If Lee had listened to Longstreet...?

If General Lee had have seen common sense,and listened to Gen.Longstreet,and not gone ahead with the disastrous Picketts charge,what do you think would have been the outcome of Gettysburgh.?

Picketts Charge would have gone off a lot better if Longstreet wouldn't have delayed his attack. If the artilery went off and the attacks went down on time, Pickett's men wouldn't have been left exposed. I'm not saying the charge was a good idea or not, just saying that some good ideas come crashing down when support isn't where it should be.

Looking out from the Lee/Virginia memorial at Gettysburg, one can see that the attack launched by Lee on the 3rd of July had little chance of success. The union forces were well entrenched along Cemetary Hill/Ridge. Perhaps Lee did think his men were invincible. A personal opinion is that if Jackson survived and been able to participate, he may have been more aggressive the first day of the battle and his men may have taken the high ground, thus avoiding the neccesity of a frontal assault across a mile of open fields to an enemy waiting behind a stone wall and who could move reinforcements back and forth with relative ease. The war may have been prolonged, but in the end attrition most likley would have still resulted in the same outcome.

I agree the attack was outlandish but Longstreet was late in his support. No matter, the charge was not Lee's most brilliant plan thats for sure. I think he was caught off guard for once and was desperate. I know I would be in his place.

how much is really known about longstreet diagreeing with lee at gettysburg?

In the brilliant movie :Gettysburgh"-one of the finest pieces of american cinema ever made-Longstreet confronts him on the field,prior to the charge,and puts his case very forcefully to Lee.He argues very logically and with a lot of commonsense.There are Officers standing nearby,and as the film is historical in nature and fact,I guess they would have vouched back then, that this debate did indeed happen. I assume it would be mentioned in history books,surely.?,

From what I've read, the discussion you're refering to did happen. Lee decided to go against his officers and ordered the charge. I was saying that regardless of how dumb the charge may have been Longstreet didn't do as he was told. He was supposed to advance at a certain time and did not.

longstreet should have listen to his commanding officer,anyway if they hadnt been marching all day long if longstreet attacks earlier in day look out the union has trouble.its the fishook linethat probally doomned lee.lee still came close to beating them,forget picketts charge the battle was won on the second day it would seem.

I read that Longstreet ran short of artillery shells, which affected the charge and its timing.

I haven't read that before so that's pretty interesting.

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The Longstreet was late thing is playing into the whole campaign, spearheaded by Early after the war, to make Longstreet the scapegoat for the whole Gettysburg fiasco.

The day that Longstreet was late was actually the 2nd, when he was still bringing up his forces. They ended up having to take an alternate route because the way they were coming brought them too close to the Army of the Potomac, it made their route longer, and while Longstreet did everything he could to get them there as quickly as possible, there's only so fast you can move a large body of troops - especially in those days.

On the 3rd, while Longstreet did disagree with Lee's plan, and stated as such, once he knew that Lee was not going to change his mind, he followed his orders and set the thing in motion.

Early, of course, had good reason to make Longstreet look bad. He caused a delay on the first day by halting his troops, costing a critical hour that had he not done that, could have garnered the Confederates Cemetery Hill.
What a difference that would have made!
And after the war was all over, and Early's on his smear campaign, Longstreet didn't help himself. While he wasn't on a campaign to malign Lee, if the topic came up, he didn't hesitate to say that Lee was wrong - okay, big mistake criticizing Lee even if he was wrong, he was marbleized long before the war was close to over.

And I just finished reading a book by Moxley Sorrel, Longstreet's chief of staff. He doesn't outright say it as I recall, but it is clear he puts a lot of the blame for Gettsyburg on Stuart's absence.

Of course all any of us can do is guess and conjecture, and our opinions may be based on which books we've chosen to read. As you can tell, I am not a believer in the "it was Longstreet's fault" campaign.

Excellent post. One of the most fascinating ongoing controversies to come from the CW (though hardly the only one) is the Lee/Longstreet conundrum. As you pointed out, all we can do now is speculate, but that's one of the things that makes study of the CW so fascinating 150 years after the fact (one can look at the English Civil War and the profound impact it had on Britain's subsequent historical progression and it generates nowhere near the interest our own CW -- or as many here refer to it, the war between the states -- continues to stir up). As you so rightly pointed out, how we feel about the controversy is colored primarily by the books we've read. Connelly's "The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society" was one of the first studies of Early's mythologization of Lee (full-text available for free on Google Books). It remains one of the most important study's on the subject. Longstreet came out on the short end of the spin stick in the years following the CW. While Early was hardly the only former Confederate to deify Lee, he was perhaps the most important, and he found a ready audience. Longstreet's biggest flaw was that he wasn't Jackson, and he could not be evaluated on his own merits, but only in how he stacked up against that genius. Everything I've read, both primary source and later studies suggest there was little difficulty between Lee and his Old Warhorse during the war.

I do believe Early deserves much of the blame for the failure of the Gettysburg campaign, right along with Stewart. The greatest hope Lee had of coming out ahead at Gettysburg lay in the rapid capture of Culp's Hill, a task Early badly bungled. He, as can be seen from posts here, also suffered from not being Jackson. I've yet to add my 2 cents directly, but there is a thread here asking whether Culp's Hill is wrongly relegated to minor status as compared to the Round Tops and the day 3 frontal assault, otherwise known as Pickett's Charge. There is much merit in that argument, but it wasn't nearly as dramatic as the 20th Maine "saving" the Union flank or the Confederate's forlorn hope on Day 3. I do believe that the campaign that was Gettysburg was a losing proposition for Lee even if he had pushed the Federal forces back on Day 1. As I've said before, the AOTP was a formidable force, finally lead by a competent commander. Meade had back-up plans (Pipe Creek et.al.). There was little chance a numerically inferior force, so far from its base, on exterior lines, and on the operational offensive, no matter how well lead, could have decisively defeated the Federal forces. It just wasn't a realistic outcome. War is not all about romantic, heroic leaders, it's a slogging, nasty, day-to-day grind of fighting, controlled by and subordinated to the physical laws of the universe, much as the German's and Japanese discovered in WWII. The larger, more well-equipped, reasonably lead force will, in direct combat, come out on top 99 times out of 100.

Ajhall wrote:

Longstreet's biggest flaw was that he wasn't Jackson, and he could not be evaluated on his own merits, but only in how he stacked up against that genius. Everything I've read, both primary source and later studies suggest there was little difficulty between Lee and his Old Warhorse during the war.

I do believe that the campaign that was Gettysburg was a losing proposition

From everything I've read as well, there were no problems between Lee/Longstreet afterward. Lee had no part in the "blame Longstreet" campaign, and Longstreet, while he may have plainly stated what he saw as a mistake, didn't "hold it against" Lee.

You are right in that Longstreet wasn't Jackson, but only in the fact that he wasn't deified the way Jackson was. I often feel sorry for Longstreet, he was easily as good a leader as Jackson, a smart military tactician, an on-the-lines fighter, etc., and he was basically "cheated" out of his just accolades.

I agree with what you said about Gettysburg being a losing proposition for all the reasons you said.
Of course, often, a single change of one event can alter everything, and such is the subject of so many alternate Gettysburg stories - it can be fun to play "what-if". But going with what did happen, clearly, if not before then, by the third day, when the Union was so firmly entrenched and reinforced on the high ground, the outcome of that day was already decided.

I have a few quick questions for consideration by you CW buffs. If Gen Stuart had have taken part in Picketts charge with his cavarly as backup in the frontal attack ,would that have broken the Union Lines.? I ask this because in 1917 in WW1 the Australian Lighthorse cavarly charged over flat open ground,about 900 yards, straight into Turkish artillery and machine guns, and took the town of Beersheba,Palestine.That was the last cavarly charge in history,that worked. So, would Stuart had made a difference.? Also,if the Confederates had taken devils den on day 2, from the 20th Maine, would that have turned the battle for Lee.? This is all conjecture,but when you get right down to it,Gettysburg was a pretty close run thing,could have gone either way,just one different move,a bit like the sliding doors theory.

Ah yes, so many possibilities, and all it takes is one little change sometimes to completely change the fortunes of war.
Of the two possibilities you mention, either Stuart or Devil's Den, I think the more likely one to make a difference would be if the Confederates could have taken the high ground at the beginning.
As far as Stuart taking part in Pickett's charge, by that third day, the Federals were so firmly entrenched, and there was still a lot of ground to cover between the Confederate lines and the Union lines - I think the only difference in that scenario is that there would have been more dead horses on the field between the two lines.

There was in fact a large cavalry engagement on the 3rd day of Gettysburg, but it did little more than add to the casualty roles. It was a separate action, not directly connected to the main combat along the Union center. While cavalry continued to have a very important role in the CW and the decades immediately following, it was relegated to a secondary role by the advent of longer range small arms. The day of the cavalry charge reached it's zenith at Waterloo. The British "Charge of the Light Brigade" at Sebastapol was the first large scale example that the day of the horse-borne charge was at an end. It hardly meant there would never be another successful large scale cavalry engagement -- witness the British in the Sudan at the end of the century, and the 1917 Beersheba engagement you mention. Even though the day of the battleship was long-gone, the single largest naval engagement of WWII, Leyte Gulf, was primarily a big-gun duel, as opposed to an aircraft or submarine-centered engagement. These cavalry engagements were, however, anachronistic examples of bygone times.

Buford's Gettysburg Day 1 delaying action was an example of the effective use of cavalry in the CW. Stuart was, in spite of his Gettysburg campaign escapade, a master at using cavalry in a tactically meaningful way within the context of his times. Reconnaissance, screening and following up infantry victories were the best roles for CW cavalry.

I more and more believe the Day 2 action along the Union left flank -- Devil's Den, the Round Tops, etc -- were and are overstated in popular lore. I've long had a great interest in the 20th Maine's role. It was important and a fine example of what kind of impact a small unit can have on the larger picture. But its commander, Col JL Chamberlain, spent a great deal of his considerable talent playing up the role his unit had in the grand scheme of things. Oates' Alabamians were at the end of their rope when they attacked, not well supported, so one has to wonder if they weren't doomed to ultimate failure from the outset. Once Meade's full attention was directed at his left flank, the odds of a full-scale, decisive Confederate victory here quickly faded away. As much as the 20th Maine represented the bitter end of the Union flank, so Oates' Alabamians represented the flickering end of the Confederate attacking wing. His men were physically at the end of their rope. This was no Chancellorsville. Sickles almost handed the Confederates the keys to the door of Day 2 success with his blundering salient at the Peach Orchard, but he just barely escaped. Had the Confederates been successful here, the story may well have been completely different.

Lots of great comments on this question! There are so many "what if's" conserning Gettysburg...and Picketts charge will always be one of the greatest. To some degree the events of July 3rd where out of both Lee & Longstreets control. One often overlooked reason for failure during Picketts charge (& Gettysburg in general) is the issue of artillery fuses. The main supplier of fuses for Lee's artillery had been the Richmond Arsonnal. However it had exploded 4 months eariler! New fuses came from Charlston S.C. & they burned slower then the Richmond fuses Lee's gunner's had been using. The problem was reported & testing was scheduled.....for July 10th, which would prove too late for the ANV! The great mass of Confederate artillery was to demolish the federal troops on Cemetery Ridge, however much of the rebel shells fell some 200 yrds beyond the union targets! ...what if the Richmond arsonnal had never exploded??? Or....what if the confederate ordinance dept tested the new fuses a week before Gettysburg???

I agree, there's just too many what if's in the whole war.

Maybe its because I'm a girl, but sometimes I think how harsh some officers are scrutinized (I don't mean anyone here) and the microscopic view of every action and it makes me wonder how hard it would have been. I know that trying to see things from "their" point of view, I can imagine how absolutely horrid a single decision would be. When you're ordered to do something from a higher officer and you believe its wrong for whatever reason you'll be sending your men to certain death. Men who trust you, have families and have fought with all they have and they're fate is pretty much resting on your decision. That is rough to live with. Those "bad" decisions make me a little less critical. I don't think I could order my men somewhere I thought they had a small chance of making it out of. But, thats war and I'd be courtmartialed.

Sorry...babbling.

I don't know about babbling, because that's another reason why I often feel sorry for Longstreet. He did not want to send his men into that charge on the third day, couldn't even speak the words, because he knew what was going to happen. But in the end, he had to follow the orders of his commander. None of us can even begin to imagine what that must have been like, knowing for certain you were sending your men into a slaughter, and even worse, have to watch it happen.

I agree, and sadly the lessons of history are rarely learned. Many years after the CW in WW1 tens of thousands of young men were being forced to come out of trenches and march over open ground,barbed wire,straight into withering artillery and machine guns.On the Somme under British general Haig,nearly thirty thousand british troops died in one day,doing a ludicrous charge. At Fromelles, 5000 young aussies died in three hours when they got caught between German lines,another pointless charge. The CW was the forerunner of the horrors of WW1,IMHO,the same waste of young life by inept Commanders. I know Lee said after the disaster of Picketts,"Its all my fault"but i wonder if he had the guts to say to Longstreet "You were right,and i was wrong",somehow i doubt it.

Lee admitted his failures far more then most other CW generals. Lee excepted all responsibility for defeats. He never wrote his memoirs & never blasted subordinates as scapegoats for his own set backs & flaws. Longsteet however, did just that! Longstreet's behavior would sour his relationship with some very fine div. commanders (McLaws, & Evander Law for ex. were both used as his scapegoats during the war). Earlier in the war @ Seven Pines he hide his failure to follow Johnston's orders behind Gen. Huger's ineptness. Longstreet was a good corp commander but his greatest moments came with Lee's direction. He failed @ independent command, against commanders Lee had beaten. Burnside whipped Longstreet @ Knoxsville a few months after Gettysburg. Longstreet ordered his troops into frontal assault against fixed & entrenched union positions! One wonders why he had not learned from Lee's mistakes? If we believe Longstreet, he told Lee many times these types of assaults were prone to fail with great slaughter!

In Longstreet's defense, he did not start that business of blasting the others, Early was the one to start all that, and of course we know, he had good reason to shift attention from himself and his own failure at Gettysburg.
What did Longstreet in was;
1. After the war, while he didn't seek to spread the word, if it came up, he dared to say that Lee goofed - big mistake.
2. In many of his responses, he was most undiplomatic. Can't say as I blame him. He was a much better commander than anyone was really giving him credit for, and then have to put up with Early trying to make him the blame for Gettysburg....not sure how diplomatic I'd be either.
3. And of course, to nail the coffin shut, he joined the Republican Party and endorsed Grant for the presidency (who had been his closest friend before the war).

This is a really good book about Longstreet and covers that whole business as well;
"Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant"
(Sub-title: James Longstreet and his place in southern history) by William Piston

I was not referring to the post war mud slinging contest between Longstreet & Early. I was talking about Longstreets ugly trait of placing blame(unlike Lee) on others for failures. He did this several times during the war. @ Knoxsville Longstreet ordered a frontal assault & lost nearly 1000 men in about 20 mins...Burnside only lost 13 men during his defense! Altough on a smaller scale, this is exactly the type of assault Longstreet would have us believe he warned Lee away from @ Gettysburg. He then blamed his div. commanders. McClaws was replaced, Robertson & Law were courtmartialed (All 3 of these Gen's had fine war records). Lee always excepted total responsibility for his failures...while Longstreet did not. I just dont think Lee needed to tell Longstreet, "You were right, and i was wrong" on July 3rd or any other day. Lee believed he saw real opportunity & had to live with the results. As for Longstreet...hind site is 20/20, & thats the view from which he wrote his memoirs!

I just assumed you were talking about the post war thing because I have read a lot about Longstreet and never read or heard it suggested that he was in the habit of blaming others.
I know about the McLaws, Robertson & Law business, you really need to read more about that before condemning Longstreet. Only a couple years before (1862) in a letter to Ewell, McLaws wrote about Longstreet, "has no superior as a soldier in the Southern Confederacy" - there's your first hint that what information you have is not quite complete.

I suggest finding a book that is unbiased, either from him being bitter, or from others having an agenda against him, I believe you will find a different picture of Longstreet. That's why I bought and read the book I mentioned earlier, reviewers reported that it was an unbiased book about Longstreet, and it proved to be the case, it gave him credit he was due as well as pointing out his faults.

Haven't posted much the last few days -- first the races at Loudon, then the weather and tides were most conducive to striped bass fishing.

The comments on the CSA problems with artillery fuses is right on. It's a little known problem, explored to some extent by Sears in his Gettysburg narrative, then in somewhat more detail by Nosworthy in his "Bloody Crucible of Courage". The ultimate impact of the fuses remains controversial and worth more study.

I've mentioned it before, but "The Marble Man" is an excellent study of the post-war tempest over Lee's place in historical tradition. LiveVegan is right about the unenviable position officers found themselves in. Two things, a bit contradictory, to keep in mind in this regard. First, general officers were doing exactly what they wanted to be doing -- leading troops. They knew exactly what they were getting into, and they accepted that they would often be called on to make decisions that would lead to the deaths of thousands of men. It was an unpleasant but unavoidable part of the job they accepted. Secondly, remember that no CW general on either side had any experience handling bodies of troops much larger than a CW regiment. They were learning on the job, and that is a most unenviable position to be in. One should empathize with what they were facing. One of McClellan's huge flaws as a commander was that he never reconciled this need with his basic personality. He could not get passed the need to make the hard, deadly decisions, and in the long run, that lead to many thousands more deaths than were saved by his timidity.

I personally think Longstreet got the short end of the stick in post-war history. He was a better corps commander than army commander, but that's no slight. Hood was an excellent brigade/division commander, but once he reached army command, he could not rise to the challenge. Very few CW general's had the moxie to competently command full-sized armies. Longstreet did a competent job. I also am not familiar with his having a tendency to shift blame for failure. It's worth noting, as Connelly points out in "Marble Man', Lee had no problem with Longstreet. It was only, as far as I know, in the post war period when he was subjected to heavy criticism. Blueshawk, thanks for the book recommendation.

Its been a few yrs, but one book on Longstreet I've read was J. Wert's "General James Longstreet: The Confedercy's Most Controversial Soldier". I dont remember the book being bias against "Ole Pete". However according to Wert, McClaws would always assert he had been the scapegoat for the Knoxsville campaign(By the way, the two men became somewhat cordial again after the war). However, Longstreet cited McClaws with the rather weak charge of "a want of confidence in the efforts and plans which the comdg genl has thought proper to adopt". Ironic...Ole Pete could have been guilty of this rather vague charge @ Gettysburg (although Lee never blamed anyone but himself). Longstreet would later admit McClaws actions didn't warrent the charges, & stated that he had removed McClaws "in an unguarded moment" ~i.e. McClaws was the scapegoat. (Or @ least thats my understanding). & remember, he had a hx of using scapegoats...Huger @ Seven Pines! I'll keep an open mind though & check out the book you suggest blueshawk.

I don't have Wert's book yet, but it's on my list. From the reviews I've read about it though, it sounds like it largely vindicates Longstreet.
I do have the book you mentioned as Longstreet's "memoirs", but I haven't read it yet because I wanted to first read books about his life in general, before during and after the war. Reviews I read, have him limiting much of it to battle strategies, etc.
And the thing to remember is that it was written 30-plus years after the war, 30 years of him being embattled by Early and his crew, and undoubtedly, somewhat bitter from not getting his just accolades for his part in the war, (and I can't say I blame him).
But as for Longstreet having a history if using scapegoats - this is the first time I have ever read that suggested, unless that's something Early and his crew tried to put on Longstreet too, then I would have missed it. I haven't read anything about Early specifically. I probably will read a general biography someday....when I run out of everything else.

Thats correct Blueshawk, Werts book doesn't seek to slander Longstreet. I haven't based my belief on this "scapegoat" issue on any post war "lost cause" hyperbole from Early or his cronies. I've formed my oppinion in this regard, by reading histories written by modern authers who appear unbiased. These incidents are mentioned, but by no means used to lamblaste or vilify his career on the whole. He was a great soldier, there is no doubt! For short discription on the Huger affair read "Damage Them all You Can" by G. Walsh (Provides brief & informative chapter on Seven Pines). I hold Longstreet in high regard, however even great men have flaws....

Mike D. wrote:

however even great men have flaws....

Too true, if they didn't, the right side would have won.