"How Deadly Was Pickett's Charge?" Topic

Interesting….

YouTube link

Armand

Debate about Pickett's Charge: War Department

YouTube link

Armand

For a lot of men who charged it meant death

Glup!…

Armand

Charging, (or more exactly) quick marching en masse uphill across a long field of fire against an entrenched force of disciplined soldiers armed with rifled muskets and supported by artillery firing grapeshot was not a brilliant idea. It was a recipe for disaster.

Seems this one wasn't the only one stile recipe for disaster in the ACW…

Armand

We all have bad days… (smile)

Armand

Take this division of men, in daylight, charge across a field, under the guns of a foe who has more everything than you, against a prepared position you allowedd him to dig into, and charge into him while enduring a hailstorm of fire at point blank range, engage, fight, win, and if you win, he has an entire army in reserve. He has more armies that could, conceivably be formed and brought to bear. He can lose multiple times today. You cannot lose once.

In short, this is a hail mary pass through alligators and loops of fire while performing a handstand avoiding a swinging pendulum of death.

Yeah, Lee was "the" genius because "reasons."

Legends are created by those who need them. They die hard…

Well, it worked a year before at Beaver Dam Creek, Gaines Mill, and Glen Dale. We have a tendency to look at battles and judge the commanders by the outcome while ignoring what they knew at the time.

I think they all knew but Lee. These were seasoned troops, top of the line soldiers.They all knew and still they went, and they turned back when the point was made with so many lives.

Some of the Union troops shouted "Fredericksburg" at them during the assault. Lee was Burnside for that afternoon. How did he not know? He had seen this before.

How did he not know? He had seen this before.

Indeed he had, twice!

Once in dishing it out at Fredericksburg and once being on the receiving end at Malvern Hill!

Thanks.

Armand

It was the old "Double or nothing". Lee knew the odds, and knew what would happen if he gave up and withdrew (what actually happened). Sometimes you just have to try.

The real horror is that these listen were not learned and fifty years later humanity is doing the same thing with better weapons, despite other similar lessons along the way.

There wasn't a long to wait to repeat the errors.

The entire Overland Campaign in the following year and the Siege of Petersburg the one after, proved nobody was paying attention in class!

Yes, Grant had lifelong regrets about Cold Harbor especially.

And then there was WW1….

What people seem to forget is that Lee had to win at Gettysburg. His 1863 invasion is a strategic failure otherwise. So as Augustus above says, it was a Hail Mary pass of sorts. Had it proven successful it would have likely ended the war. That it failed really changed nothing.

You are may be right Marcus, but I would argue that between Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, Lee lost so many men that he finally lost the initiative. He could not win the war by taking Cemetery Ridge at such a cost.

After it was over, the ANV became a defensive force, capable of doing great damage, but too spent to win. The losses of 1863, from Jackson on down, were too heavy. So many veterans gone.

That isn't entirely accurate. Despite the losses at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg and then detaching more than 25% of his strength to aid Bragg Lee was able to launch an offensive in October of 1863 that drove Meade's forces back to the fortifications around Centreville, just outside of Washington. This offensive gets forgotten because it didn't contain a big battle like so many other campaigns between the ANV and the AoP.

I stand corrected Bill, you are right. I was speaking in general terms. But the ANV was very much a force to be reckoned with at that time.

This offensive gets forgotten because it didn't contain a big battle like so many other campaigns between the ANV and the AoP.

That's a fair point!

You might also say it gets forgotten due to all Hell breaking loose the following Spring.

While no one would argue that Pickett's Charge wasn't a mistake, one has to look at context.

Just two months earlier, Lee had bested a much larger Union army with fewer Confederate forces at Chancellorsville. On May 5th, The Union retreated, even though they had @90,000 men behind significant entrenchments against Lee's 35,000. Lee was intent on attacking. Hooker retreated. The Artillerist Alexander commented that there were two people who knew the Confederates would be successful: Lee and Hooker.

At Gettysburg, on July 3rd, the Confederates had destroyed two Union Corps, inflicted far more casualties than either Chancellorsville or 2nd Manassas. At that point, the battle was a significant tactical success. Lee always played against the Union commander. He had been pretty good at second-guessing Union commanders for the last year. Meade was known to be a cautious commander and had only been in command for a WEEK. Lee was betting that Meade would respond much like Hooker before him. He also expected the artillery cannonade to do far more damage than it did.

So, Lee was betting on Union past behavior. He couldn't know Meade, unlike every commander before him, would stay. That doesn't absolve Lee of his mistake, but it does make more sense.

As for Lee's 'error', A year later Grant copied the same error at Cold Harbor with similar results, very similar casualties. In the end, Grant could afford such errors in judgement where Lee couldn't.

Thanks!

Armand

I don't know about tactical success. The high ground was still not taken. Meade was a competent commander who managed the battle pretty well. It was a sign of what was coming in terms of competent command and hard fighters.

IMO the charge was a massive blunder with everything at stake. Not the same as Cold Harbor, which I also mentioned above. I have always felt that Lee was not himself that day. Weary, bothered by a heart condition, missing Jackson, upset with Stuart, and maybe a touch of arrogance.

Or put another way it was also the three days when he found out that neither Ewell or A.P.Hill were the Corps Commanders he needed.

Worse still he had promoted them over others who probably were.

Although, in fairness, it was in May the following year that became undeniable and by that time he was in an even worse fix.

Ewell's corps performed well in the advance northward. How much of that was due to Ewell personally and how much to his subordinates was not clear even at Gettysburg. Plus the problem with the evening of July 1 argument is there were plenty of just as good defensive positions for the I and XI corps to fall back on. I'd argue that Lee knew what he was getting with Hill.

Which brings us to the second problem Trajanus. Of the commanders available to the ANV on May 10, 1863 who had performed well enough as a division commander to show promise at a higher level? Certainly not Lafayette McLaws, who I believe was next most senior division commander. Stuart had, but Lee wasn't taking him away from the cavalry. Get past these two and you are dealing with men who either had only been a Major General for a short time, or who had had little opportunity as Major General to show they had the potential to be promoted. Early for instance had only been promoted to Major General in January of 1863. Anderson had been at rank longer but Chancellorsville was his first opportunity to shine.

Great points. Maybe Early. I agree about Hill.

Its a tough one Bill, I agree.

Anderson could have been a candidate, particularly if he hadn't been wounded at Antietam where his Division did well but stumbled after he gave up command. There's belief Lee would have preferred him to Ewell but passed him over when he reorganised the Army on Seniority.

He could have taken a punt on Early, earlier (sorry about that) then again John B. Gordon proved better than Early in 1864 but again Seniority was involved.

I suppose you could argue that Lee could/should have thrown out the rule book. Lack of competent Division & Brigade commanders and replacements haunted the ANV in the last 18 months of the war as we know. You could argue Gettysburg saw the start of that process.

Yes, Trajanus this is good stuff. Again, I do not think Chancellorsville was a big plus for Lee beyond its stunning tactical success. He lost a lot of veterans he could not afford to lose. And Jackson.

And then Gettysburg really hurt the ANV, IMO. And the AOTP finally turned a corner.

Lee's was a different army in 1864, skilled defenders with limited resources verses an army approaching its peak.

If you are playing a numbers game the Killed and Wounded on both sides was almost the the same. The ANV wins on prisoners taken.

If you then look at the tactical advantage Jackson's attack is always acclaimed for, that becomes hard to reconcile.

Yes, Lee kicked Hooker's Army back over the River line but he lost Jackson and Paxton killed as well as Hill, Heth, Pender, McGowan, Ramseur, Hoke, Nicholls and O'Neil wounded.

Being a General in the NVA was a hard furrow to plough.

The battle bought time and belief that more was possible but in the short term it did nothing for the ANV's supply problems – still stuck at the end of a single track railroad back to Richmond. The need to take the fight into Union territory remained exactly the same.

Yes, and the Union cavalry failure re the railroad at Chancellorsville was maybe a bigger part of the defeat than people may recall today. Lee's win at Chancellorsville did not help him much, IMO.

Lee could not replace numbers like the North could. That was the rub. It might have been Longstreet or even Jackson earlier who said something like they could not take these kind of victories for long.

IMO Lee never really destroyed opposing armies, they came back pretty quickly. I think he just did not have the horsepower to get the Napoleonic result he needed.

Thanks.

Armand

Pickett's charge was also compromised by the lack of cavalry's support, the force Lee had send to outflank Hancock's position had been repulsed by Custer's desperate counterattack, the confederates were really in a bad situation, if Lee retreated, the Union forces probabilly would've routed his army, perhaps he hoped to crash Federalsì will to fight with this attack, as had happened before. remember that now we know how bad was for the rebels the situation on the battlefield, but he haven't our perspective.

Lee was a decent maneuver general who was at his best hitting a flank or doing the unexpected. Those options simply weren't open to him on Day 3 of Gettysburg when both armies were arrayed in respective strong positions. Without a flank to hit, Lee is just Burnside in a grey uniform.

The only real question is whether Lee had an alternative attack that avoided a predictable "heads down" march into superior artillery fire across open fields?

Practically speaking, there's probably nothing could constructively do by Day 3 and the campaign is already a failure.

Did Lee promote his generals? Or did Davis?

If Lee had commanded the Union Army (Lincoln offered him the position), the war would almost certainly have been over before the end of 1863.

Strictly my opinion, of course.

B

I agree Huevans and this is part of what makes the Charge such a tragedy.

Blutarski, I agree. Lee as a field commander at that time would have turned the tables. I have always thought that he and Lincoln would have made a good team to end the war.

Tortorella wrote -
"Blutarski, I agree. Lee as a field commander at that time would have turned the tables. I have always thought that he and Lincoln would have made a good team to end the war."

….. and I'd bet even money that Sherman would have become Lee's Longstreet and Sheridan his JEB Stewart.

B

And that would be the end of the rebellion right there!

My question, without the losses sustained in officers and men in the Gettysburg campaign, including the retreat, could the Confederacy have held on for an additional 6 months to a year? Thus having more of an effect on the 1864 election and possibly a delayed, (or maybe, never) arrival of Grant and Sheridan to the East.