- Joined
- Apr 22, 2013
- Location
- upper mid-west
Thanks to JerseyBart's heads up about C-Span showing parts of the 150th Commemoration at Gettysburg, I saw a very interesting 1 hour presentation by Kent Masterson Brown. Mr. Brown is well know for his book Retreat from Gettysburg, but for his lecture he talked about Day 1 at Gettysburg. Mr. Brown said that as late as the morning of July 1, it was Meade's intention to fight the Pipe Creek line. According to Mr. Brown, Meade sent a circular or directive to all his Corps Commanders on the morning of July 1, 1863 telling them to fight the Pipe Creek Line. Mr. Brown referred to a Jomini tactic for a corps to make contact, then fall back carefully drawing in the opposing force to where the Army Commander wants to fight the battle. It is unclear to me if Mr. Brown said that Reynolds either received the directive but was unable to execute or he was killed before he could relay the message to any subordinate, or he never received the directive at all. Doubleday apparently knew nothing of the plan. (O.O. Howard was not even discussed by Mr. Brown).
My "what if" question is simply, what if I Corps and XI Corps had fallen back to Pipe Creek and Meade had established the AoP there? Please assume everything else that really happened, i.e. Reynolds is killed, still happens. I have some thoughts but am interested to see others first.
Thanks.
My "what if" question is simply, what if I Corps and XI Corps had fallen back to Pipe Creek and Meade had established the AoP there? Please assume everything else that really happened, i.e. Reynolds is killed, still happens. I have some thoughts but am interested to see others first.
Thanks.