Isaac L. August Share this: Twitter Facebook. Like this: Like Loading Ewell , Stonewall Jackson. Bookmark the permalink. Piatek says:. October 4, at PM. Chris Mackowski says:. Meg Thompson says:. August 16, at PM. Edward S. Alexander says:. October 9, at AM. Johannes Allert says:. October 6, at AM. Thanks, Johannes. Glad you enjoyed them. Ah, yes…Pipe Creek….
Steward Henderson says:. October 6, at PM. Very true, Joe: anything can happen and usually does. October 7, at PM. October 8, at PM. William Richardson says:. October 20, at AM.
Thanks, Loading May 1, at PM. Susan Grosor says:. July 11, at PM. Dwayne Davis says:. Francis Gallo says:. December 20, at PM. One of the most famous Civil War books, Michael Shaara's semihistorical novel "The Killer Angels," later made into the movie "Gettysburg," depicts Longstreet as a wise general who did the best he could with seemingly impossible orders from Lee.
However, some historians and some of Longstreet's men contended that Longstreet willfully disobeyed orders or, at the very least, acted on Lee's orders too slowly. While there is certainly controversy surrounding Longstreet's commitment to Lee's order to attack at Gettysburg, there is no doubt that he proposed alternatives to Lee all three days of the battle.
So why didn't Lee listen? After big wins at Chancellorsville and earlier at Fredericksburg, Lee may have felt that leaving Gettysburg would have been considered a demoralizing retreat. Additionally, Lee knew he needed a big victory in the North to force Lincoln to consider peace, and he may have seen Gettysburg as his only real opportunity.
Sign up for our Newsletter! Forget the debates over what Jackson might have done on July 1 or 2; had Stonewall been alive, there may have been no battle at Gettysburg, and in any case it would not have evolved as it did, for the three corps organization that Lee settled upon was a result of Jackson's death although Lee had contemplated a reorganization for some time, he always concluded that no one was ready to take command of a third corps.
The rest should be left to one's imagination--for one can make equally plausible and unprovable cases for several outcomes. Perhaps Jackson would have dazzled Hooker and maybe Meade ; perhaps he would have regressed to the Jackson of a year earlier; perhaps he would have hallucinated on painkillers and led his men in a suicidal charge; perhaps he would have sucked on some bad citrus and gotten sick. To indulge in these counterfactual fantasies is another way of avoiding the question of evaluating Lee's performance at Gettysburg.
Suffice it to say that several factors proved pivotal in determining the outcome of that battle. For the Confederates, there is plenty of blame to go around: it was probably the Army of Northern Virginia's worst-fought battle. The fact that historians still argue over what Lee intended to do during the campaign suggests that the Confederate commander did not do a good job of conveying his intentions in an unmistakable fashion to others.
Yet one must also observe that for once his Yankee counterparts did not fold under pressure. Say what one might about George G. Meade, but at least he was no McClellan, Pope, Burnside, or Hooker, whose incompetence did much to make Lee, Jackson, and company look so good.
Union generalship was far from mistake-free, but the army and its leaders moved quickly to repair the consequences and thus staved off disaster.
If Lee and his generals were unlucky at Gettysburg, luck as well as skill had played a role in their previous successes: a strategy that in the end depends upon an opponent's incompetence has a slim margin of error. Here and there the narrative is unintentionally amusing. After a long discussion of various exchanges and recollections in late June, which collectively offer contradictory impressions about what Lee intended to do, we learn that "Alexander Butterfield" was Joseph Hooker's chief of staff p.
Things would have been so much easier for military historians had Lee, Hooker, and other Civil War generals shared Richard Nixon's desire to prepare a record for history--and Butterfield would have known how to do it although in fact Daniel Butterfield, correctly identified elsewhere as the Army of the Potomac's chief of staff at Gettysburg, was a master at distorting that very record.
In short, this is ultimately a very frustrating, unfinished book, far too concerned with promoting its own argument as novel to resolve inherent contradictions and tensions in that argument. For this Stackpole Books bears some responsibility. Kegel's manuscript is obviously a labor of love fashioned by a very devoted buff; even if he finds his interpretations original, an accomplished outside reader would have known better. Many of the book's shortcomings should have been caught in the review process.
Yet many commercial presses and the occasional university press as well are so eager to capture a portion of the sizable Civil War market that the result is the publication of much substandard and undigested material.
Armed with the services of a good editor, Kegel might well have offered readers an interesting, engaging book; instead, North with Lee and Jackson contributes little that is new to informed discussion about Confederate strategy and generalship. Copyright c by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list.
Jackson, alive, well, and whole, would have made a meaningful impact. Stuart had arrived earlier. The question revolves around a dead man—which speaks volumes about the value his contemporaries placed on him then—and we place on him now.
Ewell that it would have reversed the outcome of the battle. With the trusted Stonewall at hand, would Lee have hesitated on July 1 as he did to finish off the fight? It is far from clear that Jackson would have seized Cemetery Hill on July 1, although I believe he would have tried. But if he took it, then Gettysburg becomes a sharp meeting engagement, not what happened over the next two days.
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