Pickett's Charge

A New Look at Gettysburg's Final Attack

Phillip Thomas Tucker

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781634508025
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Amerikanische Bürgerkriegsgeschichte

Main Selection of the History Book ClubThe Battle of Gettysburg, the Civil War's turning point, produced over 57, 000 casualties, the largest number from the entire war that was itself America's bloodiest conflict. On the third day of fierce fighting, Robert E. Lee's attempt to invade the North came to a head in Pickett's Charge. The infantry assault, consisting of nine brigades of soldiers in a line that stretched for over a mile, resulted in casualties of over 50 percent for the Confederates and a huge psychological blow to Southern morale. Pickett's Charge is a detailed analysis of one of the most iconic and defining events in American history. This book presents a much-needed fresh look, including the unvarnished truths and ugly realities, about the unforgettable story. With the luxury of hindsight, historians have long denounced the folly of Lee's attack, but this work reveals the tactical brilliance of a master plan that went awry. Special emphasis is placed on the common soldiers on both sides, especially the non-Virginia attackers outside of Pickett's Virginia Division. These fighters' moments of cowardice, failure, and triumph are explored using their own words from primary and unpublished sources. Without romance and glorification, the complexities and contradictions of the dramatic story of Pickett's Charge have been revealed in full to reveal this most pivotal moment in the nation's life.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Chapter I

Genesis of Pickett’s Charge: Evolution of a Brilliant Tactical Plan

When the summer sun broke over South Mountain at 4:50 a.m. on July 3, 1863, it illuminated the carnage of the killing fields around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

By the third summer of America’s most murderous war, it was abundantly clear that the Confederacy was slowly dying. Consequently, after the first two days of combat at Gettysburg, General Robert Edward Lee’s battle plan for the afternoon of July 3 was based upon a host of urgent political, military, and economic requirements. Because the manpower-short South was trapped in a fatal war of attrition that guaranteed decisive defeat, Lee was determined to rearrange this cruel equation to end the Confederacy’s death spiral by delivering a decisive knockout blow upon the Army of the Potomac in Adams County, Pennsylvania.1 Lee felt confident of victory because his troops had reaped “partial successes” during their attacks on July 2 that he was determined to fully exploit on the third day.2

With everything now at stake, Lee needed a winning tactical plan that maximized his limited available resources to deliver a powerful blow. The tantalizing concept of achieving the perfect victory was the long-sought, but rarely achieved, ambition of military commanders from time immemorial. As long taught in military schools, only one battle was defined as tactically perfect: the Battle of Cannae on the Italian Peninsula on August 2, 216 BC, that resulted in Carthage’s greatest victory over Rome. Since that time, no commander had matched Hannibal’s tactical brilliance in vanquishing sixteen Roman legions during the greatest battle of ancient times. Hannibal’s innovative tactic of a double envelopment with his experienced multiethnic army was a masterpiece.

A careful student of history, Lee knew that Hannibal had utilized all of his troops in an innovative way at Cannae. With the Romans pressured in front by Carthaginian (or Punic) infantry of north Africa in the center and cavalry attacking both flanks, the turning point of this decisive battle resulted when Hannibal’s Numidian (north Africa) cavalry, as well as Spanish and Gallic horsemen, rode around the Roman flank and attacked in the center of their rear. Hannibal delivered his masterstroke to inflict the greatest defeat ever suffered by the Roman Republic, annihilating an army of about 75,000 men. Lee hoped to achieve his own Cannae at Gettysburg on July 3 to win it all.3

Of course, few of the Army of Northern Virginia’s common soldiers knew anything about the victory at Cannae, Italy, so long ago. Young Lieutenant George Williamson Finley, Company K, 56th Virginia Infantry, Major General George Edward Pickett’s division, Lieutenant General James Longstreet’s 1st Corps, described the situation on Gettysburg’s third day in fundamental tactical terms: “[W]ith food running low and ammunition running low, General Lee [now] decided to risk it all on one throw of the dice. He had tried the Union right, and he hadn’t broken it. He had tried the Union left, and he hadn’t broken it, so he reasoned that the only place left to strike was the Union [right] center.”4

Thanks to the benefit of hindsight, generations of armchair historians have widely denounced Lee’s final decision to launch a massive assault against General George Gordon Meade’s right-center on Cemetery Ridge. However, for the most part, these modern historians had merely projected the folly of the Army of the Potomac’s assault on Fredericksburg’s Marye’s Heights and Lee’s attacks on Malvern Hill onto Pickett’s Charge with a generalized, broad brushstroke. These two 1862 attacks were doomed because of tactical breakdowns, especially the lack of coordination, rather than the assumed inherent folly of the tactical offensive. Nevertheless, an enduring myth has been created by historians: the unchallenged axiom that the tactical defensive always decisively prevailed regardless of the tactical situation. This exaggeration of the superiority of the tactical defensive has fostered the myth of the alleged folly of Pickett’s Charge.

But in fact, the true situation as presented to Lee on July 3 was the very antithesis of this alleged folly. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Lee’s planned assault was in fact the best tactical recipe for achieving a decisive success calculated to reverse the war’s course with one blow. An officer who served under Napoleon Bonaparte described the Corsican’s secret of success: “The emperor’s favourite tactic of attacking the enemy in the centre, splitting it in two and paralysing both flanks.”5

Lee knew that a “proper concert of action” had denied him success on bloody Thursday, July 2.6 From his vantage point of Seminary Ridge’s crest and with the trained eye of a West Point–trained engineer whose tactical brilliance and reconnaissance skills were legendary in two wars, Lee searched for an Achilles’ heel in Meade’s Cemetery Ridge line with a trained eye. He was convinced that a weak point, even along the high-ground, could be taken by storm if a larger and more coordinated offensive effort was launched. Lee had originally planned to exploit previous tactical gains by hitting both Union flanks simultaneously. Lee and Lieutenant General Richard Stoddert Ewell, commanding the 2nd Corps, had decided that Culp’s Hill, just southeast of Gettysburg and the anchor of the northeastern corner of Meade’s line, and its stubborn defenders, could be overwhelmed on the morning of July 3. Likewise, with his units already in frontline positions on the right, Longstreet was ordered to continue his assault on Meade’s left (with John Bell Hood’s division) and left-center (with General Lafayette McLaws’s division) as on July 2, while Pickett’s division played only a supporting role. Therefore, the initial battle plan for July 3 was unchanged, with Ewell and Longstreet ordered to attack simultaneously on the early morning of the third day.

However, Lee’s original plan on the north was spoiled early on July 3, when Union troops launched an early morning counterattack along Ewell’s front at Culp’s Hill. Ewell was now tactically thwarted. But the escalating gunfire echoing over heavily timbered Culp’s Hill correctly convinced the tactically flexible Lee that Meade’s right flank, and certainly his left flank as well, was now certainly stronger than he originally thought. The astute Lee was convinced that Meade had considerably strengthened his flanks at his center’s expense. Indeed, Meade had rushed thousands of troops to face Longstreet’s hard-hitting echelon assaults and strengthened his battered position on the far south on July 2, including with the 6th Corps now occupying a reserve position on his left. Meade’s right and left flanks, situated on high ground and reinforced, were now impregnable.

Therefore, Lee was now forced to compensate because his original plan of attack on Meade’s right flank at Culp’s Hill had been spoiled early and Pickett’s division was still not up to playing a support role for Longstreet’s morning attack. Longstreet was not able to unleash an attack on that morning as ordered, because of Pickett’s absence. Lee, therefore, had been forced to create a new battle plan. Hoping to overcome the twin setbacks of Ewell’s failure to achieve gains and Pickett’s belatedness, Lee became more tactically innovative out of urgent necessity. After carefully surveying Cemetery Ridge’s lengthy expanse, he finally discovered a glaring tactical weakness in Meade’s position. He was now determined to break Meade’s right-center with a concentrated blow at a weak point along an overextended line. Indeed, Meade’s right-center was now even more vulnerable than ever before with reinforcements having bolstered the Union line’s northern and southern ends. If his attacking units would only act in “proper concert of action”—as at Chancellorsville in May 1863 and unlike on July 2, when dramatic Confederate breakthroughs were not supported by reinforcements—then Lee was convinced that decisive victory could be won.7

As emphasized by Lee, if Pickett’s division was fully available early on July 3, “I will strike them between the eyes [as] I have tonight [July 2] been reinforced by Pickett’s division, the flower of my army [and the only division yet to see combat at Gettysburg], and by [Jeb] Stuart’s cavalry.”8 Indeed, Pickett’s three brigades of Virginia troops were “the freshest, strongest, and most eager” troops available.9 Even more, the three brigade commanders of Pickett’s division (consisting of around 5,830 infantrymen and more than 400 Virginia artillerymen of the attached “long arm” battalion) were experienced and capable.10

More confident with Pickett’s and James Ewell Brown (Jeb) Stuart’s dual availability for the first time at Gettysburg, Lee now possessed his best tactical opportunity to achieve a decisive result. Lee was encouraged by the previous day’s success of General Ambrose Ransom Wright’s Georgia brigade, although unsupported, in attacking so near Cemetery Ridge’s crest on the right-center. Therefore, a decisive success seemed most probable at this same point if a far larger number of troops struck this weak spot on the battered right-center. The tactical opinion of General Wright, whose Georgians had allegedly penetrated Meade’s right-center (which Lee had watched through his binoculars), now coincided with Lee’s newly formed tactical view: “It is not as hard to get there as it looks.”11

Enduring Myths

Certainly the greatest myth about Gettysburg was that what Lee launched was nothing more than a doomed offensive effort. In hindsight, the basis of this myth has been founded on the concept that Cemetery Ridge and the defenders were simply too strong (by nature and numbers of infantry defenders and artillery) to be overwhelmed. In later years, to explain their dismal failure, Confederate veterans described Meade’s right-center as far more formidable than was actually the case. In contrast to the myth of impregnability, Meade’s stretched-thin right-center was much weaker and more vulnerable than has been generally recognized by historians.

However, the invincibility (a postwar creation that transformed Cemetery Ridge in the popular imagination into another impregnable Marye’s Heights) of Meade’s right-center has become a common assumption. But ample evidence of nineteenth-century warfare on both sides of the Atlantic revealed how massive frontal assaults were often successful against high-ground positions defended by veterans with modern weaponry. As Lee fully understood, decisive victory could only be won by offensive tactics because any “collapse at all was likely to be total and disastrous.”12

Smashing through Meade’s right-center meant that “Uncl. Sam would recognize his nephew and give us peace.”13 One of Longstreet’s men penned to his wife that “I think we will end the war [with] this campaign [and] I hope I will be able to write to my dear from Baltimore or Philadelphia [and] I would pray to God that this war would end soon [or] both nations [will be] ruined forever.”14 In the words of a 71st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, now defending Cemetery Ridge: “A sort of fatality had [descended and we] must depend Only on [our]selves for fighting out an honorable peace.”15 Quite simply, the South’s peace could only come with decisive victory on July 3.

Most of all, Lee knew that time was not on his side. President Abraham Lincoln was gearing up for total war on a scale never before, in American history, to totally eliminate the Confederacy. On June 15, 1863, Lincoln issued a call for another 100,000 troops. As he fully realized, Lee now needed to secure a decisive victory on July 3 before another 50,000 men for federal service from Pennsylvania, 30,000 troops from Ohio, 10,000 soldiers from Maryland, and another 10,000 men from West Virginia (which broke away from Virginia in 1862) joined the great crusade. Additionally to meet Lee’s invasion, state governors were directed by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to raise nearly fifty state militia regiments from New York and Pennsylvania, for the defense of the Pennsylvania capital of Harrisburg and other major northeastern cities.16

Gettysburg’s third day was the final showdown that had been long and eagerly awaited. General William Dorsey Pender, who fell mortally wounded at Gettysburg, had recently penned in a letter, “I wish we could meet [the Army of the Potomac in a final showdown] and have the matter settled at once.”17 But securing the North’s recognition as an independent nation now called for the Army of the Potomac’s destruction on Pennsylvania soil. Only vanquishing Meade’s army by an overpowering blow on July 3 and then marching on major northern cities, such as Philadelphia and especially Washington, DC, could now transform the great dream of conquering a peace into a reality.18 With this goal in mind, Lee was presented with a “unique opportunity” on July 3 to defeat the only slightly larger Army of the Potomac that had suffered devastating losses on the first two days: a long-sought favorable equation.19

Lee had emphasized his central objective to General Isaac Ridgeway Trimble while on the road to Gettysburg: “destroy the army” now mostly aligned on Cemetery Ridge.20 However, innovative tactics were now needed for decisive success, because of Meade’s high-ground advantage. Lee now thought much like Lincoln, who had recently ordered General Joseph Hooker (the army commander before being recently replaced by Meade): “Fight him [Lee] when opportunity offers.”21 Lee’s tactical objective was revealed in full when he pointed to Cemetery Ridge: “The enemy is there, I am going to strike him.”22 Ascertaining a shortcut to decisive victory, Lee planned to strike Meade with a powerful blow right “between the eyes.”23

However, Lee’s offensive-mindedness on July 3 has been viewed by modern historians as emotion driven and entirely reckless without careful tactical calculation—the epitome of tactical folly, if not stupidity, which had become one of the great myths of the Civil War. But Lee’s men knew better, because their commander’s tactical astuteness and aggressiveness had led to so many past victories. One of General John Bell Hood’s soldiers concluded that Lee “was in temperament a gamecock [known for] his pugnacity.”24 John Singleton ...