Lost Triumph: Lee's Real Plan at Gettysburg -- And Why It Failed (review)

Is there anything more to add to the perennial historical controversies that rage over the field of Gettysburg? Tom Carhart thinks there is. Other historians (including this one) have acknowledged that on 3 July 1863 Lee intended J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry to strike the Union rear areas behind Cemetery Ridge. Carhart, however, accords this dimension a new significance in the evolution of Lee's planning for the assault on the Union position that day. What puzzles Carhart is why the earlier, acknowledged versions of Lee's plan seem so uninspired. Furthermore, he cannot understand why Lee risked so much on an attack—the famous "Pickett's Charge"—that deployed a mere nine brigades out of an available total of forty-three. Lee had previously endeavoured to make optimum use of the entire force at his disposal. Carhart believes that he has found the answer to these mysteries.

In his radical reinterpretation, Carhart argues that on 2 July when Stuart eventually arrived at Gettysburg after his long detour through Maryland and Pennsylvania, he was "pleasantly received" by Lee, not frostily (p. 142). In an unrecorded meeting, Carhart believes Lee and Stuart studied a map prepared by Jedediah Hotchkiss, and then the latter received oral orders to take his three brigades plus Jenkins's brigade of mounted infantry to the left flank. Stuart later presented this as an effort to shield Richard Ewell's assault on Culp's Hill. Carhart points out that no cavalry was sent to the right flank, and such a role would require from Stuart little or no offensive action. Stuart commanded 6,000 horsemen and advanced well beyond the Confederate flank, occupying Cress Ridge. Carhart argues that from here, after a pre-arranged signal to notify Lee of his safe arrival, Stuart attempted to seek out the Bonaughton Road that would take him, via the Baltimore Pike, into the very heart of the Union defensive position. Stuart's 6,000 horse—"a high speed, deep-strike force"—would have had a "stunning, heart-stopping, paralysing impact" on the Union defenders (pp. 160, 164).

The cavalry assault, combined with the nine brigades assaulting Cemetery Hill, and Ewell's seven attacking Culp's Hill, if successful, would have split the Army of the Potomac in two. This scheme, Carhart suggests, was worthy of Lee in its audacity and brilliance. Once broken, the remainder of the Army of Northern Virginia would have rolled up the Union defensive line from north and south. In this radical recasting of Lee's design, Stuart's attack is presented as an essential act while Pickett's Charge, to some degree, becomes the diversion, as all Federal eyes were on it while the cavalry surged forward from behind their lines. Carhart could have strengthened his case by pointing out that for much of the twentieth century historians accepted the exaggerated view (influenced by a preoccupation with the Civil War as a model for the First World War) that the tactical role of cavalry in 1861–65 remained very limited.

Stuart failed because he had, at most, thirty minutes to secure his breakthrough. He did not have time to fight the smaller Union cavalry force that opposed him and tried to move through it using greater weight of numbers. Stuart failed, lacking the firepower of the Union troopers equipped with Spencer carbines; his formation, exhausted by its earlier raiding, was also broken up by an audacious and brilliant charge led by George Custer, whose leadership and tactical acumen is praised throughout the book.

All this is intriguing and has a certain plausibility, but hard evidence is woefully short. The author relies on circumstantial evidence, and claims as to what is not there (such as Lee's odd lack of inspiration) rather than what is. Carhart suggests that Lee suppressed all evidence of the plan, except for odd references...