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The Union Army Had Something to Do with It: General Lee's Plan at Gettysburg and Why It Failed

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Eastern Michigan University DigitalCommons@EMU Master's Theses, and Doctoral Dissertations, and Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations Graduate Capstone Projects 2008 The nionU Army had something to do with it: General Lee's plan at Gettysburg and why it failed Paul Mengel Follow this and additional works at: http://commons.emich.edu/theses Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Mengel, Paul, "The nionU Army had something to do with it: General Lee's plan at Gettysburg and why it failed" (2008). Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations. 206. http://commons.emich.edu/theses/206 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses, and Doctoral Dissertations, and Graduate Capstone Projects at DigitalCommons@EMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@EMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE UNION ARMY HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT: GENERAL LEE'S PLAN AT GETTYSBURG AND WHY IT FAILED by Paul Mengel Thesis Submitted to the Department of History and Philosophy Eastern Michigan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in History Thesis Committee: Steven J. Ramold, PhD, Chair Robert Citino, PhD John G. McCurdy, PhD June 7, 2008 Ypsilanti, Michigan ii DEDICATION To Kathy, who always thought I should do this sort of thing, and to my parents, who helped make it possible. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Steven J. Ramold, and the other members of the committee, Dr. Robert Citino and Dr. John G. McCurdy, for having the patience to wade through what I confess is a somewhat longer than expected thesis and for all their influence upon my thinking about history, both specifically as to this subject matter and in general. I would like to thank all of my professors in history at Eastern Michigan University for their ready acceptance without comment (except occasionally in what appeared to be an appreciative matter) of a student who was (in most cases) older than they were. I would like to thank Dr. Philip Schmitz for his perhaps overly kind expressions of belief in the lucidity of my writing, as well as Dr. Michael Homel for his encouragement in my perhaps somewhat quixotic quest to undertake serious study in history at an age that might be thought more appropriate for retirement than for new projects. I thank Dr. Ronald Delph for his always ready responses to my clueless inquiries as to the nuts and bolts of the thing. And I thank Lisa Walters, who proofread the thesis and endeavored to assist me to translate it into English. iv ABSTRACT The question considered is what General Robert E. Lee’s plan for the battle of Gettysburg actually was, and why he fought the battle the way he did, based on a reexamination of extensive commentaries left by the participants in the battle. General Lee believed that the Confederacy could not outlast the Union but had to win battles to cause the Union to abandon the war. This was one purpose of the invasion of the North. An initially favorable opportunity arose at Gettysburg. Despite some setbacks, Lee was encouraged and kept attacking. His plans failed because the Union Army had so weakened the Confederates that, on the third day, Lee’s subordinate commanders did not show their usual initiative and a pitifully small percentage of the army was involved. Accordingly, the attack failed, no victory to discourage the North took place, and attrition eventually led to the inevitable logical conclusion. v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION . 1 Background. 5 Statement of the Problem . 14 The Biases of the Author . 23 A Note On Time. 32 Chapter 1. The Strategic Plan. .35 Chapter 2. The Meeting . .75 Chapter 3. The Cavalry. 88 Chapter 4. Taking Cemetery Hill if Practicable . .102 Chapter 5. The Second Day’s Plan and how it changed. .119 Chapter 6. The Great Opportunity . 146 Chapter 7. Ewell, Night, and Cemetery Hill and Culp Hill. 158 Chapter 8. Pickett’s charge . 171 Chapter 9. Lee looks back. 207 APPENDIX: Did any of it matter? . 219 Note on Sources for Maps and Tables. .237 Figures (Maps). .241 Tables. .249 Works Cited. .258 vi LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1 Confederate Numbers Engaged and Casualties by Infantry Brigades……..249 2 Union Numbers Engaged and Casualties by Infantry Brigades…………….251 3 Confederate Numbers Engaged and Casualties by Segments of the Battle...253 4 Union Numbers Engaged and Casualties by Segments of the Battle……….255 LIST OF FIGURES (MAPS) Figures (Maps) Page 1 Gettysburg Area in 1863……………………………………………………..241 2 July 1, 1863, Ewell attack…………………………………… ………………242 3 July 2, 1863, as it was supposed to be……………………………… ………..243 4 July 2, 1863, as it was………………………………………………………...244 5 The Breakthrough Attack of Wofford’s and Barksdale’s Brigades…………..245 6 Pickett’s charge as it was………………………………………………… .….246 7 Pickett’s charge as it was supposed to be………………………………… .…247 8 Portion of Battlefield covered by Modern town NW of Cemetery Hill….…..248 1 Introduction E. Porter Alexander was the de facto chief of artillery for the First Corps of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by Lt. Gen. James E. Longstreet.1 He was also one of the more fair-minded observers and reporters of that army's activities.2 Alexander was remarkably free of the rote ideology of the “Lost Cause.” For instance, although he fully understood how certain of the comments made after the war by Longstreet might have grated on Lee’s admirers,3 he consistently defends Longstreet from his critics and is willing to criticize certain of the moves of General Lee.4 He opines that Hooker’s decision to recross the Rappahannock at the end of the battle of Chancellorsville without waiting for the relatively straight-on attack that Lee was planning might have spared the Confederates a rather nasty licking.5 Though not completely reconstructed (I don’t think any Confederate, including Longstreet, ever was), his relatively even-handed consideration of the wisdom of the various strategic and tactical decisions of the Confederates is almost unique among first-hand reporters. 1 Gary W. Gallagher, Introduction to Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate: A Critical Narrative (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907; Reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1993), xx-xxi. 2 Ibid., xxiv-xxv 3Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, ed. Gary W. Gallagher, (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 220. See particularly a quote from a letter to a Mr. Bancroft dated October 30, 1864, in the James Longstreet Letters, at Duke University, cited by Edwin B. Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign, a Study in Command (New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons, 1968; Reprint, Dayton: Morningside Books, 1979; Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster, 1997) fn 10, 727. “Many an old soldier will never forgive Longstreet such a sentiment & yet I do not believe he ever knew how it reads to a lover of Lee.” This quote alone represents an ability to understand how each side to a disputed question may feel, an understanding rare enough in any age, and particularly so when old Confederates were discussing their battles. 4 See Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, 233-234, 245-246, 277-278 5 Alexander, Military Memoirs, 357-358. 2 On page 200 of his Military Memoirs of a Confederate he makes the following very interesting statement regarding the stand of a small portion of the Union Army of the Potomac that had a brief but intense struggle with elements of Stonewall Jackson's wing on August 28, 1862, on the eve of the Second Battle of Bull Run (Manassas): The notable part of this action was fought by Gibbon's Brigade of three Wisconsin regiments, and one Indiana reenforced by two regiments of Doubleday’s, --the 56th Pa. and the 76th N.Y. , --in all about 3000 men. Opposed was Taliaferro's front line of two brigades (A. G. Taliaferro's on the right, and the Stonewall brigade, now only about 600 strong, under Baylor, on the left) with some help also from Ewell's front line of Lawton's brigade, and Trimble's. These troops were all veteran infantry, and it is to be noted that the decidedly smaller force of the Federals had never before been seriously engaged. They had, indeed, the great aid and support of two excellent batteries, but their desperate infantry fight, attested by their losses, illustrates the high state of efficiency to which troops may be brought solely by drill and discipline. It may be a sort of mechanical valor which is imparted by long-trained obedience to military commands, but it has its advantages, even though there may be appreciable differences in it from the more personal courage inspired by a loved cause.6 The unit, the "mechanical valor" of which so impressed Alexander, would add another regiment, a Michigan one, and would fight itself almost to extinction in the desperate attempt to deny the Confederates the high ground south and east of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. By then it had acquired a name. It was called the Iron Brigade.7 If even so dispassionate an observer as Alexander, forty years after the fight (years which he had spent very successfully in the revived republic for which the Iron Brigade fought)8 can still see nothing but the results of drill and discipline in the efforts of the Iron Brigade and appears not to consider that they may have fought for an equally beloved cause as he did himself, certainly conveys much of the attitude of the Confederates.
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    Course Reader Gettysburg: History and Memory Professor Allen Guelzo The content of this reader is only for educational use in conjunction with the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s Teacher Seminar Program. Any unauthorized use, such as distributing, copying, modifying, displaying, transmitting, or reprinting, is strictly prohibited. GETTYSBURG in HISTORY and MEMORY DOCUMENTS and PAPERS A.R. Boteler, “Stonewall Jackson In Campaign Of 1862,” Southern Historical Society Papers 40 (September 1915) The Situation James Longstreet, “Lee in Pennsylvania,” in Annals of the War (Philadelphia, 1879) 1863 “Letter from Major-General Henry Heth,” SHSP 4 (September 1877) Lee to Jefferson Davis (June 10, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt 3) Richard Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War (Edinburgh, 1879) John S. Robson, How a One-Legged Rebel Lives: Reminiscences of the Civil War (Durham, NC, 1898) George H. Washburn, A Complete Military History and Record of the 108th Regiment N.Y. Vols., from 1862 to 1894 (Rochester, 1894) Thomas Hyde, Following the Greek Cross, or Memories of the Sixth Army Corps (Boston, 1894) Spencer Glasgow Welch to Cordelia Strother Welch (August 18, 1862), in A Confederate Surgeon’s Letters to His Wife (New York, 1911) The Armies The Road to Richmond: Civil War Memoirs of Major Abner R. Small of the Sixteenth Maine Volunteers, ed. H.A. Small (Berkeley, 1939) Mrs. Arabella M. Willson, Disaster, Struggle, Triumph: The Adventures of 1000 “Boys in Blue,” from August, 1862, until June, 1865 (Albany, 1870) John H. Rhodes, The History of Battery B, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, in the War to Preserve the Union (Providence, 1894) A Gallant Captain of the Civil War: Being the Record of the Extraordinary Adventures of Frederick Otto Baron von Fritsch, ed.