The Battle of Gettysburg 1863

X

THE RETREAT

Gettysburg evacuated.

Lee's New Position.

Thrice had the sun gone down on that ensanguined field, where one hundred and fifty thousand men had striven for the mastery and forty thousand sealed their devotion with their blood. Exhausted by their efforts, the Confederates thought only of making good their retreat. Gettysburg was immediately evacuated and both wings drawn back on the main body, so that, as now re-formed and contracted, Lee's army stretched from Oak Hill to the peach orchard. Behind this line, and under cover of its woods, he was now getting ready to retreat.

Such plain indications could hardly be overlooked.[75 - Lee's cavalry had also left its menacing post in the Union rear.] A reconnoisance from the Union left found the Confederates retiring. During the night the Union troops went forward to the battlefield of the 2d.

Lost Chances.

Lee's lost opportunity on the 1st was as nothing to Meade's on the 3d. It came when the Confederates were in the confusion resulting from their repulse. It was lost, however, because the great captain was not there. Meade was unequal to exacting a supreme effort at this moment, either from his army or himself. To let slip this opportunity was to tempt fortune itself, and it never came again.

Strange Inaction.

But if from any of the many causes alleged,[76 - It has been claimed that the Union right was too much disordered for a counter-attack, and that one on the left was impracticable.] or all of them put together, the one chance out of a thousand, for which all this marching and fighting had been going on, had eluded Meade's grasp, or if it be conceded that he found Lee's new position so strong as to hold out no hope of a successful assault, history will still demand to know why this beaten army, short of ammunition, encumbered with its wounded, its prisoners, and its wagons, thirty to forty miles from the Potomac, with a mountain defile to pass and a wide river to cross, was suffered to march off unmolested with all its immense spoil, and not only to do that, but to remain eleven days between Gettysburg and the Potomac without being once seriously attacked.

Lee in a Tight Place.

That Lee could not long remain on Seminary Ridge, let his position be ever so strong, was a self-evident proposition. He had exhausted his means of attack, his army was cut down by more than twenty thousand men, his ammunition was nearly expended, nor could it be replenished short of Virginia. His means of defence were therefore extremely limited. If it had been possible to detain Lee where he was, even for a few days longer, his surrender was a foregone conclusion without firing another shot. But taking the situation as we find it, we do not see how he could have been more critically placed, if in the presence of an enterprising opponent. Lee's attitude after the battle savors far more of bravado than a desire to be attacked. To block his retreat it would have been necessary to seize the Monterey Pass immediately after the battle.[77 - Meade sent his cavalry out, not in a body, but in detachments, on the morning of the 4th. Gregg was ordered to the Chambersburg road, Kilpatrick to the Hagerstown, and Buford to Williamsport, by way of Frederick. Kilpatrick attacked and dispersed the small force then guarding the Monterey Pass that evening, but no steps seem to have been taken for holding it, and Kilpatrick therefore went on over the mountains next day in pursuit of the enemy's trains. We observe, in this connection, that Lee threw every sabre he had into Meade's rear in anticipation of his retreat on July 3d.] Meade had the shorter line. His cavalry would have kept Lee at bay until the infantry could come up. He should never have suffered Lee to put South Mountain between them without making an energetic effort to prevent it. As the Union army remained immovable until this was done, we have only to chronicle in brief the inglorious ending of an otherwise glorious campaign.

Read over Chap. I.

All the 4th the two armies lay in the positions just now described. Lee's direct line of retreat to the Potomac was by the Fairfield and Hagerstown road, which crossed the mountain below and behind him through the Monterey defile. To withdraw his army and trains by this one road was altogether impracticable. The trains and wounded were therefore started off during the afternoon of the 4th, in a drenching rain, by the Chambersburg road, under a strong escort of cavalry and artillery, but no infantry.[78 - Lee told the officer in command that he could spare him all the artillery he wanted, but no infantry.] When stretched out on the road this train was seventeen miles long.

Lee's Wounded.

Being ordered to push on to the Potomac without halting, the sufferings of the wounded were horrible beyond description. Travelling all night and avoiding Chambersburg, this column struck across the country to Greencastle, and after fighting its way all day against detachments of Union cavalry, finally got to the Potomac at Williamsport, on the afternoon of the 5th, with the loss of a few wagons. After the escort had passed through Greencastle, the citizens turned out and attacked the wagons in the rear with axes, so disabling some and delaying the rest.

When the wagon train got there, the Potomac was found too high to be forded. The bridges were gone, and the trains could not get across that way.[79 - The Union cavalry attacked this train on the 6th without success. Had they succeeded, all of Lee's immense plunder would have fallen into their hands. As it was, the trains were got across by a rope ferry; also the four thousand Union prisoners that the army brought along with it.] So there Lee met his first check.

After giving his trains a twelve hours' start, Lee put his army in motion for the Potomac by way of Fairfield and Hagerstown, by daylight of the 5th.

Lee's Infantry move off.

A Lame Pursuit.

The road being unencumbered by trains,[80 - The corps trains had to move with the army mostly.] the Confederates were able to move with celerity and silence. As soon as his departure was discovered, the Fifth and Sixth Corps moved out in pursuit. But it was then too late. Lee had stolen a march on his pursuers. An officer of this force says of its tardy operations: —

"As we moved, a small rear-guard of the enemy retreated. We followed it up to Fairfield, in a gorge of the mountains. There we again waited for them to go on. Then only one brigade, with the cavalry, continued to follow them, while the rest of the corps turned off to the left, toward Boonsboro," to which point the main body was now directing its march. Lee had got the short road and left Meade the long one.

Union Army en Route.

Lee's army was thus safe back again in the Cumberland Valley before Meade was ready to pursue.[81 - The whole Union army did not leave Gettysburg before the morning of the 6th. The Confederates were then nearly up to Hagerstown.] Having abandoned the idea of forcing the Monterey Pass, and so following up and harassing the enemy's rear, we have just seen the infantry turning off to the south, on the Gettysburg side of South Mountain, as if to head off Lee from the Potomac by this roundabout way, or, in short, by a march of fifty miles to his thirty, and after giving him a start of ten. This was to force the Union army to efforts which had just proved so exhausting. Nothing could exceed the impotence of this pursuit. In reality, the march up to Gettysburg to find and attack Lee was now being repeated. But fate, not Meade, was so checking Lee at every point that but for the weakness or delays of his adversary the Confederate general could never have saved his army as he did.

Lee brought to a Halt.

Lee Escapes.

Even before Lee could reach Fairfield, General French[82 - French, it will be remembered, had been ordered to hold Frederick. He now occupied the lower passes for which Meade was making, so reinforcing Meade.] had reoccupied Harper's Ferry, destroyed the enemy's pontoon train at Williamsport and Falling Waters, and captured the guards. Finding his means of crossing gone, nothing remained for Lee but to show a bold front until they could be restored. And the long détour the Union army was making left him ample time in which to render his new position between Hagerstown and Williamsport so strong that when Meade[83 - The infantry reached Middletown on the morning of the 9th, crossed South Mountain that day, and on the next came in front of the enemy's intrenchments.] finally got his army up before it he again hesitated to attack. The tables were now fairly turned on him. His generals mostly shared in this feeling of respectful fear. Stung by the President's censure, Meade at last bestirred himself. Again he was too late. How often during this campaign have we been obliged to repeat those ill-omened words! In the language of the general-in-chief, Halleck: —

"Instead of attacking Lee in this position, with the swollen waters of the Potomac in his rear, without any means of crossing his artillery, and when a defeat must have caused the surrender of his entire army, he was allowed time to construct a pontoon bridge with lumber collected from canal-boats and the ruins of wooden houses, and on the morning of the 14th his army had crossed to the south side of the river. His rear-guard, however, was attacked by our cavalry and suffered considerable loss. Thus ended the rebel campaign north of the Potomac, from which important political and military results had been expected. Our own loss in this short campaign had been very severe; namely, 2,834 killed, 13,709 wounded, and 6,643 missing – in all, 23,182. We captured 3 guns, 41 standards, 13,621 prisoners, 28,178 small-arms."

The Confederate losses, considering that they were always the assailants, must have exceeded these figures.[84 - The Confederate losses have been variously estimated all the way from twenty thousand four hundred (total) to thirty thousand. There exists no accurate basis for a fair count. The first figure is far too low; the last, perhaps, too high.] As it is well known that Pickett's losses were suppressed by Lee's order, any compilation must be necessarily incomplete.

Ten whole days thus elapsed from the time Lee fell back defeated from Cemetery Ridge until he recrossed the Potomac. He had brought off his army, his plunder, with upward of four thousand Union prisoners, by his opponent's leave, as one might say. There is a saying that a British army may be gleaned in a retreat, but not reaped. So far, in this war, barren victories had been the rule, and fruitful ones the rare exception.

We do not find much to say in praise of a retreat that was nowhere seriously molested. It has, we know, been lauded as a marvel of skill. Lee's patience alone was severely tested. The crossing of the Potomac was effected without hinderance in the presence of Meade's whole army, partly by the bridge at Falling Waters, partly by the fords at Williamsport. True, the Union cavalry did a great deal of hard riding and scouting; but it, too, failed to destroy Lee's trains on the 6th, when it was in its power to have done so, and, in all probability, compelled his surrender.

XI

THINGS BY THE WAY

The battle of Gettysburg has often been called the turning-point of the war between the States. It was certainly the greatest of the many great conflicts of that war – the greatest exhibition, we will say, of stubborn fighting. There, if ever, it was that Greek met Greek. During three sweltering midsummer days, two numerous, well-appointed, veteran armies, ably led and equally nerved to their utmost efforts, fought for the mastery with equal resolution and bravery. For three days the result hung in suspense. Through all those terrible days the battle constantly grew in its proportions and intensity. From first to last, until the last gun was fired, the hush of expectancy fell upon the land. It was felt that this battle must be decisive. On one side, at least, was the determination to make it so. The impoverished Confederacy was staking its fortunes upon a last throw.

Yet this battle was singularly indecisive. On the first day the Union forces suffered a serious reverse; on the second they narrowly escaped a defeat; but on the third the Confederates were so signally repulsed that nothing was left them but retreat. This they effected with boldness and skill, in spite of the victors, in spite of the elements – in fine, in spite of that fortune which seemed to have turned against them from the moment of their defeat.

Considered, then, only as a battle, Gettysburg was a series of isolated combats, delivered without unity and followed by no irremediable reverse to the vanquished. In no military sense, therefore, can it be called decisive. In a political sense it was even less so, because Lee's army was neither destroyed, nor were the resources of the Confederacy fatally crippled. Rather was it a trial of strength between two athletes, one of whom, after throwing the other, tells him to get up and go about his business – in short, a mere pounding match.

Yet Gettysburg ought to have been the Waterloo of the Confederacy. Then and there that war should have ended. To say that the whole country was aghast at Lee's escape would be only the plainest expression of the popular feeling of the day. Naturally enough one great chorus of disappointment greeted its announcement. Was this all? Had these two armies merely had a wrestling match? Had Meade and Lee compared their bruises, only to separate with the understanding that they would fight again at some future day when both felt stronger? Apparently the war was no nearer its ending than before. To the common understanding it did seem "a most lame and impotent conclusion." If the Confederates could not be crushed when everything conspired against them, and in favor of the Union army, when would they be?

That Lee extricated his army from its highly dangerous position must no longer be attributed to his superior generalship, we think, but to the want of it on the Union side. It is vain to ask why this or that thing was not done, since this campaign is unique for its omissions. Meade at Gettysburg was like a man who has been pushed into a fight reluctantly, and who stops the moment his adversary is down.

The history of this battle is largely that of the two commanders and their subordinates. Things done or left undone control the destinies of nations as well as of individuals. The want of cordiality among some of the Union generals was an incident of importance.

In arresting Lee's triumphal march, Meade had undoubtedly achieved all that the best-informed persons would have asked of him when he took the command, more perhaps than he allowed himself to expect when the magnitude of the task first unfolded itself to his troubled vision. His measures are so expressive of this want of confidence that any other conclusion seems inadmissible. Very sanguine persons, indeed, said that Lee ought never to return to Virginia except as a prisoner of war. The bare notion of a successful invasion by seventy thousand or eighty thousand men, with one hundred thousand behind them and the whole North before them, was scouted as a piece of folly designed and put in execution by madmen. If one hundred thousand were not enough, were there not one hundred and fifty thousand available? When Lee got to the Susquehanna these demands were somewhat lowered. They did not know, these unreflecting persons, that what an army wants is not men, but a man – one man.

So far this army had been a school in which mediocrity had risen. The really great commander had not yet forced his way to the front in spite of cabals in or out of the army. There had been a series of experiments – disastrous experiments. No army had ever marched more bravely to defeat or so seldom to victory. Few expected victory now.

Yielding to an imperative order, Meade found the Herculean task thrust upon him, with the fact staring him in the face that a defeated general meant a disgraced one.

But even then he did not find himself free to handle his army as he thought proper, because in Halleck he had always a tutor and critic who from his easy-chair in Washington assumed to supervise the acts of the commander in the field. Upon a not over-confident general the effect was especially pernicious. The war-cry at Washington was, "Beat the enemy, but make no mistakes!" This was constantly ringing in Meade's ears. As Halleck was an excellent closet strategist, some of his suggestions would have been eminently proper and useful, could he have been on the spot himself, but under existing conditions they could serve only to make Meade still more hesitating and timid. Handled in this way, no army has ever achieved great results, and no army ever will achieve them.

At the close of the Third Day's sanguinary encounter with Lee, Meade had found himself victorious. The fact that the fortune of war had thus placed the initiative in his hands seems to have become a source of embarrassment and perplexity; from that moment his acts became timid, halting, partial. When pressed to more active measures he flew into a passion.

The fault, as we look at it, was not so much in the commander as in the man. Meade the commander could do no more than Meade the man. He was no genius. He was only a brave, methodical, and conscientious soldier, who, within his limitations, had acted well his part. Under Grant he made an excellent so-called second in command.

It has been said that in defending itself successfully, the Union army had done all that could be expected, under the circumstances. Must we then admit that for Lee not to conquer was in itself a victory? Unquestionably there was a prevalent, a somewhat overshadowing, feeling that all the best generalship was on the Confederate side.

By a sort of perversity of the human mind, a certain class of critics is always found ready to prove why a beaten general is the best general.

Nevertheless, Lee himself goes down in history as a general who never won a decisive victory.

He was certainly lucky at Gettysburg. For a time his great reputation silenced the voice of criticism. His own subordinates are now accusing him of making fatal mistakes. May it not be equally true that Lee rashly undertook more at Gettysburg than he was able to perform? He has as good as admitted it. Carried away by a first success, he committed the old mistake of underrating his adversary. His victory of the first day was due to no combinations of his own, because he was then completely ignorant of where the Federal army was. He supposed it at least twenty miles off. His success of the second, again, arose first out of an entire misconception on his part as to the Union position, which was nowhere near where he thought it was, and next from a piece of recklessness on the part of one of the Union generals, by which an inferior force was again opposed to a superior one. On the third, he used means wholly inadequate to the work in hand, yet of his own planning; and on all three days, with the field of battle under his eye, little or no manœuvring for advantage of position, and plenty of time to look about him in, he signally failed to secure coöperation among his corps commanders. We see no evidence here, we confess, of generalship. Indeed, this inability to make himself obeyed indicates a serious defect somewhere. Like another great but also unfortunate captain, Lee might have exclaimed in bitterness of spirit, "Incomprehensible day! Concurrence of unheard-of fatalities! Strange campaign when, in less than a week, I three times saw assured victory escape from my grasp! And yet all that skill could do was done."

Gettysburg made no reputations on either side. It may have destroyed some illusions in regard to the invincibility of Confederate generals. Meade succeeded because he was able to move troops to threatened points more rapidly than his assailant, but the battle was won more through the gallantry of the soldiers than by the skill of their generals. Victory restored to them their feeling of equality – their morale. And that was no small thing.