D
Deleted member 8452
Guest
You may select one of the choices below, if you want to explain your answer or go into detail, please post your response.
My reasoning:
His career as a division commander is not extensive enough to allow a fair analysis. Yes, technically he had a division command for a prolonged period, but there are few occasions there where his qualities or lack of them would make an appreciable difference.
The charge named in his honor, for example, was mostly beyond his control.
He seems to have been at least passable administrator, however. Not noteworthy, not faultworthy.
Yeah. I think the division as a bunch of fresh troops might have been more than a third (depending on what strength they were at and how many men made the charge), if we want to nitpick - but he certainly didn't have any authority outside his own brigades.
Darn those Virginia newspapers, though. All those brigades were brave. Some were badly lead (such as Brockenburough's Virginians), but all were brave.
A very colorful character who despite his low class standing at U.S.M.A., was fortunate to be from the favored aristocratic class of Virginia gentlemen. He knew his Ps & Qs which was enough to make him adequate and because of his talent for mirth and appearance, he cut a higher than usual profile.
But he really never got the chance to be tested, I mean, a hopeless charge as your first real combat since the Peninsula Campaign? He missed out on Second Manassas and South Mountain where his men performed well, wonder if he would of showed good qualities if he had been engaged at Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville?
I'm a pessimist and cynic in general, so that may flavor this, but I don't think Pickett would have made much of a name for himself at Chancellorsville.
Not done anything outstandingly poorly, but I can see him struggling in that environment - trying to direct nine thousand men in a ****ed wilderness is hard.
I believe it was Shelby Foote who said of Pickett ( He wasn't the sharpest tool hanging in the shed) and near the end of the war at Appomattox, Gen. Lee saw Pickett standing near his troops and said to an aide....Is that man still in this Army....??????
Just two opinions of different men
Utterly unfit at Five Forks.