Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

by Allen C. Guelzo

  12. Twemlow, Considerations on Tactics and Strategy, 1–2; Richard Holmes, Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 216, 218–19. Sir Evelyn Wood, in his retrospective The Crimea in 1854, and 1894 (London: Chapman & Hall, 1895), 38, noted that at the Alma one of Lord Raglan’s infantry divisions extended “nearly a mile” when deployed out into line, “and it became difficult for the General officer commanding it to supervise its advance.”

  13. “The Column of Attack,” Colburn’s United Service Magazine and Military Journal 70 (1852), 196; Paddy Griffith, French Napoleonic Infantry Tactics, 1792–1815 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2007), 6–8, 22–2; Hew Strachan, From Waterloo to Balaclava: Tactics, Technology, and the British Army, 1815–1854 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 20–21, 25–26.

  14. William Jesse, Russia and the War (London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longman, 1854), 34; Brent Nosworthy, The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003), 44; Greenlief T. Stevens, “Stevens’ Fifth Maine Battery,” in Maine at Gettysburg: Report of the Maine Commissioners Prepared by the Executive Committee (Portland: Lakeside Press, 1989), 90; Timothy J. Orr, “ ‘Sharpshooters Made a Grand Record This Day’: Combat on a Skirmish Line at Gettysburg on July 3,” in The Third Day: The Fate of a Nation, July 3, 1863 (Gettysburg: Gettysburg National Military Park, 2010), 57; Walker, History of the Second Army Corps in the Army of the Potomac (New York: Scribners, 1886), 450–51; Brian Holden Reid, The Civil War and the Wars of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Smithsonian Books, 1999), 29.

  15. Giles St. Aubyn, The Royal George: The Life of H. R. H. Prince George, Duke of Cambridge (New York: Knopf, 1963), 78; Fletcher and Ishchenko, The Battle of the Alma, 140; Patrick Mercer, Give Them a Volley and Charge: The Battle of Inkerman, 1854 (Stroud: Spellmount, 1998), 8, 98; Capt. R. Hodasevich, A Voice from Within the Walls of Sevastopol: A Narrative of the Campaign in the Crimea and of the Events of the Siege (London: John Murray, 1856), 67–71; Brooks, Solferino, 12–13; Philip Haythornthwaite, British Napoleonic Infantry Tactics, 1792–1815 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2008), 13; Eric Dorn Brose, The Kaiser’s Army: The Politics of Military Technology in Germany During the Machine Age, 1870–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 17; Steven D. Jackman, “Shoulder to Shoulder: Close Control and ‘Old Prussian Drill’ in German Offensive Infantry Tactics, 1871–1914,” Journal of Military History 68 (January 2004), 87–89; Jennifer M. Murray, “ ‘And so the murderous work went on’: Pickett’s Charge and Other Civil War Frontal Assaults,” in D. Scott Hartwig, ed., The Third Day: The Fate of a Nation, July 3, 1863 (Gettysburg: Gettysburg National Military Park, 2010), 152–53.

  16. Francis J. Lippett, Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms: Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1865), 134; John Keegan, The American Civil War: A Military History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 339–40; Hseih, West Pointers and the Civil War, 51–52; Weigley, The American Way of War, 15–16, 71; Howes, The Catalytic Wars, 47, 381, Epstein, “The Creation and Evolution of the Army Corps in the American Civil War,” 45–46.

  17. William W. Averell, “With the Cavalry on the Peninsula,” in Battles & Leaders, 2:429; Michael Asher, Khartoum: The Ultimate Imperial Adventure (New York: Penguin, 2005), 112; Holmes, Redcoat, 228–29; Bartolomees, Buff Facings and Gilt Buttons, 62–63.

  18. Eric J. Wittenberg, “ ‘A Dash of Conspicuous Gallantry’: The 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry at Brandy Station, June 9, 1863,” Gettysburg Magazine 41 (July 2009), 13–14; “Letter from V.A.S.P.” (June 10, 1863), in Writing and Fighting from the Army of Northern Virginia: A Collection of Confederate Solider Correspondence, ed. William B. Styple (Kearny, NJ: Belle Grove Publishing, 2003), 228; Alessandro Barbero, The Battle: A New History of Waterloo, trans. John Cullen (New York: Walker & Co., 2003), 60; Michael Barthorp, The British Army on Campaign, 1816–1902: The Crimea, 1854–1856 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1987), 3; Douglas Fermer, Sedan 1870: The Eclipse of France (London: Pen & Sword, 2008); Strachan, From Waterloo to Balaclava, 75, 77.

  19. Charles Jean Jacques Joseph Ardant du Picq, Battle Studies, trans. J. N. Greely and R. C. Cotton (New York: Macmillan, 1921), 85; Sears, Chancellorsville, 233–35; James Robbins Jewell, “Theodore Garnett Recalls Cavalry Service with General Stuart, June 16–28, 1863,” Gettysburg Magazine 20 (June 1999), 48; Bowen and Ward, Last Chance for Victory, 45; Lippett, Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms, 128; Bartholomees, Buff Facings and Gilt Buttons, 256; Kirby, “A Boy Spy in Dixie,” National Tribune (June 28, 1888); Edward C. Browne, “Col. George H. Sharpe’s ‘Soda Water’ Scouts,” Gettysburg Magazine 44 (January 2011), 29, 34–35; Toombs, New Jersey Troops in the Gettysburg Campaign, 107.

  20. Griffith, French Napoleonic Infantry Tactics, 52–53; Bartolomees, Buff Facings and Gilt Buttons, 81, 83, 85, 87, 89; John C. Ropes, “The War As We See It Now,” Scribner’s Magazine 9 (June 1891), 776, 784; “Reports of Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery, Army of the Potomac” (September 27, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):241; John H. Rhodes, The History of Battery B, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, in the War to Preserve the Union (Providenc, RI: Snow & Farnham, 1894), 176–77; Bradley Gottfried, The Artillery of Gettysburg (Nashville: Cumberland House, 2008), 12; George W. Newton, Silent Sentinels: A Reference Guide to the Artillery at Gettysburg (El Dorado, CA: Savas Beatie, 2005), 4.

  21. J. Morton Spearman, The British Gunner (London: Parker, Furnivall & Parker, 1844), unpaginated; William Allan, “Reminiscences of Field Ordnance Service with the Army of Northern Virginia—1863–’5,” SHSP 14 (January–December 1886), 140–41; L. Van Loan Naiswald, Grape and Canister: The Story of the Field Artillery of the Army of the Potomac, 1861–1865 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1999), 260; R. L. Murray, Artillery Tactics of the Civil War: A Study of the Tactical Use of Artillery Based on the First Day’s Battle at Gettysburg (Wolcott, NY: Benedum Books, 1998), 9–10, 11–12, 25; Hunt (December 4, 1862), in O.R., series one, 21:827; R. D. Osborn, “The Siege of Delhi,” North American Review 107 (October 1868), 598; Twemlow, Considerations on Tactics and Strategy, 27; John Strawson, Beggars in Red: The British Army, 1789–1889 (1991; Barnsley, S. Yorks: Pen & Sword, 2003), 43.

  22. William Wheeler to “Dear Grandfather and Aunt” (July 26, 1863), in In Memoriam: Letters of William Wheeler of the Class of 1855, Y.C. (Cambridge, MA: H. O. Houghton, 1875), 409–11; Robert Dale Mitchell, “The Rise and Survival of Private Mesnard, Part II,” Civil War Times Illustrated 24 (February 1986), 14; A Gallant Captain of the Civil War: Being the Record of the Extraordinary Adventures of Frederick Otto Baron von Fritsch, ed. Joseph Tyler Butts (New York: F. Tennyson Neely, 1902), 75.

  23. Instruction for Field Artillery (J. B. Lippincott, 1860), 2; Richard Rollins, “Lee’s Artillery Prepares for Pickett’s Charge,” North & South 2 (September 1999), 47; Capt. Tyler, “The Rifle and the Spade; or, The Future of Field Operations,” Journal of the United Service Institution 3 (1860), 173–74; R. L. Murray, E. P. Alexander and the Artillery Action in the Peach Orchard: A Tactical Overview of the Artillery Action near the Peach Orchard at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863 (Wolcott, NY: Benedum Books, 2000), 8; Strachan, From Waterloo to Balaclava, 115, 116; Holmes, Sahib: The British Soldier in India, 339, 340, 343, 345; Maj. Alfred Mordecai, Military Commission to Europe, in 1855 and 1856 (Washington: George W. Bowman, 1861), 141; Jay Luvaas, “A Prussian Observer with Lee,” Military Affairs 21 (Fall 1957), 109–10; William W. Strong, History of the 121st Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers: “An Account from the Ranks” (Philadelphia: Catholic Standard & Times, 1906), 31; Blake, Three Years in the Army of the Potomac (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1866), 206–7, 216–17. There was actually only one 6-pounder gun in the artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia.

  24. Robert Emory Park, “Sketch of the Twelfth Alabama Infantry,” SHSP 33 (January–December 1905), 241; Samuel Pickens, in Voices from Company D: Diaries by t
he Greensboro Guards, Fifth Alabama Infantry Regiment, Army of Northern Virginia, ed. G. W. Hubbs (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003), 172; “From the 4th North Carolina, Camp near Fredericksburg, May 27th, 1863,” in Confederate Correspondent: The Civil War Reports of Jacob Nathaniel Raymer, Fourth North Carolina, ed. E. B. Munson (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), 77; John Camden West, A Texan in Search of a Fight: Being the Diary and Letters of a Private in Hood’s Texas Brigade (Waco, TX: J. S. Hill, 1901), 54–55; Louis Léon, diary entry for May 29, 1863, in Diary of a Tar Heel Confederate Soldier (Charlotte, NC: Stone Pubs., 1913), 28; George Campbell Brown to Lizinka Brown (May 31, 1863), in Campbell Brown’s Civil War, 105; D. Augustus Dickert, History of Kershaw’s Brigade (Newberry, SC: Elbert Aull, 1899), 227–28; Naiswald, Grape and Canister, 263; John W. Chase (July 1, 1863), in Yours for the Union, 255.

  25. Mills, History of the 16th North Carolina Regiment in the Civil War (1897; Hamilton, NY: Edmonston Publishing, 1992), 33–34.

  CHAPTER FOUR A perfectly surplus body of men

  1. Lee to A. P. Hill (June 5 and 16), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 3):859, 896; Bowden and Ward, Last Chance for Victory, 36; Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, 104–5; Murray, E. P. Alexander, 22. John Imboden, who commanded a cavalry brigade in the Shenandoah, recalled receiving “a long confidential letter from General Lee, informing me of his purpose to cross the Blue Ridge … to capture Winchester, and cross the Potomac,” but if this letter was a “lost” operational plan, no copy seems to have survived. See Imboden, “Lee at Gettysburg,” The Galaxy 11 (April 1871), 508–9.

  2. Bucholz, Moltke and the German Wars, 1864–1871 (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 146–47, 162; Reid, The Civil War and the Wars of the Nineteenth Century, 32, 187.

  3. Charles W. Turner, “The Virginia Central Railroad at War, 1861–1865,” Journal of Southern History 12 (February–November 1942), 517, 530.

  4. Bowden and Ward, Last Chance for Victory, 48–49; James K. Swisher, Prince of Edisto: Brigadier General Micah Jenkins, C.S.A. (Berryville, VA: Rockbridge Publishing, 1996), 92–93.

  5. Lafayette McLaws, “Gettysburg,” SHSP 7 (February 1879), 65–66; Charles Marshall, “Events Leading Up to the Battle of Gettysburg” (January 1896), SHSP 24 (January–December 1896), 210–11; Nye, Here Come the Rebels!, 43; Bowden and Ward, Last Chance for Victory, 50; Samuel Pickens, diary entry for June 4, 1863, in G. W. Hubbs, ed., Voices from Company D, 173–74; Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, 221; John Camden West, A Texan in Search of a Fight, 57–58, 58–59; Gary W. Gallagher, Stephen Dodson Ramseur: Lee’s Gallant General (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 68; “The Diary of Bartlett Yancey Malone,” ed. W. W. Pierson, in James Sprunt Historical Publications (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1919), 16:34; George B. Davis, “The Strategy of the Gettysburg Campaign” (1898), Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts (Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing, 1989), 3:422–23; William Seymour, diary entry for June 5, 1863, in Gettysburg National Military Park Vertical Files [#7-LABrigade—B6, folder 1]; Daniel Butterfield to George Meade (June 4, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 3):5.

  6. Lee to Hill (June 5, 1863) and Hooker to Lincoln (June 5, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):30 and (pt. 3):859; Lincoln, “To Joseph Hooker” (May 14 and June 5, 1863), in Collected Works, 6:217, 249.

  7. Samuel Toombs, New Jersey Troops in the Gettysburg Campaign from June 5 to July 31, 1863 (Orange, NJ: Evening Mail Publishing, 1888), 19, 20, 21–22, 25; Andrew J. Bennett, The Story of the First Massachusetts Light Battery, attached to the Sixth Army Corps (Boston: Deland & Barta, 1886), 113; Andrew J. Boies, Record of the Thirty-third Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry: From Aug. 1862 to Aug. 1865 (Fitchburg, MA: Sentinel Publishing, 1880), 29; Joseph Keith Newell, “Ours”: Annals of the 10th Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers in the Rebellion (Springfield, MA: C. A. Nichols, 1875), 214–15; Hooker to Lincoln (June 10, 1863) and “Reports of Col. Lewis A. Grant, Fifth Vermont Infantry, commanding Second Brigade” (June 6, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):34, 676–78.

  8. Halleck to Hooker (June 5, 10 and 11, 1863), 31, 34, 35, in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1): 31–32, 35; Lincoln, “To Joseph Hooker” (June 10, 1863), in Collected Works, 6:257.

  9. “Circular” (June 11, 1863), David Birney to J. H. H. Ward (June 11, 1863), Hooker to Howard (June 12, 1863), Daniel Butterfield to “Commanding Officer, Sixth Corps” (June 12, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 3):58, 59, 67, 69.

  10. John H. Rhodes, The History of Battery B, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, in the War to Preserve the Union (Providence, RI: Snow & Farnham, 1894), 187; Michael Hanifen, History of Battery B: First New Jersey Artillery (1905; Hightstown, NJ: Longstreet House, 1991), 65; Ambrose Hayward to “Dear Father” (June 16, 1863), in Last to Leave the Field: The Life and Letters of First Sergeant Ambrose Henry Heyward, 28th Pennsylvania Infantry, ed. Timothy J. Orr (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2010), 155; Charles S. Wainwright, diary entry for June 7, 1863, in A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journals of Charles S. Wainwright, ed. Allan Nevins (1962; Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1998), 217; Rafuse, Robert E. Lee and the Fall of the Confederacy, 48; Patrick, diary entry for June 17, 1863, in Inside Lincoln’s Army, 260.

  11. Daniel Butterfield to George G. Meade (June 13, 1863) and Hooker to Halleck (June 6, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):33 and (pt. 3):86–87.

  12. Noah Brooks, “A Presidential Visit to the Army” (April 12, 1863), in Lincoln Observed, 39; William A. Morgan to J. B. Bachelder (April 1886), in The Bachelder Papers: Gettysburg In Their Own Words, eds. D. and A. Ladd (Dayton, OH: Morningside House, 1994), 2:1274–75; Russel H. Beatie, Army of the Potomac: McClellan Takes Command, September 1861–February 1862 (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004), 264; Joseph E. Johnston, “Opposing Forces at Seven Pines,” “Opposing Forces in the Maryland Campaign,” and William W. Averell, “With the Cavalry on the Peninsula,” in Battles & Leaders, 2:219, 314, 429, 600; Jack D. Welsh, Medical Histories of Union Generals (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996), 260.

  13. Sears, Chancellorsville, 67–68, 83–90; Bigelow, The Campaign of Chancellorsville (1910; New York: Smithmark, 1995), 136, 458–59; Edward G. Longacre, Lincoln’s Cavalrymen: A History of the Mounted Forces of the Army of the Potomac (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2000), 127–28, 133, 147; Brooks, “A Presidential Visit to the Army” (April 12, 1863), in Lincoln Observed, 39; John D. Imboden, “Cavalry Raiding in 1863,” in New Annals of the Civil War, 307.

  14. Edward G. Longacre, The Cavalry at Gettysburg: A Tactical Study of Mounted Operations During the Civil War’s Pivotal Campaign, 9 June–14 July, 1863 (Rutherford, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1986), 48; Longacre, Lincoln’s Cavalrymen, 97, 150; Joseph W. McKinney, Brandy Station, Virginia, June 9, 1863: The Largest Cavalry Battle of the Civil War (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006),58; Durwood Ball, Army Regulars on the Western Frontier, 1848–1861 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001),8; George Rollie Adams, General William S. Harney: Prince of Dragoons (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001),212; One of Custer’s Wolverines: The Civil War Letters of Brevet Brigadier General James H. Kidd, 6th Michigan Cavalry, ed. Eric J. Wittenberg (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1999), 40.

  15. William H. Payne, “Notes on War and Men—Summer 1865,” 85; John Esten Cooke, “General Stuart in Camp and Field,” in Annals of the War, 665; John Camden West, A Texan in Search of a Fight, 52; Pryor, Reading the Man, 253; Emory Thomas, Bold Dragoon: The Life of J.E.B. Stuart (1986; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 29–30, 31, 54, 233; Robert J. Trout, They Followed the Plume: The Story of J.E.B. Stuart and His Staff (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1993), 202–3; John Williamson Thomason, Jeb Stuart (1929; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 138; Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, 1:276–300.

  16. Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate: A Critical Narrative (New York: Scribner’s, 1907), 114; John C. Ropes, “Gener
al Stuart” (1886), in Critical Sketches of Some of the Federal and Confederate Commanders: Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, ed. Theodore F. Dwight (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1895), 10:158; Warren Wilkinson and Steven E. Woodworth, A Scythe of Fire: A Civil War Story of the Eighth Georgia Infantry (New York: William Morrow, 2002), 216; Warren C. Robinson, Jeb Stuart and the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 37.

  17. Pleasonton to Seth Williams (June 7, 1863) and Daniel Butterfield to Pleasonton (June 7, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 3):25, 27–28.

  18. Botts, The Great Rebellion: Its Secret History, Rise, Progress, and Disastrous Failure (New York: Harper & Bros., 1866), 194; Daniel A. Grimsley, “Culpeper as a Battle Ground in the War Between the States,” in Battles in Culpeper County, Virginia, 1861–1865: And Other Articles (Culpeper, VA: Raleigh Travers Green, 1900), 8; William L. Wilson, diary entry for June 8, 1863, in A Borderland Confederate, ed. Festus P. Summers (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962), 71; Daniel P. Oates, Hanging Rock Rebel: Lt. John Blue’s War in West Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley (Shippensburg, PA: Burd Street Press, 1994), 198; R. E. Lee to Mary Custis Lee (June 9, 1863), in Wartime Papers of Robert E. Lee, 507; Stephen Z. Starr, The Union Cavalry in the Civil War: From Fort Sumter to Gettysburg, 1861–1863 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 374–76.

  19. Alfred Pleasonton, “The Campaign of Gettysburg,” in Annals of the War, 448–49; M. C. Butler to O. G. Thompson (August 17, 1907), in U. R. Brooks, Butler and His Cavalry in the War of Secession, 1861–1865 (Columbia, SC: State Co., 1909), 151; Eric J. Wittenberg, The Battle of Brandy Station: North America’s Largest Cavalry Battle (Charleston: History Press, 2010), 75–91; Clark B. Hall, “The Battle of Brandy Station,” Civil War Times Illustrated (June 1990), 33–34; Roger H. Harrell, The 2nd North Carolina Cavalry (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), 118; Neil Hunter Raiford, The 4th North Carolina Cavalry in the Civil War: A History and Roster (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), 42; Bennett Young, Confederate Wizards of the Saddle: Being Reminiscences and Observations of One Who Rode with Morgan (Boston: Chapple Publishing, 1914), 516; Thomas, Bold Dragoon, 221; Eric J. Wittenberg, “ ‘A Dash of Conspicuous Gallantry’: The 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry at Brandy Station,” Gettysburg Magazine 41 (July 2009), 7.