MEADE’S COUNCIL OF WAR

Allen Guelzo’s article “Meade’s Council of War” [Vol. 8, No.4] kept the suspense until the very end. Then he passed sentence: “George Gordon Meade really did think that ‘Gettysburg is no place to fight a battle.’” Focus rather on what Meade actually did and said that July 2 evening, and several things are clear. For one, he never said Gettysburg was no place to fight a battle. That was John Newton, quoted in John Gibbon’s full and careful account, and Dan Butterfield’s minutes of the council (“Newton thinks it a bad position”) confirming Newton’s sentiments.

For another, Meade did not call his generals together intending a council of war, an important distinction. At 8 p.m. on July 2 he reported to Washington, “shall remain in my present position to-morrow,” a clear statement of intent. Then (not mentioned by Guelzo) Meade learned that interrogation of Confederate prisoners accounted for all units except George Pickett’s division. That would be Robert E. Lee’s sole reserve for the morrow, while Meade had the entire VI Corps in reserve. Winfield Hancock exclaimed, “General, we have got them nicked!”

Meade had to find out from his generals the condition and numbers of their commands and their views of the shaping battle. He only reached Gettysburg in the early moments of July 2 and was immersed in that daylong struggle. When the evening gathering bogged down in aimless conversation, Meade agreed to the format of a council of war to gain what he required. And when it was quickly evident that all his lieutenants, alongside Meade himself, intended to stand and fight, retreat was not (nor ever had been) an option; Meade’s vehement denial deserves respect.

A better ending for Guelzo’s piece would be Meade’s letter to his wife, written early on July 3: “Dearest love, All well and going on well with the Army. We had a great fight yesterday, the enemy attacking & we completely repulsing them…. Army in fine spirits & every one determined to do or die.”

Stephen Sears
Norwalk, Connecticut

Ed. We asked Allen Guelzo if he would like to respond. He writes:

Mr. Sears doth protest too much. On page 356 of my 2013 book, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, I indeed note that Newton was the first one to suggest that Gettysburg was no place to fight a battle. (“John Newton loyally supplied the table-setting observation that Gettysburg was ‘a bad position’ and that Cemetery Hill ‘was no place to fight a battle in.’”). Butterfield’s testimony before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War describes Meade “after the council had finished” remarking “that, in his opinion, Gettysburg was no place to fight a battle.” Similarly, if Meade indeed sent his dispatch, informing Halleck of his intention to remain “in my present position” at 8 p.m., then it passes understanding why he assembled his corps commanders and allowed them to believe that he had made no such decision. In fact, Meade’s dispatch was not sent until after the council. As I point out in the article, the 8 p.m. time-stamp on the dispatch in the Official Records is an error; at 8 p.m., the fighting he describes in it was still going on. No wonder Meade’s son, in his biography of the general, The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade (1913), corrects the time-stamp to 11 p.m. (volume 2, p. 96). Yes, Meade avoided losing what might have been the Union’s last battle, and all honor to him for that. But so did William Rosecrans at Murfreesboro. Rather than quoting Meade’s own self-congratulations after the battle, Sears might explain to us the opinion of “the President, the Secretary of War and General Halleck” in December 1863 concerning the Army of the Potomac, that “from that army nothing is to be hoped under its present commander” (OR, vol. 31/3:457–458). The real George Meade is probably somewhere in between.

BUILDING THE PERFECT ARMY

The Civil War Monitor is hands-down the best periodical dealing with America’s great internecine bloodletting. I look forward to its arrival in my mailbox with great anticipation and rarely am disappointed by anything I read in its pages. However, the failure of your panelists to include Nathan Bedford Forrest when assembling their ideal armies [“Building the Perfect Army,” Vol. 8, No. 3] is extremely puzzling. For five leading historians of the conflict to not choose Forrest suggests political and academic “correctness” writ large. When I was a Ph.D. student at Ole Miss in the late 1980s Shelby Foote was a guest speaker at a history symposium. One of my colleagues asked the late author whether the Civil War “produced any geniuses.” Foote quickly cited Abraham Lincoln and then, with but slight pause, added: Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest was one of the towering figures of the Civil War and highly respected and feared by William T. Sherman and others on the Union side. Post-defeat, Jefferson Davis considered Forrest to be perhaps his best pure soldier. With anywhere near even strength and adequately used and backed by his government and military superiors, the nonpareil cavalryman would have been even more remarkable.

While Union cavalry leader James H. Wilson (picked by one of your panelists) indeed should be included in a larger perfect army, to claim that he “defeated Forrest twice” is risible. Forrest did his best as John Bell Hood destroyed the Army of Tennessee at the gates of Nashville. And, yes, Wilson overwhelmed Forrest in northern Alabama weeks before the end of the war when the Confederacy was on life support. The only organized force to truly defeat Forrest was his own government. He was neutralized by the shortsightedness, elitism, and strategic limitations of the leadership in Richmond and in the overall Confederate command structure. Forrest belongs in any perfect army as a creative, fearless, and indefatigable fighter from the figurative back alley to the literal set-piece grand battle.

Rani-Villem Palo
Emeritus, History
University of Alberta
Alberta, Canada