As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Reticent history is the greatest destroyer of reality and that which keeps humans from repeating the same mistakes as a devilish deception creates a public mind completely void of reality.
Gettysburg.
If one expresses that word, it conjures an address by President Lincoln, a battle in which a lot of people died and not much else. It is though a slaughter block upon which the death of the Confederate South began.
Antietam was the beginning in a most bloody invasion by Robert E. Lee of the North, in which he was repulsed. One of the realities hidden in all of history is that it was one company of New York Volunteers in the Irish who had a major part in the destruction of the South. That is not to discount other companies nor divisions, but at Antietem at Bloody Lane, Lt. Col. Nelson Appleton Miles turned the Confederates he was facing and ran a fire down their lines in infalidating, which was one of the bloodiest of slaughter pits.
Nelson Miles was wounded and not at Gettysburg, but his New Yorkers were. The second invasion of the North by Robert E. Lee was like the first to save the South. General Meade as then at the head of the Army of the Potomac, and his business was protecting DC, Baltimore and Philadelphia from the Confederates.
Gettysburg started days prior to the actual battle in Meade had sent out in force to the area, and there met General Longstreet. The Confederates were busy with supplies, but defeated the Union forces who reeled back.
One must understand in the eyes of Nelson Miles, then recovering from wounds and drilling and filling in the gaps of Volunteers in the area, the flurry which the South was flushed with. They had whipped the North on their own ground, and Longstreet believed that his division could conquer anything the North had.
A story of one of his boys was in being wounded, he applied for rest, but did not want to leave the Army of Virginia until after Boston was taken.
This is what is missed in all of this as Nelson Miles explains of that period, which Ken Burns never revealed in his fiction and was rewarded for it. Gettysburg was the end of the United States, as the North was fed up with Lincoln's War. There had been massive casualties and absolutely no effect. The North was not going to raise another Army of the Potomac if the current Army was destroyed or captured by Robert E. Lee.
That is what Gettysburg was about. The Union men knew they had their backs to the wall. If they lost there, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, New York were in the South's hands. The South would then dictate peace terms, as all that would remain were the Western States.
It was that confidence which Lee and Longstreet brought to the field, for when they threw back the Union forces before Gettysburg, the fatal mistake was begun and it had to do with General Longstreet.
Day One saw the Confederates in victory and Longstreet followed to Day Two, where his forces sat in the Valley while the shattered Union forces took to the heights, and there began to fortify them as Meade arrived with reinforcements of the main army.
This was the fatal flaw begun, for if General Thomas Jackson had been at Gettysburg, as he had recently been killed in battle, he would have pressed the attack on Day Two and driven the North from the heights and occupied them.
Day Three saw the second fatal flaw, as General Lee's blood was up. He knew he had victory in his grasp and the war would be over, and he wanted to end the war then and there. Both he and Longstreet, had not met any real threat from the Army of the Potamac, and had whipped superior numbers previously. That is where the South died, for again if General Jackson had lived, he never would have done the Napoleon thing and marched on the center to break it as Napoleon failed at Waterloo.
Jackson would have hit the Union lines on the left flank. I pick the left as that was the flank of Little Round Top, where the Cavalry could not maneuver.
Jeb Stuart did strike after Picketts Charge was slaughtered in the center, in a huge Cavalry battle on the Union right which was repulsed by General Custer of Michigan.
Round Top hinged on Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain being sent in to plug a hole, which for odd reasons, a Union commander marched off that key point and down into the Confederate lines and was hammered. The Confederates saw the opening, but only sent a company, where what should have been sent was Pickett, who would have stormed Round Top and then sent fire into the Union lines.
None of that took place as Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain repulsed the Confederates, and the battle took place in the center in which the South was destroyed.
There was a great deal of terror of the South by the Northern Generals. Meade after victory, refused to follow up and strike the Confederates in retreat, as he was protecting the victory and concerned the Confederates would reassemble their lines and give Meade a defeat.
If Longstreet had simply sent Pickett's thousands to Round Top, placed cannon there for infalidating fire into the Union lines, Stuart struck the right flank to occupy the Union Cavalry, the South would have swept down and rolled up the Union lines and destroyed the Army of the Potomac.
In two days, they could have caught the remnants of the Army of the Potomac and ended them, entered Baltimore to burn it with Stuart's Cavalry and sent such terror through Washington, she would have been evacuated and the North split with New York and Ohio on each side.
It was not meant to be for American survival, but the death of Stonewall Jackson was the death of the Confederate States, as Lee and Longstreet would have been on the heights to receive the Union attack, and Jackson would have been rapid marching to outflank them as the Confederates held the center, and Stuart occupied the Union Cavalry.
To even if Lee and Longstreet had just moved the Army of Northern Virginia in an advance, even as a feint on Philadelphia for Boston, to ground where they could fight their battle and bring on an attack, would have brought victory. They had done everything right in Meade had sent out forces which they killed. They should have followed up with destruction, fortified the heights, and then sent out Stuart's Cavalry to smash the Union forward. It was another mistake in not keeping Stuart on a tighter leash for operations instead of scavenging.
The reality is General Meade was a fine engineering officer and he protected his political base of major cities, but he did nothing to defeat the South, as the South defeated herself. The South did the one thing it should not have done, when Lee had three avenues open to him which he did not attempt.
Battle is a simple creature. Always bring superior power to strike a weaker enemy point, obliterate the enemy, then the enemy in reaction to your efforts moves, and in movement is rolled up by your forces which builds to a route and your victory.
The Union won nothing at Gettysburg. The South lost the battle herself. Meade protected well and sat behind fortifications well. Lee and Longstreet did not press the advantage when it was theirs and did not create advantages to exploit in this Napoleonic concentration of power.
If Jackson or I would have been there, I would have put the stick about in a Gettsyburg victory in firing Philadelphia and Baltimore, seized DC and floated Mr. Lincoln to exile in New York as I burned Boston and the annexed every state.......as the remaining states squealed like pigs for peace.
The Civil War would have been done with by September.
As for Meade, his forward forces should never have engaged Longstreet, but harried him, and drew back to a position of favorable battle, whereby Meade could join and then brought on the battle, perhaps on the heights of Gettysburg or the old Washington Revolution battlefields. Meade would probably have been dislodged, but in equal numbers the Union would have fell back to defensive again as they always did.
Robert E. Lee would have been checked though in that "victory" in his munitions spent and his Army losing ten to twenty thousand in KIA and WIA.
I touch on these battles from time to time in major events, to show the true field marshall character, and to assess these battles as they should be, as Napoleon and Wellington were horrid military commanders, in all Waterloo was, was Wellington in rope a dope in having learned Napoleons shock mass attacks, and absorbing them, and Napoleon had not evolved back to classic warfare.
Understand that if warfare was long lines, and Napoleon concentrates power, of course you obliterate thin lines. Wellington concentrated power and absorbed Napoleons attack on the center and Napoleon was expended on that effort.
Meade by fortifying, which Wellington did not, fared far better than the English with his Yanks.
Gettysburg would be General Grant's Cold Harbor in his stupidity there. That though is another subject which will be covered, as it is time to deal with the butcher of the Civil War in Ulysses S. Grant, so you learn the actual history and not the propaganda nor the ignorance of the Ken Burns PBS type.
agtG
