Newbie to this forum--couple of questions re Battle of Gettysburg

TheKinkster

Banned
Have had a timeline with a POD around Gettysburg rolling around in my head for a while. Not going to give away the whole show, but this would be my first leap into pre-1900 and I have a question I'd appreciate a bit of help with--I've tried to do some research and I can't find the answer to this particular one.

Did Lee have any actions available to him, on the third day at Gettysburg, that were logical alternatives WITH THE FORCES HE HAD AT HAND (no Jeb's cavalry returns early, no magical squadron of A-10's, etc.) Was Pickett's charge the only logical thing he had left to do?
 
Does "Make a fighting retreat that gives up on the battle but preserves more of his army" count?
EDIT: I am aware that this is kind of out of character for Lee, but the post asked for what options he had, not whether he would have taken them.
 

TheKinkster

Banned
Absolutely counts. I'm NOT looking to set up for a CS-wank here (or for a US-wank for that matter)...just looking to see what his alternatives were.
 
I once took a guided tour of Gettysburg and one of the things our tour guide mentioned was that the Confederate artillery was firing over and behind the Union lines. If they had lowered their trajectory, they could have possibly smashed and broken the fence that blocked the Confederate advance. The Confederates had to climb over that fence and were picked off by Union riflemen. They also attempted to shake the fence in different places to try to take it down, this slowed down the advance across the fields and killed or wounded many men who could have made it to the Union lines. Taking out parts of that fence may have made Pickett's Charge a bit more......interesting. Good luck in your writing, Joho:)
 

67th Tigers

Banned
The fence was gone, Anderson's division removed it the day before. What was left was used as firewood by the Union forces.

"Pickett's charge" was a direct repeat of the 2nd July attacks. It was prettymuch the only thing to do and it was not stupid by any means. However it was badly executed.

Lee had other options, but going around the flanks was not one of them.
 
The fence was gone, Anderson's division removed it the day before. What was left was used as firewood by the Union forces.

"Pickett's charge" was a direct repeat of the 2nd July attacks. It was prettymuch the only thing to do and it was not stupid by any means. However it was badly executed.

Lee had other options, but going around the flanks was not one of them.

It was an extremely stupid decision, given that it involved a direct frontal attack of the sort that Lee needed overwhelming numbers to succeed in, and as it turned out it completely wrecked Pickett's division. Lee's emphasis on continual attacks of this sort is *why* he absorbed a full quarter of Confederate manpower to make up for his losses.

His attacks on the flanks on the second day on the Union right and Union left both were repulsed with high losses, Meade predicted that he would strike exactly at the Union center and had full forces to meet it. It was a completely indefensibly stupid decision of the sort that only a Robert E. Lee or Irwin Rommel would get away with. If Grant had made Pickett's Charge it would be seen as Cold Harbor, Lee makes it and it's "brilliance."
 
what about if the union cavalry doesnt keep stuart from hitting the union rear at the same time as pickett hits the front?
 
The fence was gone, Anderson's division removed it the day before. What was left was used as firewood by the Union forces.

I'd be interested in seeing your source. Especially since you have a track record of misreading sources.

"Pickett's charge" was a direct repeat of the 2nd July attacks. It was prettymuch the only thing to do and it was not stupid by any means. However it was badly executed.

Any plan your opponent can predict the day before is not a good plan.

Longstreet thought the Charge was a mistake before it began. Union troops realized it was a blunder and started chanting "Fredericksburg". Lee apologized to the troops for asking them to do the impossible and sent in his resignation. Porter Alexander thought Lee mishandled the whole battle.

Care to explain why you think those men who were actually there were wrong about the charge?

Lee had other options, but going around the flanks was not one of them.

So which is true - "Lee had other options" or the Charge was "prettymuch the only thing to do"?
 
So which is true - "Lee had other options" or the Charge was "prettymuch the only thing to do"?

My guess is this is how 67th Tigers can blame Sherman for exaggerating the number of Confederate forces but never consider McClellan might possibly have done the same thing. Never underrate the skill of the sufficiently convinced ideologue to delude him- or herself against inconvenient truth.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
It was an extremely stupid decision, given that it involved a direct frontal attack of the sort that Lee needed overwhelming numbers to succeed in, and as it turned out it completely wrecked Pickett's division. Lee's emphasis on continual attacks of this sort is *why* he absorbed a full quarter of Confederate manpower to make up for his losses.

However, he had the numbers in the centre. Longstreet took in ca. 15,000 against somewhere in the region of 5,000. We have to look elsewhere for the reasons the attack failed, and it certainly could have succeeded under slightly different circumstances. The attempt to portray it as a doomed endeavour is overcompensation against the "Lee as God of War" attitude some Americans have.

I've never understood this notion of Lee being obsessed by the attack. I've main heard it from Bonekemper and those parrotting him. I just doesn't ring true.

His attacks on the flanks on the second day on the Union right and Union left both were repulsed with high losses, Meade predicted that he would strike exactly at the Union center and had full forces to meet it. It was a completely indefensibly stupid decision of the sort that only a Robert E. Lee or Irwin Rommel would get away with. If Grant had made Pickett's Charge it would be seen as Cold Harbor, Lee makes it and it's "brilliance."

? This is a strawman. No-one is arguing brilliance.
 
However, he had the numbers in the centre. Longstreet took in ca. 15,000 against somewhere in the region of 5,000. We have to look elsewhere for the reasons the attack failed, and it certainly could have succeeded under slightly different circumstances.

Provided an asteroid of sufficiently small size wiped out Meade's army and killed all its officers and men, is what I presume you mean. Lee was drawn into a meeting engagement and attacked without any real knowledge of the number of men he faced or with the terrain. His whole campaign was based on Victory Disease and this is why the battle focuses on how Lee lost as opposed to how Meade won. Sure, the margin was narrow but then so was the Battle of Kursk.

The attempt to portray it as a doomed endeavour is overcompensation against the "Lee as God of War" attitude some Americans have.

No, it's based from a sober, realistic military analysis. On the first day Lee did drive back a few Union forces which drew him into a general engagement which it surprising him argues whether or not Lee was sane during the start of and progression of the battle. He attacked the Union left and right at separate times during the second day, was bloodily repulsed both times and was primarily chewing up his army, leaving his only large-scale forces left which in his infinite wisdom he threw into a frontal assault over open terrain and into a great deal of artillery firepower. Artillery decided only a few battles in the war and that was an arm favoring the Union, never the Confederacy.

I've never understood this notion of Lee being obsessed by the attack. I've main heard it from Bonekemper and those parrotting him. I just doesn't ring true.

No doubt why Sherman was bad for overestimating enemy numbers but McClellan was not. Yet if McClellan faced 600,000 Confederates then surely Sherman must have faced 200,000,000, right? This is hyperbole, it's a figure of speech. Lee was obsessed with the attack because on the first day he gave full approval to the general engagement he had explicitly ordered against. On the second day he tried a flanking attack on the right and a direct attack on the left, both of which were against forces he had no idea of the number of, against terrain that favored the defender and not the attacker, with him having his smallest margin of numerical inferiority in the entire war. On the third day, his attacks having failed twice he decides on insanity and repeats a third time what failed to work the previous two.

If that's not favoring the attack I'd shudder to see what you think *is*. Perhaps Hood in Tennessee? Or was that not favoring attacks either?

? This is a strawman. No-one is arguing brilliance.

Plenty of people do argue Lee handled all his battles brilliantly, even Antietam and Gettysburg which are signs that he was a bit more Luigi Cadorna than he was Napoleon. You also I might note say that Lee simultaneously had other options but that the charge was his only option. Which position do you actually hold or is this an instance of doublethink to ensure that Lee is always the heroic general and the Army of the Potomac composed of inferior apes he was prevented from overrunning by sheer numbers?
 
The fence was gone, Anderson's division removed it the day before. What was left was used as firewood by the Union forces.

What, pray tell, did Anderson's Division do with the nearly 3/4 of a mile of wooden posts? Make a Lincoln Log House out of it? The tour guide that informed our tour group was an extremely knowledgeable man who was in his late 70's in the 1980's when I went on the tour. This gentleman was a scholar of not just the Civil War, but Gettysburg in particular. He had been one of those scholars who worked along and with President Eisenhower when President Eisenhower lived there after leaving the White House. President Eisenhower was a Gettysburg "Specialist" himself. I tend to believe what that gentleman told us about the fence being an obstacle to the Virginians and North Carolinians.
 
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What, pray tell, did Anderson's Division do with the nearly 3/4 of a mile of wooden posts? Make a Lincoln Log House out of it? The tour guide that informed our tour group was an extremely knowledgeable man who was in his late 70's in the 1980's when I went on the tour. This gentleman was a scholar of not just the Civil War in general, but in the battle of Gettysburg in particular. He had been one of those scholars who worked along and with President Eisenhower when President Eisenhower lived there after leaving the White House. President Eisenhower was a Gettysburg "Specialist" himself. I tend to believe what that gentleman told us about the fence being an obstacle to the Virginians and North Carolinians.
I do not know where you got your information from, could you please let me know where you found out that the fence had been taken down. Joho;)
 

67th Tigers

Banned
The remains of the fence in question (after two days of battle during which the Federals smashed up large portions on the 1st to allow 1st and 11th Corps to cross*, Anderson etc. did the same on the second, and the Federals used the fences as firewood) was pulled down by the skirmishers and pioneers of the Confederate attackers ahead of the attacking column:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...m=6&sqi=2&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

This is the basics. Americans (on either side) were very gened up on combat engineering. It was the most powerful doctrinal branch in the pre-war army. The pioneers "cleared the way" for movements. The problem is the fence was rebuilt and stands now and when they filmed Gettysburg they couldn't pull it down (although they removed one section to allow Garnett's horse to get through, although a lot more officers than just him went in mounted).

Part of the confusion arises from the changing language. The "stone wall" that formed the Union defensive line was in the contemporary language a "stone fence" or even a "fence". This change in language is lost.

*One of 11th Corps pioneer companies even gave an account of it: http://www.civilwarinteractive.com/Article11thCorpsatGB.htm
 
By the third day, Lee was screwed. He lost it, ultimately, at the end of the first day. There were some forces (elements of Ewell's corps?) on Culp's Hill. Had they been reinforced (& there was a full corps close & another coming) immediately at the end of Day One, they'd have enfilated Cemetery Ridge, making the Federal position for Day Two impossible. As a result, the Federals would never have established themselves, & the whole complection of the battle changes. Does this lead to a worse Confederate defeat? Maybe. There's a whole thread devoted to an alt-Gettysburg, too, if you search for it...
 
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