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Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign (review)

2005; Society for Military History; Volume: 69; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/jmh.2005.0231

1543-7795

Hans W Henzel,

American Environmental and Regional History

Reviewed by: Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign Hans W. Henzel Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign. By Kent Masterson Brown. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8078-2921-8. Maps. Photographs. Illustrations. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 534. $34.95. Many of the great gurus of Civil War history have intoned that there is no more to be written about Gettysburg, it has all been done. In terms of the battle itself, perhaps. But there remained one component of the Pennsylvania Campaign of 1863 that has never been subject to intense scholarly inspection. That void has now been filled by Kent Masterson Brown's twenty-year labor of love. As one of the very few Licensed Battlefield Guides at Gettysburg who interpret the Retreat, I have a special interest in this subject. Let me say that I certainly was not disappointed in this work. The bare facts of the Retreat remain the same, but what Kent Brown has done is to fill in the great vacuum surrounding these facts. This gives a new meaning to those events. We have revealed to us a new Lee, the totally efficient manager. How one man, after a crushing defeat, can within twenty-four hours organize his army into march serials, cover the withdrawal, and take along 46,000 head of cattle, circa 30,000 hogs, and the same number of sheep, is amazing, and doing all this under the most abominable weather conditions while foraging aggressively at the same time. Accomplishing this without losing a major element of the Army is a most remarkable achievement. Many factors and individuals were involved. But the overriding motivation was to get the army back to Virginia intact, a motivation uniformly shared by everyone in the army. The book, too, shows George Meade as a more empathetic figure. Meade, upon taking command of the Army of the Potomac, conceives a brilliant operational plan to take position on favorable ground along Parr Ridge behind Pipe Creek. This is close to Westminster, Md., on the Western Maryland Railroad—an ideal railhead. We know Meade ordered all the army trains to concentrate at Westminster—and they did. What has this to do with the Retreat? Everything! Westminster is well located to support the Parr Ridge Line, but at too great a distance (twenty-five miles) to adequately support an army with animal drawn transport. The result is that after Lee's defeat, the animals having gone without grain and fodder for seventy-two hours, were too weak to draw the wagons. Artillery horses were too jaded to tow the guns and caissons. The cavalry were so worn-out that they could not pursue. This created the thirty-hour intelligence void wherein Meade could not ascertain whether Lee would pull back to the mountains and fight or head straight for the river and Virginia. Lee exploited this intelligence gap to screen the movement of his column of trains with his wounded (the head of which enters Williamsport, Md., as the last, some fifty-seven miles of wagons later, leaves Cashtown, Pa.) The harrowing tale of the wounded is one of unending and, literally, unmitigated suffering, the likes of which have seldom been experienced in our history. Kent Brown goes into considerable detail on how the Confederate Quartermasters managed the movement, billeting the wounded in Williamsport [End Page 1217] and organizing the evacuation to Virginia. These logistic problems are matters that never cross our minds while standing on Little Round Top. The successful extraction of the Army of Northern Virginia would never have been possible without the very effective cavalry screen created by J. E. B. Stuart. Confederate cavalry vigorously and capably foiled the attempts of the Federal cavalry to interfere with the retreat or gather intelligence. This was one of Stuart's most successful performances. He truly redeemed himself. The University of North Carolina Press has done a good job in the production of this book. The linen cover is handsomely bound. The body copy is set in Janson, a pleasing typeface that is easy to read. The volume is richly illustrated with many excellent photographs, some from the...