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MEADE DAWDLES
By Bill Fawcett
The American Civil War could have ended in 1863.
There is no question that the Army of Northern Virginia lost the Battle of Gettysburg. By any standard—casualties, retaining the field, achieving objectives—the Union prevailed. Union losses were 23,049 (3,155 dead, 14,529 wounded, 5,365 missing) of almost 98,000 soldiers. Lee’s army lost 28,063 (3,903 dead, 18,735 injured, and 5,425 missing) of just 73,000. The Confederate casualties were spread almost evenly through the three large corps that composed the Army of Northern Virginia. After the disaster of Pickett’s Charge, it was an army no longer capable of any offensive actions. Incidentally, Lee accepted responsibility for ordering that infamous charge, but never admitted it was an error. He commented regularly that if the supporting attacks had gone as planned, Pickett’s and Pettigrew’s divisions would have broken through and split the Army of the Potomac. But they did not and, by the time the last of Pickett’s men had retreated to safety, one in three was dead or wounded. But much of what was bought with the Army of the Potomac’s losses was lost by a continuing mistake, one of omission, made by the commander of the Army of the Potomac, General George Meade.
Meade was a West Point graduate who had served in Mexico and the Seminole Wars. He was an engineer and had built a number of lighthouses along the US coast before the war. George Meade was not Lincoln’s first choice to command the Army of the Potomac. He wasn’t even the fourth. To say that President Lincoln had a problem finding a competent commander for the Union’s largest and most strategically important army would be an understatement. Winfield Scott had commanded before the war, but was considered too old for a field command. Then McDowell was followed by George McClellan. McClellan was given command more than twice, to be replaced by Burnside, then Hooker, and finally, just three days before the Battle of Gettysburg began, George G. Meade.
The condition of the Army of Northern Virginia after the failure of Pickett’s Charge was pitiful.
It was divided into three corps and all had taken severe casualties. These were:
I Corps: 7575 of 20,700 men or over 35 percent
II Corps: 5935 of 29,700 men or 20 percent
III Corps: 6935 of 22,100 men or 31 percent
Cavalry and artillery losses were lighter, but significant.
The modern practice is to pull a larger unit out and restore it after 10 percent casualties, so it is apparent just how badly the condition of Lee’s army was. Worse yet, his losses in officers was proportionally even higher.
The Union army had been divided into seven smaller corps that were from half to 60 percent the size of Lee’s. Four corps of the Army of the Potomac (I, II, III, XI) took proportional losses to those of the Army of Northern Virginia, but three (V, VI, XII) were relatively better off with the largest, the Union VI Corps, losing only a few hundred men.
After the failed charge, General Lee struggled to form some sort of line to repel an expected Union counterattack. For much of that day, Lee was unable to form a contiguous line even with the reserves behind it. General Hancock, commander of the Union II Corps, even though wounded, sent Meade a note saying that if the VI and V Corps attacked, the Army of Northern Virginia would be destroyed. In the first step of his mistake, which extended the war for over a year, General Meade ignored his field commander and, in effect, did nothing but re-form and rearm.
The victorious Army of the Potomac continued to reorganize all through the next day, July 4, 1863. Robert E. Lee still expected an attack and spent that day refining his defensive lines while preparing his army to retreat and sending off his wounded. The next morning, July 5, Meade wrote his wife a letter. The message, written even as Lee had begun to pull back his entire army, showed the Union general’s unwillingness to risk his partial victory in order to make it complete.
It was a grand battle, and is in my judgment a most decided victory, though I did not annihilate or bag the Confederate Army. This morning they retreated in great haste into the mountains, leaving their dead unburied and their wounded on the field. They awaited one day, expecting that flushed with success, I would attack them, when they would play their old game of shooting us from behind breastworks.
When he should have been pushing Lee or later pursuing him, Meade instead issued his General Orders No. 68:
The Commanding General, in behalf of the country, thanks the Army of the Potomac for the glorious result of the recent operations.
An enemy, superior in numbers, and flushed with the pride of a successful invasion, attempted to overcome and destroy this Army. Utterly baffled and defeated, he has now withdrawn from the contest. The privations and fatigue the Army has endured, and the heroic courage and gallantry it has displayed will be matters of history to be remembered.
Our task is not yet accomplished, and the commanding general looks to the army for greater efforts to drive from our soil every vestige of the presence of the invader.
It is right and proper that we should, on all suitable occasions, return our grateful thanks to the Almighty Disposer of events, that in the goodness of His Providence He has thought fit to give victory to the cause of the just.
By command of Major-General Meade . . .
Missing from both documents was the mention of any intent to trap or destroy the crippled and discouraged Army of Northern Virginia. Even Lincoln and his secretary of war noticed this omission. After reading the order, President Lincoln wrote to General Halleck in Washington that he was “a good deal dissatisfied. You know, I did not like Meade’s phrase ‘Drive the invaders from our soil.’” Lincoln was right to be concerned. In the days after the battle, Meade managed to squander what had been the Union’s first real potentially war-ending victory. It was not until a full day after Lee pulled his army out that General Meade finally sent his army, led by the V and VI Corps, after him. Even then, he did not follow Lee directly or as quickly as possible. Instead, he split the army and they used three routes to Williamsburg. Along the way the Southerners would have to cross rivers including the Potomac and the James. This meant he could only attack once his army was united again—a further delay.
Lee’s column was seventeen miles long and moving slowly. Meade managed to move even slower. Only a few Union cavalry units pecked on the edges of the retreating Confederate column, with little effect. There was no real contact between the two armies for three days. On July 7, General Halleck in Washington telegraphed Meade:
You have given the enemy a stunning blow at Gettysburg. Follow it up and give him another before he can cross the Potomac. When he crosses, circumstances will determine whether it will be best to pursue him by the Shenandoah Valley on this side of the Blue Ridge. There is strong evidence that he is short of artillery ammunition, and if vigorously pressed he must suffer.
The secretary was correct. Lee’s army was short many important supplies. But Meade continued to advance only slowly behind the fleeing Confederates. Even they noticed how hesitant this pursuit was. The artillery commander of Longstreet’s I Corps compared Meade’s pursuit to a mule chasing a grizzly bear. It was apparent that General Meade, for whatever reason, was not anxious to catch up to his defeated foe. The retreating Confederate soldiers later commented on what a relief this was, knowing how vulnerable they had been. As they marched unopposed, the Army of Northern Virginia’s morale began to return.
When Lee finally arrived at Williamsburg, he was unable to cross the river. The rainy weather had swollen it dramatically and the only pontoon bridge he had was destroyed by Union cavalry before his own arrived. On July 9, Halleck telegraphed Meade that Lee was crossing and he should hurry to catch his army while it was split on both banks. Meade responded that Lee would be crossing very slowly and he had plenty of time. He also complained that the bad weather and poor roads were hampering him in his task of concentrating his forces for an attack. The Army of the Potomac continued to sit only eight miles from where the entire Army of Northern Virginia was still trapped north of the James River.
For the next three days, the Army of the Potomac crept slowly toward Lee and his Virginians. On the morning of July 13, the James was low enough that a pontoon bridge constructed from lumber taken from the buildings of Williamsburg could be emplaced. Soon Lee’s corps began to stream across the James to the relative safety of Virginia. Meade knew of the crossing at three a.m., but waited until dawn to have his cavalry attack. The first attack on Williamsburg was led by the horsemen, commanded by General George Armstrong Custer. The Union mounted regiments captured several hundred Confederates, but it was too late. The Army of Northern Virginia had crossed. Nine vulnerable days without an attack by Mead had allowed what remained of Lee’s army to escape.
Even though General Meade failed to pursue Lee’s defeated army, the Union politicians needed a hero and they had won the battle. Meade was honored for his success. There were not a lot of Union generals who had defeated Robert E. Lee for them to honor. But Lincoln never forgot the missed opportunity and, eventually, replaced George Meade with the more aggressive Ulysses S. Grant. Because Lee escaped, the war continued, and while it was crippled so badly it never tried another offensive, the Army of Northern Virginia held on until April of 1865.
Meade failed to follow up the Union’s greatest victory to date and lost his chance to end the Civil War almost two years and tens of thousands of casualties sooner. Even if the Army of the Potomac had not completely destroyed the Army of Northern Virginia, a strong pursuit would have crippled it further. This would have made the Confederate capital, Richmond, vulnerable and, perhaps, encouraged the Southern politicians to question their chances of victory.
If Meade had not waited an entire day after Lee’s withdrawal to begin his pursuit, he could have maintained pressure on the demoralized Confederates with just his intact V and VI Corps. If he had moved to Williamsburg and arrived a day after Lee, the Army of Northern Virginia would have been trapped against the flooding James River for days. Union attacks might not have broken Lee’s army, but they certainly would have lowered its already diminished numbers and complicated any crossing. All General Meade had to do was obey Halleck’s order to advance on the ninth of July and he would have had at least two days to confront the Confederates in Williamsburg. The American Civil War might have ended much sooner, with less loss of life and bitterness on both sides. Lincoln might not have been assassinated. The decades of resentment in the South and spiteful punishment by the Union could have been avoided. The economy of the South would have recovered less slowly and William T. Sherman would not have marched to burn Atlanta.