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Civil War History 52.4 (2006) 422-423


Reviewed by
William Garrett Piston
Missouri State University
Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign. By Kent Masterson Brown. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Pp. 534. Cloth, $34.95.)

Kentucky attorney Kent Masterson Brown has produced a narrative of one of the few aspects of the Gettysburg campaign that has not been written about ad nauseam. Following a prologue that sets the stage, the author traces in meticulous detail the movements of the Army of Northern Virginia from the afternoon of July 3 until the last Confederate soldier re-crossed the Potomac. His work differs from pervious studies because of its depth. Brown spent twenty years in research, and it is hard to imagine that he failed to consult any significant primary or secondary material. He demonstrates conclusively that the retreat from Gettysburg required as much or more skill from Lee and his lieutenants as the movement into Pennsylvania and the battle itself. His account of the plight and suffering of the Confederate wounded is particularly moving. To the degree that sources allow, he also describes how the retreat impacted women and African Americans (both the slaves accompanying Lee's army and the free black population of Pennsylvania).

Brown's special interest, however, is logistics, and here his work both pleases and disappoints. No one could ask for a better description than Brown provides [End Page 422] of the trials and tribulations the Confederates encountered in shipping back to Virginia the supplies they garnered from the Pennsylvania countryside. This went far beyond food, cattle, sheep, horses, and mules, to include almost the entire contents of country stores and blacksmith shops encountered en route. Brown reminds readers that this, rather than battle, was the primary focus of Lee's campaign, and that the acquisition of supplies continued throughout the retreat. Obtaining this material was a remarkable feat, and thanks to Brown we know the story in more detail that before. Brown concludes that "with stores available to take them through the balance of the summer and early fall, it can be argued that the retreat from Gettysburg, at a minimum, turned a tactical defeat—and a potential strategic disaster—into a kind of victory for Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. It restored the balance of power between the two great contending armies in the eastern theater of the war" (390). He provides no analysis to support this claim, however. He does not discuss in substantial detail how Lee used the supplies, how long they lasted, or how Lee solved his logistical challenges thereafter. Nor does he weigh the campaign's gain in supplies against the strain on the Confederate medical system or the permanent loss of leadership among the army's NCOs and officer corps. Such analysis would make an important contribution to the historiography of Lee and Gettysburg.

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