In this Blogger’s opinion, the Confederacy was doomed once General Stonewall Jackson was killed, by force majeure, by his own victorious troops, by mistake, after the Battle of Chancellorsville.
This Blogger believes that if Jackson had been in tactical command of Lee’s strategic vision at Gettysburg, as he would have been, the South would have won. Jackson’s death is analogous to the Gods interfering in the Trojan War; a Divine Act which altered History.
Pickett’s Charge was 12,500 Southerners, the crème de la crème of Southern manhood, Virginian cavaliers, and North Carolinian Tar heels(including Rev. Billy Graham’s grandfather) charging across an open field, almost a mile wide, into the vengeful waiting guns and cannons of the Army of the Potomac, sheltered by a wall.
Slaveholders and sharecroppers joined together in a bid for Destiny’s favor.
Southern Slavery did not produce poets. It is remarkable to this Blogger how few great writers the South produced under slavery. The best antebellum writer was Mary Chestnut, who was a diarist; who kept her diary in secret. Faulkner, Welty, Mitchell, Williams, McCullers, Lee, Wolfe, O’Connor, Toole and Porter all should give Abe Lincoln a cut of their Royalties for winning the war, ending Slavery and thereby becoming the Founding Father of Southern Literature.
Shelby Foote (the Mississippian, who along with James McPherson are the two greatest Civil War historians) once said there was a common misconception among foreigners that America had never lost a war; but that was false. Half of America, the South, had lost a war; half of the nation were losers. The South had gone from being the Master Race to a race of losers in four years.
Gettysburg was the linchpin of that journey, and Pickett’s Charge was the key event in that linchpin.
The question has always been, why did a brilliant General like Lee send the men of Virginia and North Carolina into such a cauldron of fire and iron?
After walking and walking the battlefield of Gettysburg, this Blogger came to this conclusion, he had to do it.
This Blogger gives Lee more credit than a Battle plan based on petulance.
However, it was an almost an impossible thing he asked his Southern boys to do, cross an open field, almost a mile wide, into waiting guns, cannons and rifles and muskets. The French, including the Old Guard, had failed to do it at Waterloo; the British had failed to do it at the Battle of New Orleans. But Lee sent them.
THE FIRST DAY-
No state was more divided in loyalties during the Civil War than Maryland.. Maryland was maintained for the Union; however massive legions of pro-Confederacy men went into self exile to fight for the South.
At the time of Gettysburg, those pro Southern Marylanders formed the First Maryland Battalion of the Confederate Army.
The North fielded two regiments comprised of Marylanders, First Maryland Potomac Home Brigade and First Maryland Eastern Shore.
“In June 1863 on the way to Gettysburg, General Lee's army again advanced into Maryland.” Maryland exile George H. Steuart, leading the 2nd Maryland Infantry regiment, is said to have jumped down from his horse, kissed his native soil and stood on his head in jubilation. According to one of his aides: "We loved Maryland, we felt that she was in bondage against her will, and we burned with desire to have a part in liberating her". Quartermaster John Howard recalled that Steuart performed "seventeen double somersaults" all the while whistling Maryland, My Maryland.”
On the first day of Battle of Gettysburg, on July 1st, at”… Culp's Hill, where the Union Maryland Eastern Shore faced the Confederate 1st Maryland Battalion. Color Sergeant Robert Ross of the Union regiment was a cousin to Color Sergeant P.M. Moore of the Confederate battalion, who was wounded several times and captured by his neighbors.
Colonel Wallace of the Union 1st Maryland wrote, "The 1st Maryland Confederate Regiment met us and were cut to pieces. We sorrowfully gathered up many of our old friends and acquaintances and had them carefully and tenderly cared for." Included among these dead was the battalion's mascot, Grace. Union General Thomas Kane recalled, "He licked someone's hand, they said, after he was perfectly riddled." Kane ordered the dog given decent burial "as the only Christian minded being on either side."
The fighting went on; the Confederates were unrelenting. Finally fierce attacks on Oak Ridge caused the Union line to collapse.
At that moment in history, the Civil War could have been won for the South, the battered, bleeding Federals were dug in on Cemetery Hill, but they were edgy and ready to be spooked.
“Lee wanted to seize the high ground south of Gettysburg, primarily Cemetery Hill, which dominated the town, the Union supply lines, and the road to Washington D.C.”
It was all there, the road to Washington and victory.
However, Lee had given Confederate General Richard Ewell discretionary orders. He had told Ewell to take the heights, “if practicable.”
That may have been Lee’s biggest mistake of the War; for he thought he was still speaking to the dead Jackson. Practicable to Jackson, that blue-eyed Presbyterian killer meant ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK. Jackson was Patton; it was all attack, attack, attack. Lee and Jackson, two Christian killers, understood their mutual shorthand, practicable was an euphemism for ATTACK.
But Ewell was not Jackson, he looked at his exhausted troops, the Marylanders cut to shreds, and forestalled the attack, which would have opened the road to Washington.
THE SECOND DAY-
Lee could have won the war on the second day, but a school teacher named Joshua Chamberlain thwarted him.
If Jackson had been at Little Round Top, Chamberlain’s SWINGING GATE would have been outflanked, for Jackson, as a former school teacher, would have recognized that maneuver. He would have gotten behind the SWINGING GATE and thus gotten behind the Army of the Potomac, winning the war.
Another moment in which the South could have won the war was lost.
THE THIRD DAY-
The third day was about Lee; in fact the Civil War was just about two people, Lincoln and Lee. Lincoln’s election caused it; Lee deciding to fight for Virginia rather than the Union prolonged it. Lee would have won the war except for Lincoln’s iron will. And if not for Lee, Lincoln would have won it a hell of a lot sooner.
So there Lee sits, in his tent, reading his Bible, pondering what next.
Lee, the great Christian, the great man, the great warrior, no one in American history had a greater instinctive grasp of the strategy of war, the tactics of war, or the politics of war,or the Leadership of men.
He was such a great man; so great that Justice Oliver Holmes(who had fought valiantly for the North) stated that only one person in the land should be hung for his participation in the Rebellion-Robert E. Lee.
Why Lee?
Because Holmes thought that there was no greater sin than a good man fighting for an evil cause, and Lee was the best of men fighting for the worst of causes, ergo hang Lee.
On the third day. Lee, with his innate sense of war making, understood that winning the Civil War no longer meant getting to Washington D.C. and imposing terms.
It meant taking the will to fight out of the Army of the Potomac. By the time of the third day at Gettysburg, Lee understood that the Army of the Potomac was the most resilient Army since the Roman Army which had fought through many defeats to overwhelm Hannibal. The Army of the Potomac had been defeated over and over and over again yet they had endured, under the wondrous aura of Lincoln. They had remained cohesive and combative.
But now, after the first two days of combat, the two best Union generals Reynolds and Hancock “the Superb”, were incapacitated. Reynolds was dead; Hancock the Superb was wounded, perhaps dead.
Now was the time to issue the psychological blow that would destroy their will to fight.
It is those circumstances, with an avowed aim to break the will of the Army of the Potomac, Lee decided to cry havoc and unleash Pickett’s Charge.
“The infantry assault on Cemetery Ridge known as PICKETT'S CHARGE was preceded by a massive artillery bombardment at 1 p.m. that was meant to soften up the Union defense and silence its artillery, but it was largely ineffective. Approximately 12,500 men in nine infantry brigades advanced over open fields for three quarters of a mile under heavy Union artillery and rifle fire. Although some Confederates were able to breach the low stone wall that shielded many of the Union defenders, they could not maintain their hold and were repulsed with over 50% casualties.”
And there is it- the reason why the Civil War is so fascinating, why there are so many Civil War re-enactments. In the face of a living hell, the Johnny Rebs breached. That breach was the HIGH WATER MARK of the Confederacy.
For slavery, the Rebs had crossed nearly a mile of hell and breached.
Perhaps Lee should have been hung for his Pickett’s Charge for that Charge had changed the Civil War from a political, social and economic rebellion in the defense of slavery into the heroic LOST CAUSE. All their blood and bravery turned economic determinism into a Homeric duel with the Fates.
In 1862, at Fredericksburg, the Army of Potomac, led by the murderously incompetent Ambrose Burnside, had been decimated by Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Toward the end of Pickett’s Charge, the revenge hungry Army of Potomac turned blood thirsty; in unison, spontaneously, down the whole Union line, the Federals cried out in bloody vengeance, FREDERICKSBURG, as the Confederates were mowed down by the scythe of Death.
Winfield Scott Hancock was such a great general, his nickname was Hancock the Superb. His best friend in life was Confederate General Lewis Armistead; Armistead came from an old warrior family. His uncle had commanded Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 attack, when it held out against the British, inspiring Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner as he viewed that struggle.
Armistead and Hancock were like brothers; in fact Armistead was Hancock’s best man at his wedding.
“ During Pickett's Charge, Armistead led his brigade from the front, waving his hat from the tip of his saber, and reached the stone wall at the "Angle", which served as the charge's objective. The brigade got farther in the charge than any other, an event sometimes known as the HIGH WATER MARK OF THE CONFEDERACY, but it was quickly overwhelmed by a Union counterattack. Armistead was shot three times just after crossing the wall.”
Armistead lingered for two days and then died.
They bought Armistead’s personal effects to Hancock the Superb.
What was Hancock the Superb thinking when he saw them?
He was thinking this- Armistead had stated, promised, vowed, as they parted as friends, to fight on different sides of a bloody war, that should he ever raise a hand against Hancock--he wanted God to strike him dead.
There has never been a war closer to the psychology of God than the American Civil War.
How God thinks about this world and rules over this world is revealed in the American Civil War.
The last remaining veterans, at the 75th Anniversary of Pickett's charge, 1938
THE HIGH WATER MONUMENT at Gettysburg
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