Pickett's Charge

[Valmy]

I just looked at a map of the third day.  Man, the Confederates were really fucked.  They had fewer men, exterior lines, and a small town splitting their force.  I wonder why the Union didn't attack.

Meade was not that kind of guy, though I guess I should give him a little credit since he had only been in command of the army for about five days by the third day of Gettysburg. He might just not have been confident enough in his staff or commanders to organize such an attack, most of his staff were Hooker's guys who were not his friends.

On the other hand in Meade's two campaigns against Lee in 1863 he consistently failed to force a battle, hesistant to fight except under the most favorable condidtions. So I think launching a major counter-attack after 20,000 casualties was just not something he had the stomach for.

Meade was an expert at not losing.

[alfred russel]

Meade was an expert at not losing.

It makes sense now...Meade was reincarnated as Frank Beamer.

[Valmy]

I mean that might as well be a photo from the Mine Run Campaign.

[alfred russel]

So for confederate artillery:

each battery had 4 cannon, at full strength.

There were 9 infantry divisions, each with 4 batteries: or 144 theoretical divisional cannon.
Each of the 3 corps had an artillery reserve averaging 9 batteries: or 108 theoretical corps reserve cannon.
Jeb Stuart had 8 batteries: or 32 theoretical cannon.

If the confederate batteries were at full strength, they would have had 284 cannon.

[The Brain]

Still no match for Frank.

[grumbler]

I believe that your 360 Union guns number is wrong.  According to Gottfried's The Artillery of Gettysburg there were 355 total guns at Gettysburg.

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/hh/9/hh9j.htm

That number is from the national park service.

Okay, but what I am saying is that the number looks to be misleading.  There were 352 guns in the total Union OOB for the Army of the Potomac (I just counted them up using Scott Bowden's Last Chance for Victory), but not all of the units were present for the battle, and not all of the artillery reserve was deployed.  Gottlieb has 229 Union and 164 Confederate guns listed as having "fought" at the battle (not the 355 I listed earlier, as I left out some Confederate guns that were there on day 3).

[alfred russel]

Okay, but what I am saying is that the number looks to be misleading.  There were 352 guns in the total Union OOB for the Army of the Potomac (I just counted them up using Scott Bowden's Last Chance for Victory), but not all of the units were present for the battle, and not all of the artillery reserve was deployed.  Gottlieb has 229 Union and 164 Confederate guns listed as having "fought" at the battle (not the 355 I listed earlier, as I left out some Confederate guns that were there on day 3).

I'm trying to come back to the park service numbers...and I think they are plausible - if the count is cannon present in the area rather than cannon engaged.

As I showed earlier, the Army of Northern Virginia had 71 batteries present...which at a full strength of 4 cannon would be 284 cannon. That is reasonably close to the park services 270. Was it realistic that they would be so close to full strength? I'm doubtful, but there were overstrength batteries, and the army was just reorganized. With most Confederate guns captured from the Union, and the Army of Northern Virginia coming off a series of victories, it isn't the most insane thing.

The Union is more of a problem. They had 7 corps, each with 5 batteries. They had 9 batteries attached to cavalry, and the artillery reserve had 21 batteries. This gives a total of 65 batteries. A full strength union battery was 6 guns, so theoretically that is 390, but that isn't realistic--less than a year later the army reduced artillery batteries to 4 guns because of trouble filling them out (horses being the bottleneck). If they averaged 5 guns / battery, that is 325 guns - still 45 short of the park service number.

I wonder if the missing piece to the puzzle is militia. Militia did have artillery units and militia from Pennsylvania and I know at least New York militia went to Pennsylvania.

[grumbler]

The number of guns assigned to a Union corps varied widely, from the 20 attached to the XII Corps to the 46 attached to the VI Corps.

[alfred russel]

The number of guns assigned to a Union corps varied widely, from the 20 attached to the XII Corps to the 46 attached to the VI Corps.

Of the 7 corps, 5 had 5 batteries. The two exceptions were the corps you mentioned: XII had 4 batteries and VI had 8. So net, there were 2 extra batteries attached to corps from what I said (37 rather than 35).

[Monoriu]

I just looked at a map of the third day.  Man, the Confederates were really fucked.  They had fewer men, exterior lines, and a small town splitting their force.  I wonder why the Union didn't attack.

I guess defending is always easier than attacking.  If the enemy will attack anyway, then there is no need to attack.  Strategically, Lee was on the offensive.  He will attack to force a political solution.  So the Union could simply wait.  That worked, I think. 

[Valmy]

I just looked at a map of the third day.  Man, the Confederates were really fucked.  They had fewer men, exterior lines, and a small town splitting their force.  I wonder why the Union didn't attack.

I guess defending is always easier than attacking.  If the enemy will attack anyway, then there is no need to attack.  Strategically, Lee was on the offensive.  He will attack to force a political solution.  So the Union could simply wait.  That worked, I think. 

Sure it worked to not lose the war.

But attacking might have won it, especially after Pickett's Charge.

[Razgovory]

I just looked at a map of the third day.  Man, the Confederates were really fucked.  They had fewer men, exterior lines, and a small town splitting their force.  I wonder why the Union didn't attack.

I guess defending is always easier than attacking.  If the enemy will attack anyway, then there is no need to attack.  Strategically, Lee was on the offensive.  He will attack to force a political solution.  So the Union could simply wait.  That worked, I think.

Lincoln seemed to think otherwise, that's why Grant was put in charge shortly after this (Grant would win a huge victory over the South the next day).

[Valmy]

Lincoln seemed to think otherwise, that's why Grant was put in charge shortly after this (Grant would win a huge victory over the South the next day).

Well Meade was never actually replaced, Grant actually took the job of Meade's boss General-in-Chief Henry Halleck. Meade not only succeeded in not losing the war, he also succeeded in not losing his job.

[alfred russel]

In hindsight it is easy to criticize Meade and with the information we have it is clear he should have attacked...but we know that the Union Army was larger and better equipped. Meade received intelligence that Lee had 100,000 men in Pennsylvania and thus probably the larger army at Gettysburg.

On the other side, for reasons I don't really understand, Lee seems to have thought that the Union Army hadn't fully reached the battlefield. There is some evidence that the vantage point on the Lutheran Seminary appears to give a great view of the union line on Cemetery Ridge, but actual conceals a significant portion of it. Putting those together, if the Union really had 25% less troops on Cemetery Ridge, Pickett's Charge would have had prospects for success.

[Berkut]

Prospects for success.....hmmmm.

I think I am going to defer to the opinion of someone who was there. A confederate in fact, who was considering the prospects of success, and probably, maybe....had some idea of those prospects, and was, by all accounts, perhaps one of maybe a dozen human beings at that time who could best evaulate such things. He was, in fact, the Major General who was in charge of the attack itself. General James Longstreet.

He said, BEFORE the attack, to Lee, arguing that they should leave the field:

General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know, as well as any one, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arranged for battle can take that position.