The Angle In Winter - photo by Dennis Lawrence

PICKETT'S CHARGE

LAST UPDATED 2/18/96


These archived discussions are still open for comment. To join in write gettysburg@arthes.com


From: jpike@mailcsi.alpinecsi.com

Has anything been written about what Lee's follow up plan was should Pickett's charge have been successful? Did he ever say how many of his men did he expect to make it safely to stone wall? Once they got there, were they supposed to turn left toward Cemetery Hill or right towards Little Round Top? Once they got there, who was going to support them (Rhodes?)? Or were Longstreet and Early supposed to attack each end at that point? Or did Lee just think the Union would retreat in mass confusion at that point?


I confess I've never seen anything in writing about a follow-on, except of course Stuart's positioning for the big pursuit. My own opinion is that Lee expected that cracking Meade's center would have precipitated a rout of the Federal army. I think in this he clearly misread his opponents.

Dave Powell


From: John Blair

It might be interesting to look at Bragg's follow up to the Chickamauga breakthrough or better still, at Meade's follow through of his victory at Gettysburg. Was there ever an equivalent of what would have been Picket's breakthrough under Lee?

John


From: Norman Levitt

The nearest thing I can think of to an imaginary breakthrough by Pettigrew-Pickett-Trimble is the real breakthrough by the Army of the Cumberland on Missionary Ridge. There, a true rout ensued, and a fairly vigorous pursuit, though one that was eventually stymied by Cleburne's blocking force.

Of course, this ignores vast differences. Bragg's line on Missionary Ridge was not backed up by anything substantial. By contrast, the portion of the Cemetery Ridge line assaulted on July 3 was defended by only a small fraction of Meade's Army. Tens of thousands of troops--Most of V Corps, all of VI, for instance--stood in reserve and were, in fact, coming up when the collapse of the assault removed the immediate need for them. Thus, the idea of a "breakthrough" by P-P-T is in many senses illusory.

There's the larger point--and here, Chattanooga, as well as Chancellorsville and Gettysburg illustrate this--that it was very difficult, given the limitations on mobility and control of a large CW army, to follow up a decisive tactical victory with an action to "annihilate" the routed enemy. Victors, in these circumstances, were almost as disorganized as vanquished. The only more-or-less successful actions of this kind I can think of are at Nashville--and even here, the Army of Tennessee simply disintegrated, rather than being "enveloped", and Appamattox, where the ANV had been reduced to a rump organization and where the great Sheridan drove his forces relentlessly until they got into position to block the retreat.

Very few CW commanders really understood the strategic limitations of even the most unequivocal success on the tactical scale. Lee didn't. Grant did, which is why he is the true strategic genius of the war. Of course, Grant also understood how tactical stalemate or even loss (Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor) could be turned into strategic success.


From: DPowell334@aol.com

In a message dated 95-12-17 09:38:16 EST, you write:

>> >It might be interesting to look at Bragg's follow up to the Chickamauga >breakthrough or better still, at Meade's follow through of his victory at >Gettysburg. Was there ever an equivalent of what would have been Picket's >breakthrough under Lee?

> >John

Grant in April of '65, or Thomas after Nashville are successful examples of a pursuit. However, both men commanded substantial advantages over their opponents.

Bragg at Chickamauga, of course, thought he _lost_ the battle, and mounted no pursuit at all. To bad for the South, because an effective pursuit could have inflicted severe damage on the Union army.

Meade's own example has some extenuating circumstances, I think. Given that he was new to the command, that his most trusted and aggressive Corps commanders were down, and that the army had taken a fearsome beating, he chose not to pursue. Hindsight likely tells us that this was a mistake, but at the time, Meade made a reasonable choice, I think.
Remember, Lee's army was not disorganized. It held it's position on the field another day, and then withdrew in good order. Meade had one unscathed corps, the 6th, and had at least 3 corps that were unfit - 1st, 3rd, and 11th. Even directly after Pickett's charge, Lee had plenty of formed infantry with massive artillery support. those cannon were out of long range ammo, but had full limbers of canister. Any counterattack would have been paid for in heavy doses of Union blood.

Dave Powell


From: MattR78@aol.com

If you will read Griffith's book--the section on bayonet charges--and then read the eyewitness accounts of Pickett's Charge, I think you will agree with me that PC meets the textbook definition of a bayonet charge, as taught in 19th c military theory. Thus their goal was to pierce the Union line and then fan out as the reinforcements came up. Thus they moved at a specified clip(quickstep)(an engineer later measured it exactly, though from the Pettigrew-Trimble wing), without firing, until they got within about 250 yds, at which point they began to run.


From: cakes@ix.netcom.com (Susan Wittenberg)

Let's try this one on for size....if John Reynolds is in command of the Army of the Potomac, and not George Meade, is the outcome of the battle any different? Specifically, does Reynolds order a counterattack after the repulse of Pickett's Charge?

Personally, I suspect that he would have....

Eric J. Wittenberg


From: cakes@ix.netcom.com (Susan Wittenberg)

Hancock would have attacked. This much is clear. He did not want to leave the field after he was wounded until after the counterattack. He said so. That's not what I'm interested in.

What I want to explore is what would Reynolds have done? I understand that he turned down the command...there were very specific political reasons for that. This is a "what if". Reynolds was far more aggressive than Meade, and I think that the nature of the fight would have been very different indeed had Reynolds been in charge. What do the rest of you think?

Eric J. Wittenberg


From: DPowell334@aol.com

Eric wrote: > Specifically, does Reynolds order a counterattack after the repulse of Pickett's >Charge?

> Personally, I suspect that he would have....

Eric,

He might well have. However, I'm not sure such an attack would have been all that wise.
Why? well, there's about 6-7000 CSA infantry yet uncommitted in position to receive such an attack. Not, I admit, such an overwhelming force as to preclude success, but remember that they are supported by something like 80+ CSA cannon who have no more long range ammo, but ALL have full allowances of short-range canister. Given that arty firing canister in close-range defense work is the most effective ACW use of that branch, I'd hate to be in that Union attack. Not saying it's impossible, mind you, just that it seems too often taken as a cake walk...

Dave Powell


From: Edward Nordfors

Greetings...

On the subject of why Meade did not immediately counter attack.... I understand all the reasons Meade gave to the Congressional Inquiry (well I should say I know the reasons ..understand??)... But in my simple mind I have another of my simple questions

Why was it that Lee and Longstreet so diligently prepared for a counter attack at least until it was more than obvious that it was not forthcoming... I found myself defending all of Meade's reasons most especially the lack of intelligence as to whether the ANV was re-grouping vs. retreating but as I continue to study I find the above situation fairly consistent--save add for the utter disbelieve or suspension of disbelieve that so few soldiers were returning...

BTW, on the Charging vs walking issue...Did not Lothero A. have his men charging the last 1/3 of the distance or is my mind wandering--again How else could he have gained the wall...

Best..
Ed...


From: Dave Navarre <73613.1150@compuserve.com>

Folks,

A fellow Scout leader has asked me lately if there has been discussion of the mental state of Southern troops that participated in Pickett's Charge. He noted that these troopers were all veterans and stated what they were about to try (marching a mile across open ground while the Union cannon devastated them) yet they attacked anyway.

This shows a great deal of faith in Marse Robert and their other commanders.

Thoughts?

Dave N


From: Norman Levitt

To Dave N.

Pickett's Charge gets all the press, the result of years of "Lost Cause" historiography and Lee-worship.

But let's not forget:

The advance of the 6th Wisc. on the Railroad Cut
The charge of the 1st Minn.
Farnsworth's Cavalry charge
Not to mention:
Hood's assault at Franklin
The Army of the Cumberland at Missionary Ridge
Burnside's AoP at Fredericksburg
And also;
The Somme, Ypres, Verdun, Gallipoli, the Kursk Salient, Leningrad, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Charonaea, Thermopylae, Dien-bien Phu, Agincourt (and I'm not singling out any particular side for any of these).

Why men do this sort of thing for reasons good and bad is the eternal mystery of our species.

N. Levitt


From: jblair@roanoke.infi.net (John Blair)

I suggest that we begin this thread with a definition of a few terms. Faith, courage, tenacity, stupidity (seriously - was that charge only for the stupid or only for the faithful brave?). There may have been another element that I can only try to explain and that may, indeed have never happened in the ACW.

Those of us who were in Nam will remember that there comes a time when you just don't give a damn whether you make it or not. You get so tired, so disgusted with the machine that you're enveloped in that any way out is good enough. Death is a way out. Could the soldiers of the Confederacy involved in that charged had some of that attitude? My guess is that they did not. Desertion was so easy that the choice of death was absurd at best. But was there something in the psyche (I just gotta learn to spell!!!) that made them go. Perhaps Shelby Foote had it right in the "Civil War" PBS series. He said something like "It would have taken more courage not to go than to go". Did peer pressure drive them? We read so much about honor when we read about the war. Did a sense of honor drive them?

John


From: GaTechFan@aol.com

Interestingly, I just read a part of Foote's narrative on Pickett's Charge addressing that. One section was quite intriguing and moving and revealing:

"Some managed to steal a look at the ground ahead, and like their officers they were sobered by what they saw. One such, a Tennessee sergeant from Fry's brigade, walked forward to the edge of the woods...and was so startled by the realization of what was about to be required of him that he spoke aloud, asking himself the question: 'June Kimble, are you going to do your duty?' The answer, too, was audible: 'I'll do it, so help me God,' he told himself. He felt better then."

(Foote, Vol. 2, pp537-538[paperback]).

Pat Ellington


From: benedict@ns.moran.com (Benedict R Maryniak)

A quote most of you have probably encountered, by Lt John E Dooley, Co C, First Virginia Volunteers (shot in both thighs and captured July 3 1863; exchanged February 24, 1865), from his postwar recollections:

"When you rise to your feet as we did today, I tell you the enthusiasm of ardent breasts in many cases ain't there, and instead of burning to avenge the insults of our country, families and altars and firesides, the thought is most frequently, Oh, if I could just come out of this charge safely how thankful would I be!"

"We rise to our feet, but not all. There is a line of men still on the ground with their faces turned, men affected in four different ways. There are the gallant dead who will never charge again; the helpless wounded, many of whom desire to share the fortunes of this charge; the men who have charged on many a battlefield but who are now helpless from the heat of the sun; and the men in whom there is not sufficient courage to enable them to rise . . ."

"Some are actually fainting from the heat and dread. They have fallen to the ground overpowered by the suffocating heat and the terrors of that hour."

Ben Maryniak


From: jschuu@ix.netcom.com (John Schuurman )

Thanks to Benedict for the quote. Good to be reminded of the lack of glamour in the whole dismal affair.
And then again, the fields of glory and the stories of valor that happened in such a context mean even more.

To another matter related to Ben, his article on the first shot is well worth reading. As a resident of DuPage County, Illinois, I count myself in the Marcellus Ephrium Jones camp.

John Schuurman


From: benedict@ns.moran.com (Benedict R Maryniak)

GDGers - This is a bit long but I wanted to address a couple of current threads with quotes I've gleaned from regimentals and other publications.

TARGET PRACTICE (from a Yankee perspective)
In a recent television interview, 1988 Olympic shooting champion Silvia Sperber was asked how she had prepared for the 24th Summer Games in Seoul, where she won a gold medal in women's "smallbore standard rifle" competition. Sperber said that, during the four months leading up to the Olympics, she had fired five hundred rounds every day. I lowered the morning paper to get a look at this West German, because it dawned on me that her sixty thousand training shots amounted to one-ninetieth of the 5,400,000 rounds of small arms ammunition estimated to have been expended by the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg. No more than twenty percent - probably far less - of that army had any sort of shooting practice before their first actual combat.

According to First Lieutenant Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce of the Ninth Indiana Volunteers, " . . it is the business of a soldier to send his ounce and a quarter of lead hissing toward the enemy - it is also his habit if he is a good soldier." Confronted by the scenes of battle and gripped by a tumult of his innards, an infantryman could load and fire his rifle correctly only if he had long experience in its use. But he was expected to gain all of this experience on the battlefield, by what could be called a process of accretion. Each engagement he survived was a step towards his competency as a rifleman. The regimental history of the Thirty-Fifth Massachusetts Volunteers, published during 1884, summarized this process well with the explanation that, "men learned the use of their weapons in battle or by stealth."

Some newly-organized units were said to have recruited experienced riflemen who had been familiar with firearms in civilian life, but most contemporary journals and diaries describe opposite situations. An example of the former can be found in the history of the Ninth New Jersey Regiment, which states that the men drew Springfield rifles during November, 1861, in their camp of organization at Trenton, and "a range was immediately established for target practice. Many men were able to hit the bull at 200 yards and 500 yards, having been accustomed to the use of the rifle from boyhood." The chronicler of the Fourteenth New Hampshire echoed the majority, however, in his portrayal of shooting practice - an activity which he dubbed one of the "wonderful events" of army life because it rarely took place. "Quite a number of the men had never fired a gun in their lives; and several of them, when commanded to fire, would shut their eyes, turn their heads in the opposite direction, and blaze away." This son of the Granite State went on to say that he and his comrades became acquainted with using their rifles through "a course of undergraduate guard-duty."

Civil War infantrymen spent interminable periods at close order drill which had a tactical function, but the closest that most of them came to routinized shooting practice was endless repetition - without ammunition - of Hardee's drill to "load in nine times."

To assist regimental commanders in teaching their men to shoot, the War Department republished Willard's System of Target Practice during 1862, but officers obviously lacked enthusiasm for this phase of instruction in the art of war. Willard's system called for a three-month training period which included sighting & aiming exercises using blank cartridges, and target range firing of ball cartridges - "live" ammunition - by individuals, by detachments, & by full company. Range shooting began with targets six feet high & twenty-two inches wide at a distance of 150 yards, and the distance was increased in 100-yard increments with wider targets until reaching a maximum of one thousand yards with targets six feet high & twenty-two feet wide. The War Department had to be asked for the permission, as well as the ammunition, to conduct practice shooting - requests were frequently denied and, when allowed, trainees were allotted ten rounds per week.

In some cases, a poorly-conducted practice at firing could be worse than none at all. Orson B Curtis pictured just such a situation in his 1891 history of the Twenty-Fourth Michigan Regiment. "On the 25, 26 and 27 of September, the regiment was drilled in sham fighting, which accustoms the men to the sound of their own guns in action. On the first day, Peter Euler, of G, was shot in the leg. On the next day, a man's face was filled with powder. On the third day, a soldier shot off his ramrod, which struck Orderly Sgt Dodsley, of H. These accidents terminated this manner of drill."

Some brigades in the Army of the Potomac implemented a schedule of range shooting during the early spring of 1864. Although this is commonly construed to have been in preparation for Grant's drive on Richmond, there was another factor that motivated the target practice. When General Meade learned that, at Gettysburg, many men had loaded their rifles two or more times without ever firing them, he reacted to this news by ordering that every rifleman was to fire ten rounds under supervision of an officer. The fact that such an order came from an Army commander after more than two years of war indicates that "basic training" was defined in terms varying greatly thoughout his force.

A memorable anecdote concerning the military's casual approach to practice shooting appears in The Old Eighth: A History of the Eighth Regiment of New Hampshire Volunteers. During March of 1863, Eighth New Hamsphire Captain John M Stanyan decided that his company could benefit from some practice at shooting. The Captain reminisced about how "he had, as a boy, handled a rifle considerably," boasting how diligent practice got him to the point where he could hit a turkey at over two hundred yards. "Then we used to load at the muzzle altogether, with great care, molding our own bullets, using nicely greased 'patches' and exactly measuring our powder; even then, in the firing, the slug balls would turn and go off in strange tangents; then the turkey was happy. At Indian Village, Louisiana, we got a board about the size of a man and set it up with one end resting on the ground at the bank of the bayou. In a couple of days, the ball cartridges that had been teased for, came. The company was called out on line and remarks were made to the effect that the piece should be held level in aiming, also that the trajectory must be taken into account, for, although we had a score of good shots in the company, a large number thought that the bullet went from the gun straight as a string to the mark. Vain delusion! for the rifle ball fell forty inches in traversing five hundred yards. Well, each man was to make his best record, so the first man stepped forward and fired. His ball made the dirt fly a little to the right of the target, when lo! the figure of a badly scared man jumped out from behind the board and yelled out 'Blankety, blank, blast ye! why don't ye let a fellow know that you was goin' to sho-ot?' When it was seen that the man was lucky enough not to be hit, all hands roared. It seems that Charley Hale, our fifer, wanted a retired and shady place in which to read unmolested and behind that board looked to him to be a nice spot for quiet contemplative peace."

INFANTRY "STEPS" - Not that anything happened by the book, but these are the paces as defined by military manuals of the time. Common Time = Steps are 28" in length at a pace of 90 steps per minute. Quick Time = Steps are 28" in length at a pace of 110 steps per minute. Double Quick Time = Steps are 33" in length at a pace of 165 steps per minute.

The distance from Seminary to Cemetery Ridge is a tad more than 1300 yards. At the outlandish best, an attacking infantry force could be expected to cover 100 yards per minute for no more than 1500 yards. The successful CW commander sought to carry in his head an index of speed at which his own and his opponent's units could move across the space separating them, the distance from each other at which their fire would prove effective, and the mutual loss they were likely to inflict.

THE RIFLE
Some GDGers have rightly cast a jaundiced eye upon Attack & Die - Civil War Military Tactics & the Southern Heritage by Grady McWhiney and Perry D Jamieson, but, short of its final chapter, the book contains some good work. I agree with the conclusion that it was the rifle that won the war for the North - the rifle along with the refusal of Southerners to admit until they had bled themselves nearly to death that the rifle's killing power could check even the most courageous charges. The South simply bled itself to death in the first three years of the war by taking the tactical offensive in nearly 70% of the major actions.

Ben Maryniak


From: lawrence (Dennis Lawrence)

Ben ended an excellent post with this......

> The South simply bled >itself to death in the first three years of the war by taking the tactical >offensive in nearly 70% of the major actions.

Ben cites Grady and McWhiney's _Attack and Die_. An excellent book. Below are some of the figures given in it showing the results of Lee's love of the tactical offensive. The South simply could not afford this type of "victory?"

Seven Days
Confederate 19,739 (20.7%)......... Union 9,796 (10%)

Second Manassas
Confederate 9,108 (18.8%) ....... Union 10,096 (13.3%)

Sharpsburg
Confederate 11,724 (22%) ....... Union 11,657 (15.5%)

Fredricksburg
Confederate 4,656 (6.4%)....... Union 10,884 (10.9%)

Chancellorsville
Confederate 10,746 (18.7%) ....... Union 11,116 (11.4%)

Gettysburg
Confederate 22,638 (30.2%) Union 17,684 (21.2%)

BTW, Grady/McWhiney get a little unhinged at times in tracing the love of tactical offensive to ancient Celtic roots. Kind of a Highlander theme that you might find floated on alt.flame.war.civil, but not in a scholarly work. I think it has held the book back from being recognized for its first rate analysis of the tactical offensive. Too bad.

Dennis


From: Kip Beckman

After watching the movie Gettysburg, there is one thing that has always puzzled me. Why didn't the Confederate soldiers run or at least jog when they attacked the union center on the third day? If I had been there, I would of wanted to run (probably in the other direction).


From: DPowell334@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-09 20:24:23 EST, Kip wrote:

> >After watching the movie Gettysburg, there is one thing that has always >puzzled me. Why didn't the Confederate soldiers run or at least jog when >they attacked the union center on the third day? If I had been there, I >would of wanted to run (probably in the other direction).

> Kip,

the distance is something like a mile. any units running across that distance would be exhausted and incapable of fighting once they got there, not to mention the impossibility of holding formation while running.

Dave Powell


From: ajackson@oyez.law.upenn.edu (Anita Jackson-Wieck)

If only to state the obvious, it was a bloody hot day.

David Wieck


From: Dave Navarre <73613.1150@compuserve.com>

Now, Dave Powell did beat me to the punch on the distance (a mile) and the difficulty of holding formation, but the key is why they needed to hold formation, and has to do with WBTS tactics.

1) Since ammunition was considered rather expensive, few soldiers were ever allowed target practice. As such, an infantryman could fire his musket a few hundred times over several years, but rarely with any accuracy - after all, it's hard to tell exactly where YOUR shot in a volley goes, and you probably ain't watching it real close anyway.

2) Due to the slow rate of fire of a musket (don't recollect exact rate, but it's no M1 or M16), it's short range and general inaccuracy, many muskets had to be massed to provide effective fire. [Of course, this was slightly out-of-date reasoning, as weapons were becoming more accurate and thus had greater effective ranges.]

3) Units generally opened fire at 100 yards or less. The first volley was always the most effective, as everyone fired at once. As such, officers would hold their regiment's fire to cause a greater impact.

4) As such, WBTS commanders wanted their units to form in lines 100 yards or less from the enemy, fire a volley and, if practicable, rush the enemy line, break it and send the enemy packing.

For this reason, staying in formation was critically important in the attack. Units could, and did, double-time march in assaults, but, over long distances and under heavy fire, unit cohesion becomes problematic.

Hope this helps a little, Kip. For the few years I've been studying this war, I've always had to force myself to remember that they operated from a completely different perspective due to the technology and, more importantly, the Napoleonic concepts of war. (as laid out by Jomini?? someone help!)

If anyone can help me flesh this out with a few facts, it'd be appreciated, since all this is off the top of my head (not that I want to lose anything from the top of my head... )

Dave N


From: thumphri@nafis.fp.trw.com (Thad Humphries)

Rate of fire--3 rounds/minute. In practice, often less (else a unit would be out of ammo in 2 minutes).

Actually, sort jogs to combat were part of the Zouave tactics but only 100-200 yds (I think). No where near a mile. Recall too that morning PT wasn't part of the routine then as now.

I recommend _Battle Tactics of the Civil War_. The author, whose name escapes me, is a professor at Sandhurst (the British West Point).

Thad Humphries


From: mosby@nando.net

The author's name is Paddy Griffith. He also wrote a shorter illustrated paperback that is often found at NPS Visitor Centers - "Battle in the Civil War: Generalship and Tactics in America 1861-65". A quick way to get a grasp of Civil War tactics.


From: Norman Levitt

To Dave N:

Until something better comes along, the standard work on this is Paddy Griffths: "Civil War Battlefield Tactics" (Yale)

Norm Levitt


From: DPowell334@aol.com

The other main reason for holding formation (besides massing fire, as so ably pointed out in prior posts) was to retain command control. A disorganized unit was just a mob, soon destined to be sent running back in confusion. It took discipline and cohesion to sustain the momentum of an attack and take ground, and the only method for doing this was by holding formation.

This really holds true for all armies in all times: modern formations simply use dispersed tactics, because they no longer need to mass men to mass fire. However, the fire team wedge is no less a command control formation than a battleline - both exist to retain cohesion.

BTW, beware of Griffiths book _Battle Tactics_. While it certainly goes a long way towards explaining ACW tactics, he also reaches some rather shaky conclusions about firepower and the effects of rifling that I think are off-base. He is essentially a Napoleonic scholar, and tends to see things in 1815 terms.

Dave Powell


From: ajackson@oyez.law.upenn.edu (Anita Jackson-Wieck)

Subject: Cannonade

A puzzlement to me has always been the ineffectiveness of the Confederate cannonade on July 3. I have several questions in this regard that neither Coddington nor Stewart settle to my satisfaction - or maybe they do but I am too dense to get it. By a rough guess 7000-8000 rounds were fired by Alexander's guns in the span of an hour and a half at an area no larger than an acre. Yet they had remarkably little effect.
1.) Why were the guns placed so as to give no cross-fire?
2.) Surely this wasn't the first time that extended firing caused
artillery to shoot long. The phenomenon can't have gone unnoticed. That being the case, why didn't Alexander have his gunners compensate? In that smoke they were shooting blind anyway.
3.) Why didn't Ewell's guns join in? They had nothing better to do.
4.) Were the artillery barrage highly accurate, would the assault on Cemetery Ridge have succeeded?
If this subject has been discussed and put to rest, my apologies. Point me at it. My apologies too for not getting the hang of deleting my wife's name from my e-mail. Don't blame her for my ignorance.

David Wieck


From: Norman Levitt

It's always been a puzzle to me why Lee thought the bombardment would be any more effective than it was. If anything, his pre-war expertise was in siting and placing of guns (as in the Mexican War).

To try to answer Mr. Wieck's questions.

1) The placement of Pendleton's guns (exxcept at Alexander's end of the line) was not optimal (why didn't Lee supervise this more closely?) but even if it had been, most of the guns would have been at very long range and shooting transverse to the Federal line, rather than enfilading it.

2) There was some converging fire--mostly on Cemetery Hill, and it knocked out quite a few guns; trouble was, the Federals had plenty of reserve guns that were available to be brought up as soon as the barrage stopped and the charge started to form up (and why didn't Lee think about this as well?)

3) After a few rounds from both sides, visibility was wretched, as Wieck notes. Could guns have been re-sighted blind to make up for the creep in their elevation? What does Alexander say? But this wouldn't have solved the main problem of the inconsistency of CW era field guns, so far as range is concerned.

4) There's no mystery as to why the cannonade was so ineffectual against infantry. If you've got a line enfiladed, your bound to hit something; firing transversely, you're lucky to hit anything. The same situation holds in battleship warfare, where range is so much trickier than direction, which is why battleship admirals are so intent on "crossing the T".

5) Solid shot is a hit-or-miss affair, mostly miss. It becomes more effective against an opponent in or behind woods, because of the flying splinters and boughs that go all over the place when a shot goes through. The Confederates forming up for the charge were in or behind woods; the Federals weren't. So the confederate infantry was much harder hit, despite the lower volume of Federal fire.

6) Cutting the fuse to the right length on shell or case shot was a tricky art; under the best of circumstances, a lot of ordinance went off too early or not at all. But a lot of the Confederate ammo was old and didn't go off at all.

7) This was the black-powder era. A shell from a field piece simply didn't have all that much punch--nothing remotely resembling the deadliness of a WWI shell with a high-explosive warhead. The killing range of a shell was small, and a little protection went a long way if you were on the receiving end. Recall: there were no shell-holes at Gettysburg.

8) The confederate organization insisted on forming batteries with two or three kinds of gun. (Again: Why did Lee allow this?). Thus, if one pair of guns ran out of ammo or had their caissons blown up, they couldn't use the stuff their nearest neighbors were using.

9) Lee's guns were never run forward to support the infantry once the charge started. They might have been useful at canister range; but apparently, guns and men were too beat up to do this in time.

A note on canister: A field battery directing fire on advancing, unprotected infantry at close range (<500 yds) was a very different sort of animal than a battery firing long range stuff. Canister against infantry at close range was more-or-less like a machine gun nest in WWI, provided there was enough shot and the crews were well-trained and steadfast. Which is why one reads of unaided batteries holding up the advance of several regiments of infantry for 10 or 15 minutes.

So to sum up: the great bombardment was inevitably a great Son et Lumiere show with predictably small military effect; and again, the great question is: why did a commander of Lee's acumen place such great faith in it? Longstreet sure as hell didn't, and neither did Alexander.

Norm Levitt


From: clemenst@isx.hjc.cc.md.us (Tom Clemens)

I agree with Norm's points and would like to chime in with a couple more. Lee didn't supervise the artillery very much because he didn't know that much about it. Remember, he was the guy that stood on the ramparts of Ft. Pulaski in Georgia and assured its commander that the Union forces on Tybee Island couldn't breach his walls with artillery at that range.(1 mile) It only took a few hours of bombardment to prove him dead wrong. Rifled artillery and its uses were still a very new science, and Lee was primarily an engineer and cavalryman.

Secondly, the Union line was on the crest of a ridge. It is nearly impossible to land a shell or make it burst exactly on the crest. Undershooting or overshooting is likely in this situation, even with good visibility and fuses. The Confederate gunners had neither. Alexander frequently complained about the quality of Confederate cannon fuses. If you want an example of the difficulty of this type of shooting, go out and try to hit the exact ridge line of your roof with a tennis ball. You'll see how hard it is to land a shell directly on a ridge.

Tom Clemens


From: Paul Esposito

Excellent point about the tennis ball.

Stewart in his book on Pickett's Charge has a excellent chapter on the CSA artillery (mis)placement and (mis)use.

paul....


From: ajackson@oyez.law.upenn.edu (Anita Jackson-Wieck)

The tennis ball analogy is a false one. One of those machines that serves up balls for practice is more apt, but with that you can home in very nicely on a small area and hit it with regularity. More to the point, Cemetery Ridge is hardly comparable to the ridge line of a roof. It has no sharp crest - in fact it hardly has a crest at all. It is hardly a ridge. It is flat, at the end of a low rise, and doesn't begin to drop off sharply for some distance beyond. It held 5000 troops and considerable artillery with room to spare.
Accurately placed fire could have swept that area of ground clear of infantry and much of the artillery but probably not one shot in a hundred hit it. CW Artillery was useless against entrenched positions but it should have been effective against exposed troops, which Hancock's men were. The "walls" those men hid behind were no more than two feet high at any point.
Norm Levitt's point about traversing fire vs. enfilading fire is reasonable and well-taken, but this could hardly have been a mystery to Alexander, yet he set his guns to fire almost solely traversing the position and made little effort to control their accuracy. (Rather like that endless blithering by Martin Sheen, "God's will". Yes, I know Lee said it, but he could hardly have achieved all he did if he left EVERYTHING to God's will.) Well, Porter did, it seems. I've read Stewart's comments on the placing of the guns and I still come back to the same question: Why? Could Alexander have done worse if he had tried? I very much like his writings and his even handedness in his post-war writings but in this, his most famous action, he did rather poorly, I think.
Waiting for some incoming more well-placed than Porter's.
.. David Wieck


From: clemenst@isx.hjc.cc.md.us (Tom Clemens)

To some extant you may be right with the analogy about the machine, but, those machines can be pre-set, cannons cannot. After every discharge the guns must be repositioned after the recoil, re-aimed and reloaded. All of this disrupts aim. Not only reaimed, but reaimed in an environment of smoke, (yours and theirs), which limits visibility, noise and confusion, and the discomfort, (fear?) of incoming fire. In short, Civil War cannons, especially the smoothbores, were not that precise, and could only be as precise and the gunners aiming them, and those gunners had major distractions. Assuming that they got all of that right, then you need reliable range and timing accuracy of the fuses to do the job properly, and the reports show that the Confederates were frustrated by the failure of these fuses time and again.
Cemetery Ridge is pronounced enough that there does not need to be a sharp spine to it, there is very little flat space on it, and that is the problem. Short rounds will either bury into the face, or skip over it. Long rounds will overshoot and deflect even further away. I stand by my point, it is tough to land a shell on the ridge every time, and the consequences of missing are great. Perhaps to leave the tennis ball theory alone and switch sports, if you can hit a target of a difficult pin on a sloped golf green at 150 yards with a 5-iron once, you should be able to do it every time, right? I sure can't and I practice a lot, and look at the consequences of missing. Even a little bit.

I agree that Alexander did very little to achieve enfilading fire, however given the unusual circumstances of his command of the bombardment, (Walton was senior to him) could he have ordered the movement of all of the guns? Or even a major portion of them? Could he order the fire of the 2nd Corps guns on Oak Hill or near the town? I think he was given an impossible job, and his dispatches reflect that feeling.

Tom Clemens


From: Anthony.Staunton@pcug.org.au (Anthony Staunton)

>On Tue, 16 Jan 96 20:49:45 -0500, Harry Hunt wrote:

><>What was Lee thinking?? You would think after Fredericksburg that any attack ><>on troops behind good earth works, that an frontal attack would be out of ><>question. I have been to Gettysburg on a very hot day in August looking ><>across the open mile thinking to myself no way just to much to over come ><>to break the Union lines. Not enough of ever thing for that kind of ><>attack. I would have to tell Marse Robert sorry not today.

><> >Not only did Lee not learn the lesson neither did Grant (witness Cold Harbor) or the generals in WWI(which is why a million died at the Somme.)

Grant learnt the lesson, he entrenched and nine months later was victorious. Forget the Somme - the Brits have a fixation which distorts their view. The casualties were caused by artillery and were made much worse where the assaults failed and wounded were left out in no-mans-land. The problem of WW1 was not breaking the front line, that was easy but breaking through the line of battle to the green fields beyond.

I really do not think Lee had any choice but to attack on the third day. I do not think ANV would have succeeded but I think it could have been much closer if Lee had planned the battle in the same meticulous way he planned the withdrawal. It was not just the Union position that decided the day it was other things such as not appreciating how bad Heth's troops suffered on the first day, the coordination of the attack with Ewell and the artillery.

Anthony.Staunton@pcug.org.au


From: MattR78@aol.com

Lee was thinking that if the artillery did its work well, eliminating or at least reducing the guns on Cemetery Ridge, and the cavalry did its work well, got in the rear and either cut off the Federal retreat or attacked in the rear of the center just as Longstreet's men hit the center, and that Longstreet's first wave did its work well, piercing the center, the reinforcements would break the center and roll up the lines toward Cemetery Hill. We keep forgetting the Pickett's Charge was not simply a few thousand men making a suicidal assault against an impregnable position.


From: thumphri@nafis.fp.trw.com (Thad Humphries)

There was a seminar last year on the ACW that was reported on NPR's All Things Considered (if any are familiar with this, I'd be interested in finding its papers). Anyway, NPR did a follow up interview with one researcher who presented a paper that said, essentially, that Lee wasn't as good a general as many make him out to be. He pointed out that Lee mostly fought 2d or 3d string quality commanders like McClellan and that Pickett's Charge was just Lee being Lee. He noted that in the Seven Days, Lee frontally attacked and McClellan obliged by pulling back, even when he held all the ground at the end of the day. So, says the researcher, we're too hard on Burnside--he did what Lee did at Gaines Mill, it just didn't work this time around. Also, as others have pointed out, Burnside did a masterly withdrawal back across the Rappahannock.

I haven't been to Gaines Mill, and Fredricksburg is too built up to grasp the situation 1st hand so I don't know how good that parallel is. Also, I don't think Lee got all his daring from Jackson, though Jackson features prominently in Lee's better maneuvers, 2d Manassas Campaign and Chancellorsville.

I like Shelby Foote's remark, "Pickett's Charge is the price the Confederacy paid for having R.E. Lee as its commander."

Thad Humphries


From: MBRADLEY@MSCC1.MSCC.CC.TN.US

The ANV had driven the AOP out of good earthworks at Chancellorsville on the day after Jackson's wounding. Frontal attacks had worked before and would work again. When they worked, they worked very well; when they did not work one left the dead piled in windrows.


From: "James F. Epperson"

A good point that should be borne in mind. Lee had seen the success of Gaines Mill. Unfortunately for his men he forgot about Fredericksburg. Other generals had the same problem; they had seen or experienced one success against what looked like a good position, and kept trying to repeat it.

Jim Epperson


From: lawrence@appsmiths.com (Robert W Lawrence)

On Tue, 16 Jan 1996 23:53:52 -0500, you wrote:

<>Lee was thinking that if the artillery did its work well, eliminating or at <>least reducing the guns on Cemetery Ridge, and the cavalry did its work well, <>got in the rear and either cut off the Federal retreat or attacked in the rear <>of the center just as Longstreet's men hit the center, and that Longstreet's <>first wave did its work well, piercing the center, the reinforcements <>would break the center and roll up the lines toward Cemetery Hill. We keep <>forgetting the Pickett's Charge was not simply a few thousand men making a <>suicidal assault against an impregnable position.

<> Actually it was a suicidal charge against an impregnable position. Lee didn't realize it at the time but in hindsight that is exactly what it was.

lawrence@arthes.com


From: thumphri@nafis.fp.trw.com (Thad Humphries)

Robert W Lawrence writes:

> Actually it was a suicidal charge against an impregnable position. Lee didn't > realize it at the time but in hindsight that is exactly what it was.

To paraphrase Shelby Foote, "There was scarcely a trained soldier there who didn't know it was a mistake, except Robert E. Lee and George Pickett... But who's going to say, 'Marse Robert, I ain't going out there.' Nobody had that much courage."

Thad Humphries


From: MBRADLEY@MSCC1.MSCC.CC.TN.US

On the second day a Florida Brigade had reached the crest of Cemetery Ridge. The position was hardly impregnable.


From: "James F. Epperson"

> On the second day a Florida Brigade had reached the crest of Cemetery > Ridge. The position was hardly impregnable.

Having taught for seven years at the University of Georgia, I have to object to this post, in a light-hearted sense, by pointing out that it was Wright's Georgia Brigade, not the Florida brigade of Lang, that claimed to reach the crest of Cemetery Ridge.

On a more serious note, I have always understood that this claim by Wright is disputed. His report describes the terrain he scaled in terms that would do justice to Little Round Top, and the reports of the men he was fighting indicate that he did not get as far as he thought. I would appreciate the comments of others.

Having said all this, Mark's conclusion is correct, that the position was not impregnable. If Pickett had made his attack in that degree of force on July 2nd, late in the afternoon, it probably would have succeeded. But to launch the attack as an isolated assault -- in that context the position was close to impregnable.

Jim Epperson


From: DPowell334@aol.com

Wright's report is very seriously disputed. The Army War College essentially regards it as fatally flawed. Wrght was likely very confused as to the extent of his penetration into the line, and one should also bear in mind that his advance was made at dusk, in the middle of a very confused action, and against a position stripped of defenders to go support Sickles' stupidity. Vastly different conditions than those of Pickett's Charge, and hence immaterial to the actual prospects of success on July 3rd. Lee, of course, may well have taken Wright at face value, with all the ramifications that indicates.

Dave Powell


From: Doug Miller

On Tuesday, January 16, 1996 11:53 PM, MattR78@aol.com wrote:

>We keep forgetting the Pickett's Charge was not simply a few thousand men making a >suicidal assault against an impregnable position.

Very true, Pickett's Charge didn't occur in a tactical vacuum, despite that "popular" history fails to cover any of the other things going on at the time.

I don't wonder, though, if you haven't thrown up one of Lee's weaknesses as a commander. Lee in his less effective engagements (his campaign in West Virginia comes to mind) seems to have depended on too complex plans that required many disparate maneuver formations to converge or strike the enemy at nearly the same time. Given the distance between Stuart's cavalry and the divisions used in the attack, and the problems the ANV had in coordinating attacks throughout the battle, it seems unlikely for the attack as a whole to have succeeded. Throw in Longstreet's opposition to the attack and the history (as I understand it) of inaccurate CSA artillery at long ranges, and it makes me ask, "What was Lee thinking?"

Doug Miller


From: DPowell334@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-16 22:00:35 EST, Bob wrote:

>Not only did Lee not learn the lesson neither did Grant (witness Cold Harbor) >or the generals in WWI(which is why a million died at the Somme.)Basically no >one wanted to believe that the Napoleonic tactic of massed infantry against >fortified positions did not work in the days of rifled guns.

Not quite - that's too facile an explanation.

In hindsight, it is always easy to tell that an idea is passe, or unworkable. At the time, however, commanders were faced with a conundrum - how to close and attack. Command control and fire control of the time demanded mass formations. Effective offensive tactics required both of these things to succeed. The problem, then was how to overcome tactical drawbacks of the massed attack without losing the requirements of offensive tactics in general. In fact, this very question was something virtually every army in the world struggled with in WWI, and finally solved after vastly greater slaughter than the ACW.

You should also remember that some frontal attacks worked. Fredericksburg, for example is an absolutely horrendous example to draw large conclusions from, because it was not just flawed in concept, but in execution as well. F'burg was a series of individual brigade and divisional attacks against a frontal position, and would have been regarded as a rank stupidity at by the greenest of Napoleonic officers.

The real problem was that neither the problem nor the solution was as self evident as we see it, looking back on it from 125+ years.

Dave Powell


From: lawrence@appsmiths.com (Robert W Lawrence)

On Wed, 17 Jan 1996 18:30:34 -0500, you wrote:

<> <>You should also remember that some frontal attacks worked. Fredericksburg, <>for example is an absolutely horrendous example to draw large conclusions <>from, because it was not just flawed in concept, but in execution as well. <>F'burg was a series of individual brigade and divisional attacks against a <>frontal position, and would have been regarded as a rank stupidity at by the <>greenest of Napoleonic officers.

<> <>The real problem was that neither the problem nor the solution was as self <>evident as we see it, looking back on it from 125+ years.

<> I believe the solutions were self evident-several of the solutions were out in effect by the end of the war(massive entrenching for instance). The problem, in my view, was the stubbornness of the old army officers reluctant to give up the tactics and traditions they learned in school. How else can you explain not only massed infantry attacks but also cavalry charges in WWI? The cases of successful frontal assaults on a well fortified position were few and far between in the Civil war. For the life of me I can not understand how the same Robert E Lee who sat on Maryes Heights watching that ill fated attack could order such an assault.

lawrence@arthes.com


From: kgm@rci.rutgers.edu (Ken Miller)

Lee and Sickles: what a start to a post!!!!
here will be many sons of the South who will tune in to see how anyone can mention REL and Ole Dan in one breath...

No, this message is not to lump them, but to comment on their joint membership in the human race (although this and participation in the War may be about the only two things they had in common).

I have greatly enjoyed the postings on both the Lee line and the Sickles line; they share one common thread: both the move from Cemetery Ridge by Sickles and the attack on the ridge by Lee were dumb moves, no matter how some seem to rationalize them.

However, in defense of Lee, I am convinced that his health played an important role in his decisions at Gettysburg. Despite his deification, he was human. Norm has taken the line that he was not a particularly great general based on kill ratios; his work at Chancellorsville and elsewhere refutes this. But as Foote aptly says, his decision on the third day was a bad one, and every experienced soldier knew it.

Sickles was human too, which meant that not even he could screw everything up. He had to get something right, which is why he apparently did reasonably well at Chancellorsville. However, his true nature was revealed in ludicrous decision to ignore orders and advance ahead of the army, jeopardizing its position.

Ken Miller


From: MattR78@aol.com

Jim Epperson writes:

>But to launch the attack as an isolated assault -- in that context the >position was close to impregnable.

Again, it was not supposed to be an "isolated assault." See Stuart's report; Richard Anderson's report; A.P. Hill's report; Alexander's books. There was supposed to be artillery support, cavalry coordination, and large numbers of reinforcements.


> Unfortunately for his men he forgot about Fredericksburg.

Do you really believe this? Was Lee STUPID? I think not. I think he remembered Fredericksburg and did all he could to see that it wouldn't happen in Pennsylvania. Then his subordinates--Longstreet, Pendleton, and Stuart--failed to carry out his plans.


From: MattR78@aol.com

Please give citations for anyone who said he thought before the charge that it would fail, other than Longstreet. It will be a very short list.


From: lawrence@appsmiths.com (Robert W Lawrence)

On Wed, 17 Jan 1996 22:36:37 -0500, you wrote:

<>Please give citations for anyone who said he thought before the charge that <>it would fail, other than Longstreet. It will be a very short list.

<> For starters-

Porter Alexander "Fighting for the Confederacy", Page 252
"I think all military engineers who study the field will agree that the point selected for Pickets attack was very badly chosen-almost as badly chosen as it was possible to be:.

Wofford to Lee in response to his question about the probability of reaching the crest of cemetery ridge on July 3(Tucker, "High Tide at Gettysburg" p337)

"No, general I think not"
"Why not?", asked Lee
"Because General, the enemy has had all night to entrench and reinforce.

lawrence@arthes.com


From: MattR78@aol.com

The point is that the -plan- was significantly different from what actually occurred. "What Lee was thinking" is not the same as "what happened."


From: MattR78@aol.com

Dave Powell writes:

>The real problem was that neither the problem nor the solution was as self >evident as we see it, looking back on it from 125+ years.

This is the first rule that a historian or one seeking the truth about history, must not only remember, but adhere to: in order to understand the past, you must try to understand it on its own terms, as those who lived then understood. Thus Pickett's Charge must be understood as those who planned it understood it, not as those who lived through it, or those living 130 years later understand it. It was most certainly not a suicidal charge.


From: "James F. Epperson"

On Wed, 17 Jan 1996 MattR78@aol.com wrote:

> The point is that the -plan- was significantly different from what actually > occurred. "What Lee was thinking" is not the same as "what happened."

I'm not sure this is true. There are claims that Hood and McLaws were supposed to participate, but those claims are easily refuted. Alexander was supposed to send some guns forward, true, and did not because of some ammo replenishment foul-ups, but that is about it for deviation from the plan as far as I know. Oh, yes, perhaps Wilcox's supporting column was poorly handled. But I would really like to hear what Matt is thinking about when he refers to "the plan."

Jim Epperson


From: thumphri@nafis.fp.trw.com (Thad Humphries)

James F. Epperson answers MattR78@aol.com:

> > I'm not sure this is true. There are claims that Hood and McLaws were > supposed to participate, but those claims are easily refuted...

I would think so! Hood was badly wounded the day before and his division very cutup. I thinks McLaws men were pretty mauled, too, but I'm not sure.

Thad Humphries


From: MBRADLEY@MSCC1.MSCC.CC.TN.US

On the topic of frontal attacks please note that in the fall of 1864 the ANV delivered several successful frontal attacks in the area west of Petersburg. By "successful" I mean the attack captured the position targeted and inflicted more casualties than they sustained. Reams Station is one good example.
There also seems to be to be an assumption that the AoP had fortified itself quite well at G/burg. Is it not true that its field works were rather scattered and, in many places, non-existent?


From: lawrence@appsmiths.com (Robert W Lawrence)

On Thu, 18 Jan 1996 09:14:16 -0500 (CDT), you wrote:

<> On the topic of frontal attacks please note that in the fall of 1864 <>the ANVa delivered several successful frontal attacks in the area west of <>Petersburg. By "successful" I mean the attack captured the position targeted <>and inflicted more casualties than they sustained. Reams Station is one good <>example.

<> Were these "frontal attacks" preceded by a march of over a mile over open ground under heavy artillery fire and against a position fortified by 20,000 plus men?

Robert W Lawrence


From: Doug Miller

On Wednesday, January 17, 1996 10:36 PM, MattR78@aol.com wrote:
>Do you really believe this? Was Lee STUPID? I think not. I think he >remembered Fredericksburg and did all he could to see that it wouldn't happen >in Pennsylvania. Then his subordinates--Longstreet, Pendleton, and >Stuart--failed to carry out his plans.

Have you considered that perhaps the reason the orders weren't carried out was because the plan was fundamentally unworkable? No, Lee wasn't stupid, but during this battle he wasn't his typical self, either. There is a marked pattern of detachment from what was actually happening on the field in Lee's actions on the 2nd and 3rd.

Doug Miller


From: bennettb@sgenva.cc.geneseo.edu (Brian Bennett)

Matt R wrote:

>The point is that the -plan- was significantly different from what actually >occurred. "What Lee was thinking" is not the same as "what happened."

A good recently published book on Pickett's Charge is "Pickett's Charge: Eyewitness Accounts," edited by Richard Rollins. Along with 176 different accounts of the action, grouped into nine different sections, Rollins writes a compelling introduction in which he argues that, basically, Pickett's Charge as executed was not Pickett's Charge as planned.

He notes that to study the charge, one must understand it as an extension of the strategic plan of the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania and the battlefield events of July 1 and 2.

He goes very in-depth with his analysis and it would take up too much space to reiterate here. If there is a graph that sort of sums up his thinking, it is this: "On the tactical level the specific elements of Pickett's Charge began taking shape on the evening of July 2nd and continued to evolve in the minds of Lee and his subordinates until the Charge took place. The military operation, as conceived on the evening of the 2nd, changed considerable on the morning of the 3rd. During its execution several of its major components failed, were altered by the events of the moment, or never took place. The result was an attack that varied significantly from what was planned, or what was ordered."

Available in paperback. Also had a fold-out map that plots the position of each of the eyewitnesses on the battlefield.

Brian Bennett


From: jblair@roanoke.infi.net (John Blair)

>Jim epperson writes:
>> Unfortunately for his men he forgot about Fredericksburg.

> >Do you really believe this? Was Lee STUPID? I think not. I think he >remembered Fredericksburg and did all he could to see that it wouldn't happen >in Pennsylvania. Then his subordinates--Longstreet, Pendleton, and >Stuart--failed to carry out his plans.

> Surely we are not talking about Lee's folly as executed by Pickett, et al. Can that be blamed on Longstreet or Pendleton or Stuart? I Don't think so. I agree with you that Lee probably did not forget about Fredericksburg. Perhaps "failed to consider" is a better way to think about Lee/Fredericksburg/Gettysburg. Or perhaps he did consider it and made a common mistake of military commanders. Perhaps he just overestimated his troops while underestimating his enemy's.

John Blair


From: MBRADLEY@MSCC1.MSCC.CC.TN.US

The Reams Station attack covered over 400 yards of open ground to assault Hancock's Corps which had constructed trenches and breastworks. Heth made the attack capturing 9 cannon, 3100 small arms, 12 flags, and 2000 prisoners. Federal killed and wounded numbered about 600. Total Union numbers were about 8000 with 16 guns. Peagram's Artillery Battalion provided a 30 min pre-assault bombardment. The attack was made by Heth and part of Wilcox, supported by Hampton's cavalry. C.S. casualties were termed "light."
Given the numbers on both sides, it seems to me that the point is proven. Frontal attacks, even on fortified positions, did sometimes work and when they did they produced excellent results.
It was the development of the repeating rifle and the machine gun which made frontal attacks suicide in WW I. WBTS commanders saw them, rightfully, as a risky but potentially useful tactic.


From: "James F. Epperson"

We don't need to get into an extended discussion of Reams Station here -- (it is especially uncomfortable to the spirit of WS Hancock ;-) -- but there are important differences to that action which render it a poor parallel to Pickett's Charge.

The Union position at Reams was a squared-U around the station area. The Rebels attacked the base of the U. The line was poorly laid out and there was high ground that allowed the Rebel artillery to fire at the backs of the men on the arms of the U. Consequently there was a great deal of panic, and the green troops that constituted the bulk of II Corps at that time broke and fled. At least, that is how I remember reading of it in a couple of places.

The key differences are the quality of the defenders and the enfilade of the defensive lines. Those are tactical advantages which can indeed negate entrenchments. Lee did not have either of those on July 3rd.

I think Lee simply over-estimated his men. It has for a long time been my view that Pickett's Charge was the ironic and tragic result of Lee's humility. Lee's character would not allow him to think that he had defeated Hooker at Chancellorsville; he preferred to believe that (a) God had willed it; and (b) his men were indeed better than the Federals. With those two hypotheses it is easy to believe that something like Pickett's Charge might work.

Jim Epperson


From: "James F. Epperson"

On Thu, 18 Jan 1996 MBRADLEY@MSCC1.MSCC.CC.TN.US wrote:

> There also seems to be to be an assumption that the AoP had fortified > itself quite well at G/burg. Is it not true that its field works were rather > scattered and, in many places, non-existent?

Actually, the "fieldworks" were mostly non-existent by 1864 standards, certainly in the area of the Charge. The stone wall would serve as a natural breastwork, of course, but the notion that Pickett was making an attack against lines like existed at Petersburg is indeed false. There was no abatis that I am aware of, for instance.

The biggest terrain problem was the long stretch of open ground which was swept by a lot of good artillery.

Jim Epperson


From: MBRADLEY@MSCC1.MSCC.CC.TN.US

Final comment on Reams Station. The Union position was not as weak, nor the Confederate position so strong, as Prof. Epperson presents it. Hancock had defended the position quite well until Heth arrived.
At G'burg, the artillery bombardment was more effective than some comments have made it seem. Remember, some Union infantry were so enfiladed they crossed the stone wall in the cemetery area to take shelter on the Confederate side, feeling safer there. Recent comments on this list have also pointed out that Pickett was not under direct artillery fire the entire distance, the ground rolls and there are many places where troops were partially or wholly sheltered for at least part of the time.
As to Lee having confidence in his men, why should he not have? The ANVa had defeated the AoP under five commanders and often at a severe numerical disadvantage. To quote an ancestor who was at G'burg, 7th Tennessee Inf., "We wuz proud men when we went to Gettysburg, and hadn't we the right?"
If Lee attributed these victories to God rather than to his men then we can say Lee felt God would grant his arms victory again. But, Calvinism did not lead one to feel that such blessings came unaided. It was the role of the human element to take all preparations and to exert themselves to the fullest if such divine blessings were to be expected. In short, thinking victory came from God would not lead Lee to assume he could be lazy or sloppy. He would do all he could first. And so he did. The result proves his all was not good enough---this time.


From: "James F. Epperson"

On Thu, 18 Jan 1996 MBRADLEY@MSCC1.MSCC.CC.TN.US wrote:

> Final comment on Reams Station. The Union position was not as weak, > nor the Confederate position so strong, as Prof. Epperson presents it. Hancock > had defended the position quite well until Heth arrived.

This doesn't gainsay what I said, though, that the success of the attack was due in large part to the greenness of the defenders and an artillery enfilade effect, neither of which were present in Pickett's Charge.

> At G'burg, the artillery bombardment was more effective than some > comments have made it seem. Remember, some Union infantry were so enfiladed > they crossed the stone wall in the cemetery area to take shelter on the > Confederate side, feeling safer there.

The cemetery is not near the designated point of attack, though. Lots of Union soldiers were forced to scamper all over hell and back to avoid the cannonade, but they were on the reverse slope of the Ridge and were not the troops that Pickett et all were going to be engaging. This doesn't make the cannonade effective; in fact, it is evidence of its ineffectiveness.

> Recent comments on this list have also pointed out that Pickett was not under direct >artillery fire the entire distance, the ground rolls and there are many places where troops >were partially or wholly sheltered for at least part of the time.

But most, if not all, of that occurred at long range. As the men closed in the guns had a free field of fire. And the swales in the ground did not hide the fact that an attack was coming. The point of broken ground close up to the point of attack is that it shields the defender from knowledge of the attack that is about to break upon him. This was the point with Upton's attack at Spotsylvania, and Longstreet's attack at Chickamauga. At Gettysburg everyone and his mother-in-law knew the Rebels were coming and where they were coming from. The attacking formation was large enough that I don't think it was ever entirely hidden from view, so the artillery always had targets to fire upon.

> As to Lee having confidence in his men, why should he not have?

I didn't mean to imply he shouldn't have had confidence in his men; my point was that he let what happened at C-ville convince him they were close to invincible. That's too much confidence.

> If Lee attributed these victories to God rather than to his men then we > can say Lee felt God would grant his arms victory again. But, Calvinism did > not lead one to feel that such blessings came unaided. It was the role of the > human element to take all preparations and to exert themselves to the fullest > if such divine blessings were to be expected. In short, thinking victory came > from God would not lead Lee to assume he could be lazy or sloppy.

Again, I never said this. I think it did lead him to believe more strongly that God was on his side, hence that a difficult task which he assigned to his army would have more of God's help. The issue is not that Lee made mistakes in the planning of Pickett's Charge; the issue is that in ordering the attack at that time and place he bit off more than his men could chew.

For example, I might someday decide to write a textbook on my research specialty in mathematics. This is a task clearly within my abilities, but I might well do a poor (lazy or sloppy) job. On the other hand, I might also decide to write a textbook in macro-economics, about which I know damned little. In this case, I could be as dedicated and careful as possible, but the result would likely be a disaster.

BTW, I don't think Lee was a Calvinist; he was a high-church Episcopalian, which I think is something different. But that is a minor issue.

Jim Epperson


From: DPowell334@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-18 07:37:05 EST, you write:

> >I would think so! Hood was badly wounded the day before and his division very cutup. I thinks McLaws men were pretty mauled, too, but I'm not sure.

> Losses in both divisions ran to between 40 and 50 per cent. In later years, the anti-Longstreet gang made some effort to claim that they should have attacked, but this seems to be pure fabrication. The original stuff makes it pretty clear that they were considered too cut up for offensive action.

Dave Powell


From: DPowell334@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-17 23:11:13 EST, you write:

>Again, it was not supposed to be an "isolated assault." See Stuart's >report; Richard Anderson's report; A.P. Hill's report; Alexander's books. There was >supposed to be artillery support, cavalry coordination, and large numbers of >reinforcements.

Large numbers of reinforcements...?

Anderson was tasked with supporting the advance with two brigades. Strength, about 2000 men. Name another infantry organization that was ordered to support that attack. I can find none.

Dave Powell


From: DPowell334@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-17 22:44:15 EST, Matt wrote:

> >Do you really believe this? Was Lee STUPID? I think not. I think he >remembered Fredericksburg and did all he could to see that it wouldn't >happen in Pennsylvania. Then his subordinates--Longstreet, Pendleton, and >Stuart--failed to carry out his plans.

> Oops. Lee gave the orders for Pickett's charge. Hard to argue that it was really someone else's flawed execution that made it a FUBAR of the worst order...

Dave Powell


From: lawrence (Dennis Lawrence)

Lee probably thought little about tennis balls or golf swings when he ordered the Confederate cannons to neutralize the Federal artillery before the assault. Surely Lee knew exactly what the chances of such a cannonade had of succeeding.

Either 1) Lee was unrealistic in his expectations
or 2) Alexander failed in his job
or 3) A combination of the two.

At any rate, Alexanders' failure to neutralize the fire of the Federal batteries is the chief cause of the failure of the assault.

Dennis


From: lawrence (Dennis Lawrence)

Brian writes....

> > A good recently published book on Pickett's Charge is "Pickett's >Charge: Eyewitness Accounts," edited by Richard Rollins.

I love this book - I don't leave home without it. As Brian says anyone who is interested in the conversations about whether the attack was flawed or poorly executed should read his introduction. Those who think Stuart was an integral part of the attack will find Rolins squarely in that corner. But even better, anyone who likes to just sit and look across the field from either side from any position will find a excellent first hand account in this book.

The part of the intro that I find most interesting is his contention that the charge was a bayonet charge (xxii-xxii). Rollins says these are the characteristics of a bayonet charge.

1) Troops would be told to fix bayonets
2) They would be told to move forward rapidly, holding their line until very close to the enemy
3) They would be instructed to yell when they got close, causing more fear
4) Finally, they would break the enemy lines with support troops coming up
behind them, clear the area and destroy the enemy line.

It seems to me that the above would apply to almost any advance made by Confederates in the direction of the enemy, Archer - Day One; Hood - Day Two, etc. The crucial difference between these charges and a bayonet charge would be, say, sticking somebody with a bayonet at the end of the charge???

Rollins admits that the biggest drawback to his theory is that there is not one written order or report of one that supports his contention.

Can anybody supply evidence that there was large spread usage of bayoneting in the hand to hand combat at the angle - that it was indeed the primary means by which Lee thought he could take the position?

Dennis


From: Norman Levitt

To Dennis:

How the hell could Alexander (who had de facto command only of Longstreet's guns) have "neutralized" the Federal batteries? There was plenty of Fed. Artillery in reserve. There could even have been more had not Hunt been overcautious (he withdrew many of his guns to a reserve artillery park a couple of mile behind the line). Obviously, the Federals had far too many guns to be "neutralized" a battery at a time. Moreover, as we know, the batteries that hammered Pickett, Pettigrew and Trimble from Cemetery Hill were brought up after the barrage, as were a number of other batteries further down the ridge. Again, the question must be: What the hell was Lee thinking?

Norm Levitt


From: Susan & Eric Wittenberg

To respond to a prior post, there was no contact at all between Stuart's cavalry and the 6th Corps infantry. By the way, I stand firmly behind what I said earlier about Stuart's role in supporting Pickett's Charge.

There's been a lot of discussion about grand assaults which parallel Pickett's Charge. The best analogy I can come up with is Fitz-John Porter's assault with the Fifth Corps at the Deep Cut at Second Manassas. In many ways, it was far worse than what Pickett's men faced. The march was as long, with 12,000 men compacted into a very small area with an incline which was much steeper, an 18 gun battalion of Confederate artillery was enfilading Porter's men the whole way, and the oblique forced Porter's men into a much more compact area than that faced by Pickett. The charge was worse, and was every bit as much a bloody failure as Pickett's Charge. For those who are interested, read John Hennessy's superb Return to Bull Run.

Thus, Marse Robert's decision to send Pickett forward was one which had several prior examples (Deep Cut, Fredericksburg) to demonstrate that direct frontal assaults were bound to fail.

Eric Wittenberg


From: John Kelly

At 10:36 PM 1/17/96 -0500, you wrote:

> >Do you really believe this? Was Lee STUPID? I think not. I think he >remembered Fredericksburg and did all he could to see that it wouldn't happen >in Pennsylvania. Then his subordinates--Longstreet, Pendleton, and >Stuart--failed to carry out his plans.

> Longstreet did just about everything he could do. Stuart, as I recollect, was to carry out a diversionary attack on the Federal rear, but it was meant to be more of a nuisance than a major threat to the Federal rear. Ewell's attack on the Federal right at Culp's Hill had petered out by the time of the bombardment, and I do not think that he had any troops left that had not been beaten up over the three days.

Lee was plagued by illness, perhaps, but his major problem was the lack of an adequate staff. His staff was minuscule when compared with that of his enemy, or even his subordinate commanders. Before Gburg, with Jackson and Longstreet working together, he did not need a large staff. After the death of Jackson, more of the planning and logistical load fell on Lee's staff because of the mediocrity of his subordinates. This resulted in lack of coordination among units (the 2nd and 3rd days), unfortunate situations like Johnston's reconnaissance, and other omissions and miscues (artillery ammo and guns sent to the rear on 3rd day).


From: Norman Levitt

To Dennis:

Funny thing about bayonets.

In his generally excellent "Gettysburg" book, Kent Gramm makes note of the fact that reports from field dressing stations throughout the war (and at Gettysburg) indicate that bayonet wounds were quite rare--less than 5% of casualties, as I recall. Gramm makes the (to me outlandish) suggestion that that was because most bayonet thrusts were instantly fatal!! Unlikely, to say the least.

The more obvious conclusion is simply that, for whatever reason, bayonets were rarely used as a weapon, even though there are frequent reports of "clubbing muskets".

Comments?

Norm Levitt


From: Dave Navarre <73613.1150@compuserve.com>

Norman Levitt wrote:
"The more obvious conclusion is simply that, for whatever reason, bayonets were rarely used as a weapon, even though there are frequent reports of "clubbing muskets"."

>From what I gather, the main reason that bayonets were used so infrequently was that it was "distasteful". As difficult as it is to convince yourself to kill your fellow man in battle (less difficult when you realize he is trying to kill you), it is even more challenging to resolve to stab someone with a bayonet. I believe that even in the 20th Maine's bayonet charge, few men were actually bayoneted - someone charging you with a bayonet can convince you rather quickly to surrender.

A Park guide told me he believed that Colonel Jeffords of the 4th Michigan was the only Colonel commanding a regiment who was killed by a bayonet thrust (which was followed quickly by the Confederate soldier discharging his musket - a little "over-kill", but a tactic I remember being suggested in WWII movies to remove the enemy from your bayonet....)

Dave N


From: thumphri@nafis.fp.trw.com (Thad Humphries)

> "The more obvious conclusion is simply that, for whatever reason, > bayonets were rarely used as a weapon, even though there are frequent > reports of "clubbing muskets"."

> > From what I gather, the main reason that bayonets were used so infrequently > was that it was "distasteful"...

Not only that, it's difficult. Every tried to learn fencing or a martial art? Good bayonet drill is much the same. The movement are unnatural and must be executed swiftly, accurately, against a moving and hostile adversary. However easy it looks, it's hard when you try it. There just wasn't much practice on this in the ACW.

> A Park guide told me he believed that Colonel Jeffords of the 4th Michigan > was the only Colonel commanding a regiment who was killed by a bayonet thrust > (which was followed quickly by the Confederate soldier discharging his musket - > a little "over-kill", but a tactic I remember being suggested in WWII movies > to remove the enemy from your bayonet....)

Another reason it wasn't done often. The human body enfolds itself over the blade and it can be extremely difficult to remove. I understand this from what I've read and what my father told me. A career NCO, he used to fascinate us with tale of WWII and Korea. But only once do I recall him talking about killing. We were young and asked. He got very sad and described a time in Italy where he shot a man point blank in the forehead and, so after, bayoneted one in the chest. He had to stand on the body and wrench hard to pull it out. The tone of his voice and the look on his face ensured we never asked about that again.

Thad Humphries


From: GaTechFan@aol.com

In "Attack and Die", McWhiney and Jamieson spend several pages discussing bayonet use. Quoting from the OR, they mention several battles in which at least somewhat significant fighting with bayonets occurred: Frayser's Farm, Spotsylvania, Kennesaw Mtn, Jonesboro, etc.
On page78(paperback), however, they seem to conclude:
"Rifle fire was so destructive that it usually decided an attack before the attackers got close enough to the defenders to use their bayonets."

Pat Ellington


From: John Kelly

>The more obvious conclusion is simply that, for whatever reason, >bayonets were rarely used as a weapon, even though there are frequent >reports of "clubbing muskets".

> The bayonet is generally conceded to have been the least-used weapon in the Civil War. The Federals, with stricter uniform regulations, kept their bayonets and used them on sentry duty and parades. They may have even used them in anger in some cases (notably Upton's assault at Spotsylvania). Most Confederates, however, with the possible exception of the Stonewall Brigade early in the War, used every opportunity to "lose" their bayonets as just one more unnecessary weight on a long forced march. They thought, and correctly so, that every ounce of extra weight slowed them up and/or tired them out. The officers generally went along with this because they were more concerned with straggling than the possibility of a need for the bayonets. Besides, the successful use of the bayonet requires constant training exercises (I never could get the hang of the thing), and just about precludes the rapid reloading of the rifle. Clubbing the musket would be my choice, as it was for most of the ACW troops.

Jack Kelly


From: ENordfors@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-20 08:11:14 EST,Dave wrote:

>The line Lee ultimately held was far too long for his available troops. I've >mentioned the failure of Ewell to mount a solid attack on the evening of the >2nd as a significant failure for the CSA command, and the length of his line >was likely the main reason: Ewell devoted too much of his command to holding >ground, and was unable to mass sufficient force, for any offensive options. >In fact, all of 2nd Corps' (CSA) actions on July 2nd and 3rd bear this out - >never was Ewell able to put more than one division into combat at a time.

Dave..
I totally agree with this statement...Question: Is this not the logical end result of an Army that devotes itself to an entire defensive campaign? Then changing without coordination, etc. would lead to these type of deficiencies?

Ed...


From: Norman Levitt

On the liength of Lee's line:

This is another of those mysteries of Lee's Gettysburg thinking that remained unexplained. What the hell was Ewell's left doing bent round the fishhook, at least on July 3rd? Why didn't Lee just shorted his front after the reverses of the morning of the 3rd? At that point, certainly, he must have had a map in front of him, which surely would have shown what a nightmare position he was in, facing a larger force that had beautiful interior lines and secure flanks.

While we're on the subject, why didn't he see what Grant saw: When you have an extended line of several miles, the first damn thing you do is run telegraph lines around the perimeter, down to the division level, so you can see what the hell is going on and keep your subordinates in synch. This seems completely obvious; why wasn't it done? Even if materiel wasn't at hand, why didn't Lee see the need for beefing up his staff and couriers, even if it meant drafting them on the spot from other units?

Mysteries, mysteries.

Norm Levitt


From: Susan & Eric Wittenberg

There have been some good points made about the length of Marse Robert's line. Further, there have been some good points made about Ewell's failure to attack properly on the second due to the length of his line.

Allow me to add some insight. Part of the reason why Ewell's line was extended too far out on the left was due to the presence of David M. Gregg's cavalry division in the area near East Cavalry Field. Remember that Allegheny Johnson did not have the services of the Stonewall Brigade for the attacks on July 2. Why not? There's a very good reason. The Stonewall Brigade was pinned down on Brinkerhoff's Ridge, engaged in a fight with the dismounted troopers of Gregg's Division.

We all know that the Stonewall Brigade was one of the best and hardest-fighting of all of the Confederate infantry units.

Query: If Gregg's men do not tie up the Stonewall Brigade, and if these men are available for Johnson's assaults on Culp's Hill, does the addition of this tough, veteran brigade tip the scales in favor of the Confederates on Culp's Hill? Perhaps then the length of Lee's line is not too long. Perhaps it does not become an issue at all. If so, the entire outcome of the battle changes.

Although little know (and for those who are interested, I commend you to Paul Shevchuck's work in the first issue of GB magazine) about the fight at Brinkerhoff's Ridge, and although it is not that interesting in terms of tactics, this small engagement turned out to be a crucial element to the development of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Just some food for thought....

Eric Wittenberg


From: DPowell334@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-20 09:20:07 EST, Norm writes:

> >While we're on the subject, why didn't he see what Grant saw: When >you have an extended line of several miles, the first damn thing you >do is run telegraph lines around the perimeter, down to the division >level, so you can see what the hell is going on and keep your >subordinates in synch. This seems completely obvious; why wasn't it >done? Even if materiel wasn't at hand, why didn't Lee see the need >for beefing up his staff and couriers, even if it meant drafting them >on the spot from other units?

Well, Norm, Lee - unlike Grant - had neither the time nor the field telegraph units to go around erecting such a set-up.

However, as to couriers - a good point. The ANV was forever understaffed compared to it's counterpart, and Lee, who set up his military family, should bear much of the blame for this. On the other hand, as far as I've read, Lee never sent any officers to urge on Ewell on the evening of July 2nd, or even investigate the extent of that officer's attack. If no direction from the top exists, more couriers in the system are not likely to solve the problem...

Dave Powell


From: DPowell334@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-20 08:39:12 EST, Ed wrote::

>I totally agree with this statement...Question: Is this not the logical end >result of an Army that devotes itself to an entire defensive campaign? Then >changing without coordination, etc. would lead to these type of deficiencies?

Ed,

I'm not sure of the direction your taking, here. In fact, I think the ANV could be characterized as an army that had plenty of experience with the tactical offensive, and quite successfully on occasion.

To be sure, deficiencies did exist. I think they were organic to the structure and laissez-faire attitude of Lee's command style, not the outgrowth of some excessive defensive bent.

Dave Powell


From: DPowell334@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-20 10:22:52 EST, Eric wrote:

> > Query: If Gregg's men do not tie up the Stonewall Brigade, and if >these men are available for Johnson's assaults on Culp's Hill, does the >addition of this tough, veteran brigade tip the scales in favor of the >Confederates on Culp's Hill? Perhaps then the length of Lee's line is not >too long. Perhaps it does not become an issue at all. If so, the entire >outcome of the battle changes.

I think that the real problem with Ewell's line is getting involved at Culp's Hill in the first place. Once there, troops had to be diverted to Brinkerhoff's Ridge to protect what was Johnson's rear, given the orientation of his front vis a vis the Federal line on Culps. Might it not have been better to anchor Ewell's line no further than Benner's Hill? Certainly a line using the reverse slopes of Benner's would have the added benefit of arty support. While fighting in the woods around Culp's Hill, the CSA 2nd Corps Guns were all but wasted.

To answer your direct question, though, Eric, I don't think Walker's Brigade would've tipped the scales that much. Once plunged into the woods, tactical control went to hell, and tended to disorganize attacks more than defenses. I'd rather have used this brigade on E. Cemetery Hill on the night of July 2nd, where even a small attack met with some success. A couple more brigades here would have been far more valuable than lost in the trees around Culps.

Dave Powell


From: clemenst@isx.hjc.cc.md.us (Tom Clemens)

Dennis wrote:

> > Either 1) Lee was unrealistic in his expectations
> or 2) Alexander failed in his job
> or 3) A combination of the two.
> Put me down for #1. Lee knew little about artillery, especially rifled guns, and expected too much from his cannoneers in this instance. Witness Lee's observations concerning the vulnerability of Ft. Pulaski in 1861! Alexander did the best he could under the circumstances in which he operated.

Tom Clemens


From: MBRADLEY@MSCC1.MSCC.CC.TN.US

Please note that participants in the charge on July 3 seemed more concerned about rifle fire than about artillery. The survivors noted that they still felt able to break the Union line when they arrived within rifle range. I think the decisive factor was the flanking fire delivered by, I think, a Vermont unit.


From: "Michael D. VanHuss"

You said:
As far as concrete evidence is concerned we will never have concrete evidence as it does not exist. We only have conjecture. As we all know Lee's orders for the fighting on the 2nd and 3rd day were very simple leaving the details to be worked out by each individual Corps Commander. Trimble gives us a glimpse into these orders in the Bachelder papers, Gen'l Longstreet will make a vigorous attack on our right, Gen'l Ewell will make a demonstration on our left to be converted into a vigorous attack if circumstances justify it. Gen'l Hill will hold the center at all hazards. These were the orders for day three. These are very similar to the orders for day 2. I also think it very important to note that these orders were expected to be carried out at a "very early hour" this is per Gen'l Early in a letter to the southern historical papers. The question remains could they be carried out. I think yes, on day 2 Gen'l Ewell was to commence the attack/demonstration on the left when he heard Longstreet's guns. This did not happen and the attack went on in piecemeal fashion allowing Meade to move his men freely to point in the greatest peril. A piecemeal attack against the Union line under no circumstances could have worked. The scary thing about it is it almost did. Had Longstreet's attack on day 2 been properly supported by Hill we may be looking at a whole new situation.

On to Pickett's Charge, There are many reference's to the question as to "Was this a folly?", in the Historical Papers. Lee's adjutant states in a memo that he believes that success would have been there had the plan been faithfully carried out. Pickett was never intended to go in unsupported. According to Taylor, Hood or Mclaws were to have followed or supported Pickett, and Pettigrew and Anderson were to advance. This according to Taylor was the design of Lee. Obviously it did not happen this way. Furthermore, Colonel Allan of Ewell's staff stated "There was nothing foolish in Pickett's charge had it been executed as designed. Again we are talking of coordination of attack. It is obvious to me that these men felt if the attacks had come off as designed, in coordination, they could have won the battle.

But they did not and that's why we get to have these wonderful discussions. Could the ANV won the battle and the war, probably not. There was just too much Northern fire power in that area. Could they have scared the crap out of them for awhile. I think the answer to this is yes.

Mike VanHuss


From: clemenst@isx.hjc.cc.md.us (Tom Clemens)

> Please note that participants in the charge on July 3 seemed more >concerned about rifle fire than about artillery. The survivors noted that they >still felt able to break the Union line when they arrived within rifle range. >I think the decisive factor was the flanking fire delivered by, I think, a >Vermont unit.

> No doubt about it, the rifled musket still ruled the battlefield. That does not mean that artillery fire was superfluous. The intention to drive off Union guns by cannonade of the ridge would allow the Confederates to approach the position with fewer casualties and formation intact to deliver counterfire. If the bombardment were intense enough, it might even reduce the number of infantry units there to oppose the Confederate advance. There are incidents during the war of units retreating or changing position due to artillery fire. Cemetery Ridge might have been one of them had the circumstances been more favorable to the Confederacy. As you correctly point out, it didn't work out that way, but that does mean it was preordained not work out at all.

Tom Clemens


From: lawrence (Dennis Lawrence)

Could Pickett's Charge have been repelled with artillery only?

"McGilvery always stoutly maintained that had General Hancock not interfered and had Hazzard reserved his fire, the enemy could not have got a handful of men through the crossfire which Hazzard and he would have poured over the open field in front of the second corps." Hunt in Bachelder papers v II , 827.

Or, was the infantry all that was needed to repel the attack?

"Each man in a veteran regiment like the 69th (Pa.) could deliver a rate of two aimed rounds per minute., which meant the 69th would theoretically deliver approximately 500 rounds per minute in their front. But with their added firepower (rifles gathered from in front of their position) the regiment could have delivered a minimum 700 rounds in a matter of seconds - many of which carried 12 buckshot - and nearly 1,000 rounds a minute. And all of this massive firepower would be delivered on a front of no more than 250 feet, guaranteeing devastating casualties upon an enemy formation advancing over the open ground."

"It Struck Horror To Us All" Scott Hartwig, GBM #4

The obvious answer is that it took both, but in view of the Hunt/Hancock feud over artillery and the controversies involving the infantry units at the Angle, I thought there might be some useful topics in this issue.

Dennis


From: "Douglas M Macomber"

Since I haven't been around for maybe four months, I think I will reintroduce myself. My name is Paul (Douglas) Macomber. I am a reenactor with the 69th NYSV and 7th Virginia. Now to elaborate on your post, the Vermont unit was the 16th Vermont. While the 13th Vermont poured in volley after volley. The 16th moved from behind the 13th and flanked the 24th Virginia of Kemper's brigade. The 24th scattered and unable to continue broke off. The 16th about faced and fired right into Col. Lang's Floridians.

Paul (Doulgas) Macomber


From: "Douglas M Macomber"

The units that see receive the least attention are the Vermonters. After reading Howard Coffin's FULL DUTY, I began to study with interest Vermont's role in Gettysburg, I then found out that I had two ancestors, Patrick Marr Johnathan Marr(Johnathan was wounded during Picketts charge)who fought with the 16th Vermont, Co.A.
I wholeheartedly recommend FULL DUTY, it contains maybe 40 pages on Gettysburg and a foreword by Ed Bearss, you can order from:
The Countryman Press,Inc.
PO Box 175
Woodstock, Vermont 05091

Some interesting notes I found:
-When Hancock was wounded in the movie, the "colonel" with the red beard was George Stannard cmdg. Second Vermont Brigade, the officer with the mustache was George Benedict of the 13th Vermont. Benedict who had some surgical knowledge helped tie Hancock's wound and stopped the flow of blood.

-The First Vermont Brigade participated in "Death March" to Gettysburg. The 16th spent the night on picket duty on the night of July 2nd and 3rd in front of Hancocks line.

-The 16th attacked Kempers flank in the famous flanking attacking, then about-faced and attacked Lang's Floridians.


From: Kip Beckman

Some of the recent discussion about Pickett raised an interesting issue. I read somewhere (I don't remember where) that Pickett may have stayed too far behind his troops during the charge. Yet in the movie Gettysburg, he seems to be fairly close to the action. Not knowing anything about battle formations, I don't know where he should have been. Anyone know anything about this?


From: CSVZ07A@prodigy.com ( TERRY MOYER)

Kip,
George Stewart in Pickett's Charge speculates that Pickett was in the vicinity of the Codori Barn (this is also where the movie places him). This position (near the Codori farm) would conform nicely to Michael Brasher's comment that:

>During the advance, the division commander should be in >the center of the "box" formed by this formation.

Which from a command and control standpoint is pretty much the argument that Stewart promotes.

Kathy Harrison - the chief historian of the GNMP - gives evidence in the article 'Where was Pickett during Pickett's charge', that Pickett was somewhere in the vicinity of the Wentz house (near the Peach Orchard and millerstown/wheatfield road). Kathy is an excellent researcher and her opinion always carries heavy weight. Actual evidence pinpointing the location of Pickett during the assault, as Kathy herself points out in her article, is a great rarity. Some accounts even place him behind the Confederate line on Seminary Ridge (ala the infamous 5 forks shad bake).

There is a picture accompanying Kathy's article that shows what a great view of the battle line, including Wilcox's command, a position at the Wentz house would give. Having no incontrovertible evidence to put forth to bolster my claim, all I can say about my opinion is that I 'like the idea' of Pickett being in the area of the Codori house. It seems to me to be the most reasonable place for him to have been to exercise control of his command.

Terry Moyer


From: mbrasher@iconcepts.com (Michael R. Brasher)

In an age of "radio-less" communications, the ideal location for a Civil War division commander would be a "central" location, behind his lead brigades and to the front (initially anyway) of any reserve brigades. In this location, he would have the clearest view of the action and be able to send his couriers more directly to any of his brigade commanders. Any division attack formation with more than a two-brigade front was generally asking for trouble because the division commander simply could not see and control that wide a formation. In the same vein, it usually meant trouble if the supporting battleline was not also of the same division. So if a division consisted of three or four brigades, two would form the first line of battle, and the remaining brigades would form a second battleline or reserve, ideally. During the advance, the division commander should be in the center of the "box" formed by this formation. Longstreet was generally very careful when preparing for an assault that the formations allowed for the greatest control by his division commanders.

Hope this helps.

---- Michael R. Brasher, President


From: acameron@tcac.com (Alexander Cameron)

Folks,
Let me take the opportunity to welcome Michael Brasher to the Gettysburg Discussion Group. I will take the credit for getting him to join! :) Mike knows more about individual regiments in the Civil War than anyone I have ever known. I met him electronically on CompuServe a couple of years ago. As he indicates in his signature, he is the president of a software company and I was able to be one of his beta testers for his software program "The American Civil War Regimental Information System". I stumbled onto his web page the other night and got back into contact with him. Suggest you visit his site.
Welcome Mike.

BTW, Kathleen Georg Harrison wrote "Where Was Pickett During Pickett's Charge" in Civil War Quarterly, Volume XI. I got my copy from Terry Moyer. As usual, Kathy does an excellent job on this subject.

Bill Cameron


From: "Heather Peake"

SOLDIER OF THE SOUTH; General Pickett's War Letter to His Wife

Arthur Crue Inman, ed
New York: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1928

------------------------------------------------------------------- Dated, July 3, 1863 (p 53-58)

Can my prettice do patchwork? If she can, she must piece together these penciled scraps of soiled paper and make out of them, not a log-cabin quilt, but a wren's nest, cement it with love and fill it with blue and golden speckled eggs of faith and hope, to hatch out greater love yet for us.

Well, Sallie, the long, wearying march from Chambersburg, through dust and heat beyond compare, brought us here yesterday (a few miles from Gettysburg). Though my poor men were almost exhausted by the march in the intense heat, I felt that the exigencies demanded my assuring Marse Robert that we had arrived and that, with a few hours rest, my men would be equal to anything he might require of them. I sent Walter with my message and rode on myself to Little Round Top to see Old Peter, who, I tell you, was mighty glad to see me. And now, just think of it, though the old war-horse was watching AP Hill's arrack upon the center of Hood and McLaws of his own corps, who had struck Sickles, he turned, and before referring to the fighting or asking about the march, inquired after *you* my darling. While we were watching the fight, Walter came back with Marse Robert's reply to my message, which was in part: "Tell Pickett I'm glad he has come, that I can always depend upon him and his men, but that I shall not want him this evening."

We have been on the *qui vive*, my Sallie, since midnight; and as early as three o'clock were on the march. About half past three, Dary's pistol signaled the Yankees' attack upon Culp's Hill, and with it's echo a wail of regret went up from my very soul that the two brigades of my old division had been left behind. Oh, God!--if only I had them!--a surety for the honor of Viginina, for I can depend upon them, little one. They know your soldier and would follow them into the very jaws of death, and he will need them--right there, too, before he's through.

At early dawn, darkened by the threatening rain, Armistead, Garnett, Kemper and your soldier held a heart-to-geart pow-wow.

All three send regards to you, and Old Lewis pulled a ring from his little finger, and, making me take it, said, "Give this little token, George, please, to her of the sunset eyes, with my love, and tell her the 'old man' says since he could not be the lucky dog he's mighty glad that you are."

Dear old Lewis--dear old 'Lo,' as Marguder always called him, being short for Lothario. Well, my Sallie, I'll keep the ring for you, and someday I'll take it to John Tyler and have it made into a breast-pin and set around with rubies and diamonds and emeralds. You will be the pearl, the other jewel. Dear old Lewis!

Just as we three seperated to go our different ways after silently clasping hands, our fears and prayers voiced in the "Good luck, old man," a summons came from Old Peter, and I immediately rode to the top of the ridge where he and Marse Robert were making a reconnissance of Meade's positon. "Great God!" said Old Peter as I came up. "Look, general Lee, at the insurmountable difficulties between our line and that of the Yankees--the steep hills--the tiers of artillery--the fences--the heavy skirmish line--And then we'll have to fight our infantry against their batteries. Look at the ground we'll have to charge over, nearly a mile of that open ground there under the rain of their cannister and their shrapnel."

"The enemy is there, General Longstreet, and I am going to strike him," said Marse Robert in his firm, quiet, determined voice.

About 8 o'clock, I rode with them along our line of prostrate infantry. They had been told to lie down to prevent attracting attention, and though they had been forbidden to cheer they voluntraily arose and lifted in reverential adoration their caps to our beloved commander as we rode slowly along. Oh, the repsonsibility for the lives of such men as these! Well, my darling, their fate and that of our beloved Southland will be settled ere your glorious brown etes rest on these scraps of penciled paper--your soldier's last letter, perhaps.

Our line of battle faces Cemetary Ridge. Our detatchments have been thrown forward to support our artillery which streches over a mile along the crests of Oak Ridge and Seminary Ridge. The men are laying in the rearm ny darling, and the hot July sun pours its scorcing rays almost vertically down upon them. The suffering and waiting are almost unbearable.

Well, my sweetheart, at one o'clock the awful silence was broken by a cannon shot, and then another, and then more than a hundred guns shook the hills from crest to base, answered by more than another hudred--the whole world a blazing volcano--the whole of heaven a thunderbolt--then darkness and absolute silence--then the grim and gruesome, low-spoken columns. My brave Virginians are to attack in front. Oh, God in mercy help me as He never helped me before!

I have ridden up to report to Old Peter. I shall give him this letter to mail to you and a package to give you if--Oh, my darling, do you feel the love of my heart, the prayer, as I write that fatal word 'if'?

Old Peter laid his hand over mine and said:--"I know, George, I know--but I can't do it, boy. Alexander has my instructions. He will give you the order." There was silence, and his hand still rested on mine when a courier rode up and handed me a note from Alexander....


Letter, July 4 (p 59-62)

...I closed my letter to you a little before three o'clock and rode up to Old Peter for orders. I found him like a great lion at bay. I have never seen him so grave and troubled. For several minutes after I saluted him, he looked at me without speaking. Then in an agonized voice, the reserve all gone, he said:

"Pickett, I am being crucified at the thought of the scarifice of life which this attack will make. I have instructed Alexander to watch the effect of our fire upon the enemy, and when it beings to tell he must take the reposibility and give you the orders, for I can't"

While he was speaking a note was brought to me from Alexander. After reading it I handed it to him, asking if I should obey and go forward. He looked at me for a moment, then held out his hand. Presently, clasping his other hand over mine without speaking he bowed his head upon his breast. I shall never forget the look in his face nor the clasp of his hand whin I said--"Then, General, I shall lead my Division on." I had ridden only a few paces when I remembered your letter and (forgive me) thoughtlessly scribbled in the corner of the envelope, "If Old Peter's nod means death then good-by and God bless you, little one," turned back and asked the dear old chief if he would be good enough to mail it for me. And he took your letter from me, my darling, I saw tears glistening on his cheeks and beard. The stern old war-horse, God Bless him, was weeping for his men, and I know, praying too that this cup might pass from them. I obeyed the silent assent of his bowed head, an assent given against his own convictions--given in anguish, with reluctance...

Your sorrowing
Soldier


From: Norman Levitt

To Heather Peake:

Thanks for posting the Pickett letters.

FWIW, I think they should be read with a great big salt-shaker at hand. They have all the earmarks of having been cooked up, or at least heavily edited, post-bellum. For one thing, we find Pickett, who supposedly has just come up from Chambersburg with his division, using the standard names "Culp's Hill" and "Cemetary Ridge"; it's unlikely that he'd know either, especially given that "Cemetary Ridge" was not in use until after the battle, when it was invented for the express purpose of giving a name to the position of the Federal line. As we all know, it's hardly perceptible as high ground to the casual eye.

Am I right in assuming that the "originals" of these letters don't exist?

It's an interesting document, though, if one is interested in post-war mythmaking. But who knows how reliable it is as evidence of what Lee and Longstreet thought and said.

Norm Levitt


From: "Heather Peake"
From: deicher@astronomy.com (Dave Eicher)

The Pickett letters are forgeries, concocted by Sallie. Gary Gallagher has demonstrated this and produced the definitive paper that was published several years ago, I believe, in the North Carolina Historical Review.

-- Dave


From: "Heather Peake"
Hi folks...

Yesterday after I posted the Pickett letters, I wrote Dennis about there authenticity, and I think I should have posted it to the whole group. So I'll remedy that now.

From what I can find out, these are authentic, but heavily edited. Sallie Pickett undoubtedly did some cut and paste jobs on the originals, and was particularly careful to omit her beau's less than gallant obvervations of Marse Robert. The editor of the book, no doubt, inserted what had become commonplace names like "Little Round Top," etc, by the 1920s, but that the Confederates probably would not have known at the time.

Still, before we invalidate them as a historical source, let's take a second look, if anyone is interested. Compare it to other eyewitness reports of the encounter. Does Alexander have anything of the scene in his memiors? Moxley Sorrel in "Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer"? Longstreet himself in "Manassas to Appomattox"?

Also, all letters, journals, etc, are subjective. Strong of feelings and opinions and somewhat loose with fact. That said, can we accept these as an accurate reflection of the feelings Pickett may have had during the countdown to the charge, and does that increase their historical value?

Heather


From: acameron@tcac.com (Alexander Cameron)

Hi Heather
, First let me say that they are interesting and I think we all appreciate you posting them. Let's focus on your last paragraph where your wrote:

>That said, can we accept these as an accurate reflection of >>the feelings Pickett may have had during the countdown to the charge, >>and does that increase their historical value?

I think their value is the "color" they add to the Gettysburg story. There is more to studying Gettysburg than historic fact. Gordon meeting Barlow, Warren looking at glistening bayonets, and Pickett writing love letters before his charge are all part of the Gettysburg experience. That's not unimportant. As to their historical value, I don't think they have any. You can't tell if you are reading about Pickett's feelings, or what Sallie thought he was feeling, or what Sallie thought he should have been feeling, or what some editor thought would look good and sell books. A lot of this stuff is "Strong of feelings and opinions and somewhat loose with fact" but these letters are clearly "made up" and as such, serve to demonstrate what can be done to "history" with a pen.

They are however, fun to read and again, interesting.

Thanks for posting them.

Bill


From: Brooks Simpson

On Tue, 19 Dec 1995, James F. Epperson wrote:
> I think Dave Powell continues to hit the nail on the head. (Dave, I have
> this backyard carpentry project . . . ) Meade's four closest colleagues
> in the AoP command structure were Reynolds, Hancock, Gibbon, and
> Sedgwick. Only Sedgwick participated in the pursuit.

I would add Humphreys and Warren.
>More than anything
> else I think this contributed to Lee's escape. It is very easy for us,
> at the distance of 130 years, to say he should have done such and so. To
> be frank, I think a more aggressive effort should have been attempted, or
> at least explored. But the inaction is entirely justified, to me, by
> Meade's newness to command and the loss of so many capable top officers.

I agree with Jim about the deceptiveness of armchair generalship. I also think Meade was just plain exhausted. The fact is that the frontal assault against Lee's position might not have been the best move in any case. Now, had Meade been more aggressive about cutting off Lee's lines of retreat across the Potomac, we might have had a different story, for perhaps then he could have forced Lee to attack.

Brooks Simpson

From: jblair@roanoke.infi.net (John Blair)

lots of stuff cut:
>>The point is that everyone in the Confederate high command deserves credit
>>for this defeat; save for Longstreet, perhaps, who at least counselled his
>>commander not to do any of the foolish things he tried to do..

> I agree wholeheartedly. The ultimate cause of the Confederate
>defeat at G-burg was a complete, total (yes, I know that's redundant)
>failure of the Confederate command structure. I find it absolutely
>astonishing that Lee could conduct a massive three day battle as he did, and
>never have a council of war. I have never seen a single account which
>indicates that Lee, Longstreet, Ewell, Hill and Stuart had a group meeting
>at any time during the three day battle. Meade had three major councils of
>war. If that's not a failure of command, I don't know what is.

>Eric Wittenberg

What is even more amazing is that the south blamed Longstreet! The hardest question for me to answer about the recent unpleasantness is Why does the south so love Lee? I have some genealogical info on Lee comming (soon I hope) if anyone is interested let me know by direct e-mail.

John Blair

From: ajackson@oyez.law.upenn.edu (Anita Jackson-Wieck)

Of Pickett's Charge Jeffrey Zirkle writes:
> The fact is they did break through. The needed reinforcements strayed to
> the left because of battle smoke.

A hundred and fifty men across a stone wall does not constitute a breakthrough. Those "needed reinforcements" - two brigades under Wilcox - were badly used in the assault and would have been no match for the 13,000 reserves - more than three brigades - Meade had positioned behind Cemetery Ridge. A deeper penetration into the Union position would have resulted only in more Confederates captured or killed.

David Wieck

From: Don Brazier 102651.1016@compuserve.com
>>>lee was outgeneraled. why complicate the issue

First, what was it that Meade did that demonstrated such superior military tactics? Lee had not been outgeneraled in previous battles. At Chancellorsville the Confederates were outnumbered 2-1 but defeated Federal forces by using an outflanking maneuver that his corps commanders were suggesting he use at Gettysburg. He didn't seem to remember the lessons that paid off for him - and cost the Army of the Potomac so much - at Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg. Instead he opted for straight out assaults that proved so disastrous.
>>When he had tried both flanks and these attacks
>>failed, why Lee may have thought Meade had 75% of his army on the flanks

Could he not have assumed that overnight Meade would have strenghed his middle? Given the two-hour shelling that preceded Pickett's Charge, Meade had time to reinforce the center of his line.

DVB.

From: Don Brazier 102651.1016@compuserve.com
>>> Longstreet in effect pouted,
>>>and did not prepare his generals sufficiently for the fighting that they
>>>would encounter. His generals could see the doubt in Longstreet's eyes,
>>>and this made the plan even less plausible to them.

Longstreet knew the Lee's plan was fatal and that he was sending men to be slaughtered. Pretty hard to be upbeat in those circumstances.
>>>He couldn't attack the Federal Right,
>>>couldn't attack the left, couldn't move around the Federals, felt he couldn't
>>>retreat, had no better position to fight....the whole idea behind the
>>>Gettysburg campaign was to get the Federal army out into the open where it
>>>could be defeated. Instead, the Confederates managed to get the Federals in a
>>>perfect natural defensive position, where they couldn't be defeated.

There are always options in a battle. Lee may have felt that he could not have have moved around the federals - he'd done it before in some pretty unlikely circumstances - but a strategic retreat is always better than a loss of the magnitude the ANV suffered at Gettysburg.

DVB.

From: cappz@crosslink.net (Jeffrey Zirkle)

>>Of Pickett's Charge Jeffrey Zirkle writes:
>> The fact is they did break through. The needed reinforcements strayed to
>> the left because of battle smoke.
> >A hundred and fifty men across a stone wall does not constitute a
>breakthrough. Those "needed reinforcements" - two brigades under Wilcox
>- were badly used in the assault and would have been no match for the
>13,000 reserves - more than three brigades - Meade had positioned behind
>Cemetery Ridge. A deeper penetration into the Union position would have
>resulted only in more Confederates captured or killed.
> David Wieck

David,
Where were all of those 13,000 reserve forces when the charge was repulsed.

Jeff Z

From: dcl4628@ritvax.isc.rit.edu (Daniel Lane)
>>>> Longstreet in effect pouted,
>>>>and did not prepare his generals sufficiently for the fighting that they
>>>>would encounter. His generals could see the doubt in Longstreet's eyes,
>>>>and this made the plan even less plausible to them.

>Longstreet knew the Lee's plan was fatal and that he was sending men to be
>slaughtered. Pretty hard to be upbeat in those circumstances.

Don I believe that any general in that situation would be have a hard time sending his men into such a slaughter. The difference between a good general and bad one is that the good general would find every way possible to limit the number of casualties and to achieve the objective. Longstreet was irritated that Lee would not heed his warnings and he did not prepare his men for the fighting. The attacks were all uncoordinated and and unsupported. The men fought to achieve a certain goal with no chance of retaining it because there was no support on the other end, due to bad, shallow planning.

Sure, Longstreet knew what he had to do. Longstreet also knew what was going to happen to his men. But he did not play the part of the strong leader to see that his men won the day. If you were a infantryman, and saw your commanding officer shaking his head, doubting the success a pending attack, how confident would you be that the attack that you were about to make and the life that you were about to risk wouldn't be in vain?

Dan

From: ajackson@oyez.law.upenn.edu (Anita Jackson-Wieck)
> David,
> Where were all of those 13,000 reserve forces when the charge was repulsed.
> Jeff Z

In reserve. They were never called upon. From Coddington, P531: "By means of prior arrangements and good management he (Meade) thus quickly concentrated almost 13,000 infantrymen from four different corps and every part of his battle line, ready to relieve Hancock's men should the pressure become too great for them, or to pounce on columns should they break through."

David Wieck

From: SteveH7645@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-28 13:35:09 EST, you write:
> Had the breakthrough surged with the additional momentum the reinforcements
>would have produced it is very possible the Northern Army center would have
>collapsed. Routed soldiers do not stop to ask about numbers or casualty
>statistics they run for safety. The rest of the ANV was in position to
>press the flanks had such a collapse have ocurred. I have to agree with you
>the topography and the distance involved would have made it a long shot.

Quite right. But, Jeff, tell me, once Lee saw the breakthrough (and there WAS a breakthrough), how did he expect the rest of the army to make it to the mile between Seminary and Cemetary Hill to exploit the breakthrough? Can you name ANY troops which were formed up and ready to go to Pickett's assitance if he had broken through? The way the rest of the army was formed, it would have taken an hour to get help to Pickett. By definition, the supports have to be within supporting distance. No one was within supporting distance of Picket.

Face it. Picket was sent out to hang. If he HAD secured a successful breakthough, he would have had to hold on alone against the rest of the Federal Army, while Lee and his lieutenants frantically tried to get him some help.

Lee's attack on the Third Day was one of the most mis-managed attacks during the war, ranking up there with Fredericksburg and Cold Harbor for futility.

Steve Haas
Rockford, IL

From: SteveH7645@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-28 13:30:06 EST, you write:
>I don't think Lee was ever out generaled, not by much atleast, he was a
>born leader and shouldn't be recieving the critisim about his actions at
>GB. It wasn't all his fault, and his men believed they could do it
>because Lee thought of the plan.

Oh, good. Another 'Lee was GOD' message.'

Lee was quite human, quite capable of making a mistake. He was not a great tactical commander, and he knew it. He lost at Gettysburg. By definition, he was outgeneraled. The opposing general came up with a better battle plan than Lee. That is the definition of being out-generaled, as I can see.

After Gettysburg, he submitted his resignation to Jeff Davis. He knew he had made a mistake, and was willing to take the heat for it.

Steve Haas
Rockford, IL

From: DPowell334@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-28 13:35:09 EST, you write:
>The fact is they did break through. The needed reinforcements strayed to
>the left because of battle smoke. Believe me the rest of the ANV was well
>played out, and it was there turn to await the outcome of this charge. Had
>the breakthrough surged with the additional momentum the reinforcements
>would have produced it is very possible the Northern Army center would have
>collapsed. Routed soldiers do not stop to ask about numbers or casualty
>statistics they run for safety. The rest of the ANV was in position to
>press the flanks had such a collapse have ocurred. I have to agree with you
>the topography and the distance involved would have made it a long shot.

The fact is, they didn't break thru, nor were they ever close to. the reached the front line of the Union position. Union reserves and strong defense utterly defeated the attack.

Dave Powell

From: DPowell334@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-28 15:45:07 EST, you write:
>First, what was it that Meade did that demonstrated such superior military
>tactics?

A classic use of reserves and interior lines, for starters. It is generally ackowledged that commitment of reserves is the overall commander's primary means of influencing an action - commit them correctly, you will win. Meade did an outstanding job here.

Dave Powell

From: Susan & Eric Wittenberg

At 08:26 PM 1/28/96 -0500, you wrote:
>In a message dated 96-01-28 15:45:07 EST, you write:

>>First, what was it that Meade did that demonstrated such superior military
>>tactics?

>A classic use of reserves and interior lines, for starters. It is generally
>ackowledged that commitment of reserves is the overall commander's primary
>means of influencing an action - commit them correctly, you will win. Meade
>did an outstanding job here.

>Dave Powell

To add to Dave's point, Meade also had highly competent subordinates (except for Sickles, and this was obvious) who did an excellent job of micromanaging the battle for him. His corps commanders did a far better job for him than did Lee's. Hancock, for example, was magnificant throughout all three days.

Eric Wittenberg

From: DPowell334@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-28 20:08:04 EST, Mike VanHuss wrote:
> Pickett was never intended to go in unsupported.
>According to Taylor, Hood or Mclaws were to have followed or supported
>Pickett, and Pettigrew and Anderson were to advance. This according to
>Taylor was the design of Lee. Obviously it did not happen this way.

Alas, this is a good example of the problems the post-war recriminations have generated. Taylor only made these claims much later, after the Longstreet-Early feud had exploded full-bore. In fact, more contemporary orders show quite clearly that Hood and McLaws were assigned a defensive role, with no intention to attack - that's why Longstreet was assigned Heth and Pender's divisions. Taylor knew this, almost certainly, but allowed the fury of the later confrontations distort reality.

Unfortunately, no such supports were ever designated - or apparently even seriously contemplated - for the main body.

This is one of the oldest myths of the charge, and has been refuted by a number of good historians.

Dave Powell

From: Susan & Eric Wittenberg

At , you wrote:
> I have to agree with Norman. Cashtown and Fairfield being excellent defensive
>positions. If Longstreet was let loose, the invasion would have still ended in
>defeat. The AOP would wait out the ANV and Lincoln could assemble an army in >a very short time. Leaving Lee with two options, follow that untrained army or
>destroy the AOP. Remember General Beauregard was defending Richmond with >25000 men.(Still don't know why Davis would even let Beauregard around >Richmond. Considering the two hated each others guts.)

> Please reply,
> Paul(Douglas)Macomber

Having just written an article on the Battle of Fairfield, having figured out where BUford's skirmish with Heth's guys occurred on June 30, and having spent some time in the area around Fairfield, I disagree that it would have been a good defensive position for Lee. The area is flat, with a narrow valley. The mountain gap is narrow. This area was filled with high stone walls and stout wooden fences. In short, it was not a good place to try to shake out columns of infantry into lines of battle. I simply don't think it was a good place for large scale cavalry operations. The truth is, as Maj. Samuel Starr of the 6th U.S. found out, this area wasn't even especially good for mounted operations. Too narrow, too much bad terrain.

Eric Wittenberg

From: DPowell334@aol.com

In a message dated 96-01-30 09:50:36 EST, Mike VanHuss wrote:
>Dave,
>Taylor only made these claims much later, after the Longstreet-Early feud
>had exploded full-bore. In fact, more contemporary orders show quite clearly
>that Hood and McLaws were assigned a defensive role, with no intention to
>attack that's why Longstreet was assigned Heth and Pender's divisions.
>Taylor knew this, almost certainly, but allowed the fury of the later
>confrontations distort reality.

>Just when you think you have all the answers you find out you really don't
>know squat.

Thanks for the correction. Mike, If it's any consolation, I've been in those shoes many times.:)

Dave Powell

From: ENordfors@aol.com

Greetings Bill...

Yes I agree with all corrections to my post on LRT....

I will make certain to type slower and think harder....lesson well learned ....perhaps the biggest lesson learned was that indeed one will never know the impact of an alternative action unless it happens...in most any situation!

I do have one area that I have always found hard to envision....was LRT a tactical anchor? My impression was that it seemed like it would be most easily cleaved away and beat back if that would be how it would be played out...but indeed you are right we will never know the impact on decisions made and actions followed...makes one think doesn't it!! Actually I have been sitting here for 20 minutes thinking of several scenarios and the ramifications to such possibilities....Boy one could go crazy trying to alter the past on paper (keyboard )

Thank you very much...
All the Best for a Safe and Healthy New Year..
Ed....