Lee Lee's Gettysburg Campaign Was Doomed From the Start; Logistics & Horses.

Grant thought he could live off Mississippi for a few days. But he also had exit points on the Yazoo River, back to Grand Gulf or all the way to Port Hudson, all points patrolled by US river vessels. Sherman probably had multiple exit points on a coast patrolled by the US navy. And his invasion force started from a large logistical surplus, and faced no serious opposition. Grant took greater risks of combat depletion, but the distances involved were much shorter.
 
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If General Lee wanted to take his army to Harrisburg, I would have helped him. But I would have occupied or destroyed all the bridges across the Susquehanna River, if he dared to cross it. If he did not want to cross, it would be a good place for a battle.
 
Grant thought he could live off Mississippi for a few days. But he also had exit points on the Yazoo River, back to Grand Gulf or all the way to Port Hudson, all points patrolled by US river vessels. Sherman probably had multiple exit points on a coast patrolled by the US navy. And his invasion force started from a large logistical surplus, and faced no serious opposition. Grant took greater risks of combat depletion, but the distances involved were much shorter.
Well, more to the point Grant had a supply base (Grand Gulf) and never really interrupted his LOC with it; you can't lay siege for long without a line of communication because when you lay siege you stop moving.

If General Lee wanted to take his army to Harrisburg, I would have helped him. But I would have occupied or destroyed all the bridges across the Susquehanna River, if he dared to cross it. If he did not want to cross, it would be a good place for a battle.
I doubt Lee's whole army would have crossed the Susquehanna. I could see Ewell's corps crossing at the fords or bridge for long enough to take the surrender of Harrisburg, though, and then heading back south to Gettysburg. (He was pretty close historically.)
 
For the record, in terms of manufacturing output the numbers come out like this:

Heavy Industry (scaled for CSA as 100, based on value of bar, sheet and railroad iron produced)
Virginia 68
Tennessee 22
Georgia 6
North Carolina 4
Rest of CSA 0
Border States (KY, MO, DE, MD) 113 between them

Rest of Union (minus CSA and border states) 450

All manufactures (including goods like cider and liquor, scaled for CSA as 100 and measured by value)

Virginia 33
Texas 4
Tennessee 12
South Carolina 5
North Carolina 11
Mississippi 4
Louisana 10
Georgia 11
Florida 1
Arkansas 2
Alabama 7

Kentucky ~25 (2% of prewar US)
Missouri ~25
Delaware, Maryland, DC ~38

California, Oregon and territories ~50
Midwest (IL, IN, IA, MN, OH, WI) ~200
NJ ~50
NY ~250
PA ~200
Mass ~175
New England (minus Mass) ~138


This means that in economic terms Virginia is worth considerably more than any one border state. In manpower terms and industry terms it's not worth all four, but I'd say that any swap of "The CSA loses Virginia" has to in return get at least two of the Border States (as in, get control of their resources as securely as the CSA had control of Virginia's resources historically) to break even.


(Numbers compiled by 67th Tigers based on 1860 census - I wasn't going to go to the trouble of getting them all again myself.)


This is one of the reasons why the Confederate operational focus on the Eastern theatre is justified, but not the only one.
 
For the record, in terms of manufacturing output the numbers come out like this:

Heavy Industry (scaled for CSA as 100, based on value of bar, sheet and railroad iron produced)
Virginia 68
Tennessee 22
Georgia 6
North Carolina 4
Rest of CSA 0
Border States (KY, MO, DE, MD) 113 between them

Rest of Union (minus CSA and border states) 450

All manufactures (including goods like cider and liquor, scaled for CSA as 100 and measured by value)

Virginia 33
Texas 4
Tennessee 12
South Carolina 5
North Carolina 11
Mississippi 4
Louisana 10
Georgia 11
Florida 1
Arkansas 2
Alabama 7

Kentucky ~25 (2% of prewar US)
Missouri ~25
Delaware, Maryland, DC ~38

California, Oregon and territories ~50
Midwest (IL, IN, IA, MN, OH, WI) ~200
NJ ~50
NY ~250
PA ~200
Mass ~175
New England (minus Mass) ~138


This means that in economic terms Virginia is worth considerably more than any one border state. In manpower terms and industry terms it's not worth all four, but I'd say that any swap of "The CSA loses Virginia" has to in return get at least two of the Border States (as in, get control of their resources as securely as the CSA had control of Virginia's resources historically) to break even.


(Numbers compiled by 67th Tigers based on 1860 census - I wasn't going to go to the trouble of getting them all again myself.)


This is one of the reasons why the Confederate operational focus on the Eastern theatre is justified, but not the only one.
Per the cited numbers for the above chart mean that say Pennsylvania alone had twice the industrial production of all the Confederate States combined?
Leftyhunter
 
I haven't read this thread, but there was no "Gettysburg Campaign." The Battle of Gettysburg was a freaking accident.

The Confederate Arny of Northern Virginia set out on a "Pennsylvania Campaign".

Just 'sayin.
 
Per the cited numbers for the above chart mean that say Pennsylvania alone had twice the industrial production of all the Confederate States combined?
Yes, though that's in "all manufactures" (which is to say, any process that isn't just farming or mining raw materials). The distinction is important.

US heavy industry is dominated by four states - Ohio (17%), Massachusetts (16%), New York (13%) and New Jersey (10%). The first two have more heavy industry than the whole CSA. Virginia in the Union also had a 10% share of heavy industry, equal to New Jersey.

Note that Pennsylvania is not on this short list. Pennsylvanian manufactures are in the "all manufactures" category, not the "heavy industry" one.
 
I haven't read this thread, but there was no "Gettysburg Campaign." The Battle of Gettysburg was a freaking accident.

The Confederate Arny of Northern Virginia set out on a "Pennsylvania Campaign".

Just 'sayin.
That's fair, though I think the shorthand is acceptable as far as I'm concerned. It's also not beyond the bounds of possibility that Lee could have planned for a general engagment at Gettysburg, because of the nature of the road net and the position of the mountain ranges; in that case it would be a Gettysburg Campaign a priori, and the reason I mention this is that it offers one of the ways Lee could have used planning to improve on the benefits he got from chance (in the form of Ewell's fortuitous arrival on the rear flank; if Lee was planning a Gettysburg battle that could have been deliberate).
 
That's fair, though I think the shorthand is acceptable as far as I'm concerned. It's also not beyond the bounds of possibility that Lee could have planned for a general engagment at Gettysburg, because of the nature of the road net and the position of the mountain ranges; in that case it would be a Gettysburg Campaign a priori, and the reason I mention this is that it offers one of the ways Lee could have used planning to improve on the benefits he got from chance (in the form of Ewell's fortuitous arrival on the rear flank; if Lee was planning a Gettysburg battle that could have been deliberate).

Lee didn't plan an engagement at Gettysburg. His cavalry (Stuart) was in fact separated from him. He didn't know General Meade's Army was in front of him, until he did.

Look, what happened, happened. It wasn't planned by either side and shouldn't be characterized that way.
 
Lee didn't plan an engagement at Gettysburg. His cavalry (Stuart) was in fact separated from him. He didn't know General Meade's Army was in front of him, until he did.

Look, what happened, happened. It wasn't planned by either side and shouldn't be characterized that way.
I know what Lee did plan (though I think it's sort of tricky to characterize Meade's army as "in front" of Lee given the way Lee was moving - Lee's leading corps was nearly to Harrisburg). I'm simply trying to make it clear that if Lee was planning on any sort of general engagement in Pennsylvania, Gettysburg was the most likely place for it.

(It's actually interesting to wonder what Lee's plan would have been if he did have his cavalry operating properly, because he didn't actually plan for Stuart to go off on a ride into the blue - as I understand it that interpretation developed while the orders for the cavalry were going via Longstreet.)
 
Lee didn't plan an engagement at Gettysburg. His cavalry (Stuart) was in fact separated from him. He didn't know General Meade's Army was in front of him, until he did.

Look, what happened, happened. It wasn't planned by either side and shouldn't be characterized that way.
Well, with the AONV on the move in PA, it was going to happen somewhere, it just happened to be at Gettysburg, that was no more an "accident" than any other location that the two armies would have clashed at.
 
I know what Lee did plan (though I think it's sort of tricky to characterize Meade's army as "in front" of Lee given the way Lee was moving - Lee's leading corps was nearly to Harrisburg). I'm simply trying to make it clear that if Lee was planning on any sort of general engagement in Pennsylvania, Gettysburg was the most likely place for it.

(It's actually interesting to wonder what Lee's plan would have been if he did have his cavalry operating properly, because he didn't actually plan for Stuart to go off on a ride into the blue - as I understand it that interpretation developed while the orders for the cavalry were going via Longstreet.)

Alright, it is incumbent upon you to post whatever shred of historical evidence you have, that either Robert Lee or George Meade "planned" an engagement at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Neither did, until you can prove it.
 
Alright, it is incumbent upon you to post whatever shred of historical evidence you have, that either Robert Lee or George Meade "planned" an engagement at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Neither did, until you can prove it.
You stated you had not read the thread; the general point by the OP is that the results of Gettysburg as they played out were more or less a foregone conclusion due to logistics. Other posters do not agree.
 
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Alright, it is incumbent upon you to post whatever shred of historical evidence you have, that either Robert Lee or George Meade "planned" an engagement at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
The nature of a conditional ("if Lee planned on any kind of general engagement...") is to make clear that I'm not saying that a thing is so, but that I'm saying that if X is true then Y should reasonably follow.

Our original poster for example claims that Lee's campaign in Pennsylvania was doomed from the start for logistical reasons, which means that it would not be possible for his campaign to succeed (no matter the reasonable alternative events or decisions) for logistical reasons. But it is a reasonable alternative decision for Lee to decide that he is expecting a general engagement, and once you look at Lee's movements and the direction Meade's army would be coming up from Stafford county VA then Gettysburg is one of the only places such an engagement makes sense given the Pennsylvania road network.
Thus, IF Lee planned on any kind of general engagement as part of his campaign plan, THEN Gettysburg would be one of the places he would consider.


Moving on from that, I suspect that Lee didn't plan on an engagement and that he didn't plan on no engagement. My suspicion is that Lee's campaign plan included a space where the Union reaction to his movements would go (informed as he presumably expected he would be by Stuart - whose cavalry he was sending to screen him, not to go off on a raid) and then he would decide on what to do once that information came in; that is, he intended to react better to a fluid situation as it developed.

Historically, of course, that information did not come in from Stuart, and so the concentration on Gettysburg came after Lee got the information from pretty much bumping into the Army of the Potomac. In an alternative way the campaign could go, he could have got that information from Stuart (deployed properly rather than going off on a ride) and made his plans a little in advance; another alternative way the campaign could have gone would be Lee deciding that he would do his best to draw Meade north for an engagement around Gettysburg. A third alternative way the campaign could have gone would be Meade planting himself on the Pipe Creek line, in which case no battle occurs and Lee returns to Virginia.

All of these are better for Lee than the historical. (Interestingly the second one could deserve the name "Gettysburg Campaign" in fact as well as for convenience.)
Thus it was possible for the Pennsylvania Campaign to have gone better for Lee than it historically did regardless of the logistical constraints of history, and many of these ways would count as "successes".



As an aside I'll note that Napoleon's final campaign is often labelled the Waterloo Campaign, and this name is both easily understood and appropriate because one of Wellington's contingency plans from months before was to fight where he fought historically (at the ridge at Mont-St-Jean). We know this because he had a map drawn; without this fact, it is quite possible we would not know Wellington had come up with this contingency plan. This is one reason it's hard to tell whether one of Lee's contingency plans was "if Stuart reports Meade has moved north into Pennsylvania I will concentrate at Gettysburg" because he wouldn't have a reason to write it down.
 
Lee's Gettysburg Campaign Was Doomed From the Start; Logistic & Horses

View attachment 338118

It is great fun to speculate on what General Lee could of, would of, should of at Gettysburg. I personally have war gamed dozens of scnerios. While that was both instructive & entertaining, it did leave out the critical factor that made all my "cunning plans that could not fail" moot. In reality, Lee's diminishing supply of horses & lack of logistical assets doomed his campaign from the start.

The stated goal of the Gettysburg Campaign was to raid into Pennsylvania, cause alarm among the populous & dampen the will to win of the Northern Population. If possible, Lee was to fight one beat battle, defeat the Army of the Potomac & take Washington. From there, Lee was to publish a declaration the Jefferson Davis had written & await the inevitable Northern Collapse. Whatever doubts an educated observer may have about that collapse or the wisdom of the overall strategy that sent Lee into Pennsylvania, certain iron clad rules that even Lee's genius could not outflank applied.

Horses & mules were a diminishing asset. In 1860 there were 4.2 million horses in the Northern states, 1.7 million in the Southern states. A horse had to be five years old in order to be physically developed enough for military duty. No stallions, pregnant mares or mares with foals, hot blooded breeds, under or oversized animals need apply. The artillery, for example, required a Morgan or similar breed, 16 hands tall. About one million five hundred thousand horses were lost during the Civil War. Cavalry operations used up horses at an almost unbelievable rate. Each cavalryman could require two or there remounts during an active campaign.

View attachment 338115
Henry Lovie, "Shell burst in the spot sketched [center left] killed 6 horses & wounded all the position & tore Sergeant Tosey previously wounded to pieces."

Every horse that was of military age during the Civil War was the issue of a stallion that stood to a mare before 1860. Both sides went to war with the existing stock & had no ability to add to it. Lee was running out of horses. The great horse & mule country of Kentucky & Tennessee had been closed to him for some time. In some cavalry units, more men were on the books without mounts than with. The Gettysburg Campaign & a theoretical follow on would have consumed horseflesh at an unsuitable rate. The huge farm animals that some of Lee's officers found themselves mounted on speak volumes about the impossibility of finding remounts in Pennsylvania.

During the first two years of the Civil War, the Union Army issued 284,000 horses to 60,000 cavalrymen. Indeed, the cavalry used up horses like the infantry used up shoes.

What would it have taken for Lee to mount his raid into Pennsylvania, fight his major battle & then sustain himself in Washington D.C. long enough to force the North to surrender? We can speculate, but a better use of our time might be to examine a campaign that started a few days after Lee recrossed the Potomac River. On June 23rd, William Stark Rosecrans ordered the Army of the Cumberland centered on Murfreesboro TN to attack the Army of Tennessee under Braxton Bragg. The logistical effort it took to chase Bragg to Chattanooga & stay there is a real world analogy for what it would have taken for Lee to take & hold Washington.

The best description of what became known as the Tullahoma Campaign's logistical challenge I know of comes from a Sanitation Commission report.

View attachment 338089

It is interesting to note that the wagon train "extended forty-seven miles' is almost exactly the same as the line of wagons General Imboden guarded during Lee's retreat from Gettysburg. Given that, we can have confidence that the total of twenty-two thousand army horses, three thousand private horses (officer's mounts) & thirty-six thousand mules, "in all sixty-one thousand animals" is a fair approximation of Lee's animals.

66,000 X $140 = $2,240,000 at the average rate of $140/horse paid by the Union army during the war. When you figure that each of those animals would be replaced at least once during an extended campaign, $4,480,000 worth of animals would be required to sustain a campaign in Pennsylvania & Washington D.C. In reality, that number is probably very conservative. On an active campaign, the Confederacy simply had no means available to remount Lee's army or pay for it in the summer of 1863.

The daily ration for an army horse was 14 pounds of hay & 12 pounds of grain (oats, corn or barley). The 26 pounds per day of the 66,000 animals in the army weighted 229,000 pounds. Project a one month stay in Pennsylvania & the Army of Northern Virginia would have to transport 6,870,000 pounds of fodder just to meet the minimum requirement for keeping their animals alive. The next calculation is easy, the standard army wagon could carry 1,000 pounds of cargo. That is an astonishing 700,000 wagon loads to be driven both ways from somewhere in Virginia. Confederate rail roads transporting that volume of fodder to a forward railhead in Virginia simply could not have happened.

View attachment 338122
Doubling teams to get up grades or other obstacles was a common occurrence. After all, a six horse hitch has only six horsepower.

The grim reports of the Confederate inspector general for transport make it certain that no such lift capability existed in the entire Confederacy even if fodder in that volume could be obtained. There were no surplus animals available to reenforce Lee. In June the inspector reported that the Army of Tennessee was thousands of draft animals & wagons short.

General Rosecrans ordered rations & ammunition be forwarded by wagons from Murfreesboro. The railroad was used exclusively to transport fodder. During WWI, the British shipped more tones of long fodder to France than they did ammunition. One problem with fodder is that the rail cars cubed out before they grossed out, i.e., ran out of room before they ran out of load carrying capacity. The fodder consumed by Rosecrans' animals came from what we would call the Midwest. The rail cars & steamboats that hauled it came from every line in the country. Southern railroads refused to consolidate under a military railroad command like did Union companies with the U.S. Military Rail Road. The territorial squabbling & general self-centeredness of Confederate rail executives resembled nothing I can think of but what happens when six small girls are cooped up in the back of a van on a 500 mile car trip. It wan't a pretty thing to witness.

How was Lee going to evacuate his sick & wounded? General Imboden reported that the convoy of wounded extended the entire 45 miles from Gettysburg to the Potomac. 10,000 wounded & stragglers were left in Union hands. It required the entire lift capacity of Lee's army to transport his wounded. Lee could sustain his fighting regiments or evacuate his wounded, not both. Confederate armies in the West abandoned their dead & wounded to be cared for by the Union army. How many men would Lee have had to abandon along the way during his advance toward Washington D.C., thousands, tens of thousands? There is no way to know, I don't suppose.

Where was Lee going to get the labor to man his logistical push into Pennsylvania & maintain his position in Washington D.C. for a month? The obvious source of labor would be the slaves of the men in whose interest Lee went to war. By 1863, a significant percentage, ranging as high as 75% in some areas, of the adult male slave population had run off. Anywhere Union forces had even passed through saw a wholesale exodus of slaves. Even when all the adult male slaves in the surrounding area were commandeered, the labor force was only a fraction of what was needed. Needless to say, Virginia did not have a surplus of white males available to do the backbreaking labor that was required. Lee simply did not have the labor pool to keep his army supplied on the projected Gettysburg/Washington D.C. campaign.


View attachment 338114
Depending on the meat ration (salt pork in brine vs smoke cured bacon, e.g.) an army boxcar was packed with 8 to 9,000 complete daily rations. That meant that the ten car drags, which is all that the rickety Nashville & Chattanooga could handle, would deliver a single days' rations for Rosecrans' 80,000 men. A train an hour 24/7 passed through Murfreesboro headed south toward Rosecrans' army. The consists were lashed together as far away as Chicago & at the railhead on the Tennessee River at Johnsonville TN, 75 miles west of Nashville. Manning the rail yards, warehouses, building & maintaining the track were thousands of self-liberated black people. The Nashville & Northwestern Rail Road was successfully guarded & kept open by several regiments of United States Colored Infantry like the 13th & 100th. That labor source & military aide was not something Lee could count on. In fact, the opposite was true. The 25th Corps that took Richmond was an all United States Colored Troop unit.

As has already been alluded to, Lee had an almost impossible situation were his wounded were concerned. A week after the battle, a large cluster of Army of Northern Virginia wounded were discovered laying in the open under the shade of an orchard. Aide was called for immediately. The men had been left there when Lee retreated & only discovered by chance. Had Lee maneuvered to Washington D.C., many thousands more of his wounded would have suffered the same fate as the survivors of the orchard.

View attachment 338112
Hospital train running between Nashville & Chattanooga.

In contrast, Rosecrans had "almost 20 hospitals in Murfreesboro". There were many more in Nashville. From there, the sick & wounded men were transferred by river or by rail to their home states. Special built rail cars were lashed up to form hospital trains. A diagram of the hospital cars is in the The Official Military Atlas of the Civil War that most of us have in our library. Hospital ships, such as the luxury packet Red Rover, catered to the needs of soldiers without regard to which side they were on. Remarkably, once a soldier was in a Union hospital, he had a 90% survival rate. The fate of the many wounded that Lee would, of military necessity, have abandoned along his line of advance is, fortunately, only a subject of conjecture.

View attachment 338113
Interior of specially constructed hospital car. If you look carefully, you can see the rubber straps that hopefully cushioned the bone jarring ride on the rickety N&CRR.

The final analogy of Lee's raid into Pennsylvania & Rosecrans' Tullahoma Campaign is provided by the battles of Chickamauga & Gettysburg. Lee, of necessity, had to make a precipitate withdrawal across the Potomac into Virginia. Rosecrans, on the other hand, was, as Lee might have been, pinned in place. Because of the high morale & sheer doggedness of the Army of the Cumberland, Chickamauga was reduced to a the level of a tactical defeat... an incident along the way in a triumphant campaign. There was no equivalent of the Army of the Tennessee or corps from the Army of the Potomac to come to Lee's aid should he take & hold Washington D.C. Both topography & manpower made such a move on the part of the Confederate Army impossible. Grant's army group smashed Bragg's Army of Tennessee & secured Chattanooga. There was no concentration of forces of that caliber & number that could have joined the Army of Northern Virginia in Washington D.C. In fact, it was Lee's defeat in Pennsylvania that allowed three corps of the Army of the Potomac to be transferred to Chattanooga.

There is a saying, "Amateurs talk about tactics, generals talk about logistics." Whatever the political reasons given for Lee's raid into Pennsylvania & dreamed of laying down the surrender terms on President Lincoln's desk were, the Army of Northern Virginia simply did not have the logistical support necessary to make such an outcome possible.
Don’t overlook the 1864 election. Lincoln’s re-election was in doubt.
 
Don’t overlook the 1864 election. Lincoln’s re-election was in doubt.
This is an interesting point, because if for a moment we assume that the 1863 Pennsylvania campaign included a convincing win by Lee - not the destruction of the Army of the Potomac, but heavy losses and Meade being forced from the field - or no battle at all and Lee was allowed to return to Virginia unmolested after stripping Pennsylvania of forage - then there are some political knock on effects:

Short term, the PA gubernatorial election is likely to go the other way. Curtin has just been roundly humiliated, and the election was close historically; this has implications for the willingness of PA to raise troops for offensive war in 1864.
Long term, the 1864 election has other propoganda possibilities. Imagine the hay the Democrats would make about McClellan's firing if he's literally the only person to ever hand a defeat of any sort to Lee?
 
The nature of a conditional ("if Lee planned on any kind of general engagement...") is to make clear that I'm not saying that a thing is so, but that I'm saying that if X is true then Y should reasonably follow.

Our original poster for example claims that Lee's campaign in Pennsylvania was doomed from the start for logistical reasons, which means that it would not be possible for his campaign to succeed (no matter the reasonable alternative events or decisions) for logistical reasons. But it is a reasonable alternative decision for Lee to decide that he is expecting a general engagement, and once you look at Lee's movements and the direction Meade's army would be coming up from Stafford county VA then Gettysburg is one of the only places such an engagement makes sense given the Pennsylvania road network.
Thus, IF Lee planned on any kind of general engagement as part of his campaign plan, THEN Gettysburg would be one of the places he would consider.


Moving on from that, I suspect that Lee didn't plan on an engagement and that he didn't plan on no engagement. My suspicion is that Lee's campaign plan included a space where the Union reaction to his movements would go (informed as he presumably expected he would be by Stuart - whose cavalry he was sending to screen him, not to go off on a raid) and then he would decide on what to do once that information came in; that is, he intended to react better to a fluid situation as it developed.

Historically, of course, that information did not come in from Stuart, and so the concentration on Gettysburg came after Lee got the information from pretty much bumping into the Army of the Potomac. In an alternative way the campaign could go, he could have got that information from Stuart (deployed properly rather than going off on a ride) and made his plans a little in advance; another alternative way the campaign could have gone would be Lee deciding that he would do his best to draw Meade north for an engagement around Gettysburg. A third alternative way the campaign could have gone would be Meade planting himself on the Pipe Creek line, in which case no battle occurs and Lee returns to Virginia.

All of these are better for Lee than the historical. (Interestingly the second one could deserve the name "Gettysburg Campaign" in fact as well as for convenience.)
Thus it was possible for the Pennsylvania Campaign to have gone better for Lee than it historically did regardless of the logistical constraints of history, and many of these ways would count as "successes".



As an aside I'll note that Napoleon's final campaign is often labelled the Waterloo Campaign, and this name is both easily understood and appropriate because one of Wellington's contingency plans from months before was to fight where he fought historically (at the ridge at Mont-St-Jean). We know this because he had a map drawn; without this fact, it is quite possible we would not know Wellington had come up with this contingency plan. This is one reason it's hard to tell whether one of Lee's contingency plans was "if Stuart reports Meade has moved north into Pennsylvania I will concentrate at Gettysburg" because he wouldn't have a reason to write it down.
There is no need to guess at what Davis sent Lee into Pennsylvania to accomplish. The historical record is unambiguous. An integral element of Lee's orders when he advanced into Pennsylvania was to defeat the AoP on Northern soil & then take Washington D.C. Those two mighty blows would then force the North into a negotiated settlement. Entire bookshelves are filled with historians' analysis of the who, what, when & why; not to mention the would have, could have & should have done.
 
There is no need to guess at what Davis sent Lee into Pennsylvania to accomplish. The historical record is unambiguous. An integral element of Lee's orders when he advanced into Pennsylvania was to defeat the AoP on Northern soil & then take Washington D.C.
You might then need to address that criticism at:

Alright, it is incumbent upon you to post whatever shred of historical evidence you have, that either Robert Lee or George Meade "planned" an engagement at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

(Though I think it's quite plausible that taking DC was a "stretch goal" - what a commander says they're going to do does not necessarily concord with what they'd be happy to accomplish.)


Heres the thing. If you're going to have a general engagement in Pennsylvania then there are only a few real possibilities as to where - the road network constrains the manoeuvre of armies.

I think that it's plausible that Lee had not decided in advance that any general engagement that was going to happen was definitely at Gettysburg, but anyone with skill at map reading would be able to conclude that the choices are limited. In Pennsylvania the key strategic geography here is the Blue Mountains (the engagement will be east of here), the Susquehanna River (the engagement will be west of here) and South Mountain which divides the Cumberland Valley from the rest of the state.

Within this space there are surprisingly few actual good road junctions, and Gettysburg is the best. For this reason I think that if Lee was expecting a battle in Pennsylvania then Gettysburg would have to be on his list of possible battle locations.
 
There is no need to guess at what Davis sent Lee into Pennsylvania to accomplish. The historical record is unambiguous. An integral element of Lee's orders when he advanced into Pennsylvania was to defeat the AoP on Northern soil & then take Washington D.C. Those two mighty blows would then force the North into a negotiated settlement. Entire bookshelves are filled with historians' analysis of the who, what, when & why; not to mention the would have, could have & should have done.
Then why do you continue to regurgitate them as if it is some revelatory information that you have struck upon? Lee's reasons for taking his army north are well known and his reasoning to me seems sound. The failure to meet the goals he wanted to attain was not a foregone conclusion as you suggest. Was it a gamble? Of course it was and no one knew it better than Lee. To borrow from the poker table, when you are short stacked on chips and the ante is eating you up, you have to take your shot before your stack is gone.
 
Then why do you continue to regurgitate them as if it is some revelatory information that you have struck upon? Lee's reasons for taking his army north are well known and his reasoning to me seems sound. The failure to meet the goals he wanted to attain was not a foregone conclusion as you suggest. Was it a gamble? Of course it was and no one knew it better than Lee. To borrow from the poker table, when you are short stacked on chips and the ante is eating you up, you have to take your shot before your stack is gone.
This was the Confederacy's last shot. Roebuck in London was going to make an attempt at getting British recognition of the Confederacy. There were agitators in New York stirring up labor troubles and race riots. There was a stolen ship raiding northward on the Atlantic coast.
And it was all necessary, because once down river traffic to New Orleans was restored, and New Orleans began to function again as a full naval depot and international port, the Confederate economy was in serious trouble and the US economy was in blue sky.
 
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