I Don’t Understand This, and Never Have….

The fascination with Pickett’s Charge is a cultural phenomena, not a military one. While the eggheads may argue about the Western Theater or Antietam being the “turning points” of the war, we can see Lee won all the battles before Gettysburg, loses Gettysburg by making a classic(in the Greek sense) blunder, then he loses or at least stops winning all the rest of the battles.

It’s all there, the hubris, the gallantry, the high water mark at the clump of trees, the touching vignettes(“General Lee, I have no division.”) That’s the fascination. It’s like asking why all the fuss about the Titanic? The big canoe wasn’t a feat of navigation or engineering either, but we’ve got a bunch of movies about it.

Really, Eric, what a question.

‘Fess up, Eric. You just don’t like it because it wasn’t a cavalry charge.

Jim Morgan

Eric I look at that event similar to the disastrous charge (for the North) here in Fredericksburg… I think that we sometimes look at those two attacks and are dumbfounded by the guts that it took to do them. NOT saying other attackes were not worthy, but these two were doomed from the start. Looking back at both of these events, I cannot fathom what these men experienced and how they managed to do what they did. Imagine standing on the edge of town here in F’burg – or the tree line in G’burg – and some guy points off in the distance and says we are going there… and then DOING IT. Suicide missions stand out. They are magnificent and horrifying all at the same time.

The dirty dozen is awesome.

Eric,

Like you, I too am amazed with the fascination of the “perceived” Pickett’s Charge. However, the “High Water Mark of the Rebellion” that historians have handed down to us barely resembles what actually happened on July 3, 1863. Pickett’s Virginians storming the Angle is merely a gallant image that justified the Lost Cause.

Unlike you, I don’t find “Longstreet’s famous assault” “tactically boring,” “gallactically stupid,” or a forlorn hope. Tactically, Lee’s intended plan of attack was brilliant and even worked later at the Wilderness. As learned, “Pickett’s Charge” is a direct frontal assault on the Army of the Potomac’s Second Corps with thousands of Confederates mindlessly marching to their doom. In reality, Lee had designed an obliquely moving attack along a much broader front that would have hammered the Second Corps, taken the Eleventh Corps in flank, and negated Meade’s out of place reinforcements. As intended, Lee’s assault would have stretched from Standard’s brigade far south of the copse of trees to Smith’s brigade at the intersection of the Emmitsburg and Taneytown Roads.

Lee thoroughly knew his opponents and hoped to exploit their weaknesses. Battle after battle he had witnessed the Army of the Potomac gloriously march forward. Similarly, he knew the location of each enemy corps on the battlefield and the assault would unravel his enemy’s weakest.

Lee envisioned:

The front line of Pickett’s division erratically maneuvering first north then east then north then east, etc. with Anderson’s brigades closely covering its right flank

Pettigrew’s division closing on and catching Pickett’s left to give Hancock the impression that the assault was concentrating on his center

Then Pettigrew’s line attacking obliquely to the northeast, creating an ever-widening breach, north from the Angle

The entire second line (Trimble’s two brigades and Pickett’s second line) marching obliquely to the left from the onset to add punch to Pettigrew’s push and extending the attack’s front to Cemetery Hill

Finally, Rodes’ division charging directly forward and smashing Smith’s brigade before landing on the flank and rear of the twice shy Eleventh Corps

With Lee’s assault continuously shifting farther north and the initial belief that the copse of trees was the point of attack, Meade’s reinforcements would be distracted and delayed. Without the terrain, the disjointed flanking maneuvers, and subsequent countering tactics, Lee’s ill-conceived attack quite possibly might have unhinged Meade’s defenses from atop Cemetery Hill.

For 144 years our collective interest in “Pickett’s (portion of the) Charge” has obscured the true grandeur of “Longstreet’s famous assault.” Lee’s deceptive tactics continue to befuddle and our historians haven’t told us the whole story. It’s all there; yet, most of us aren’t probing our popular memory, just blindly accepting its history. We are well studied on less than a third of Lee’s battle plan; we need to shift our focus farther north. There is where our fascination should lie.

Private John H. Jack, 8th Ohio, was a member of the brigade band and served with the regiment’s ambulances. During “Pickett’s Charge,” he stood on the Taneytown Road near the current Visitors Center. On July 6, he wrote:

“This artillery duel was immediately followed by an advance of the enemy’s infantry, which swarmed out of the woods in such hosts as to make one wonder where they all came from. They advanced at a rapid pace and in true American style, their lines being almost perfect and three in number, but changing as they came, making a masterly display of military manoeuvre [sic]. Finally they close their columns by division and directed their march upon the batteries, directly to the left of the 8th Regiment.”

Woodruff and Arnold’s Batteries were “directly” to the Buckeyes’ left – not Cushing and Brown’s.