Download The Consequences of a Confederate Victory at Gettysburg

The Consequences of a Confederate Victory at Gettysburg
Much has been said and written about the possible results of a Confederate battle
victory during Lee’s Raid in the North in June-July of 1863. It has even been proposed
that a Confederate victory would have brought foreign intervention if not ending the Civil
War. This essay is a closer look at the probable aftermath and consequences of a
Confederate victory at Gettysburg.
How would the events of the Battle of Gettysburg have to be altered to achieve a
Confederate victory and what would be the results.
First Day:
Events: On the first day, Lee pummels the I and XI Corps of the Army of the Potomac,
due to the fortuitous (for the Confederates) death of Reynolds, the order of march of
A.P. Hill’s Corps which brought it down on the Union flank from the north taking
advantage of O.O. Howard’s misplacement of his Corps. This time, Ewell and Hill move
on Cemetery Ridge, and after a hard fight, drives Hancock and the remnants of I and XI
Corps to the east, on to the XII Corps.
Results: The survivors fall back towards the southwest, covered by Buford’s Cavalry
Division and XII Corps, on to the rapidly concentrating Army of the Potomac. In
exchange for the virtual destruction of I and XI Corps, Heth’s Division of Ewell’s Corps is
decimated, Pender’s is hard hit, along with two or three brigades of Hill’s Corps,
especially in regimental officers. Casualties are in favor of the Confederates at about a
1.25 to 1 ratio, but the percentage loss to each Army is about even. Lee has
concentrated his Army and is subsisting from his supply trains. He now has 3-6 days of
subsistence left (and A.P.Hill’s Corps would be short on ammunition) to bring the Army
of the Potomac to battle. He cannot break up and forage or maneuver freely on
Washington, Philadelphia or Baltimore with the Army of the Potomac still intact. If he
does not eliminate organized Union forces in the area of operations, he will be forced to
end his raid and retreat back to the Catoctin and South Mountains. His only other option
is to maneuver to bring the Army of the Potomac to battle again. The problem is that
Meade will not attack a prepared Lee, just as he declined to do at Fair Waters and Mine
Run and Meade’s lines of communication ran back to Westminster to Baltimore, not to
Washington. Lee would have to move all the way around Meade to get between him
and Baltimore and Meade was on interior lines and his cavalry was now as good at
screening and scouting as Lee’s. Moving on Washington would be a bluff, as Lee had
no siege artillery and risked being attacked in the rear by Meade as he attacked the
heavily fortified lines around Washington. Lee would be the attacker, with both armies
concentrated, a scenario far different from beating off the enemy as at Antietam and
Fredericksburg or in detail as at Chancellorsville or Second Manassas (Bull Run).The
end result is Lee retires back down the Shenandoah with Meade shadowing him looking
for an opportunity to pick off a piece of the ANV and both armies are back on the line of
the Rappahanock by the middle of July. In any case, Union forces do not withdraw from
the Atlantic seaboard and their operations against Charleston, Vicksburg and Port
Hudson still fall by 5 July and Rosecrans begins to maneuver Bragg out of middle
Tennessee back beyond Chattanooga into Georgia. The victory would not be sustained
and there would not be enough impact to bring France and/or Britain to recognize the
Confederate States.
Second Day
Events: Thanks to Sickles moving III Corps forward, creating a salient, and the absence
(ahistorical) of initiative and competence on the part of several Union officers from
Meade, Hancock and Warren down to Vincent and Chamberlain, Hill pins the Army of
the Potomac on its left and Longstreet’s attacks on the right unhinge the Union position.
If Longstreet had moved earlier, he would have faced Sickles and III Corps in their
original position, which may or may not have changed the results that much, if Meade
could not reinforce the right because of Hill’s Corps attacks on the left. The problem is
that Lee sent Longstreet to conduct an attack on Cemetery Ridge from southwest to
northeast, which, if Sickles had stayed where he was supposed to would have exposed
Longstreet’s assault to a flanking counterattack by III Corps (Sickle’s competence might
be in question but not his aggressiveness) supported by V Corps as it became
available. So if Sickles had not moved forward and Longstreet had gotten an earlier
start, Longstreet’s attack may still have gone off late as he repositioned his line of
departure from it original orientation. The attack is successful in driving the AoP off
Cemetery Ridge and Culp’s Hill, what was left of I and XI Corps, III and XII Corps are
destroyed, but Ewell’s Corps and both Hood’s and McLaw’s Divisions being fought-out
and devastated, Pickett still not available and two of A.P. Hill’s divisions still recovering
from the first day, Lee and Longstreet are unable to exploit the advantage they gain, as
the AoP, covered by V and VI Corps, the Artillery Reserve and Cavalry Corps, retires
intact upon its lines of communications at Westminster.
Results: In exchange for destroying most of III Corps and parts of II and V Corps, and
leveraging the Army of the Potomac out of its position, the Confederates lose Hood’s
and McLaw’s Divisions, which are rendered ineffective and some more of Hill’s brigades
are damaged. The casualties are again in favor of the Confederates at about 1.25 to 1,
but, again, both armies lose about an equal proportion of their combat force. The Army
of the Potomac cannot retire to the southwest, but instead retires toward its supply train
and the railhead at Westminster. Otherwise there is little change to the operational,
strategic and diplomatic situation. Lee still retires because of supply shortages or
initiates another, less sustainable, bloody offensive battle. Vicksburg, Port Hudson and
Chattanooga still fall. The Union can draw on Burnside’s large IX Corps in eastern
Kentucky, the Army of West Virginia and from its forces along the Atlantic coast and
from line forces released from lines of communications duties by the militia to reinforce
the Army of the Potomac. Losses for both armies would be up to 15% of their strengths,
and both would still be intact and ready to fight after a couple of days. Then Lee faces
the same situation described above and the fact that he is forced to retire back to
Virginia adversely impacts the possibility of recognition and intervention.
The Third Day:
Events: Longstreet’s attack in the center is coordinated with the attacks on the Union
right by Ewell and supported by A.P.Hill’s remaining division (Anderson’s, which served
as Lee’s operational reserve through the battle) and the Union position is broken. The
remnants of the Army of the Potomac retire on Westminster covered by the Cavalry
Corps, the Artillery Reserve and VI Corps. Lee is unable to pursue as Stuart’s cavalry
has not recovered from the effects of his ride and the Union cavalry is equal to the task,
as shown by their performance on Cavalry Field and throughout the campaign, and he
had committed his last reserve (Anderson’s Division) and had no more fresh infantry to
support such a pursuit.
Results: The Army of the Potomac has around 40,000 infantry left, with over 200 guns
and 8,000 cavalry. Lee is left with around 30,000 infantry, his artillery and an exhausted
cavalry of around 5,000 effectives. He has one day of supply of ammunition on-hand
and around 3 days of subsistence in his trains. Without a siege train, he cannot threaten
Washington or Baltimore. If he tries, he will be caught between the defenses of
Washington or Baltimore and the Army of the Potomac, being reinforced by veteran
troops drawn from Kentucky, Pennsylvania and the Atlantic coast (IX, VIII and VII
Corps) and militia from the Mid-Atlantic states and New York, which being well trained,
manned, led and armed, and filled with veterans from the AoP. There were in these
forces over 40,000 infantry within a week’s travel of Washington or Baltimore. He
cannot forage without bringing the Army of the Potomac, beaten and battered, but
intact, to battle. His remaining option is to retire to the mountains and back to Virginia.
The political and psychological value of his victory will be offset by his rettirement back
to Virginia. The impact of the Confederate victory will also be nullified by the impact on
Union, Confederate and foreign opinion by the captures of Vicksburg, Port Hudson and
Chattanooga.
The Reality
Lee’s Raid into the North was intended to relieve pressure on the Confederacy in the
West (by diverting forces to the East), subsist the Army of Northern Virginia off the
enemy (giving northern Virginia a period of relief from the requirements of both armies)
and, possibly, to relieve some of the pressure being placed on the Confederacy along
the Atlantic coast. At the beginning of the campaign, bringing to battle and defeating the
Army of the Potomac was a secondary mission. Lee’s inability to state his objectives for
the campaign clearly resulted in confusion amongst his primary subordinates.
Longstreet was seemingly unaware of Lee’s intent to act aggressively if he could isolate
a portion of the Army of the Potomac, while Stuart completely failed in his
understanding of the campaign’s objectives by riding off to a less than glorious raid in
the rear of the Army of the Potomac, leaving his commander with two small cavalry
brigades, with a commander who didn’t execute his orders and two more or less
irregular mounted infantry brigades, acting primarily as foragers and raiders, to screen
and scout for the ANV. Lee had no intention of bringing on a general battle, except on
the best possible terms for himself. This is evident by his orders to his Corps
commanders not to bring on a battle until his army was concentrated. As it was, Lee,
chasing the chimera of battlefield victory due to his mistaken perceptions of his enemy,
committed the Army of Northern Virginia into battle piecemeal and was beaten
piecemeal. The end result was that Lee accomplished only one of the primary
objectives he had established for this campaign in his conferences with Jefferson Davis,
in that he had relieved pressure on the agricultural communities of Virginia and North
Carolina by raiding into and subsisting on enemy territory, but he was unable to destroy,
much less severely damage the Army of the Potomac, while Vicksburg, Port Hudson
and Chattanooga still fell and the Union continued its pressure along the Atlantic coast
at places like Charleston.
If Lee was indeed seeking a decisive battle to end the war in the summer of 1863, he
would have had to accomplish what no general in the Civil War ever accomplished, and
that was to destroy an enemy army in the open field. Armies could be surrounded
and/or placed under siege and then captured, but only the Battle of Nashville came
close to the ideal (rarely achieved even by Napoleon) of a “Napoleonic battle of
annihilation”. Though Thomas achieved a Civil War “Cannae”, Hood, his opponent had
bled himself with reckless attacks at Franklin and then brought his army to the brink of
logistical destruction over a cold, wet “siege” of Nashville. Despite all of this, Hood was
still able to rally about a third of the infantry that he had went north into Tennessee with
at the start of the campaign. Apply these same results to a summer battle in
Pennsylvania, and the Army of Northern Virginia would have 40,000 infantry left to face
30,000 in the Army of the Potomac. If Lee could not bring that surviving intact combat
effective core to battle in a week or so after Gettysburg and destroy it, the Army of the
Potomac would be brought back up to 60,000 veteran infantry with 60,000 militia
(30,000 from New York which, well trained, armed and uniformed, and with a hard core
of discharged veterans, were equal to the average Confederate infantry) to face 40,000
Confederate infantry short on supplies and ammunition. There would have been a relief
of pressure on the Atlantic coast (Charleston, the North Carolina coast) as Union troops
were withdrawn to the north, and northern Virginia would have had a spell of relief, but
Vicksburg, Port Hudson and Chattanooga would still have fallen. The Union victories in
the West, however, would have balanced the impact of a Confederate battlefield victory
in the East in the scales of public opinion, both North and South, or in the diplomatic
battle of the Confederacy for recognition by France and the British Empire, leaving the
situation as it was before Lee’s raid.
Postulating such a decisive victory for Lee, however, would have required a bit of
help from the Union side of things. Meade was not a Hooker, but neither was he a
Burnside. He surprised Lee with the speed with which he moved the Army of the
Potomac northward and in the speed of his concentration on the battlefield of
Gettysburg, which prevented Lee from defeating the Army of the Potomac in detail. He
showed competence in operational maneuver during the autumn campaign in 1863 and
moral strength and determination through the summer and autumn of that fateful year in
refusing to attack Lee in field fortifications. Meade would not deliver himself into Lee’s
hands as Hood did for Thomas. And while there may have been some suspect
commanders at corps, division and brigade level in the Army of the Potomac, the same
could be said for the Army of Northern Virginia. Dividing the army into three corps may
have created more staff work than Lee and his headquarters could handle, while still
leaving the corps too large for Hill and Ewell to handle. The failure to use all the
brigades and even divisions available on and near the field, when they temporarily
outnumbered the enemy at the point of contact, but the enemy outnumbered them in the
area of operations, was a major mistake by the Confederate commanders and their
staffs. This point is even better illustrated by the assignment of brigades from AP.Hill’s
Corps to Longstreet’s attack on the third day, brigades that still had not recovered from
the pummeling they took from I Corps on the first day, especially in the casualties
among brigade commanders and regimental officiers, and the seeming ignorance Lee
displayed when, in riding among these troops, he first noticed their poor condition. More
importantly, most of the officers and men of the Army of the Potomac were neither
afraid of nor awed by their counterparts in the Army of Northern Virginia. While Lee may
have created an aura of invincibility as an army leader, the soldiers of the Army of the
Potomac knew they could give as good as they got if their commanders gave them the
chance, which they more or less did during those three days in July. Like Lee, many
Southern sympathizers seem to think the Army of Northern Virginia was invincible and
that they merely needed to show up to beat the despised Yankees. Talk about a bad
case of “victory disease”. Just as Stuart received a shock to his assumptions of
superiority at Brandy Station and the series of cavalry clashes up and down the gaps in
the Shenendoah, the Army of Northern Virginia would get another shock during the
clashes at Gettysburg, and continue to be shocked later in the autumn at
Tappahannock Station.
Any victory of the Confederates at Gettysburg over the Union forces there that fell
short of the complete destruction of the Army of the Potomac, which as I discussed, was
nearly impossible, and resulted in Lee retiring back down the Valley, would have only
balanced, if that, the losses of Vicksburg, Port Hudson and Chattanooga. It might have
prolonged the war or it might have caused Rosecrans to go on the defensive instead of
pursuing Bragg to setup the Battle of Chickamauga or brought Grant to the East sooner.
It could have damaged Northern morale or it could have created greater resolve (Shelby
Foote seems to think that the North was fighting the war with less than total commitment
anyway). Remember that Lee could not sustain himself in the operational area without
completely destroying all organized resistance, which, as we have discussed, was
nearly impossible. His nearly inevitable retirement back down the Shenandoah to his
logistics base could have gone far to offset his battlefield victory. I believe the bottom
line would still have been a massive, coordinated assault on the Confederacy in 1864
under Grant’s leadership as General in Chief and the eventual pinning and destruction
of the Army of Northern Virginia within the defenses of Richmond and Petersburg
through 1865.