Gettysburg

by Stephen W. Sears

  A few days later, Longstreet offered Senator Wigfall his view of the principal reason for the defeat. “Our failure in Pa.,” Longstreet wrote, “was due I think to our being under the impression that the enemy had not been able to get all of his forces up.” It was under this impression that Lee decided to attack at once. “And we did attack before our forces got up and it turned out that the enemy was ready with his whole force, and ours was not.” 13

  This explanation, in obvious reference to the second day’s fighting, suggested that a cause beyond General Lee’s control contributed to the defeat—that is, a lack of intelligence about the Federal army. That, in turn, led to the matter of Jeb Stuart’s culpability. As early as July 18, Charles M. Blackford of Longstreet’s staff was writing his wife, “General Stuart is much criticized for his part in our late campaign…. In his anxiety to ‘do some great thing’ General Stuart carried his men beyond the range of usefulness and Lee was not thereafter kept fully informed as to the enemy’s movements as he should have been….” Lee in his report was uncharacteristically blunt: “The movements of the army preceding the battle of Gettysburg had been much embarrassed by the absence of the cavalry.”

  In going on to note that Stuart had exercised “the discretion given him,” Lee appeared to accept a share of the blame for that embarrassment. Yet his serious misjudgment in permitting Stuart to go off on his improbable adventure in the first place largely escaped notice. Stuart’s dereliction in many eyes (including Lee’s) was his utter failure to communicate with the army during his long sweep around Hooker’s (and then Meade’s) army. When Major Andrew Venable found Lee on the July 1 battlefield, he brought with him the first news of the cavalry in a week. Apparently it never occurred to Stuart during that eventful week that cavalry scouting reports on the Yankee army would be a great deal more valuable to General Lee than the 125 captured Yankee wagons he was dragging along with his column.

  If Stuart in fact expected the brigades of Beverly Robertson and Grumble Jones, left behind with the army, to do Lee’s scouting for him, that was a point he and Lee failed to settle in advance. Lee ignored the two and just waited for Stuart to appear; he seemed only to trust Stuart to bring him usable intelligence. As a consequence, when the Confederates stumbled into battle on July 1, they not only knew nothing of the opposing army but nothing of the battlefield either. Lee was guilty of mishandling his cavalry during the campaign, but Jeb Stuart’s failing was the more grave. His lack of reconnaissance deprived Lee of one of the cornerstones on which his campaign was based—the choice of battlefield.14

  To be sure, Stuart was not alone among Lee’s generals in falling short of the mark at Gettysburg. A. P. Hill was guilty of simply doing nothing. He failed to supervise his officers, especially Harry Heth on the first day of the battle. He did even less on July 2, when the Third Corps’ attacks in support of Longstreet’s offensive were made piecemeal (or not made at all). On July 3 Hill stood completely aloof from the planning and management of Pickett’s Charge even though the majority of the attacking force was from his command. He gave no thought to the selection of the Third Corps troops, and he made no effort to direct their deployment. In his first exercise of corps command, A. P. Hill seemed always to be waiting for General Lee to tell him what to do.

  Dick Ewell, too, had seemed to shrink back from his new role as corps commander. At the time of the appointment, Lee recalled, he spoke “long and earnestly” to Ewell about his “want of decision.” It so happened that when he was in the heat of the fight—at Winchester in June, at Gettysburg on July 1—Ewell acted decisively enough, but when the guns cooled his decisiveness cooled as well. He grasped the importance of seizing Culp’s Hill on the evening of July 1, then grew inattentive and let the prize slip away. He thrice argued Lee out of shifting the Second Corps away from its tactically poor position on the far left, then proved unable to coordinate the subsequent attacks there. On July 2 and July 3 the Second Corps contributed little more than casualties to the Confederates’ battle record.15

  It was only in the postwar years (and only after Lee’s death), when the old generals refought old battles, that James Longstreet’s role at Gettysburg came to dominate the debate over the lost campaign. That exercise, from first to last, generated great heat and very little light. But through the course of the war and in the years left to him, General Lee gave not a hint of any dissatisfaction with Longstreet’s conduct on the second and third days of the battle. Their parting at Appomattox was carried out with the same old affection. Lee turned to Longstreet’s aide Thomas Goree and said, “Captain, I am going to put my old war horse under your charge. I want you to take good care of him.”

  There is no doubt that Longstreet, exercising what he thought of as the prerogative of a corps commander, argued strongly against Lee’s attack plans on the 2nd and 3rd. There is no doubt either that he directed those attacks with a heavy heart. Yet there is also no doubt that when he struck, he struck as hard as he always did. He could justifiably speak with pride of the attack on July 2: “the best three hours’ fighting ever done by any troops on any battlefield.” In managing Pickett’s Charge, Old Pete gave more attention to Pickett than to Pettigrew and Trimble, but in this regard he apparently (and properly) expected A. P. Hill to at least do his duty by his own troops. Then, by holding back reinforcements, Longstreet saved lives in what was clearly a misbegotten venture. Indeed, at Gettysburg James Longstreet was the only one of Lee’s corps commanders who lived up to expectations. 16

  In the final analysis, it was Robert E. Lee’s inability to manage his generals that went to the heart of the failed campaign. Right at the start, for example, he backed away from ordering a recalcitrant D. H. Hill, in North Carolina, to return the troops loaned him from the Army of Northern Virginia. These included two of Pickett’s brigades, and their lack greatly influenced how Pickett’s division would be employed at Gettysburg. Lee let Jeb Stuart talk him into an expedition that, considering all the risks inherent in invading the enemy’s country, made no military sense. On July 1 Lee issued vague and contradictory directions to Dick Ewell, who of all his generals most needed positive directions. This pattern of indecision continued in his dealings with Ewell. On the evening of the first day Lee twice determined to bring the Second Corps, or a substantial part of it, around to the right where it might be put to better use, and twice he gave in to Ewell’s pleadings to remain where he was. That exercise was repeated the next morning.

  At the same time—perhaps in part because of his unsatisfactory dealings with Ewell—Lee did impose his will on Longstreet. Since there is only Longstreet’s record of what occurred between the two of them on these days, it is not clear what arguments Lee may have countered with. What is clear is that theirs was a serious, extended dispute, and that by morning on July 2 Lee would have no more of it. The general commanding entertained no further argument; the battle would be fought his way. As Longstreet explained it soon afterward, Lee was convinced that Meade’s army was scattered and so he must attack immediately.

  Longstreet’s offensive that afternoon was checked—narrowly, so it appeared to Lee—and he took what proved to be the final, fateful decision that evening: for July 3 “The general plan was unchanged.” Lee chose this course reflexively, without consulting his lieutenants, without a survey of the battlefield, without an appraisal of the enemy, apparently without any consideration of alternatives. Robert E. Lee felt obliged to demonstrate to his lieutenants that his way was the right way, and the only way.

  Porter Alexander is easily the most astute of Confederate soldier-historians, and in his published appraisals of Gettysburg he wrote critically but with proper deference concerning General Lee’s conduct of the battle. In a private letter, however, Alexander was rather more blunt. “Never, never, never,” he wrote, “did Gen. Lee himself bollox a fight as he did this.” 17

  THERE WAS A TIME, in the Army of the Potomac, when the men would raise a cheer and toss their caps every time commanding general Georg
e McClellan appeared. Two years and much hard, discouraging fighting later, they had lost that innocence and put aside that habit of cheering. They eyed their generals more coldly now, even (in this instance) after a victory. “About Meade, I hardly know enough to form an immediate opinion,” wrote Captain Henry Abbott, 20th Massachusetts, on July 27. “I can hardly tell yet whether he is Wellingtonian or simply apes it…. I certainly feel great confidence in him, as do most others, though no enthusiasm. He hasn’t had a cheer, so far as I can learn.”

  While General Lee sought to excuse his defeat at Gettysburg, General Meade was in the peculiar position of having to defend his victory there. It seemed that victory was not enough. Mr. Lincoln complained of the failure to finish the job, to finally crush the Rebel army that (so he thought) had exposed itself to destruction by the very act of invading Pennsylvania. General-in-Chief Halleck softened this interpretation in his later dealings with Meade, and then the president swallowed his disappointment and paid proper tribute to the victor of Gettysburg. Still, Meade did not rest secure. “My conscience is clear,” he wrote his wife. “I feel I have done my duty, and that I could not have done more than I have done, and now I intend to await events in patient submission to God’s will, prepared for any contingency.” As to his continued command of the Potomac army, “I presume I am retained simply as a matter of necessity, and that my head will be cut off the first moment it can be done with security to themselves.”

  The general was of course wrong in his prediction, and at Appomattox he still commanded the Army of the Potomac. But in the months following Gettysburg Meade would be tormented by the testimony of hostile generals paraded before the hostile congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War. The generals were intent on avenging themselves on Meade. The committee’s radical Republicans were intent on seeing Meade replaced by the more politically correct Joe Hooker.

  The miscreant Dan Sickles, who had been dressed down by Meade for his July 2 blundering, and then (so Sickles thought) blocked by Meade from reclaiming his Third Corps command, led the attack. He was joined by Dan Butterfield, a Hooker loyalist pushed out of his chief of staff position; Abner Doubleday, who blamed Meade (wrongfully) for denying him command of the First Corps after the July 1 fighting; and David Birney, a disappointed suitor for the Third Corps command. Their message was that General Meade had mismanaged the battle at Gettysburg, afterward let the Rebel army escape, and would even have given up the field on July 2 and retreated but for his more warlike lieutenants. All this was fabricated and contrived, but all of it became public when the committee leaked the testimony to the press, and when Sickles enlisted “Historicus,” one of his staff, to write poison-pen letters defaming Meade to the New York Herald.

  Meade’s supporters, including such authentic heroes of Gettysburg as Hancock, Gibbon, Warren, and Hunt, defended him in print, and in time the unpleasantness faded away, but it left George Meade embittered. It was, he wrote, a “hellish ingenuity to rob me of my reputation.” Unfortunately Meade did not live long enough—he died in 1872, age fifty-seven—to see History overtake Historicus and refurbish his reputation. The fact of the matter is that George G. Meade, unexpectedly and against the odds, thoroughly outgeneraled Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg.18

  Lee demonstrated weakness in managing his generals in this battle, while that skill proved to be Meade’s especial strength. After consultation and instructions, he entrusted responsibility to his best generals, and was rewarded. Assigning three army corps to John Reynolds, he deputized him to select a battlefield if it should come to that. It did come to that, on July 1. For a time that day Meade hesitated over the choice of fields—perhaps momentarily borne down by the stresses of command—but he steeled himself and ratified Reynolds’s choice. He called up his forces and, ignoring seniority, sent Winfield Hancock ahead to take over for the slain Reynolds.

  When he reached Gettysburg himself, Meade carefully surveyed the position and personally assigned its defenders. On July 2 he anticipated needs and had reinforcements promptly on the way. In council that night, the plan for July 3 was made abundantly clear, and each general knew what was expected of him. In meeting Pickett’s Charge, Meade mobilized 13,000 troops—as it happened, the same number making the charge—to support his center where he had surmised any attack would strike. Although they were not needed, they were there. The more he studied Gettysburg, Henry Hunt later observed, “Meade has grown and grown upon me…. Rarely has more skill, vigor, or wisdom been shown under such circumstances as he was placed in, and it would, I think, belittle his grand record of that campaign, by a formal defence against his detractors….“19

  Like Meade himself, his principal lieutenants—most of them at least—rose to the occasion at Gettysburg. Before his death, Reynolds acted decisively in selecting Gettysburg as a good place to make a fight. Abner Doubleday, leading the First Corps on July 1, had his best day of the war. Hancock of the Second Corps was a singular, inspirational fighting general on the second and third days. George Sykes of the Fifth Corps and Gouverneur Warren of the engineers responded nicely to crises on the second day. John Sedgwick, while not called on to fight, force-marched his Sixth Corps so as to be there if needed. Artillerist Henry Hunt, granted the command independence by Meade that Joe Hooker had earlier withheld, proved to be a dominating presence on this battlefield.

  There were painful exceptions, however. Otis Howard failed the challenge when in command of the field on July 1, and failed at the task of restoring the Eleventh Corps’ morale following its Chancellorsville debacle. Dan Sickles, in not obeying Meade’s explicit orders, risked both his Third Corps and the army’s defensive plan on July 2. Henry Slocum’s strangely imperious command behavior left him a virtual cipher at Gettysburg, but at least in the interim the command of the Twelfth Corps was in good hands. Cavalryman Alfred Pleasonton, like Slocum a cipher-like figure, fortunately had subcommanders with initiative in the persons of John Buford, David Gregg, and George Armstrong Custer.

  For the most part, then—and for the first time ever—the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac had received the leadership they deserved. The victory won as a result became of surpassing importance to the rank and file. On that account it had perhaps more lasting meaning to the army than to the country at large. “What do people think now of the demoralized Army of the Potomac,” Lieutenant Charles Brewster, 10th Massachusetts, asked in a letter home on July 12. “If the growlers could have seen that desparate fighting on that battlefield at Gettysburg I think they would shut up their potato traps about this Army….” This was a widespread view among those in the ranks long belabored for their losing ways, and their soldiers’ pride was revived. “Again I thank God that the Army of the Potomac has at last gained a victory,” Elisha Rhodes of the 2nd Rhode Island entered in his journal. “I wonder what the South thinks of us Yankees now. I think Gettysburg will cure the Rebels of any desire to invade the North again.“20

  There was a sense in the ranks, too, that they had won this battle. It was not after all won by clever maneuvering or by Napoleonic inspiration, but by thousands of Yankee foot soldiers standing firm and strong against the best the vaunted Lee could hurl at them. And this time, in the end, it was the Rebels who skedaddled. “I really believe that we are learning to out fight the rebels on even fields, in spite of their dash and fanatical desperation,” wrote cavalryman Charles Francis Adams, Jr.

  With the Army of the Potomac poised on the Potomac for a new campaign in Virginia, the 14th Connecticut’s soldier-correspondent Samuel Fiske summed up the situation for the folks back home: “Our army is in good spirits, as you may well suppose, but very tired … having done an amount of labor in the past five weeks that must be shared and seen to be appreciated. I believe the country does, in some measure, appreciate, and is grateful for it. This army ‘deserves well of the Republic’ for the work of these few weeks especially.“21

  LATE ON JULY 5 the first photographers—Alexander Gardner, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, and Jame
s F. Gibson—reached Gettysburg, and over the next few days they composed their graven landscapes of the dead. They and other photographers recorded freshly scarred landmarks of the struggle—Devil’s Den, Little Round Top, Culp’s Hill, Evergreen Cemetery. Already working at the scene were artists Alfred Waud and Edwin Forbes, furiously sketching incidents and anecdotes of the fighting for Harper’s Weekly and Leslie’s. Well before the month was out, readers across the North would glimpse the great battle through the woodcuts in the illustrated papers.22

  When the two armies marched south, they left behind a third army—an army of the wounded, some 20,350 in number, a third of them Confederates. With another battle pending, the Army of the Potomac spared just 106 medical officers to remain at Gettysburg; the Confederates left perhaps 80 or 90 attendants with their wounded. While the majority of the amputations and other surgeries had by that time been done, the comparatively few overburdened surgeons and attendants now on duty still labored every day to the point of exhaustion.

  The same was true of the volunteer nurses of Gettysburg. Mary McAllister described the scene in one of the town’s requisitioned churches. “I went to doing what they told me to do,” she wrote, “wetting cloths and putting them on the wounds and helping. Every pew was full; some sitting, some lying, some leaning on others. They cut off the legs and arms and threw them out of the windows. Every morning the dead were laid on the platform in a sheet or blanket and carried away.” Sarah Broadhead surprised herself at her growing ability to tolerate the terrible sights and sounds and smells among the patients she nursed at the