Posted by:
Geobeet (IP Logged)
Date: May 09, 2008 12:27PM
Hyway et al,
The shoes angle is myth plain and simple. Heth pushed his division toward Gettysburg as part of a general advance of the ANV. Longstreet's corps was on the road to Gettysburg, so if Lee intended to bypass the town somebody took a wrong turn. Lee himself was on the road. Early had passed through with his division days earlier. Lee's objective was the Susquehanna River opposite Harrisburg of via the bridge between York and Columbia (the one the federal militia burned).
The shoes myth surfaced sometime after the war and was gobbled up hook, line, and sinker by folks of that era. No serious researcher in this day and age buys the shoes myth.
It is a fact that many of the southern soldiers lacked shoes, but most of Lee's Army at that time was fairly well equipped from the march up the Valley into Pennsylvania. Chambersburg's shops were literally ransacked and shopowners paid with worthless Confederate scrip. There was no shoe factory in Gettysburg at the time capable of making enough shoes to fit out Heth's Division.
Buford's cavalry division was in Gettysburg as part of the Army of the Potomac's screen. Cavalry's mission was to screen the army from the enemy's cavalry and to perform reconnaissance. When Meade took command, he pushed both infantry corps and cavalry units in the general direction of Gettysburg.
The worth of Gettysburg was greater than any mere shoe factory. It was a major crossroads, with roads radiating out in all directions. For Lee, he could head east to York or north toward Carlisle and Harrisburg. Heth was the advance element of Longstreet's corps when he blundered into Buford's troopers west of town.
For Meade, the crossroads had a similar connotation. It was a point where he could concentrate his forces if need be or head in whatever direction necessary to intercept Lee.
The best all around book on the battle is this one: [
www.amazon.com] by Coddington. It's not the easiest read in the world, but it gives both a solid overview and pretty well researched account of the battls.
The Killer Angels is fiction. The author presents a number of half-baked theories and somehow they get taken as fact. The movie "Gettysburg" is based on The Killer Angels.
I made up the fast food story. It started on a visit to the battlefield, and all the fast food joints on the Emmitsburg Road just sit there on the battlefield, glaring out. They need to take them out and restore that part of the battlefield as they did with the monstrous tower and what is now the old visitor center on Cemetery Ridge.
The Park Service, by the way, is trying to restore old vistas as much as possible. They are removing trees that grew up in the decades since the battle on fields that had no trees back then and planting trees where they were at the time of the battle and have since been removed. It's a long-term project, but eventually the visitor will have a clearer picture of the battlefield.
Also, for those visiting the battlefield, there is a bit of an anomaly between the Confederates position on Seminary Ridge and the Federal position on Cemetery Ridge. From Seminary Ridge, where Lee ordered the attacks on the second and third day, a good part of the intervening valley is obscured by a low ridge. As a result the distance appears condensed - it does not look as far off.
From Cemetery Ridge, you see the entire field. It is a bit higher, so you see it all. Union veterans remarked for years how they watched the Confederates march out across the field, not believing they were making the assault on that field.
Besides Coddington's book, there are many others. Troy Harmon, a park ranger at Gettysburg, has written one where he theorizes that Pickett's Charge was but one of three assaults that Lee hoped would be carried out simultaneously. The others were Johnson's division on Culp's Hill and Stuart was to drive into the federal rear. Had all three assaults happened at one time Meade would have had his hands full.
As it was, Meade made a counter-attack on Johnson, the Union cavalry intercepted Stuart before he got formed up, and the infantry charge on Cemetery Hill was left hanging. Further, other infantry that was to have supported the Pickett/Anderson assault never jumped off. Survivors who made it to the copse of trees wondered what happened to the support.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
