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And how would he have gone around to the right? Meade controlled the roads to the south; any route Lee might have taken, Meade would be able to use interior lines of march to beat Lee to the spot.

What other option did they have? Retreat to Virginia without losing another 10k casualties and have that many more men to resist when Meade tried to move into Virginia again.

Thanks. I’ll fix it.

"Chancellorsville was a fluke: Lee thought it was a pattern." Yes! Thank you! So tired of people treating Chancellorsville like it was some sort of genius move, when it was actually a wild gamble that got lucky.

Lee's decisions at Gettysburg were fairly predictable, given his previous mistakes and the way he interpreted Union mistakes. Biblical examples of the creator intervening in battle are typically more decisive and less ambiguous in origin: an earthquake that throws the enemy into panic; a stone wall crumbling inexplicably; and army being struck down by a plague in a single night; etc. Gettysburg, on the other hand, is a pretty non-miraculous chain of events leading from mistakes on the rebel side and courage and skillful generalship on the Union side.

Cool detail

Interesting question. It certainly could have helped. As it happened, Lincoln was in bad shape in the summer of '64, with the Democrats running on a peace platform. A few more rebel victories might have been enough to convince the public to vote Lincoln out of office. Personally, I think that Chickamauga was much closer to being a decisive victory for the rebels. Rosecrans was isolated and trapped at Chattanooga after Chickamauga; a defeated Union army after Gettysburg would easily find refuge, supplies, and reinforcements nearby.

Not really. It's hard to compare them, though...the scale of the armies is just so different between the Civil War and WWII.

Lincoln was in serious political trouble in the summer of '64. It might not have taken too many more rebel victories in '63 or '64 to tip the scales so that the northern public would vote Lincoln out in favor of a peace candidate.

Why did George Meade WIN the battle of Gettysburg? I asked.

@@manilajohn0182 several factors. Meade while not exactly a genius was a solid general who was not going to do anything stupid, so you basically had to beat him outright. The army of the Potomac at the time of the battle was dangerous basically like a wounded grizzly bear who had egg on their face from several bad losses, but were still basically in tact as a fighting force and their back was to the wall. And this time they were fighting on their own home soil. Whereas the Confederate Army was dangerously overconfident. Lee was also not at his best, he was not only sick during the battle but had two new corps commanders in their first battle, and even they weren't 100% as Hill was sick too. And even his two remaining experienced subordinates Longstreet and Stuart did not perform particularly well during the campaign at a time when Lee needed both to be at their best. The Gettysburg campaign all in all was not very well planned and hasty. But Grant's siege of Vicksburg plus Virginia farms having been devastated and Lee needing to get the war out of Virginia forced him to move quickly, more so than he might have done under other circumstances. So none of Lee's subordinates really came through for him. Whereas in the Union army, they had probably their best lineup of the war between most particularly Reynolds, Hancock, and Slocum. Meade was fairly well liked in the army as he had not really sought out the job, whereasHooker was generally disliked by his subordinates. So they kind of came together to help out Meade.

@@joshlight6892 There was no planning of the Confederate campaign. Lee had no topographical department and had no idea of the ground in the north. He had only an idea of the road net. The AoNV was starving in its position along the Rappahannock. Lee's operational objective was to invade the north, forage off of Union territory, and restock the army's supply train. His plan of campaign was to maneuver the AotP into attacking the AoNV and decisively defeat that attack. Lee was allowed to do this by Confederate President Davis, who authorized Lee's invasion provided that Lee would achieve a great enough success to remove pressure from the Confederate defenders at Vicksburg. Lee's subordinates didn't fail him, or perform particularly badly. The critical errors of the campaign were made not by any of them, but by Lee himself- and before the battle at Gettysburg even began.

@@manilajohn0182 disagree. I'm not absolving Lee of blame for the battle, but saying his subordinates performed well is simply not accurate. Stuart did not report for weeks effectively leaving Lee blind, (though it was partly his fault for not using the cavalry available to him I concede but to do so would have left the supply trains unguarded), Ewell did not take Cemetery or Culp's Hill (though the vagueness of Lee's order was partly to blame), and Longstreet was slow to attack July 2nd as a result the Confederates failed to take Little Round Top by a matter of minutes. A.P Hill was sick the whole battle. Not that that's his fault, but it still supports my argument none of these guys was up to par. Longstreet gets a pass for the battle just because he felt Pickett's charge was a bad idea which was true. But his subpar performance on July 2nd is part of why they were in that desperate a position in the first place to try that. Granted, it was one of very few poor performances by Longstreet in the battle, he was excellent most of the rest of the war, but not in that battle.

@@joshlight6892 Hold on. I never said that Lee's subordinates performed well. I said that they "...didn't fail him, or perform particularly badly". The Stuart fiasco was Lee's fault completely. "One force, one objective" is a military standard practiced by every army on this planet since the dawn of military history. Lee placed Stuart in an impossible situation when he gave him two objectives for one (very small) force. Stuart lacked the strength to accomplish both simultaneously or the time to accomplish first one and then the other. Moreover, Stuart sent two messengers to inform Lee that the AotP was in motion northward but neither of them got through to Lee. Lee gave Ewell what in military parlance is known as a "discretionary order". Since Lee wasn't close enough to see for himself what was taking place, he left the decision on whether to take the hill up to the "man on the spot"- Ewell. Ewell's decision not to attack was the correct one given his situation and the information which he had available. Lee instructed Ewell twice not to bring on a general engagement. As Ewell commanded a corps, this precluded Ewell from taking any action which his corps couldn't accomplish. One if his divisions wasn't on scene, the other two had been marching since dawn and had seen combat, and he had received a report of Union forces moving on his left flank. Most importantly, Ewell had no idea of the strength on either Cemetery or Culp's Hill. Ewell did what Jackson was well- known for doing; he sent a reconnaissance unit to scout Cemetery Hill while he looked to the report regarding his flank. It was almost dark by the time that he established that the report was false. When his reconnaissance unit returned shortly afterward and reported the hill was held "...by a superior force", Ewell chose not to attack. It was only after the war was over that it became clear that Ewell probably could have taken the hill. Longstreet was not slow in attacking on 2 July. Lee's orders weren't even issued until 1100. The 30- minute delay in waiting for Law's brigade was authorized by Lee and the fiasco caused by moving down the wrong road bringing his corps within sight of Little Round Top was due to a guide sent by Lee. The remainder of the delay was due to moving his forces into position and Hood's formal complaint regarding the frontal assault. Far from being a bad idea, Lee's 3 July attack was the only viable option open to him. He was late getting into Pennsyvania (he wrote Davis to this effect) because he tasked his infantry formations with foraging while getting northward in good time, which they couldn't possibly do (Lee's fault), the information he needed to maneuver the AotP into attacking him didn't arrive (Lee's fault), and the resulting unexpected meeting engagement on 1 July ruined his plan of campaign because he assumed the tactical offensive to gain it. With Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville in recent memory, the AotP was unlikely in the extreme to attack him, particularly since they had a new commanding general at the helm. The AoNV was foraing and couldn't remain in any one area for more than 3- 5 days, and it hadn't foraged since Lee's concentration order of 29 June. Lastly- up to this point, Lee had done nothing to remove pressure from the Confederate defenders at Vicksburg, which was the strategic objective of the campaign- and they Vicksburg was placed under siege before Lee's campaign even began. Longstreet's idea of a flanking maneuver wasn't viable because: 1) Lee was out of time; 2) the local road net didn't support, and; 3) such a maneuver wasn't likely to elicit a major offensive by the AotP. Lee had to either attack or abandon the campaign in failure. Pickett's Charge was not the lamentable idea envisioned by so many. It was right in line with a variant of the Napoleonic strategic battle, where flank attacks would presumably draw local Union reinforcements from the closest locale- namely the Union center, leaving it weak for a concentrated assault. The primary reason why the attack failed was that Meade saw the attack coming. He told Gibbon on the night of 2 July that if Lee attacked on the 3rd, it would be on Gibbon's front. When Gibbon asked him why, Meade- himself a West Point Graduate- said that as Lee had attacked on both flanks and failed, an attack on 3 July would be in the center. Meade was ready when the attack came and he had approximately 20,000 Union reinforcements moved to the center, where they crushed the attack.

Largely true.

Why is that unfortunate?

1. Lee got his troops butchered at Malvern Hill by marching them up a well-defended hill. While some may not consider MH to be a significant battle, it seems significant in that Lee didn't learn from it. 2. Lee also lost the battle of Antietam, a serious strategic setback made worse by how successful the Maryland campaign could have been if he hadn't foolishly stayed to fight at Antietam.

@@aaronfleming9426 Correct. Lee lost the two most crucial battles, Antietam and Gettysburg. Moreover, both attacks were not really good strategy, as Porter Alexander pointed out. An invasion of the North could not be sustained logistically.

@@heridfel I think the invasions of '62 and '63 were well conceived as opportunities to get supplies on Union soil; to shift the theater of operations at least temporarily; and to create possible opportunities for battlefield success. In the case of the invasion of Maryland, Lee got the opportunity to capture Harpers Ferry, with mountains of materiel and a garrison of over 12,000 troops - a very good haul indeed. Where both campaigns fell apart was when Lee insisted on giving pitched battle, going for a knockout punch when he could have a smaller success at much lower cost.

@ I believed that as well; however, after reading Porter Alexanders book, I doubt it a bit. He argues that the South could have used its interior lines to quickly shift a great number troops to the West and overwhelm one of the western armies like in Ky or Tennessee instead of defending everywhere with numerical inferiority. The invasions of Maryland or Pennsylvania could not realistically achieve much more than a glorified raid, since supplies of ammo etc could not be sustained. Moreover, Lee had a penchant for attacking even strong defences, wasting way more men than the Confederates could afford

@@heridfel Alexander's case certainly has merit: look at what happened at Chickamauga when Lee finally did send Longstreet and 10k crack troops to the west! Chickamauga was, in my opinion, far closer to being a war-winning battle than anything Lee ever engineered. Glorified raids are underrated, in my opinion. Bragg's invasion/raid of Kentucky was vilified in the Confederacy, and while Bragg was far from perfect, he shifted the theater of operations out of Tennessee for several months; Rosecrans didn't begin to move toward Chattanooga until December! And going back to Alexander...what if Lee had sent Bragg another 10k men for Murfreesboro...?

Forget DIM-ocrats period.

@@Tex1947 still crying over the last election?😂😂😂😂😂

@@BillBanyon crying after serving this country for 30 years a traitor has destroyed it. Biden's men in skirts pentagon have destroyed our military, but one would actually have to be aware of the lack of military readiness and not a "gimme free stuff" DIM-ocrat.

@@BillBanyon you mean the one were more dead people than ever voted dim-ocrat?