Compelling Analysis of Gettysburg Campaign By Renowned Historian

Army, Sep 2003 by Kingseed, Cole C

Compelling Analysis of Gettysburg Campaign By Renowned Historian Gettysburg. Stephen W. Sears. Houghton Mifflin Company. 623 pages; photographs; maps; notes; index; $30.

The Battle of Gettysburg was the largest battle ever fought on the North American continent. Amid the hills of southern Pennsylvania, the Army of the Potomac under Maj. Gen. George G. Meade decisively defeated Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia during the first three days of july 1863. The Pennsylvania Campaign was Lee's second major offensive in the North and the South's last true opportunity to secure a negotiated settlement of the war.

In the latest analysis of this epic battle, renowned historian Stephen Sears has compiled the most comprehensive single volume history of the battle since Edwin Coddington's The Gettysburg Campaign.

Sears is hardly a stranger to Civil War history. In addition to his excellent biography of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, Sears has written analyses of the Peninsula, Chancellorsville and Antietam/Sharpsburg campaigns. With the possible exception of James McPherson, Sears' current study of Gettysburg marks him as the preeminent living historian of the eastern theater of the Civil War.

What make Sears' Gettysburg so captivating are the author's compelling analysis of the campaign's origins and his assessment of the generalship exercised by both Lee and Meade. Sears opines that Lee's invasion was the direct result of Lee's arrogance in thinking that he could easily conquer the Army of the Potomac on its own soil. In the span of one year the Confederate commander had conducted five major campaigns against four different commanders, emerging victorious in all except Antietam, which he could claim as a tactical, though not a strategic victory. That hubris, coupled with his desire to offset the impending loss of Vicksburg by a compensating victory in the East, led Lee to propose an immediate offensive into Pennsylvania in order to capitalize on the army's recent success at Chancellorsville.

Sears makes his most provocative arguments in assessing the performance of the Union and Confederate commanders. Of Lee's corps commanders, none performed to standard. Maj. Gen. Ambrose P. Hill and Maj. Gen. Richard Ewell failed utterly to act decisively on the first two days of the battle. Lt. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, commanding the cavalry corps, was culpable for his failure to keep his commander informed of the enemy's movements and dispositions. Surprisingly, Sears gives relatively positive marks to Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, the perennial scapegoat for the Confederate defeat. Although Longstreet vehemently argued against Lee's attack plan on july 2 and 3, there is little doubt in Sears' mind that "when Longstreet struck, he struck as hard as he always did."

The Union commanders served Meade far better than their Confederate counterparts. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, Gen. John Gibbon, engineer Gouverneur Warren, and artillerist Henry J. Hunt emerged from the battle as legitimate heroes. The performance of corps commanders Daniel Sickles, Oliver Otis Howard, Henry Slocum, and cavalryman Alfred Pleasonton, however, left much to be desired. Fortunately each possessed subordinate commanders who offset their respective chief's deficiencies. On the whole, Meade managed his corps commanders with special skill and dexterity. As Sears summarizes, for the first time in the war "the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac received the leadership they deserved."

Gettysburg of course was an unmitigated disaster for Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Not only did Gen. Meade repel the Confederate invasion, but he also stripped the operational initiative from Lee. Within weeks of the battle, the war returned to the familiar soil of Virginia. Lee's catastrophic losses, particularly among his seasoned commanders, placed the army on the defensive for the remainder of the war. For an army famed for its mobility and its striking power, the Army of Northern Virginia never recovered its command or its offensive capability. The Southern army would survive and remain a powerful threat, mostly due to Lee's adept generalship, but Gettysburg and the concurrent loss of 40,000 additional troops when Vicksburg capitulated on july 4 drained the Confederacy of the requisite manpower to vigorously pursue the war.

Why did the South lose the pivotal battle? Sears places most of the blame at the feet of the Confederate commander. Sears unabashedly states that the Pennsylvania campaign marked two major departures for Robert E. Lee. First the battle witnessed the questioning and outright opposition on the battlefield of Lee's tactics by his principal lieutenants. The second was what Lee termed "the expression of discontent in the public journals at the result of the expedition." Based on that criticism, Lee tendered his resignation on August 8,1863, but Confederate President Jefferson Davis wisely declined. The truth be told, for the first time in the war Lee was simply outgeneraled by his opponent and he utterly failed to manage effectively his subordinate commanders over the course of the three-day battle.