Warner Todd Huston

One hundred sixty years ago today, on July 3, 1863, Robert E. Lee was defeated by General Meade's Union forces at Gettysburg. And even more significantly, on July 4, General Ulysses Grant achieved victory at Vicksburg essentially cleaving the Confederacy in two and dooming it to defeat, though the war would drag on for two more bloody years.

Tim adds:

Gettysburg was Lees biggest blunder in the war. He allowed the Union to get up in the hills around Gettysburg, take the high ground, and then in a fit of hubris tried to take those hills by a direct assault.

It was a monumentally stupid move. His right hand man, Gen. James Longstreet, argued that they could just bypass the Union forces. With the Union entrenched up on those mountains the road was clear all the way to Washington and they could just hustle towards Mr. Lincoln. The whole idea was to sack Washington and terrify the Union into suing for peace. It may well have worked; the average citizen wasn't very enthusiastic about this war anyway, and this would suggest there was no point in continuing.

But Lee kept winning, and so went in overconfident, believing his troops could not lose.

After attempting to take the flanks (most notably at Little Roundtop, where a desperate gambit by Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of Maine - a bayonet charge since the Maine boys were out of ammunition) Lee decided the middle must be vulnerable.

He set three divisions to attack the center. Ultimately led by Longstreet, the main charge was led by George Pickett, a man who finished dead last in his class at West Point and had no idea what he was doing (he hadn't seen any real combat). Pickett's charge was a total disaster. The guns ran out of ammunition before clearing the center and so Pickett had to begin his charge earlier than planned. It was a bloodbath, with cannons bombarding them from all over the field of battle. The Confederates had to walk over a mile of open ground, and were stopped at a fence which they had to climb under heavy enemy fire. Then they had to assault a stone wall, just as the Union did at Fredericksburg.

By the end of the charge there were few people left. Pickett, when told by Gen. Lee to look to his division, famously said "General, I have no division". They were all dead.

Lee high tailed it and ran. At that point they were vulnerable but the Union Commander, Gen. George Meade, did not give chase (ultimately leading to his being sacked by Lincoln).

(BTW, you couldn't tell the Georges without a scorecard, could you?)

So the Army of Northern Virginia lived to fight another day, but they were so decimated by this fight they couldn't ever mount an offensive against the Union again. It became a matter of running and running...

Had Lee listened to Longstreet and moved off from Gettysburg he could have found a place with high ground HE could occupy, and then make the Union assault their fortified position. It would have been a disaster. Worse, Lee could have taken D.C., forced Lincoln to flee, and then offered generous terms for a conditional surrender.

But Lee got cocky and it cost the Confederacy their freedom. They couldn't afford to make any mistakes.

With the great victory at Gettysburg Lincoln saw new life breathed into his campaign for the Presidency. Suddenly the war was winnable and the public was willing to give him more time. Prior to that his primary challenge from his old Gen. George McClellan would probably have succeeded - and McClellan promised to make peace with the Confederacy.

So everything hinged on this victory.

This was a momentous day.

As for Vicksburg, Gen. Grant had been rolling like a juggernaut through Tennessee and down to Vicksburg, Mississippi,which was the last bastion of the Confederacy along the Mississippi River.  Once Vicksburg fell the entire western Confederacy was cut off from the rest of the country. That was Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas. It meant the Union could move men and supplies along the Mississippi river, as well as the Ohio, and Missouri.

Actually, Vicksburg was a definite change for the fortunes of Grant, who had been taking his enemies quickly and decisively up to that point. But Vicksburg was a long, bitter siege that bogged Grant down for a while.
The siege lasted almost two months.

The only offensive launched by the Confederates in the West after this was the invasion by Gen. Stirling Price into Missouri. Price, who was a former Mo. governor, led a large force into southeast Missouri with the intention of seizing St. Louis. But he made the exact same mistake Lee had made a Gettysburg a year before, attacking a well defended fort (Fort Davisson) and taking so many casualties he couldn't prosecute his assault on St. Louis. After piddling around attacking Jefferson City he gave up and returned to Arkansas, the last major offensive of the western war.

After Vicksburg Grant and his able if a bit vicious sidekick William Tecumseh Sherman began moving through the Mississippi delta towards Virginia. Grant would be put in charge of the Army of the Potomac and would invade Virginia, and with the help of Sherman's infamous March to the Sea would decimate the heart of the Confederacy.

But that is a story for another day.

At any rate, this was a very critical point in U.S. history and one well worth remembering.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:17 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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