Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation Read Free

night in order to mingle by day with the Union troops converging on Frederick. It was in Frederick that he, a supposed innocent, had quite casually learned that Lee’s army was at Chambersburg. That part of his story had to be accurate.
    On his way to Chambersburg, Harrison added, he had learned that two Union corps were close to the mountains. Then, as an afterthought, Harrison mentioned that General Meade had replaced Hooker in command of the Union army.
    This was more ominous news to Lee than the proximity of the enemy. Lee never minded pugnacious blusterers such as Hooker. They could be counted on to defeat themselves. But General George Gordon Meade, an old friend from the regular army and husband of a girl with Virginia connections, was of a different breed.
    “General Meade will make no blunder in my front,” Lee said and prophetically added: “and if I make one he will make haste to take advantage of it.”
    To Harrison and Sorrel the middle-aged gentleman showed only his usual composure, though he had questioned and listened with the most concentrated attention. Convinced that Harrison was telling the truth, Lee did not reveal even this conviction. However, as soon as Colonel Sorrel had left with the spy of good faith, the general summoned his staff officers.
    His scattered northward movement into the fertile Cumberland Valley was placed in jeopardy by the movement of the Union army toward the other side of those mountains which, as they protected him, also concealed the enemy. The separated corps of the army must contract. In the baffling absence of Stuart’s cavalry, the infantry must cross the mountains and discover the intention of “those people,” as Lee invariably referred to the Federals.
    Couriers were dispatched northward to Ewell at Carlisle, instructing him to abandon his attack on Harrisburg and return southward. The same orders went to Early’s division at York. Riders started south to bring up two cavalry brigades that had been left to guard the mountain passes in Virginia. Others went west to summon the semi-independent command of Imboden’s raiders, who had been pillaging farms while supposedly guarding the left flank a day’s march away. As no order could be sent to Stuart because his whereabouts were unknown, the last order went to the newly formed corps of A. P. Hill. General Hill, in the absence of cavalry, would move east of the mountains on a reconnaissance in force. The next morning Hill was to start eastward through a sinuous mountain pass that opened on the other side at Cash-town, and, eight miles farther on, at Gettysburg.
    Having done all he could to meet the emergency, Lee went to bed late. He had confided to no one any sense of apprehension.But from its inception the invasion had been a desperategamble, undertaken half reluctantly, and the portents had been unfavorable from the first.

 
    The Opening Phase
     

     
    T HE G ETTYSBURG campaign opened on May 15–16, 1863, in Richmond, Virginia. There President Davis began the course that determined the nature of the invasion, restricted its scope, and was to make his part in the battle as decisive as that of any man who fought on the field.
    On May 14, Jefferson Davis had called General Lee away from his army at the Rappahannock River defense line, fifty miles north of Richmond, to attend a cabinet meeting in the White House. The South’s greatest general and the seven civilians gathered in the small oblong room on the second floor to decide on emergency measures to meet a crisis in the military fortunes of the two-year-old nation. The crisis was caused largely by the defense policies of the president, though Davis would never have admitted it.
    Among the limitations of this self-aware gentleman was an inability to acknowledge himself in the wrong, and in military affairs his need to be right was aggravated by delusions of genius. His military experience was really very limited. It consisted of a mediocre career at West Point,