Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

by Allen C. Guelzo

  17. Gary W. Gallagher, “Confederate Corps Leadership on the First Day at Gettysburg: A. P. Hill and Richard S. Ewell in a Difficult Debut,” in Three Days at Gettysburg: Essays on Confederate and Union Leadership (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1999), 37–38; Larry B. Maier, Gateway to Gettysburg: The Second Battle of Winchester (Shippensburg, PA: Burd Street Press, 2002), 284; Hunter McGuire, “Clinical Remarks on Gun-shot Wounds of Joints” (January 10, 1866), Richmond Medical Journal 1 (March 1866), 262; John Warwick Daniel, “General Jubal A. Early” (December 13, 1894), SHSP 22 (January–December 1894), 328; R. H. Early, Lieutenant General Jubal Anderson Early, xxiv–xxv.

  18. Jefferson Davis to Robert E. Lee (May 26, 1863), in The Papers of Jefferson Davis: January–September 1863, eds. L. L. Crist et al. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 191; Robert K. Krick, “The Unfulfilled Promise of Robert E. Lee’s Favorite Officer,” America’s Civil War 20 (January 2008), 43–44; Bartholomees, Buff Facings and Gilt Buttons, 40; Robertson, A. P. Hill, 177–78; Lee to Jefferson Davis (May 28, 1863), in Lee’s Despatches, 96; Jedediah Hotchkiss, “Virginia,” in Clement A. Evans, ed., Confederate Military History: A Library of Confederate States History (Atlanta: Confederate Publishing, 1899) 3:392; One of Lee’s Best Men: The Civil War Letters of General William Dorsey Pender, ed. W. W. Hassler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 4–5; Frank A. O’Reilly, “Stonewall” Jackson at Fredericksburg: The Battle of Prospect Hill, December 13, 1862 (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1993), 28.

  19. Longstreet, Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1908), 332; Piston, Lee’s Tarnished Lieutenant, 40.

  20. Bartholomees, Buff Facings and Gilt Buttons, 206–7; Henry G. Wayne to Joseph E. Brown (August 12, 1863), in Americana Catalog 157 (December 2005), Abraham Lincoln Bookshop, Chicago, IL; Alexander McNeil (August 16, 1863), in Don Ernsberger, Also for Glory Muster: The Story of the Pettigrew-Trimble Charge (LaVergne, TX: Xlibris Corp., 2008), 184; Robert J. Wynstra, “The Rashness of That Hour”: Politics, Gettysburg, and the Downfall of Confederate Brigadier-General Alfred Iverson (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2010), 327; R. H. G. Kean, diary entries for May 3 and 20, 1863, in Inside the Confederate Government: The Diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean, ed. Edward Younger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), 55, 64.

  21. Torrence to Sarah Ann Torrence (March 28, 1863), in “Diary and Letters and Leonidas Torrence,” 504; Vance to James A. Seddon (January 5, 1863) and L. S. Fash to Vance (June 1, 1863), in Papers of Zebulon Baird Vance, ed. Joe A. Mobley (Raleigh: North Carolina Division of Archives and History, 1995), 2:5, 180; Ruffin Barnes to Mary Bryant Barnes (June 8, 1863), in Hugh Buckner Johnston, ed., “The Confederate Letters of Ruffin Barnes of Wilson County,” North Carolina Historical Magazine 31 (January 1954), 81; Vance to Jefferson Davis (March 9, 1864), in O.R., series one, 51 (pt. 2):831–32.

  22. Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860–’65 (Hartford: O. D. Case, 1866), 2:484; John W. Chase to Samuel S. Chase (January 11, 1863), in Yours for the union: The Civil War Letters of John W. Chase, First Massachusetts Light Artillery, ed. J. S. and B. B. Collier (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), 189; Henry Wilson Hubbell [40th New York] to mother (January 15, 1863), in Henry W. Hubbell Papers, New-York Historical Society.

  23. Browning, diary entry for January 12 and 19, 1863, in The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, ed. T. C. Pease and J. G. Randall (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1925), 1:613, 616; Strong, diary entry for November 5, 1862, in Diary of the Civil War, ed. Allan Nevins (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 271–72; John Torrey Morse, Abraham Lincoln (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899), 2:121–25; “Illinois Legislature Prorogued,” Washington National Intelligencer (June 12, 1863); “Speech of Richard Yates,” Illinois State Journal (July 13, 1863); Arnold Shankman, “Draft Resistance in Civil War Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography 101 (April 1977), 191, 192, 195, 196; “The Enrollment in Pennsylvania,” Washington National Intelligencer (June 11, 1863); Franklin Boyts to brother John (May 21, 1863), in Franklin Boyts Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

  24. McClure, Colonel Alexander K. McClure’s Recollections of Half a Century (Salem, MA: Salem Press, 1902), 474–75; Tevis and Marquis, History of the Fighting Fourteenth, 238; Asa W. Bartlett, History of the Twelfth Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion (Concord, NH: Ira C. Evans, 1897), 36; Nelson V. Hutchinson, History of the Seventh Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in the War of the Rebellion of the Southern States Against Constitutional Authority (Taunton, MA: Authority of the Regimental Association, 1890), 158–59.

  25. Richard Margerum to William Margerum (November 11, 1863) in Corp. Richard Margerum Letters (1861–1864), Historical Society of Pennsylvania; McClellan to Mary Ellen McClellan (August 16, October 31, and November 17, 1861), in The Civil War Papers of George McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860–1865, ed. Stephen W. Sears (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1989), 85, 114, 135; Erasmus Keyes to Chase (June 17, 1862), in The Salmon P. Chase Papers, ed. John Niven et al. (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996), 3:212–13; Edwin M. Stanton to Ulysses S. Grant (March 3, 1865), in O.R., series one, 46 (pt. 2):802; Stephen R. Taaffe, Commanding the Army of the Potomac (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 9–13.

  26. “The Doomed Army,” Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times (December 12, 1863); George Sewall Boutwell, Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1902), 1:309; Walter H. Hebert, Fighting Joe Hooker (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1944), 147–48; O. R. Howard and William H. Rauch, History of the “Bucktails”: Kane Rifle Regiment of the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps (Philadelphia: Electric Printing Co., 1906), 223; Robert K. Beecham, Gettysburg, the Pivotal Battle of the Civil War (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1911), 23.

  27. “General Orders No. 47” (April 30, 1863), in O.R., series one, 25 (pt. 1):171; Régis de Trobriand, Four Years with the Army of the Potomac (Boston: Ticknor & Co., 1889), 414; “To Joseph Hooker” (May 14, 1863), in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. R. P. Basler et al. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 6:217; Robert Grandchamp, “The 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers in the Gettysburg Campaign,” Gettysburg Magazine 42 (July 2010), 73.

  28. Epstein, “Creation and Evolution of the Army Corps,” 29, 30, 31, 33–34; Frederick Elizur Goodrich, Life of Winfield Scott Hancock, Major-General, U.S.A. (Boston: B. B. Russell, 1886), 332; Sedgwick to his sister (April 14, 1862) and to William French (September 1, 1863), in Correspondence of John Sedgwick, Major-General (Norfolk, CT: Carl Stoeckel, 1903), 2:43–44, 155; Meade to “Dear Doct” (August 5, 1861), Meade to John Sergeant Meade (March 29, 1862, October 23, 1862, and March 31, 1863), and Meade to Margaretta Meade (November 24, 1861, August 9, 1863, and January 20, 1865), in George G. Meade Papers (box 1, folders 3 and 4, and box 2, folder 10), Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Ethan S. Rafuse, George Gordon Meade and the War in the East (Abilene, TX: McWhiney Foundation Press, 2003), 22–23; Abner Doubleday and William Newton, in William B. Styple, ed., Generals in Bronze: Interviewing the Commanders of the Civil War (Kearny, NJ: Belle Grove Publishing, 2005), 47, 167; Almira Hancock, Reminiscences of Winfield Scott Hancock (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1887), 90, 94–95; Cross to Henry Kent (December 17, 1861) and to Franklin Pierce (April 14, 1863), in Stand Firm and Fire Low: The Civil War Writings of Colonel Edward E. Cross, Walter Holden, W. E. Ross, and Elizabeth Slomba, eds. (Hanover: University of New Hampshire Press, 2003), 97, 137; George Alfred Townsend, in William B. Styple, McClellan’s Other Story: The Political Intrigue of Colonel Thomas M. Key, Confidential Aide to General George B. McClellan (Kearny, NJ: Belle Grove Publishing, 2012), 204.

  29. Thomas A. Desjardin, These Honored Dead: How the Story of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory (New York: Da Capo Press, 2003), 78–79; Sickles, “Address at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Scienc
e and Art” (November 1863), in Gilder-Lehrman Collection, New-York Historical Society; Sickles to Adam Badeau (August 26, 1887), Seth Kaller, Inc. Historic Documents Catalog #20340.1 at www.sethkaller.net/catalogs/abraham-lincoln/34-abraham-lincoln/150-general-sickles-lincoln-dictator-dispute; Charles Elihu Slocum, The Life and Services of Major-General Henry Warner Slocum (Toledo, OH: Slocum Pubs., 1913), 9; Thomas E. Hilton, ed., “To the Memory of Henry Slocum: A Eulogy by Oliver O. Howard,” Civil War Times Illustrated (March 1982), 40; Carlos Martyn, “Introduction,” in Howard, Fighting for Humanity; or, Camp and Quarter-Deck (New York: F. Tennyson Neely, 1898), vii; “Testimony of Major General Abner Doubleday” (March 1, 1864), in Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 4:311; Strong, diary entry for September 13, 1862, in Diary of the Civil War, 256.

  30. Richard Slotkin, The Long Road to Antietam: How the Civil War Became a Revolution (New York: Liveright/W. W. Norton, 2012), 381; “Oration of Henry S. Huidekoper” (1899), in Pennsylvania at Gettysburg: Ceremonies at the Dedication of the Monuments Erected by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, ed. John P. Nicholson (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1914), 2:991–92, and “Address of Mr. J. G. Rosengarten” (March 8, 1880), in Reynolds Memorial: Addresses delivered before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania upon the occasion of the Presentation of a Portrait of Maj.-Gen. John F. Reynolds, March 8, 1880 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1880), 16, 19.

  31. W. E. Doubleday to Chandler (July 5, 1861), in Zachariah Chandler Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; Abner Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860–’61 (New York: Harper & Bros., 1876), 137; Wayne Mahood, General Wadsworth: The Life and Times of Brevet Major General James S. Wadsworth (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003), 80, 111; Henry Clay Christiancy to Charlotte Elizabeth Christiancy, in Christiancy & Pickett Family Papers (box 1, file 1), Library of Congress; George L. Wood, The Seventh Regiment: A Record (New York: James Miller, 1865), 161; Noah Brooks, “Too Many Generals” (July 23, 1863), in Lincoln Observed: Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks, ed. Michael Burlingame (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 60; Inside Lincoln’s Army: The Diary of Marsena Rudolph Patrick, Provost Marshal General, Army of the Potomac, ed. Daniel S. Sparks (New York, 1964), 209.

  32. Sears, Chancellorsville, 18; Sears, Controversies and Commanders: Dispatches from the Army of the Potomac (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 185; Wright, No More Gallant a Deed, 268; George A. Custer to I. P. Christiancy (May 17, 1863), Special Collections, University of Virginia; Oliver Otis Howard, “Campaign and Battle of Gettysburg, June and July, 1863,” Atlantic Monthly 38 (July 1876), 48; Orson Blair Curtis, History of the Twenty-fourth Michigan of the Iron Brigade (Detroit: Winn Hammond, 1891), 141–42; Alan T. Nolan, The Iron Brigade (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1975), 223–24; James Lorenzo Brown, History of the Thirty-Seventh Regiment, Mass. Volunteers, in the Civil War of 1861–1865 (Holyoke, MA: Clark W. Bryan & Co., 1884), 167–68.

  33. Wood, The Seventh Regiment, 162; Richard Margerum to William Margerum (November 11, 1863), in Margerum Letters, HSP; Marshall Phillips to Diana Phillips (June 2, 1863), in Yankee Correspondence: Civil War Letters Between New England Soldiers and the Home Front, eds. N. Silber and M. B. Sievans (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996), 39; Oliver Edwards to Eunice Lombard Edwards (January 13, 1863), Gilder-Lehrman Collection, New-York Historical Society.

  CHAPTER THREE This Campaign is going to end this show

  1. Pender to Fanny Sheppard Pender (June 28, 1863), in One of Lee’s Best Men: The Civil War Letters of General William Dorsey Pender, 254; Rafuse, Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 35–37; Johnston to Davis (December 22, 1862), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 2):801; “Fears in the North of General Lee’s Army,” Charleston Mercury (June 12, 1863).

  2. Davis to Johnston (March 16, 1863), in O.R., series one, 23 (pt. 2):712; Rafuse, Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 35–37; Lee to Davis (April 2, 1863) and Seddon to Lee (April 6, 1863), in O.R., series one, 25 (pt. 2):700, 709; Archer Jones, “The Gettysburg Decision,” Virginia Magazine of History & Biography 68 (July 1968), 332–35.

  3. Lee to Anne Lee Marshall (April 20, 1861), in Wartime Papers of Robert E. Lee, 10; James Dabney McCabe, Life and Campaigns of General Robert E. Lee (Philadelphia: National Publishing, 1866), 31; Vincent A. Welsher to John Warwick Daniel (March 15, 1906), John Warwick Daniel Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia; Wilbur Sturtevant Nye, Here Come the Rebels! (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965), 8; William Swallow, “From Fredericksburg to Gettysburg,” Southern Bivouac 4 (November 1885), 352–53; Donald J. Stoker, The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 281; Long, Memoirs of Robert E. Lee, 269.

  4. William J. Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 468; Thomas, Robert E. Lee: A Biography, 288, 290; Rembert W. Patrick, Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1944), 137; John H. Reagan, Memoirs, with Special Reference to Secession and the Civil War, ed. W. F. McCaleb (New York: Neale Publishing, 1906), 151; Jones, “The Gettysburg Decision,” 338; Longstreet, Manassas to Appomattox, 327; Longstreet, “Lee in Pennsylvania,” in Annals of the War Written by Leading Participants North and South (Philadelphia: Times Publishing, 1879), 417; Jeffrey D. Wert, “No Fifteen Thousand Men Can Take That Position: Longstreet at Gettysburg,” in James Longstreet, eds. DiNardo and Nofi, 82; Krick, The Smoothbore Volley That Doomed the Confederacy, 62–63; Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, 220.

  5. Thomas Arnold, Introductory Lectures on Modern History (London: Longmans, Green, 1874), 153; Col. George Twemlow, Considerations on Tactics and Strategy (London: Simpson, Marshall & Co., 1865), 187.

  6. Bruce Catton, A Stillness at Appomattox (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1953), 154–55. For a modern repetition of this view, see David White, “Born in the USA: A New World of War,” History Today 60 (June 2010), 12.

  7. Peter Smithurst, The Pattern 1853 Enfield Rifle (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2011), 8–12, 26, 34; Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox, Rifles and Rifle Practice: An Elementary Treatise upon the Theory of Rifle Firing (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1859), and George L. Willard, Manual of Target Practice for the United States Army (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1862). It’s worth adding that the U.S. armory system had been itself producing rifled weapons for general use (although with patched ball) for twenty years before the Civil War; and that no one less than Jefferson Davis had outfitted his Mississippi Volunteers in Mexico with rifles (he later made rifled weapons the standard for all infantry and, as secretary of war, approved J. G. Benton and Benjamin Huger’s Reports of Experiments With Small Arms for the Military Service [1856], attesting to their practicality). My thanks to John M. Rudy of Harpers Ferry NHP for bringing this to my attention.

  8. Colston, “Modern Tactics,” Southern Literary Messenger (January 1858), 10; Lt. Col. John Mitchell, Thoughts on Tactics and Military Organization (London: Longman, 1838), 164; Richard Brooks, Solferino 1859: The Battle for Italy’s Freedom (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2009), 84; Saul David, The Indian Mutiny: 1857 (New York: Penguin, 2002), 248, 250; Bucholtz, Moltke and the German Wars, 106.

  9. Andrew Steinmetz, “Military Gymnastics of the French,” Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies 5 (1861), 390; Charles Carleton Coffin, “Memories of Gettysburg,” in Stories of Our Soldiers: War Reminiscences by “Carleton,” and by Soldiers of New England (Boston: Journal Newspaper, 1893), 109; Andrew Cowan to J. B. Bachelder (August 26, 1866), in The Bachelder Papers: Gettysburg in Their Own Words, eds. D. and A. Ladd (Dayton, OH: Morningside House, 1994), 1:281; Earl J. Hess, Pickett’s Charge: The Last Attack at Gettysburg (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 197; Earl J. Hess, The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), 17–18, 58; Gerald J. Prokopowicz, “Tactical Stalemate: The Battle of Stones
River,” North & South 2 (September 1999), 16; O’Reilly, “Stonewall” Jackson at Fredericksburg, 59.

  10. See Philip M. Cole, Command and Communications Frictions in the Gettysburg Campaign (Orrtanna, PA: Colecraft Industries, 2006), 80; Ethan S. Rafuse, The American Civil War (Ashgate, 2005), 230; Richard Holmes, Sahib: The British Soldier in India, 1750–1914 (London: HarperCollins, 2005), 344; Earl J. Hess, The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), 80–81; Brooks, Solferino, 84.

  11. Cross, in Stand Firm and Fire Low, 51; Wright, No More Gallant a Deed, 22; William Payne, “Notes on War and Men—Summer 1865,” North & South (September 1999), 83; Hess, The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat, 30, 198, 201–2; Hsieh, West Pointers and the Civil War, 150, 152; Philip Haythornthwaite, British Napoleonic Infantry Tactics, 1792–1815 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2008), 10; Bell I. Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank, 51; Nosworthy, The Bloody Crucible of Courage, 144–45; “Report of Col. William B. Franklin” (July 28, 1861), in O.R., series one, 2:407; William Valmore Izlar, A Sketch of the War Record of the Edisto Rifles, 1861–1865 (Columbia, SC: August Cohn, 1914), 55–57; George F. Noyes, The Bivouac and the Battlefield; or, Campaign Sketches in Virginia and Maryland (New York: Harper & Bros., 1864), 333; Robertson, Soldiers Blue and Gray, 55, 56–57.