Gettysburg III

One hundred and forty five years ago today, the sun came up over the humid haze of mid summer outside a small town in Pennsylvania. The morning breeze carried that peculiar sweet and sour smell that visitors to a meat packing plant would recognize in the air. That distinctive odor mingled with the acrid smell of gunpowder as well as the odor of latrines for tens of thousands of men, further mingled with the odor of tens of thousands of horses and cattle. There was no mistaking it for a vacation spot.

Greeting that dawn was a manager without any good options. His opponent, the Union Army of the Potomac under George Meade, held a strong position and time was very much on the Union side. But perhaps most troubling was his sense that he had been failed by his senior leadership team. His soldiers had again displayed the élan that had won victory after victory. But their leaders had failed those men, and him, badly. But what to do about it?

The manager, Robert E. Lee, had made his choice during the night to attack the center of the Union line across more than a mile of open field. He was going to throw 9 brigades, 15,000 men, in an attack straight up the middle. His men would be advancing in ordered rows of marching men under Union fire for over 10 minutes before they would be able to return that fire. Even under the most favorable outcome, thousands of his boys would not return from that walk across the field.

But who would lead that attack? I imagine that Lee's heart ached for his strong right arm, Stonewall Jackson. But Stonewall lay in a cold grave back in Virginia, lost in Chancellorsville's wild melee. If Lee was human, he must have wanted to punish those who had left him with this choice, to make them accountable for this sad state of affairs. He had not wanted to fight here, and once engaged, opportunity after opportunity had been lost. Ewell had been cautious when boldness was necessary. Stuart had abandoned duty to engage in headline hunting. Longstreet had sulked because his advice had not been taken, letting victory slip from their hands because he was in a snit.

But instead of giving vent to his frustration and anger, Lee sought out Longstreet and engaged him in awkward conversation. Lee laid out his plans, tapping Longstreet to command the advance. Longstreet argued passionately against Lee's plan, advancing his own plans instead. It is a familiar argument for both, repeated many times in the past months. After patiently hearing him out again, Lee again orders his planned advance. Longstreet begs that command be given someone else. Lee, with sadness and resignation in his voice, tells Longstreet that no one else can do it as well as he. He, James Longstreet, is ordered to command the attack; seeing to it that it is coordinated and handled according to plan.

And so it happened. We remember it as Pickett's Charge, but it would be more rightly called Longstreet's Charge. Again it was late. Again the Confederate artillery was poorly coordinated. Again the Confederate attack was disjointed and poorly led. Again the courage and spirit of the individual soldiers and unit leaders was superb. Again the Confederate's failed, admitted defeat and returned to Virginia.

Who was accountable? Who was to blame? On whose head should the responsibility for failure be laid? In our modern world we believe in accountability. Review performance on objective criteria, measure performance and then mete out justice. When things go wrong, someone must be blamed for failure. Certainly the question of who lost Gettysburg has been endlessly debated in the years following.

Was Lee too bold? Was his invasion of Pennsylvania reckless? Was he overconfident and overcome by pride? In retrospect, this certainly seems the case. Yet, hindsight also argues that Gettysburg was lost by the Confederacy rather than won by the Union.

Did Longstreet let his ego get out of control? Did his pouting prevent him from doing the job he was assigned to do, and for which he was well competent? Certainly the operations over which he had control were carried out poorly and with no evidence of good management. Yet, is it right to assign responsibility for successful execution of a task to one who believes that it will fail?

True to his character, Lee accepted full blame for the action. He was not much for accountability. When his men succeeded, he praised them. When his men failed, he accepted the blame. If his judgement indicated one of his men unsuitable for their position, he quietly saw to it that they were posted somewhere more suited to their talents and without public humiliation.

The demands of the war required Longstreet to be sent, along with his men, to Tennessee. There Longstreet quarreled with his new boss. But rather than continue to work with him as Lee had done, his new boss exiled him to an out of the way backwater where Longstreet would be free to pursue his own plans. Those plans went nowhere and the following April found Longstreet back in Virginia under Lee again. After the war he rose to senior management in the federal bureaucracy where he seems to have been comfortable.