Confederate Cavalry at Gettysburg.

Lee has some cavalry with him but made his decisions on how to utilize his cavalry assets based on the false assumption that the Army of the Potomac would react slower than it did. Lee also sent Stuart on his mission under the same false view. This is just my opinion, but I do not believe that Lee could convince himself that he faced the whole Army of the Potomac on the second day at Gettysburg. Had Lee believed that the Army of Potomac was reacting so quickly he would have keep his army more concentrated during the invasion of Pennsylvania. Lee conducted some fine campaigns, but he underestimated the speed at which Meade and the Army of the Potomac would respond to his invasion.
 
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Lee has some cavalry with him but made his decisions on how to utilize his cavalry assets based on the false assumption that the Army of the Potomac would react slower than it did. Lee also sent Stuart on his mission under the same false view. This is just my opinion, but I do not believe that Lee could convince himself that he faced the whole Army of the Potomac on the second day at Gettysburg. Had Lee believed that the Army of Potomac was reacting so quickly he would have keep his army more concentrated during the invasion of Pennsylvania. Lee conducted some fine campaigns, but he underestimated the speed at which Meade and the Army of the Potomac would respond to his invasion.

Not just speed but skill. Lee's blows were parried by Meade, and even the defeat of 1st and 11th Corps on day 1 was, in the context of the battle on the whole, hardly worth the cost.

In that regard, I'm not sure that even if Stuart and his three brigades were up that Lee would have done much better or differently.
 
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Page 216, 3rd Paragraph -- "General Stuart admitted that he had made the movement at his own discretion, and that he had General Lee's letter written by me. ......"
 
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Page 220, 2nd Paragraph..."Thus the movement towards Gettysburg was the result of the want of information which the cavalry alone could obtain for us, and General Lee was compelled to march through the mountains....."
 
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