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"Union artillery and rifle fire
brutalized the nine attacking brigades of Pickett's Charge. By
three-thirty, they reached the Clump of Trees, but could not hold.
They retreated, bleeding, back across the open field, and Lee, it
is said, was there to receive them, loudly telling one and all,
'It's all my fault!' But was it really?"
 This passage from the book Lost Triumph: Lee's Real Plan at Gettysburg--And Why It Failed by Tom
Carhart succinctly captures the question addressed in the book.
Carhart's thought-provoking and provocative book explores the issue
of Robert E. Lee's battle plan for the third day at Gettysburg. The
author is a graduate of West Point and a Vietnam veteran. He
received a law degree from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in
American and military history from Princeton University.
To give credit where due, the book
was brought to my attention by Dr. David Burke of Holden Arboretum
and Case Western Reserve University, who professes a deep interest
in the Gettysburg battle. As the title of the book implies, Lee's
plan entailed more than merely Pickett's Charge. Carhart's book
presents the author's argument that Pickett's Charge was only one
component of a planned three-pronged attack on the Union Fishhook
defenses on Cemetery Ridge, Cemetery Hill, and Culp's Hill. The
specific details of Lee's real plan as articulated by Carhart have
been intentionally omitted from this review to avoid spoiling the
book for those who have not read it. Suffice it to say that Lee's
real plan at Gettysburg required the kind of timing and coordination
which characterized his battle plans in the Kanawha Valley and in
the Seven Days battles earlier in the Civil War. In those instances,
the inexperience and failings of some of Lee's subordinates caused
Lee's plans to fall far short of his objectives. But by the battle
of Gettysburg, the Army of Northern Virginia had become a highly
cohesive fighting force capable of executing Lee's complex plans,
which gave Lee the confidence to devise an intricate plan for the
destruction of the Union Army of the Potomac. As the book's title
further implies, Carhart explains the reasons why Lee's real plan
was unsuccessful, and a prominent figure in this, according to
Carhart, is someone who is remembered not for his actions at
Gettysburg, but for his own disastrous failure thirteen years later.
As an ardent admirer of Robert E.
Lee, I need no motivation to enthusiastically support any argument
which vindicates Lee from what is widely considered, as Carhart
states, "Lee's faulty decision making on July 3, 1863," and I am
more than happy to put my eyes to a book which enhances Lee's
already lofty status by removing the one blemish from his stellar
military record. But for those skeptics whose opinion on this issue
is solidified, the author's point of view is endorsed by no less a
Civil War authority than James M. McPherson, who wrote the book's
Foreword and who, according to the Acknowledgments, provided
guidance and additional evidence to the author and also acted as
devil's advocate to assist the author in honing his case. McPherson
states in the Foreword, "Given the vast number of writings on
Gettysburg, it seems impossible to come up with new information and
insights about the battle. But Tom Carhart has done it."
Carhart's argument can be
summarized in a single paragraph from his book. "Upon considering
Lee and his life experiences to date, it is readily apparent that he
was a consummate military strategist and tactician. When he defeated
McClellan in the Seven Days, Pope at Second Manassas, Burnside at
Fredericksburg, Hooker at Chancellorsville, and, despite the fact
that the Union force was nearly twice the size of his own, fought
McClellan to a draw at Antietam, Lee never left any of his forces
inactive at the critical moments of those battles. I believe it
frivolous and professionally insulting to think that Lee did not
have some major plan…for the rest of his army during Pickett's
charge by 13,000- less than 20 percent of his available force-
against the heart of the Union defenses on July 3."
To support his argument, Carhart
draws primarily from the Official Records of the Union and
Confederate Armies. The historical evidence is supplemented with
what Carhart admits is conjecture and what McPherson in the Foreword
refers to as "plausible inference." The majority of this inference
involves extrapolation from Lee's training, statements, and prior
performance to ask, "Now, at the most important battle of the war,
one that could win it all for the Confederacy, are we really
supposed to believe that he risked everything on Pickett's charge
against the center of the Union line by 13,000 of his 63,000 troops
while the rest stood by and did nothing?" The answer, according to
Carhart, is an emphatic no.
The first half of the book lays the
foundation of the argument by briefly reviewing Lee's West Point
training, which, as was the norm of that time, included a thorough
study of Napoleon and the other Great Captains. Throughout the book,
Carhart interjects examples of the Napoleonic influence on Lee. Also
reviewed are Lee's Mexican-American War experiences and his Civil
War battles prior to Gettysburg. All of this information provides
support for the emphatic negative response to the question noted
above. Carhart asserts that Lee intended Gettysburg to be the Cannae
(or more appropriately Austerlitz) which would remove the Army of
the Potomac as a viable fighting force. Lee's goal, in Carhart's
view, was to effect a triumph in the Napoleonic tradition, which
would eliminate the Army of the Potomac from the Union arsenal and
perhaps even lead to a political settlement of the war. Carhart
presents his rationale in a regrettably redundant fashion, although
perhaps this is done for emphasis. In addition, the first part of
the book, in which Lee's pre-Civil War career is reviewed, sometimes
comes across as filler, although this information may be necessary
for those who are not familiar with this part of Lee's life.
Carhart's point of view naturally
begs the question why Lee's real plan for the third day had not been
discerned previously. To address this, Carhart presents some
"plausible inference" based again on Lee's known traits and on his
adherence to a personal policy to never publicly criticize his
subordinates. In fact, Carhart challenges the widely held notion of
Lee's irate reaction to J.E.B. Stuart's delayed arrival at
Gettysburg, a challenge which fits into Carhart's thesis regarding
Lee's plan for the third day. The author's reasoning for why Lee's
real plan remained undetected for over 140 years is one of the
weaker aspects of the book. Carhart argues that Lee informed very
few of his subordinates about the plan, which is difficult to
believe in light of the plan's complexity, and it is even more
difficult to accept that after the battle the details of this plan
would have remained concealed by those individuals whom Carhart
believes were the few who knew of it. In addition, and particularly
in this instance, "plausible inference" is used unnecessarily to
flesh out details of specific events. Whether such events occurred
as the author speculates is not germane to the central thesis of the
book, that is, that Lee's plan for the third day involved more than
an assault on the Union center.
Another difficulty in the book is
the lack of a map depicting the topological features and the roads
in that region of the battlefield which the author posits is the
location of the key engagement. While this area is described
verbally, a map would have spared my feeble mind the mental exertion
of translating the words into geography. A map which appears later
in the book shows some of the pertinent features, but this map is
not cited at the place where the area of the decisive engagement is
verbally described.
The author lays out his argument
through the insertion of contemporaneous quotes, with the clues to
Lee's real plan highlighted. In this way, Carhart both buttresses
his argument and builds his argument gradually to the climactic
thwarting of Lee's real plan in an engagement which is largely
overlooked and which, in the words of McPherson in the Foreword,
"They (visitors) leave Gettysburg after driving around the rest of
the park without realizing that they have missed an essential part
of the battle."
An especially touching example of Carhart's use of
contemporaneous quotes occurs in the chapter which focuses on the
aftermath of the battle. In an exchange between Lee and John D.
Imboden, which was recorded by the latter and which is probably
familiar to many devotees of the Civil War, Lee reputedly told
Imboden on the night of July 3, 1863, "I never saw troops behave
more magnificently than Pickett's division of Virginians did to-day
in that grand charge upon the enemy. And if they had been supported
as they were to have been - but for some reason not yet explained to
me, were not - we would have held the position and the day would have
been ours. Too bad! Too bad! OH! TOO BAD!" Viewed in the context of Carhart's thesis, Lee was mourning not only the dead and wounded of
the Army of Northern Virginia and not only the defeat at Gettysburg,
but he was also mourning the demise of his real plan as only a
consummate genius can agonize over the failure of his carefully
conceived designs to come to fruition due to circumstances beyond
his control. Lee's repetitious "Too bad" echoes in the forlorn
emptiness of what might have been.
Not surprisingly, given the
controversial nature of the book's thesis, not everyone is sanguine
about the argument presented by Carhart. One such individual is Eric
J. Wittenberg, who posted a
review of "Lost Triumph" on the internet. Wittenberg is not at all
satisfied with the evidence to support Carhart's thesis. As
Wittenberg states in his review and reiterated in similar words in
an e-mail to me, "…there simply is not a single shred of evidence to
support it (Carhart's thesis)." Wittenberg further contends that
Carhart either ignores evidence which contradicts his thesis or
makes attempts to disparage such evidence, and based on information
in Wittenberg's strongly worded review, there is some merit to this
criticism.
 In his internet book review, Wittenberg presents one such
piece of ignored evidence which, he argues, refutes one of the key
elements of Carhart's perspective, specifically a supposed signal
sent to Lee by the firing of a cannon. Wittenberg has written his
own book about the part of the Gettysburg battle which Carhart
considers the decisive engagement. Wittenberg's book, Protecting the Flank: The Battles for Brinkerhoff's Ridge and East Cavalry Field, Battle of Gettysburg, July 2-3, 1863 , is, in Wittenberg's opinion (as expressed in an e-mail
to me), "the factual version" about this part of the Gettysburg
battle.
Clearly, in spite of the endorsement by McPherson, Carhart's
point of view is not universally accepted. Wittenberg's "Protecting
the Flank," which I have not yet read, might provide a useful
counterpoint to Carhart's thesis. Another opinion on this issue from
someone who participated in the decisive engagement at Gettysburg
can be found in Volume III of "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War"
in the article by William E. Miller, who was a captain in the Second
Pennsylvania Cavalry. In light of the Roundtable's upcoming field
trip to Gettysburg and the type of good-natured discussions which
characterize the Roundtable field trips, Carhart's thesis seems like
a timely and novel topic for us to consider, and hopefully we can
visit the site which Carhart considers the location of the battle's
decisive engagement and decide for ourselves which point of view is
the historically correct one.
Books referenced in this
article:
(Note: Roll-over a book title to bring up more information on that
book; click the book title to purchase from Amazon.com. Part of the proceeds from any book purchased from Amazon
through the CCWRT website are returned to the CCWRT to support its
education and preservation programs.)
Lost Triumph: Lee's Real Plan at Gettysburg--And Why It Failed
by Tom
Carhart
Protecting the Flank: The Battles for Brinkerhoff's Ridge and East Cavalry Field, Battle of Gettysburg, July 2-3, 1863
By Eric J. Wittenberg
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