http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqT8PMBtIKI
Yesterday marked the 150th anniversary of the denouement to the Battle of Gettsyburg, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War and by most accounts its turning point. Reviewing Allen Guelzo’s new history of those three days in July, Gettysburg, Stu Seidel emphasizes that the battle lines began to be drawn before the armies ever met on the fields of Pennsylvania:
Long before taking readers to the battle, Guelzo details the chess pieces who will oppose one another on the first three days of July in 1863. He enumerates the underlying political and military forces at play on Lee as he planned the invasion: Lee’s desire to force a negotiated settlement to the war by invading a Northern state and the challenges Lee faced in reconfiguring command of the Army of Northern Virginia following the death of Stonewall Jackson, Lee’s trusted and accomplished field commander, in the closing hours of the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. On the Union side, Guelzo sets out the political and military challenges of simply finding a suitable commander for the Army of the Potomac. Not a single corps commander at the time of the Battle of Gettysburg had held a comparable post a year earlier. In an army so politicized that Lincoln’s choices to command were limited to Democrats who sympathized more with the president’s principal nemesis, former Army of the Potomac commander Gen. George McClellan, than with the president himself.
Anne Kelly Knowles uses an awesome interactive map to shed light on Robert E. Lee’s losing hand:
Altogether, our mapping reveals that Lee never had a clear view of enemy forces; the terrain itself hid portions of the Union Army throughout the battle. In addition, Lee did not grasp – or acknowledge – just how advantageous the Union’s position was. In a reversal of the Battle of Fredericksburg, where Lee’s forces held the high ground and won a great victory, Union General George Meade held the high ground at Gettysburg. Lee’s forces were spread over an arc of seven miles, while the Union’s compact position, anchored on several hills, facilitated communication and quick troop deployment. Meade also received much better information, more quickly, from his subordinates. Realizing the limits of what Lee could see makes his decisions appear even bolder, and more likely to fail, than we knew.
Relatedly, Kate Pais lists 10 items most don’t know about the battle, including the academic past of one of its central figures:
Renowned war hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who is sometimes credited as the most influential figure in the Battle of Gettysburg, wasn’t even going to enlist in the service originally; he hesitated because he was supposed to take a sabbatical from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine to study in Europe for two years. He was struck with a pang of patriotism and instead used his sabbatical to grant leave from the school and become lieutenant colonel in the 20th Maine Infantry.
And Pete Wehner summarizes the meaning that endured beyond Gettysburg’s carnage:
[T]hese horrific losses were hardly in vain. The Civil War, after all, achieved two monumentally important things: It ended slavery and it preserved the Union, which meant it preserved and extended liberty in America and the world. George Will refers to the Battle of Gettysburg as “the hinge of American, and hence world, history.” That seems to me to be a fair judgment–and today is a good day not only to remember the annihilation that began 150 years ago but also to give thanks for the courage and purpose that was on display on the grassy hills, the consecrated ground, of Gettysburg. If the North had lost instead of won at Gettysburg, America, as we know it, would have ended. And everything would be different. Instead this nation experienced a new birth of freedom–and a government of the people, by the people and for the people did not perish from the earth.
The Dish 