Gettysburg Campaign

The Gettysburg Campaign of June-July 1863 was a decisive turning point in the American Civil War. Confederate General Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia into a raid into Pennsylvania designed to capture supplies and destroy the political will of the Union to continue the war. He encountered the main Union army under General Meade at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In an intensely fought 3-day battle, Lee was decisively defeated. He was trapped but Meade's dilatory pursuit allowed him to escape. The battle became a central icon of courage on both sides, and was used by President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address to mark the birth of a new nation dedicated to equality and democracy.

Summary

Lee's movement started on the first of June and within a short time was well on its way through Maryland, with General George Meade, the new Union commander, moving north along parallel lines. Lee's cavalry, under General Jeb Stuart had the primary mission of gathering intelligence on where the enemy was position, but Stuart failed and instead raided some supply trains. He did not rejoin Lee until the battle was underway. Lee's armies threatened Harrisburg, Washington, Baltimore and even Philadelphia. Local militia units hurriedly formed to oppose Lee, but they were inconsequential in the face of a large, battle-hardened attack force. Gettysburg was a crossroads junction in heavily wooded areas. Over three days, July 1-3, Confederate forces arrived piecemeal from the northwest, while Union forces arrived piecemeal from the east. By July 1 Meade was to the south of Lee--Lee's retreat was cut off and he had to fight, and had to win. On July 1, 1863, the fighting began, with a Confederate advantage in manpower. The Union forces fell back on a fishhook position on hills to the southeast of town.

The bloody combat in very hot July weather climaxed in the spectacular but fruitless charge of General George E. Pickett's brigades into a trap set by Union forces atop Cemetery Ridge. Pickett failed, and lee was out of reserves (and out of artillery ammunition). After this decisive defeat, Lee was trapped, but Meade failed badly in not pursuing. Lee's escape was one of his greatest achievements. By the end of July Lee's depleted army was back in its camps around Orange Court House, Virginia. There was little important action the rest of the year.

For months Confederates denied there was a defeat. However the only bright spot for them was that Lee's army systematically looted Pennsylvania and in retreat brought back enough captured food, wagons, hardware, horses and cattle to keep Lee supplied for months to come. The looting indeed was part of Lee's plan, but the 28,000 casualties permanently weakened his army, leaving it no chance to take the initiative in the future.

Details

Lee's plans

Confusing peace rhetoric for northern public opinion, assuming the Yankees must be just as war weary as southerners, and frightfully short of supplies for his army, Lee planned another full-scale raid into the North--Pennsylvania this time. He figured:

If we can baffle them [Yankees] in their various designs this year & our people are true to our cause...our success will be certain.... [and] next year there will be a great change in public opinion at the North. The Republicans will be destroyed [in the 1864 presidential election] & I think the friends of peace will become so strong as that the next administration will go in on that basis. We have only therefore to resist manfully.

Lee's invasion and his seizure of free blacks, who were shipped south and sold into slavery, had the unintended effect of mobilizing northern Republicans and tarring the peace Democrats as traitorous "Copperheads" who refused even to resist the invasion of their homes. Antiwar protests occasionally turned into riots, which further antagonized the patriots, for as one Wisconsin private wrote his sweetheart, "I hope if they do have to take soldiers home to enforce the draft that I will be the one who will have to go, for I could shoot one of those copperheads with a good heart as I could shoot a wolf."

Union plans

Joseph Hooker, commanding the Army of the Potomac, was, as Lee had calculated, indeed tardy and afraid to fight Lee. He wanted to attack Richmond, but Lincoln vetoed that idea as impossible of success and replaced Hooker with George Meade. The new commander brooked no delay in chasing the rebels north. Lee underestimated his new foe, expecting him to be a day late and a division short, like Hooker. Lee was blinded for a week by the failure of Jeb Stuart's cavalry to provide timely reconnaissance. "Where on earth is my cavalry?" he kept asking every day. In fact Stuart was miles away sacking a mule-drawn supply train. Stuart had trouble finding Lee; he solved his intelligence problem by swiping a Philadelphia newspaper that accurately reported Lee's location. The news was a day old, however, and Stuart, slowed down by booty, did not arrive at Gettysburg until July 2.

Meanwhile Meade was close behind Lee, and had cut off the line of retreat back to Virginia. Lee had to fight, but first he had to rush to reassemble his scattered forces at the crossroads town of Gettysburg before Meade defeated them piecemeal. Lee had 60,000 infantry and 10,200 cavalry (Meade's intelligence officers estimated Lee had 140,000). Would this be enough to challenge the United States on its home ground? This time it was Lee's turn to be fooled; he gullibly swallowed misinformation that suggested Meade had twice as many soldiers, when in fact he had 86,000.

Even though the main Confederate army was marching through Pennsylvania, Lincoln was unable to give Meade more firepower. The vast majority of the 700,000 Federal soldiers (except for Grant's 70,000 near Vicksburg) were noncombatants, held static defensive posts that Lincoln feared to uncover, or like Rosecrans at Nashville, they were afraid to move. Urgently the President called for 100,000 civilian militiamen to turn out for the emergency; some did, but being unorganized, untrained, unequipped and poorly led, they were more trouble than worth.

Lee was overconfident of the morale and equipment of his "invincible" veterans; he fantasized about a definitive war-winning triumph:

They will come up...broken down with hunger and hard marching, strung out on a long line and much demoralized when they come into Pennsylvania. I shall throw an overwhelming force on their advance, crush it, follow up the success, drive one corps back on another, and by successive repulses and surprises, before they can concentrate, create a panic and virtually destroy the army. [Then] the war will be over and we shall achieve the recognition of our independence.

Memory

The campaign and battle is enshrined in American memory as a near-sacred event, as Abraham Lincoln said when he dedicated the cemetery in November, giving the most influential speech in American history. Every state erected memorials at the battlefield.

Bibliography

• Brown, Kent Masterson. Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign. U. of North Carolina Press, 2005. excerpt and text search
• Coddington, Edwin B. The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command (1968), the best single book; excerpt and text search
• Foote, Shelby.
• Freeman, Douglas Southall. Lee
• Gallagher, Gary W., ed. Three Days at Gettysburg: Essays on Confederate and Union Leadership (1999) online edition
• Gallagher, Gary ed. The Second Day at Gettysburg and Beyond (1993) excerpt and text search
• Gallagher, Gary ed. The Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond (1994)
• McPherson, James M. "To Conquer a Peace? Lee's Goals in the Gettysburg Campaign." Civil War Times (2007) 46(2): 26-33. Issn: 1546-9980 Fulltext: Ebsco
• Nofi, Albert A. The Gettysburg Campaign, June-July 1863 (1997) online edition; excerpt and text search
• Pfanz, Harry W. Gettysburg: The First Day (2000) excerpt and text search
• Pfanz, Harry W. Gettysburg: The Second Day (1987) online edition excerpt and text search
• Sears, Stephen W. Gettysburg (2004) excerpt and text search
• Wills, Garry. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (1993) excerpt and text search
• Woodworth, Steven E. Beneath a Northern Sky: A Short History of the Gettysburg Campaign. (2003). 241 pp.