J.E.B. Stuart dropped the ball.
Interactive map:
Longstreet was apprised of the importance of little round top by his division commanders on the right and was informed that the Union forces there were out of position and could be overrun. He declined to even look at the ground.
As an aside I think Longstreet gets a "bum rap" he seems to have been right: Lee should have early on gone around the left flank of the Union army.(Lee's right flank.)
Agreed.
The defeat can be laid at the feet of Stuart.
Lee needed his cavalry. Without them he was fighting blind, could not disengage.
I was going to point that out, too...
An amazing revelation. Before air reconnaissance, commanders were at the mercy of what they could see in line of sight, and what they could gather from intelligence (cavalry and spies). High ground was important, but did not necessarily solve all of the visibility problems. This has been the case since the beginning of warfare. It’s amazing that these scholars spent all of their time reconfirming what any student of military history knows.
Because at the time, the Round Tops were virtually undefended, and by capturing them, Lee could have deployed his artillery very effectively against the Union left and pushed them off Cemetery Ridge.
The more puzzling question to me has always been why Meade or Hancock didn't see the strategic importance of the high ground to begin with.
Michael Shaara wrote only one Civil War novel, about Gettysburg, which did not sell well in his lifetime. Jeff has written a series of novels--the Vicksburg book is the second in a four-book trilogy (bad math) on the western campaigns. He had a lot of interesting points that are not well known.
He told from a soldier's point of view what it would have been like to be part of Pickett's Charge, very effectively--but he did not reveal that he was describing Pickett's Charge until the very end.
He told how his father took him to Gettysburg in 1964 when he was 12. His father knew the story of how Lewis Armistead and Winfield Scott Hancock had been friends before the war and were both in California when the war started. When they parted Armistead, who supported the South, told Hancock that if he ever fought against him that he hoped God would strike him dead. Shaara told of how his father found the marker at Gettyburg where Armistead fell (during Pickett's Charge, I believe) and how for the first time in his life he saw his father crying. It was at that point that Michael Shaara decided to write his novel about Gettysburg, which took him 7 years.
In his memoirs, and perhaps aided by hindsight, Longstreet said the Union line, being curved in, would enable the Yankees to reinforce any position that came under attack. He also projected that the Yankees had amassed a huge force, from stale intel, by considering Union forces known to be en route to Gettysburg and the distance infantry in forced march could move per day.
Having said this, it should be pointed out that the Yankees “won” the Battle of Gettysburg only in the sense that Lee did not defeat them. On the other, all Lee would have accomplished had he defeated Meade was to be confronted by what I will call a phantom army of 70,000 under the command of the Governor of Pennsylvania. This phantom army was drawn from the militia and the civilian populations of Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York, almost overnight, at Harrisburg, by the Pennsylvania RR and other railroad companies.
Gettysburg was a strategic and moral victory for the North because the war had become a war of attrition, and the Union states were several times larger in population and capital.
When your eyes and ears are out foraging instead of developing operational intelligence on enemy formations, you’re pretty much screwed. And yes, spot on with your summary.
I’m sure it was fun playing with the computers and maps, though.
I agree nothing new in this research, but I enjoy the map. Once Ewell failed to take Culp’s Hill it was unwinnable by Lee.
Surely, God had the greatest role in determining the outcome.
Somehiw Custer managed to get promoted from Captain to General.
The movie on Custer portrays the promotion as a mistake that the Generals were then going to remedy the next day.
However it happened, Custer was bumped five ranks that day from CPtain to General.
He was immediately in the thick of the battle.
Hunterstown, Day 2.
He blunts Stuarts advance with his troops.
http://custerlives.com/custer26.htm
Quote”. Gettysburg: Cavalry Battle At Hunterstown
The Hunterstown Cavalry Battlefield, also known as North Cavalry Field at Gettysburg, marks the first time George Armstrong Custer made a name for himself as a gutsy Cavalry Commander. The cavalry battle was waged there after 4:00 PM on July 2, 1863. Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer led his beloved Michigan Cavalry Wolverines against the Confederate States of America’s very capable Brigadier General Wade Hampton.
Battle lines were established about a mile apart, General Custer’s artillery at Felty-Tate Ridge on the northern end and Rebel General Hampton’s artillery at Brinkerhoff’s Ridge to the south. General Custer had ordered most of his Troopers to dismount and lie in wait as he attempted to lead the Rebel cavalry into a trap. Elements of the 6th and 7th Michigan Cavalry dismounted and moved south on foot along both sides of Hunterstown Road. The Michigan Troopers were hidden by tall wheat while they waited for the Rebels to be led into a crossfire.
To complete the trap, the Confederate horsemen would have to be lured into the crossfire. Leading from the front as always, General George Custer led the “bait” himself. The Boy General took about sixty mounted men of Company A 6th Michigan on a daring cavalry charge toward the Confederate position. Riding forward at a gallop, General Custer’s small contingent of Michigan Wolverines established contact with the Confederate Troopers. General Custer then retreated, hoping to draw the Confederates back north to the waiting trap.
The Confederate Cavalry chased General Custer and his Wolverines about a quarter mile up the narrow Hunterstown Road between the fences which hemmed them in. As soon as the Union Cavalry Wolverines cleared the dismounted Union Troopers, the trap was sprung. The Confederate Cavalry was caught in a devastating crossfire. Many of the Confederates continued on, hoping to race past the trap. Unfortunately for them, Union artillery concealed by a barn opened fire at close range, sealing their fate.”