “Of course I was again disappointed,” Meade wrote his wife, “& I suppose the President will be again dissatisfied….” On the contrary, the general was presently shown a tribute to him from the president. “A few days having passed,” Lincoln wrote, “I am now profoundly grateful for what was done, without criticism for what was not done. Gen. Meade has my confidence as a brave and skillful officer, and a true man.“6

  BY JULY 24 Robert E. Lee was back at Culpeper Court House, whence he had launched the Pennsylvania campaign just over six weeks earlier. In his reports to Richmond the general had consistently put the best possible face on the failed campaign. Writing to Mr. Davis, he explained that in the fighting on July 3 the enemy’s “numbers were so great and his position so commanding, that our troops were compelled to relinquish their advantage and retire…. It is believed that the enemy suffered severely in these operations, but our own loss has not been light.”

  By July 7 he was writing, “Finding the position too strong to be carried, and being much hindered in collecting necessary supplies … I determined to withdraw to the west side of the mountains.” The next day he assured the president that the army’s “condition is good and its confidence unimpaired,” and that he himself was neither discouraged nor was his faith in “the fortitude of this army … at all shaken.” On Ju
ly 12 he summed up his accomplishments: “The Army of the Potomac had been thrown north of that river, the forces invading the coasts of North Carolina and Virginia had been diminished, their plan of the present campaign broken up….” Soon afterward, in a conversation with Secretary Seddon’s brother, Lee was said to have claimed that his admittedly heavy losses at Gettysburg were no greater than would have occurred “from the series of battles I would have been compelled to fight had I remained in Virginia.” And then he supposedly said, emphatically, “sir, we did whip them at Gettysburg….”

  By the time Lee was back at Culpeper, however, his list of claimed accomplishments was contracted. The Army of the Potomac was again south of the Potomac and confronting him directly. The Union’s Atlantic seaboard forces had not in fact been diminished to supply reinforcements to Meade (or Hooker). Virginia had been freed of Yankee occupation for only some three weeks. Remaining on the plus side of Lee’s ledger was the fact that his army was subsisted (and then some) by the enemy for a month; and whatever plans the Yankees might have had for a summer offensive were interrupted. But there was one very large debit. The ultimate (although unstated) objective of the entire campaign—to win a major victory on Northern soil that might have at least offset the disaster at Vicksburg—had failed completely. 7

  There was one other very large debit, of course—the casualties. General Lee recrossed the Potomac on July 13–14 with just under two-thirds of the men who had marched north across the river with him in June. The Confederate toll for the three days of Gettysburg came to 22,625, including 4,536 dead. Casualties on the march north, and on the retreat to Williamsport, added just over 4,500, raising the total for the campaign to some 27,125 men. This substantially exceeded the Seven Days’ record of 20,200 casualties among Lee’s previous campaigns.

  Fighting (and losing) the campaign on Union soil sharply increased the severity of these losses. In addition to the estimated total of 5,000 dead and the 5,445 missing, the Federals recorded the capture of 6,802 Confederate wounded at Gettysburg—men found on the field, or left behind as too badly injured to join the retreat. Thus some 17,250 of Lee’s men—almost two-thirds of his total casualties—had to be struck off the Confederate rolls as a consequence of Gettysburg. When Vicksburg’s losses were added to those of Lee’s campaign—the grand total came to some 56,600—it made July 1863 easily the worst month so far in the Confederacy’s short annals.8

  Damage to the officer corps was severe. In Longstreet’s First Corps, Barksdale, Semmes, Garnett, and Armistead were dead, Hood, Robertson, and Tige Anderson wounded, and Kemper wounded and captured. Of Longstreet’s fourteen division and brigade commanders, only six escaped unhurt. The Second Corps suffered two brigade-commander casualties, Avery dead and John M. Jones wounded. Among Third Corps officers, Pender, Pettigrew, and Marshall were dead, Heth, Fry, Scales, and Lowrance wounded, Trimble wounded and captured, and Archer captured. In the cavalry, Wade Hampton and Albert Jenkins were wounded. Of the officers heading the army’s forty-six divisional and brigade infantry commands at Gettysburg, nineteen were casualties.

  Losses among the field officers were severe as well, and in the most heavily engaged brigades, murderously so. Of Cadmus Wilcox’s five regimental commanders, three were wounded and one wounded and captured; of Rans Wright’s four, two were dead and one wounded and captured; of Alfred Iverson’s four, one was dead and two wounded; of William Barksdale’s four, one was dead and two wounded; of Jerome Robertson’s four, two were wounded and one wounded and captured. The four regiments in Pettigrew’s brigade suffered eight command casualties, including four dead. Just two of Pickett’s regimental commanders survived unhurt. All told, of 171 infantry regiments, 78 (46 percent) suffered command casualties.

  Gettysburg exemplified a grim statistical anomaly of this war. A great battle, it seemed, invariably claimed the best and boldest officers … and spared the worst. Extra Billy Smith, Alfred Iverson, Edward O’Neal, Joe Davis, and John Brockenbrough all survived without a scratch. (Like the dead, the worst required replacement too; of these five, only Joe Davis, the president’s nephew, continued with the army.) The same harsh arithmetic applied to the field officers. The shortage of capable officers had already become a problem, and Gettysburg turned the problem into a crisis. “I am gradually losing my best men,” General Lee told the president. In command and capability, indeed in offensive power, the Army of Northern Virginia would never recover.

  As Lee’s soldiers reflected on what they had accomplished, and had not accomplished, in Pennsylvania, there was widespread agreement that invading the enemy’s country was not a very good idea. Nothing had come of it the previous September, and this latest invasion proved to be no different. “We had a nice time going into Pa.,” a Virginian wrote, “but comeing out was quite to the contrary.” Even before he was back across the Potomac, Colonel David Aiken of the 7th South Carolina had reached the same conclusion. “I am sick of Maryland, and never want to come this side of the river again,” Aiken wrote his wife on July 11. “…Genl. Lee can whip with this army double as many Yankees in Virg. as he can in Penn. Better prolong the war by defending then ruin ourselves by failures at invasion.“9

  That sentiment was reflected in scattered complaints in the Southern press, and these General Lee seems to have taken personally. In a widely reprinted dispatch, correspondent Peter W. Alexander questioned Lee’s choice of battlegrounds at Gettysburg. Alexander concluded that the general “acted, probably, under the impression that his troops were able to carry any position however formidable. If such was the case, he committed an error, such however as the ablest commanders will sometimes fall into.” A considerably more outspoken critic was the choleric Charleston Mercury. It described the “ill-timed Northern campaign” as consuming resources better applied to the straitened western theater. Their gorge rising, the Mercury’s editors insisted that “It is impossible for an invasion to have been more foolish and disastrous.“10

  General Lee wanted Mr. Davis to understand that “No blame can be attached to the army for its failure to accomplish what was projected by me, nor should it be censured for the unreasonable expectations of the public—I am alone to blame, in perhaps expecting too much of its prowess & valour.” In thus confessing his overconfidence in his troops he concurred with Peter Alexander’s appraisal. Still, he was not prepared to admit any battlefield misjudgments of his own: “But with the knowledge I then had, & in the circumstances I was then placed, I do not know what better course I could have pursued.”

  The Pennsylvania campaign marked two major departures for Robert E. Lee. The first was the questioning and the outright opposition on the battlefield that he encountered from his chief lieutenants. The second was what he termed “the expression of discontent in the public journals at the result of the expedition.” He had met the former by a stubborn and all-but-blind enforcement of his will. The latter caused him, on August 8, to offer his resignation as general commanding.

  There was a pro forma quality about this resignation letter to the president, a routine offering to step down for the good of the country in consequence of “the result of the expedition.” Whether the discontent expressed in the press extended into the army General Lee could not say; “My brother officers have been too kind to report it, & so far the troops have been too generous to exhibit it.” He supposed it did exist, however, and a commander who lacked the confidence of his men should not be commanding.

  Lee also raised the matter of his health. He was not recovered from the illness of the past spring, he said, and that hampered him in giving operations in the field his personal supervision. “I am so dull that in making use of the eyes of others I am frequently misled.” (This may well refer to the botched reconnaissance by Captain Samuel Johnston on July 2, which led to the misdirection of Longstreet’s attack that afternoon.) “I cannot even accomplish what I myself desire,” said Lee; consequently, “I the more anxiously urge the matter upon your Excy from my belief that a younger & abler
man than myself can readily be attained.”

  There was of course no younger and abler man waiting in the wings—as General Lee well knew. “But suppose, my dear friend, that I were to admit, with all their implications, the points which you present, where am I to find that new commander,” Mr. Davis asked in reply. The answer was nowhere. “To ask me to substitute you by some one in my judgment more fit to command, or who would possess more of the confidence of the army, or of the reflecting men in the country is to demand an impossibility.” A day or so later, Senator Louis Wigfall wrote to a friend that the president “was almost frantic with rage if the slightest doubt was expressed” regarding General Lee’s “capacity & conduct.” 11

  The search for explanations of the failed campaign began soon enough. The observant Colonel Fremantle, writing in the immediate aftermath of Pickett’s Charge, spoke of the sin of overconfidence: “It is impossible to avoid seeing that the cause of this check to the Confederates lies in the utter contempt felt for the enemy by all ranks.” Longstreet told him, Fremantle wrote, that “the mistake they had made was in not concentrating the army more”; they should have attacked with twice as many men on July 3. General Lee, for his part, would say that victory was within his reach on several occasions at Gettysburg “if he could have gotten one decided simultaneous attack on the whole line.” So far as he was concerned, the decisions were sound; it was the execution that had failed.12

  What Longstreet described as “a sly undercurrent of misrepresentation of my course”—no doubt a reference to newspaper reporting—caused Old Pete to explain his views in a letter to his uncle on July 24, when the army returned to Culpeper. “The battle was not made as I would have made it,” he wrote. “My idea was to throw ourselves between the enemy and Washington, select a strong position, and force the enemy to attack us.” But General Lee “chose the plans adopted,” he went on. “I consider it a part of my duty to express my views to the commanding general. If he approves and adopts them, it is well; if he does not, it is my duty to adopt his views, and to execute his orders as faithfully as if they were my own…. As we failed, I must take my share of the responsibility.” Indeed, he would shoulder all the responsibility if it would contribute to public support for General Lee: “If the blame, if there is any, can be shifted from him to me, I shall help him and our cause by taking it.”