Pickett's Charge

[alfred russel]

Jeb Stuart's cavalry WAS engaged on the third day, and the Union cavalry fought it to a standstill south of the battlefield. No reason to imagine any different outcome there, so no, they don't actually cut off the Union. Nor would being reduced to one road "for supply" matter for the Union all that much anyway, at least not compared to the South's problem of being basically out of ammunition regardless of how many roads they could move ammunition they didn't have on.

There is extensive debate on exactly what Jeb Stuart was trying to accomplish, but when the fighting stopped, he still threatened the Baltimore Pike.

[Berkut]

Your "suppose" that a successful attack would see 9000 men "able to organize themselves".

No, they would NOT be able to organize themselves, because nobody was ever able to organize themselves in that manner during the ACW. Successful attacks did not see the attackers all fresh and organized, it saw them with their brigades and regiments hopelessy mixed up, officers dead and wounded, the men exhausted, and most importantly....out of ammunition.

The day before, there was obviously a very significant attack and a couple of brigades reached cemetery ridge, with a couple more in striking distance. To keep them from organizing, Hancock sent in the 1st Minnesota that lost 80+% of its men in 15 minutes. Hancock traded a regiment to keep the enemy disorganized while he could bring up reserves. You know the story.

The attacks on the Union left July 2 involved more men than Pickett's Charge. They would not have been able at the base of Cemetery Ridge and 1st Minnesota was thrown away needlessly? Hancock didn't think so.

Look--if you've got 9,000 men on Cemetery Ridge after pushing Union troops off the center, how many men do you need to push them off?

Whatever you number you say, the Union had that number. They also had 4 hours to put the assault together and pull it off. Look at how long it took the Confederates to pull off the July 2 and July 3 attacks. The timing of the orders of July 2 are a major point of controversy, but suffice it to say they were at some point in the morning and the attack on the Union left didn't step off until 4:30 PM. On July 3 they were ordered at 8 AM and didn't step off until about 3 PM. There was a non trivial chance that the attacks couldn't come off in time, or if they did would be blundered.

You are comparing the time it takes to mount a corrdinated assault against prepared defenses while trying to conceal from the enemy what your are doing with the time it takes to respond to an attack with a counter-attack. The first AND second days saw many, many attacks and counter-attacks, so clearly it does not take hours to mount a counter attack. Hell, the damn orchard at Antietam changed hands like 15 times in one morning! IIRC, the Peach Orchard changed hands a couple times on the 2nd.

You are creating a false comparison - comparing how long it took the rebels to coordinate and mount large, prepared attacks against known enemy positions with the ebb and flow of a battle once it is engaged, and how hard it is to order in more troops into an ongoing battle.

1st Minnesota was ordered to attack to counter attack a breakthrough, and did in fact by precious time. Indeed, that would argue AGAINST your claim that any counter to a Confederate assault would take "more than 4 hours" since in fact that happened in just minutes, and indeed, both the first and second days saw the Union respond to rebel attacks time and time again in radically less than hours.

You are inventing scenarios, and creating obstacles that did not exist, while simply ignoring the very real obstacles that DID exist. Pickets Charge was doomed to fail, and was never going to suceed. You could figure that out before it ever happened, and plenty of people did in fact know perfectly well it would fail. You can claim that other people thought it *might* succeed, but given the actual outcomes, it is pretty interesting that you want to make an in hindsight argument that what actually happened was NOT the likely outcome.

I point out that Longstreet said before the attack that it would fail, and you respond that Lee ordered it anyway. Well, I guess one of them was right, and one was wrong. It's bizarre to argue that the guy who was right....was actually wrong.

[alfred russel]

You are comparing the time it takes to mount a corrdinated assault against prepared defenses while trying to conceal from the enemy what your are doing with the time it takes to respond to an attack with a counter-attack. The first AND second days saw many, many attacks and counter-attacks, so clearly it does not take hours to mount a counter attack. Hell, the damn orchard at Antietam changed hands like 15 times in one morning! IIRC, the Peach Orchard changed hands a couple times on the 2nd.

You are creating a false comparison - comparing how long it took the rebels to coordinate and mount large, prepared attacks against known enemy positions with the ebb and flow of a battle once it is engaged, and how hard it is to order in more troops into an ongoing battle.

1st Minnesota was ordered to attack to counter attack a breakthrough, and did in fact by precious time. Indeed, that would argue AGAINST your claim that any counter to a Confederate assault would take "more than 4 hours" since in fact that happened in just minutes, and indeed, both the first and second days saw the Union respond to rebel attacks time and time again in radically less than hours.

I assume you are talking about the Cornfield at Antietam? In either event, those are not comparables - an attacking force was attempting to reach an objective that was not achieved, while the defending force was attempting to hold its position. For example, when the Peach Orchard was attacked on the 2nd, the objective was Cemetery Ridge. The III Corps was trying to hold its position. Two lines were pushing against each other, and as reserves arrived the position of the lines would ebb and flow.

That is not the case with an objective achieved. Had Pickett's Charge achieved its objective, half the men presumably wouldn't set off to scramble up Cemetery Hill with the other half going for Little Round Top. They would have established defensive lines and waited for reserves and further orders. The Union troops in the immediate vicinity would have naturally fallen back as they were locally badly outnumbered. I'm speculating a bit because there was not an attack in the center of an enemy position during the war on a scale similar to Pickett's Charge that met with success (for obvious reasons they were not frequently attempted).

You are inventing scenarios, and creating obstacles that did not exist, while simply ignoring the very real obstacles that DID exist. Pickets Charge was doomed to fail, and was never going to suceed. You could figure that out before it ever happened, and plenty of people did in fact know perfectly well it would fail. You can claim that other people thought it *might* succeed, but given the actual outcomes, it is pretty interesting that you want to make an in hindsight argument that what actually happened was NOT the likely outcome.

I point out that Longstreet said before the attack that it would fail, and you respond that Lee ordered it anyway. Well, I guess one of them was right, and one was wrong. It's bizarre to argue that the guy who was right....was actually wrong.

I am 100% inventing scenarios. I made it clear early in this thread that the attack as it happened as doomed - and I will reiterate that at this point.

What started this back and forth was that I stated that there was a study of Lee's observation point, and while it appeared to give a very good view of the Union center, in actuality a significant number of troops were hidden. I pointed out that I thought the charge would have had "prospects of success" had the Union strength been 25% less.

You keep coming back to what actually happened, and that isn't going to be determinative in a scenario where the Union is 25% weaker. I actually even came up with a peer reviewed model that projected the charge would have succeeded had the Union had one brigade less.

If you don't want to play in the invented scenario game, we really have not had anything to discuss.

[PDH]

1st Minnesota (a regiment with a couple of companies detached) with about 250 men was ordered by Hancock to charge a brigade (Wilcox?) that was marching toward an open spot on Cemetery Ridge on July 2nd (Too many other units had been ordered to help out III Corps and none had filled in yet.  Hancock ordered 1st Minn to charge the enemy colors and they did so, buying time for reinforcements to come up.  They were savaged with something like 80% casualty rate.

This showed that small units could react quickly to attacking threats, and could stymie forces seemingly on the verge of a breakthrough.  The Civil War was far more about the defensive (even if a local counter-attack) than the charge.

[alfred russel]

1st Minnesota (a regiment with a couple of companies detached) with about 250 men was ordered by Hancock to charge a brigade (Wilcox?) that was marching toward an open spot on Cemetery Ridge on July 2nd (Too many other units had been ordered to help out III Corps and none had filled in yet.  Hancock ordered 1st Minn to charge the enemy colors and they did so, buying time for reinforcements to come up.  They were savaged with something like 80% casualty rate.

This showed that small units could react quickly to attacking threats, and could stymie forces seemingly on the verge of a breakthrough.  The Civil War was far more about the defensive (even if a local counter-attack) than the charge.

Wright's Brigade actually reached Cemetery Ridge, but was forced to retire because the brigades to their right (the small Florida Brigade, Wilcox, and Barksdale) were unable to, while the brigades that were supposed to be to his left never really came (Posey and Mahone). My understanding is the way was relatively open for the Florida Brigade and Wilcox, but the troops were badly disorganized at the base of Cemetery Ridge (they had been fighting for probably an hour and covered almost a mile while fighting), and were trying to reorganize for the last push. Instead, the 1st Minnesota charged in, and in the time spent fighting them off, Cemetery Ridge was properly reinforced and they withdrew.

Wright was extremely upset and blamed the Floridians and the lack of reserves...someone involved (not sure if it was Wright) said something like, "We won the battle, but the battle was lost."

[Berkut]

It just goes to show that your claims that had Pickets charge somehow worked, those making the attack would have been disorganized, exhausted, and unlikely to be able to hold their positions against the inevitable Union response.

And no, that Union response would not have been impossible to make because somehow it would be 3:30 and Meade and his commanders would have thought "Damn, only 4 hours of daylight left! I guess we will just have to pack it in, no way we could ever possible do anything in just FOUR HOURS!"

It's kind of a funny counter-factual. The actual outcome was so devastating that there wasn't anything like a typical back and forth that one side eventually just breaks from, and the winner holds the field, that you typically see in these piched civil war battles (and indeed you saw this on days 1 and 2 several times, with both sides variously coming out on top in particular cases). There is no reason to think that had PC been a bit more successful than it was, the result would not have been exactly that - a hotly contested fight over some particular piece of terrain, with both sides shoving in reinforcements as they can, reforming their troops to go back into the fight when they are pushed back, and a back and forth battle.

Instead, because it never got to that because it was such a stupidly lopsided affair, we are asked to imagine that had things been a little different, the outcome would have been *radically* different in favor of the side that actually got so badly crushed there was never anything like an actual contested close combat! That the South, had there been a few fewer Union troops would have not just suceeded, but suceeded so thoroughly that the Union would be completely driven from the field and unable to even respond to the attack at all, for hours and hours and hours.

This is silly, of course. If there were a few fewer Union troops, the likely outcome is that instead of a devastating defeat, the South would just experience a bad defeat. And if we imagine it being even more in favor of the south, then maybe they just experience a solid repulse of their attack. And if we imagine it swinging even MORE, then maybe we see that pitched, back and forth battle that takes a couple hours to resolve, but where both sides are responding with local troops being moved to fill gaps and counter-attack back and forth, and where the particular scenario of the initial attack isn't so much the deciding factor as what happens after the initial attack succeeds in actually "sticking" such that the defenders then respond and the point of conflict shifts to this new location.

The scenario where the south attacks, and we shift the outcome from a crushinf defeat to a crushing Union defeat such that the South after the attack is sitting on Cemetery Ridge with 9000 basically fresh troops with plenty of ammo and leisure time to dig in, have a smoke, maybe make some tea, all the while the Union is so disrupted that they cannot even respond for the rest of the afternoon.....well, that is just into straight out fantasy land at that point. Civil War battles did not work that way.

[alfred russel]

And no, that Union response would not have been impossible to make because somehow it would be 3:30 and Meade and his commanders would have thought "Damn, only 4 hours of daylight left! I guess we will just have to pack it in, no way we could ever possible do anything in just FOUR HOURS!"

Berkut, I didn't say it would be impossible. Thanks for arguing against a point I didn't make.

[Berkut]

1st Minnesota (a regiment with a couple of companies detached) with about 250 men was ordered by Hancock to charge a brigade (Wilcox?) that was marching toward an open spot on Cemetery Ridge on July 2nd (Too many other units had been ordered to help out III Corps and none had filled in yet.  Hancock ordered 1st Minn to charge the enemy colors and they did so, buying time for reinforcements to come up.  They were savaged with something like 80% casualty rate.

This showed that small units could react quickly to attacking threats, and could stymie forces seemingly on the verge of a breakthrough.  The Civil War was far more about the defensive (even if a local counter-attack) than the charge.

Wright's Brigade actually reached Cemetery Ridge, but was forced to retire because the brigades to their right (the small Florida Brigade, Wilcox, and Barksdale) were unable to, while the brigades that were supposed to be to his left never really came (Posey and Mahone). My understanding is the way was relatively open for the Florida Brigade and Wilcox, but the troops were badly disorganized at the base of Cemetery Ridge (they had been fighting for probably an hour and covered almost a mile while fighting), and were trying to reorganize for the last push. Instead, the 1st Minnesota charged in, and in the time spent fighting them off, Cemetery Ridge was properly reinforced and they withdrew.

Wright was extremely upset and blamed the Floridians and the lack of reserves...someone involved (not sure if it was Wright) said something like, "We won the battle, but the battle was lost."

Without taking anything away from 1st Minnesota, lets not kid ourselves here - these kinds of things tend to take on a mythology of their own, and a good story becomes hard to resist. This same fight, as told from the side of the Confederate commander:

This cannonading continued until 6.20 p.m., when McLaws' troops advanced to the attack.
        My instructions were to advance when the troops on my right should advance, and to report this to the division commander, in order that the other brigades should advance in proper time. In order that I should advance with those on my right, it became necessary for me to move off by the left flank so as to uncover the ground over which they had to advance. This was done as rapidly as the nature of the ground with its opposing obstacles (stone and plank fences) would admit. Having gained 400 or 500 yards to the left by this flank movement, my command faced by the right flank, and advanced. This forward movement was made in an open field, the ground rising slightly to the Emmitsburg turnpike, 250 yards distant. Before reaching this road, a line of the enemy's skirmishers along a fence parallel to the road were encountered and dispersed. The fence being crossed, my men advanced to the road, in which infantry in line of battle were formed. A brisk musketry fight for a few minutes followed, when the enemy gave way; not, however, till all save two pieces of a battery that was in the road had been removed. These fell into our hands, the horses having been killed.
        On the far side of the pike the ground was descending for some 600 or 700 yards. At the bottom of this descent was a narrow valley, through which ran a rocky ravine or stream, fringed with small trees and undergrowth of bushes. Beyond this, the ground rose rapidly for some 200 yards, and upon this ridge were numerous batteries of the enemy· This ridge to my right rose into a succession of higher ridges or spurs of mountains, increasing in height to the right, but to the left gradually descending. When my command crossed the pike and began to descend the slope, they were exposed to an artillery fire from numerous pieces, both from the front and from either flank.
        Before reaching the ravine at the foot of the slope, two lines of infantry were met and broken, and driven pell-mell across the ravine. A second battery of six pieces here fell into our hands. From the batteries on the ridge above referred to, grape and canister were poured into our ranks. This stronghold of the enemy, together with his batteries, were almost won, when still another line of infantry descended the slope in our front at a double-quick, to the support of their fleeing comrades and for the defense of the batteries.
        Seeing this contest so unequal, I dispatched my adjutant-general to the division commander, to ask that support be sent to my men, but no support came. Three several times did this last of the enemy's lines attempt to drive my men back, and were as often repulsed. This struggle at the foot of the hill on which were the enemy's batteries, though so unequal, was continued for some thirty minutes. With a second supporting line, the heights could have been carried. Without support on either my right or left, my men were withdrawn, to prevent their entire destruction or capture. The enemy did not pursue, but my men retired under a heavy artillery fire, and returned to their original position in line, and bivouacked for the night, pickets being left on the pike.

https://civilwarhome.com/wilcoxgettysburgor.htm

It is a regiment against a brigade, to be sure. But it was a *fresh* regiment against a brigade that by that time had just attacked across several hunderd yards of ground under constant cannon fire and had already engaged and driven off defenders. If anything this goes to show how hard it is to sustain an attack over time in the ACW. The charge of the 1st Minnesota worked, at least in part, because the brigade they were attacking was tired, disorganized, lacked support, and was at that time under fire from its own flanks, and from their perspective THEY were outnumbered and being attacked by superior forces, which they managed to drive off several times before being forced to retire.

Note that there isnt anything here that disputes your above account at all. It is just interesting to see how both sides see the same fight. I suspect that if 1st Minnesota had not gone in, the battle still would not have been lost. The southern attack at that point was petering out the way these attacks always did as the attacking troops became tired, disorganized, and run out of ammunition. Without more troops coming in, these kind of attacks had a pretty short half life if they don't just break the front immediately and turn things into a rout.

I feel the same way about the defense of Little Round Top. It was critical, no doubt, but the entire "OMG if we don't hold the flank will collapse and the line will be rolled up and the battle lost and the Confederacy will win the war!" narrative of these things is a bit over-stated, to say the least.

[PDH]

The VI Corps was arriving at the battle when the fight for Little Round Top was happening, 16,000 spare (though not fresh) troops coming in behind the Round Tops was a pretty good reserve had things gone differently there.

[crazy canuck]

I am learning a lot about the battle 

[Berkut]

The VI Corps was arriving at the battle when the fight for Little Round Top was happening, 16,000 spare (though not fresh) troops coming in behind the Round Tops was a pretty good reserve had things gone differently there.

Indeed.

The power of the Union position, with decent high ground and interior lines meant that absent the Union commander making bad mistakes, or simply losing his nerve, the battle was really going to be very hard for Lee to win by pushing the Union from their positions.

There was some absolutely desperate fighting to be sure, but that I think speaks more to how kind of hopeless the thing was.

Sickles deciding to move his entire freaking Corps out of the line is the only reason the 2nd day was actually as close as it was - it took a really fucking stupid mistake to make the fight even sort of even, and even then....that mistake just meant that a bunch of union troops got beat up that probably did not need to - those same interior lines allowed Meade to respond to that mistake as well, albeit not fast enough to save Sickles corp (or his leg, the dumbass).

Meade was not the kind of guy who Lee needed in charge of the Union those days. He was by no means brilliant, but he was steady and not prone to hysterics or drama.

It is such a weird thing too - Lee lost Gettysburg because he chose to fight at Gettysburg. He did not need to - that campaign could have seen another few days of maneuvering, to try to force the fight on better ground.

[Valmy]

Sickles made that move because he was still angry about Hooker making him leave the Hazelgrove at Chancellorsville, this left excellent high ground to the rebel artillery and allowed Lee and JEB Stuart to re-unite the Confederate Army. It also allowed the Confederates to hit Hooker's headquarters and gave him a concussion at the worst possible time.

So Sickles went up on Cemetary Ridge and saw the higher Houck's ridge in front of him and was like "well fuck that I am not getting burned a second time by my incompetent superiors" and re-deployed. Sickles had little respect for Meade and would certainly have been replaced if Meade had had more than 48 hours before the battle being in command.

Of course it extended Sickle's line from 1500 yards to 3500 yards and put III Corps in a position much harder to reinforce...which is kind of a bigger deal than having ground with a slightly higher elevation. But it is a nice example about how sometimes generals are still fighting the last battle.

[Berkut]

Jeb Stuart's cavalry WAS engaged on the third day, and the Union cavalry fought it to a standstill south of the battlefield. No reason to imagine any different outcome there, so no, they don't actually cut off the Union. Nor would being reduced to one road "for supply" matter for the Union all that much anyway, at least not compared to the South's problem of being basically out of ammunition regardless of how many roads they could move ammunition they didn't have on.

There is extensive debate on exactly what Jeb Stuart was trying to accomplish, but when the fighting stopped, he still threatened the Baltimore Pike.

The fighting stopped because his attacks to drive away the federal cavalry had failed. Saying he "threatened" the Baltimore Pike doesn't mean anything - his job was to attempt to force the Union to react to his attack on their rear, and that failed. His command was not wiped out, so I guess that means he still existed and hence "threatened" the pike, but that doesn't mean anything since his actual attempt to make that threat into anything more than a threat was defeated, and there was no reason to suppose an additional attack would have succeeded where the first one failed. Given the situation, where both sides had roughly equal numbers, but the Union troops were better armed and actually well led (Gregg was an effective cavalry commander), and were NOT exhausted from having ridden all over Pennsylvania for the last week and a half, Stuart defeat at the Cavalary Field was conclusive. Meade was not concerned about his flank because 3000 rebel cavalry were riding around, followed around by an equal number of union cavalry.

[alfred russel]

The fighting stopped because his attacks to drive away the federal cavalry had failed. Saying he "threatened" the Baltimore Pike doesn't mean anything - his job was to attempt to force the Union to react to his attack on their rear, and that failed. His command was not wiped out, so I guess that means he still existed and hence "threatened" the pike, but that doesn't mean anything since his actual attempt to make that threat into anything more than a threat was defeated, and there was no reason to suppose an additional attack would have succeeded where the first one failed. Given the situation, where both sides had roughly equal numbers, but the Union troops were better armed and actually well led (Gregg was an effective cavalry commander), and were NOT exhausted from having ridden all over Pennsylvania for the last week and a half, Stuart defeat at the Cavalary Field was conclusive. Meade was not concerned about his flank because 3000 rebel cavalry were riding around, followed around by an equal number of union cavalry.

The situation on July 3 was not the same as a hypothetical July 4 opening with the Confederates with a position on Cemetery Ridge.

On July 3, the Union had 2 roads leading into their Gettysburg positions, and cutting the Baltimore Pike would obviously still leave the Union with 1. If his job was to force the Union to react in their rear, his attack was unsuccessful. The cavalry did not fully commit to that attack - 3 of the 7 brigades were not involved in the attack, and a significant portion of the 4 that were did not engage. I don't know how many calvarlymen Stuart had (I think it was significantly more than the 3k you mention), but their losses were under 200 which shows the level of commitment to the attack.

On a hypothetical July 4, the Union is reduced to one road--the Baltimore Pike. The enemy cavalry would not be limited to only attacking the road in the immediate vicinity of the Union rear, but could raid further behind union lines.

As you know, the Union entered Gettysburg with 90k men and almost that many mules and horses. Supplying the army with one road that had enemy cavalry roaming around in the vicinity would not be an attractive proposition to Meade on the night of July 3 if he was unsure he could use the Taneytown Road.

[Valmy]

If Meade wasn't too worried by Stuart riding around his Army in June he was hardly going to sweat it now. Especially with his entire cavalry arm at his disposal.