More Thoughts on the Depletion of Meade’s Army After Gettysburg

The other day, I posted about how the New York draft riots drew thousands of troops away from the Army of the Potomac, thereby depleting the strength of the army. Over the course of a few weeks, the Fifth Corps division of U. S. Army Regulars, an entire brigade of Vermonters, and nine other regiments were sent to New York to keep the peace. The Vermonters and the Regulars were some of the best and most battle-tried troops in the army, and they would be difficult to replace.

The army of the Potomac suffered about 25% casualties during the battle of Gettysburg, or about 23,000 men killed, wounded, and captured. There were another 1,000 or so casualties in the fighting during the retreat from Gettysburg. Obviously, these immense losses limited Meade’s options and his choices.

As I continued to work on the epilogue to the retreat manuscript, I had another realization. In addition to the battle casualties and the detachments to deal with the New York draft riots, nine veteran regiments–two year and nine months regiments–reached the expirations of their terms of service and left the army to muster out and go home. Between the detachments to New York and the men leaving to go home, Meade lost about 15,000 veteran troops at a time when he needed every available musket in order to bring Lee’s wounded army to bay.

Thus, by the end of July, there were 40,000 less veteran soldiers in the Army of the Potomac than there were when the Gettysburg Campaign began. It is, therefore, no great surprise that Meade was particularly cautious in making his decisions about when and how to attack Lee’s army.