The 15th Alabama fought very bravely, making uphill attacks against a well-ensconced enemy.
It was a very near thing and could easily have gone the other way.
Lee was not feeling well physically.
He was feeling worse at Chancellorsville and that didn't stop him.
Stuart wasn't there on the first and second day to provide reconnaissance.
Lee was his commander and Stuart's foibles were well-known to him.
The “expert” and back-stabber Longstreet deliberately tried to sabotage Lee's plans.
An unsubstantiated Lost Cause slander designed to make Lee appear the perfect and blameless hero and Longstreet the Judas goat.
Also, Custer was where Lee didn't know he was - behind the Union Lines - and the attempt on the third day to break the Union Lines would have gone off like a charm had Stuart not been delayed by Custer.
Custer was on the extreme Union right to the east of Culp's Hill and not behind Union lines southwest of Culp's Hill.
Stuart was not delayed by Custer, he was defeated by Custer. He was delayed by himself and his own vanity. Stuart had one job to do at Gettysburg after his belated arrival, and he failed utterly.
Lee planned to have Pickett and his unit hit the front of the Union Lines at the same time and place that Stuart was supposed to hit them from the rear, then roll them up on the flanks. It was a good plan and would have probably worked had the luck of the draw not stopped it.
It was not the luck of the draw. Lee made the assumption that Union cavalry would repeat the errors made by McClellan at Antietam (holding his cavalry completely in reserve) or Hooker at Chancellorsville (sending the bulk of his cavalry far behind enemy lines). Instead, Lee duplicated Hooker's Chancellorsville error - ensuring that he would not have adequate intelligence - and Meade intelligently used his cavalry on the Third Day to protect his flanks to avoid being rolled up.
The fact is, Union generalship left a lot to be desired and Lee was a pretty crafty and able commander.
But Lee was human and made mistakes - and his mistakes at Gettysburg cost him the battle. If he can take credit for Longstreet's masterly performance at Antietam and Stuart's brilliant performance at Chancellorsville, then he take blame for their failings at Gettysburg.
The fact that it took so many years for a part of the Country with so many more men and so much more industry and total control of the seas to defeat the South indicates where the real military talents lay.
The South had better generals from 1861-1864, no question.
And had Lee not decided to surrender at Gettysburg and save both the North and South and their civilian populations the cost of a long an uncertain guerrilla war, fighting may have gone until the 20th century.
Lee did not surrender at Gettysburg. Perhaps you are thinking of Appomattox Courthouse. There was a guerrilla war both before and after Lee surrendered. The guerrilla war was crushed handily.
And you can compare the way Lee treated northern civilians to the way that savage Sheridan and that other Savage Sherman treated the southern population to see who the real primitives were.
Popular myths, but Sherman and Sheridan did in GA and VA exactly what Early and Stuart did in MD and PA.
Sheridan and Sherman set the ground rules for the horrors of the Boer War, WW1, WW2 and all successive wars which involved attacks on civilian populations as a deliberate matter of policy.
More myths.
Attacks on civilians were never a matter of policy in the Boer War, WWI or WWII.
And Sherman and Sheridan did not attack civilians - they requisitioned what they needed from civilians and destroyed militarily significant rail links, storage facilities and buildings. They did not gather Southern civilians into camps as the British did with the Boers.
And if anyone was a precursor to the military doctrine of WWI it was Lee, with his thorough entrenchment of Petersburg.
By the way, I'm not a southerner.
Neither was Clement Vallandigham.
“Lee was not feeling well physically.
He was feeling worse at Chancellorsville and that didn’t stop him.”
Military events are often impacted by uncontrollable factors. There is no way to defintely judge the relative impact of Lee’s health on the Chancellorsville or Gettysburg campaign. In my opinion it was a factor and may have had a greater impact at Gettysburg given the circumstances. Lee was under a lot of pressure, was away from his source of supplies, and operating on hostile ground. Also, unlike his opposing commander, he had been in overall charge of his army for a longer time with far worse supply and manpower problems. The stress must have been immense.
“Lee was his commander and Stuart’s foibles were well-known to him.”
Every commander has his own style of leadership and Lee’s had proven itself in other campaigns. He had to work with the personalities of his staff.
“An unsubstantiated Lost Cause slander designed to make Lee appear the perfect and blameless hero and Longstreet the Judas goat.”
That’s your opinion. Reams of material have been written on both side of the issue and my opinion is Longstreet was a mediocre leader with a greater sense of his own abilties than they deserved and I think he was envious of Lee. It is also my opinion and that of others that Longstreet did not direct the effort on the third day to the best of his abilities as he wanted that to fail as he disagreed with Lee over tactics. Lee never criticized anyone for what happened at Gettysburg or anywhere else to my knowledge but Longstreet made it quite clear who he blamed for not following his (Longstreet’s) plans.
“Custer was on the extreme Union right to the east of Culp’s Hill and not behind Union lines southwest of Culp’s Hill.”
Stuart was supposed to sweep around behind the Union lines and hit them from the rear at the same time and place as Pickett. He was delayed by an attack by Custer. Due to Custer’s attack the planned assault by Stuart on the rear of the Union lines never occurred. Had it succeeded the result of the battle and possibly the entire might have been very different. It is of course, not possible to know exactly what was planned as Lee never discussed it and no documents remain if any ever existed on this subject. Read “Lee’s Real Plan at Gettyburg” by Harmon.
“It was not the luck of the draw. ....”
But it was. Lee assumed Meade would be as inept as his several precedessors, and had the timing of Custer’s and Stuart’s movements not coincided as they did the results may have been very different. Campaigning in retrospect is always easier than in the pressure of the moment.
“But Lee was human and made mistakes - and his mistakes at Gettysburg cost him the battle. If he can take credit for Longstreet’s masterly performance at Antietam and Stuart’s brilliant performance at Chancellorsville, then he take blame for their failings at Gettysburg.”
Lee was human and humans make mistakes. But the result of Lee’s actions at Gettybsurg was not due to an entirely flawed plan. He had a logical reason for doing what he did and had circumstances turned out differently he very well may have succeeded. Luck in war is as important as skill.
“Lee did not surrender at Gettysburg. “
I know. I was thinking Gettysburg, not Appomatox when I wrote that.
“There was a guerrilla war both before and after Lee surrendered. The guerrilla war was crushed handily.”
It was a very ineffective one and was not directed by any responsible leaders. Had Lee been involved, or any of his lieutenants, it would have been a far more serious matter.
Read “April, 1864: The Year That Saved Americ”
“Popular myths, but Sherman and Sheridan did in GA and VA exactly what Early and Stuart did in MD and PA.”
I don’t think so. Numerous books have described Sheridan’s destruction and warfare against civilians in the Shenandoah valley as well as Sherman’s incredible swath of destruction in the deep south.
“More myths.
Attacks on civilians were never a matter of policy in the Boer War, WWI or WWII.”
The British government used a deliberate polic of interning the wives and children of Boers in what would later be called “concentration camps” during the Boer War. The causalty rate from starvation and disease in these camps was extremely high. It was done deliberately to break the will of the Boer troops. It worked.
The Germans didn’t deliberately target civilians in Serbia and in Belgium in WW1? Hitler targeted civilians in WW2 and so did Stalin. The Japanese rape of Nanking was just one in a series of sordid attacks on Asian civlians.
We did also. At Hieroshima and Dresden.
“Neither was Clement Vallandigham.”
So, maybe I WOULD have been a Copperhead. Maybe not. So what? Anderson at Ft. Sumter was a southerner. Did that make him a traitor, or a man who followed his conscience, just like Lee?