# Could Pickett's Charge have succeeded? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 7, 2009, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670 "2009-11-07T02:31:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2009, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/21 "2009-11-08T22:47:13Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > Not a civil war buff, so perhaps this is a foolish question - but did no one consider, well, _running_? Perhaps in some sort of crouch? Dodging from side to side a bit? One mile. In July. Wearing wool uniforms and carrying a weapon, ammo, and other equipment. Uphill. :dubious: Add into that the fact that massed fire is the only way to use muskets, and that since they were advancing over open ground, uphill, with a fence in the middle of the advance, any kind of run would get whatever troops that survived there in no formation at all, unable to break through a pack of Boy Scouts, much less the Union 2nd Division. (A sad note is that, while most Civil War muskets were rifled, the tactics that were used were those more suitable to smoothbores. Thus, the appalling casualties.) ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/22 "2009-11-09T02:33:38Z")
There is a [segment from movie Gettysburg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiDumCX_Pr8&feature=related) that shows it: filmed on the exact same ground with a similar number of men, most of whom were heavily-armed re-enactors so you know that any deviation from reality by the writer or director was likely to trigger gunplay, and you can get a feel for what happened that day. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/23 "2009-11-09T02:42:22Z")
Because it’s more dramatic, the camera angles all look like there is just a thin line of Union soldiers facing the Charge. One good push, and you’d think they would break. Of course, the whole frakking Union Army was massed at that point. All the Charge managed to do was erode the front line a bit. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/24 "2009-11-09T02:45:14Z")
There was that, yes. ETA: And Ted Turner’s death was the worst I’ve seen in a movie made after 1928, though still enjoyable. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/25 "2009-11-09T04:32:31Z")
The clip also had the four dumbest soldiers in the world. “There’s a rebel, take him prisoner! You three help me carry him, even though the battle is going on around us and the rest of the rebels are still marching toward us!” ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/26 "2009-11-09T04:39:23Z")
OKAY, it wasn’t always realistic. I’d’ve bayoneted the Rebel cuss myself, to avoid the paperwork, but we are referring to Noble Yankees Cut Down By Horrid Rebels. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/27 "2009-11-09T05:19:41Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > …but we are referring to Noble Yankees Cut Down By Horrid Rebels. That needed a sarcastic ;). ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/28 "2009-11-09T07:12:08Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > One mile. In July. Wearing wool uniforms and carrying a weapon, ammo, and other equipment. Uphill. :dubious: Yep, you start out way over there in the far line of trees and need to get to where the photographer in this picture was standing. While being shot at most of the way. > **[File:Picketts Charge Field.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Picketts_Charge_Field.jpg)** > > In case this is not legally possible: Liamcrouse1 grants anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law. > Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. > You cannot overwrite this file. There are no pages that use this file. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/29 "2009-11-09T22:28:50Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > Not a civil war buff, so perhaps this is a foolish question - but did no one consider, well, _running_? Perhaps in some sort of crouch? Dodging from side to side a bit? The more pertinent question is: did no one consider frontal assaults stupid? The answer is yes but unfortunately not enough, thus the appalling casualty rates. To give you an idea of how appalling they were, the Allies had a 5% casualty rate during the D-Day landings in WW II ([source](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_Landings)). In the Battle of Gettysburg the casualty rate for the North was 24%, the South 33% ([source](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gettysburg)). ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/30 "2009-11-09T22:58:35Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > See, that’s what I meant. Custer was not brilliant and, had Stuart been where he BELONGED… > > Who was it who said that, had Southerners not read “Waverly,” the war might never had taken place? Is “Waverly” a book on tactics? ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/31 "2009-11-09T23:19:09Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Burns undoubtedly got that crush from Michael Shaara, whose _The Killer Angels_ is really quite a remarkable book. Shaara was totally besotted with Chamberlain. > > Not without reason: Chamberlain’s heroism on the second day, and its importance, are quite real - and it’s just one piece of the arc of an exceedingly remarkable life. > > But Bruce Catton, in his Army of the Potomac trilogy, gives a much more measured account of Chamberlain’s importance in the overall action of the second day, describes no less than a half dozen separate instances where the Confederates came scarily close to turning or breaking through the Union line; Chamberlain and the 20th Maine stopped only one of these. It took a great deal of heroism under fire to hold the Union line during that long afternoon and evening. The movie _Gettysburg_ is, in many ways, an overwrought and bloated mess. But deeply embedded in it is a profoundly moving and brilliant performance by Jeff Daniels as Chamberlain–easily the best work he’s ever done and alone makes the movie worth seeing. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/32 "2009-11-09T23:44:51Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > Is “Waverly” a book on tactics? [Waverley](http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/works/novels/waverley.html) by Sir Walter Scott. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/33 "2009-11-10T00:20:51Z")
The bombardment that was supposed to provide support was a disaster due to miscalculations. The Confederate cannons overshot the Union lines or else hit the field between them when adjusted. Had the bombardment worked and opened a gap there would have been a slim chance of success perhaps. Certainly there’s any number of occasions of people with the higher ground being routed anyway. However this was a misfire on all levels. Many biographers believe that Lee suffered a mild heart attack shortly after Chancellorsville/before Gettysburg. It’s record that he was still heartbroken over the recent death of his daughter Annie the year before (he mentioned this constantly in his letters) and of course he was under major stress all around and add to this he had lost his father-in-law’s enormous estates\* and a host of other professional/military/personal matters ranging\*\* just all worked together to severely cloud his usually good judgment. In Longstreet’s memoirs he mentions that grieving over the recent deaths of three fo his own children in one week the year before combined with learning just before they entered Pennsylvania that two more were sick (they recovered) definitely clouded his own judgment and concentration. \*For those who don’t know the story: [Lee’s father-in-law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Parke_Custis), grandson of Martha Washington/adopted son of her husband, was one of the richest men in Virginia and left a huge but hugely complicated estate to Lee’s children. Lee was executor. The estate included several plantations (most famously Arlington) and many thousands of acres, more than 200 slaves, stocks and bonds and cash and real estate in D.C. and Baltimore and shipping interests, etc., and also LOTS AND LOTS of debts ranging from a few dollars to many thousands to various creditors. And… the request that all of his slaves be freed within 5 years of his death. Lee took a leave of absence from the army to figure out how to honor the will and pay off all the debts and it took him several years. He was doing this when called to active duty to take care of John Brown and when offered the armies of two nations. A glossed over portion of Lee’s life is that while his men were said to have loved him and would “march straight into hell for that old man”, the slaves he controlled detested him; one called him “the meanest man God ever made” and another “the hardest taskmaster in Virginia” and Arlington under his management was at the point of near slave revolt (reported in the New York Tribune long before the war broke out); he was so disliked that many of his slaves, knowing fully well that they were set to be freed within 5 years of Custis’s death, nevertheless ran away rather than work for him and when he redeemed them he ordered them flogged- both males and females. His father-in-law, who had promised his late wife (a very progressive thinker on terms of race) on her death bed that he would free the slaves when he died, had specifically stated that if the estate needed cash then the lands were to be sold- he even named the order- rather than the slaves go unfreed, and he forbade the selling of any slaves or separating of any families. Lee sued to break the will in order to retain the slaves for more years to pay off the estate debts without selling the land, and he also rented out most of the male slaves to other farmers and planters in Virginia and Maryland which effectively separated every family at Arlington (something that had never been done). He fought this lawsuit even while in the field against the Yankees, but ultimately lost; ironically he was ordered to have every slave freed by January 1, 1863, coincidentally the same day as the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. He managed to “get ‘r’ done” but only at great stress. \*\*Lee had never had high hopes for the Confederacy’s chance of victory and unlike Davis and others he saw Gettysburg as a last ditch effort to make the north surrender; he knew that if it failed then it was to be a defensive war from then on, and this was much on his mind. The recent death of Jackson, the earlier death of his daughter, the Union’s decision to use black troops (Lee had no love for blacks and not much more for Mexicans, Irish, or other groups who weren’t WASPs from the Mid-Atlantic- even for the times he was a snob), the confiscation of Arlington and other family properties, the estate issues and other matters (perhaps even the fact that [his oldest son](http://www.nps.gov/archive/arho/tour/history/bios/custislee.html)was 31, unmarried, “shy around girls” and nicknamed ‘Bunny’) all were causing him to nearly collapse under the pressure. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/34 "2009-11-10T01:30:52Z")
A secondary question: if Pickett’s Charge had succeeded or somehow else Lee had won at Gettysburg, what do you think the ultimate outcome would have been? Personally I think the war might have ended _sooner_. D.C., among the most unprotected capitol cities in the hemisphere when the war started (surprising considering they’d been burned to the ground 50 years before) had almost overnight become the _most_ fortified, and tens of thousands of rebels marching through Pennsylvania and Maryland would probably have been destroyed by an upswelling of militia and anyone with a gun before they ever got within cannon’s range of D.C… Vicksburg and Tennessee were already damned. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/35 "2009-11-10T01:47:52Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > Is “Waverly” a book on tactics? _laughing_ In a way. It is a conceit of some historians, I think including Catton and Shelby Foote, that the historical novels of Walter Scott, full of dashing horsemen and glorious warfare, were rather too popular in the antebellum South and led many hot-blooded young gentlemen to be overeager for war. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/36 "2009-11-10T01:52:28Z")
Depends on **when** the Confederates won the battle. If they had pressed through on the first day, cost be damned, and taken the heights before Hancock could arrive, then **maybe** they could have forced a battle more of their choosing. Maybe. Even then, Meade wouldn’t have to attack. He could play a waiting game that Lee couldn’t. If they had flanked the Union position on Day 2, and rolled up from the south, then maybe they could’ve broken Meade. At the very least they could have trounced him soundly. Then it would be political, and your scenario might happen. It was a close-run thing, and Sickle’s III Corps was shattered by the days fighting. If Lee had thrown everything he had around the Union left, instead of mucking about with a “demonstration” against Culp’s Hill, things might have been different. By Day 3 the cause was lost. The assault against the middle of the Union lines was suicidal from the get-go, barrage or not. I think if Meade was forced from the field, Lee would have faced scorched-earth the likes of which he had ever imagined. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/37 "2009-11-10T02:22:57Z")
So, how was Meade as a general? ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/38 "2009-11-10T02:32:38Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > So, how was Meade as a general? He rarely makes either the best or the worst lists, but he was far more capable than incompetent, certainly a vast improvement over McLellan and Hooker. Lincoln was livid after Gettysburg because, like McLellan and Hooker, he didn’t pursue Lee after the battle, but he had some good reasons. One was that he couldn’t count on support from Hooker and he’d already had the hell blasted out of him at Fredericksburg when he was aggressive without adequate assistance, and though defeated Lee’s army was far from harmless and though victorious Meade’s men had just been hit hard. ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/39 "2009-11-10T02:37:40Z")
It was late last night before I decided to quit reading about Picket’s Charge, and all the related issues and people involved. Thank you dropzone and silenas for bringing up the topic. I watched half of the film Gettysburg this afternoon. But I will have to wait until after the wife watches monday night football to finish. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670/40 "2009-11-10T02:41:31Z")
I don’t know who will win the football game, but the Good Guys ( 🙂 to Sampiro) win at Gettysburg. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-picketts-charge-have-succeeded/516670.md?page=3)