Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command 

He kept Meade because he knew the Army best. But Grant quickly took overall command after the wilderness. Meade second fiddle once the 1864 campaign season got going.

Meade was promoted sideways, a military insult.

Meade never got the respect hr deserves and demands. Grant was no better that’s for sure.

​@revolutionoutdoorsandstuff5846 Meade only survived Gettysburg and there was no counterattack after Picketts charge or any attack on the 4th and let Lee reteart in good order back to Virginia! Meade had the McClellan slows, 10 months after Gettysburg Lee was not seriously engaged until may of 1864 and only because Grant said where Lee goes you go.

@@danielkitchens4512 no disrespect, but your comment shows barely a surface level knowledge of the battle. The union army was in no shape for a pursuit of the army of Northern Virginia. They took massive casualties and barely had food or water for days. There was zero chance the army was in any condition to pursue.

i think you have found all there is to find about why Lincoln picked Meade ... and at that point in the war, the General Officer pickings in the AOP were pretty slim ... when Reynolds said "no thanks," Meade was the only good candidate.

All of the corps commander (except Sickles) recommended Meade for commander of the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln and Stanton had run out of time, so they ordered Meade to command.

Lincoln didn't like Meade.

@@marknewton6984 That was part of the problem with the Union Army to begin with. Lincoln had too much influence over his General Staff and hence making the General Staff extremely politicized. As we know from history (Vietnam in particular) politician’s making decisions for field Commanders, never works. This was a great lecture and he has truly changed my outlook of Gettysburg. However, when the historical FACTS outweigh tradition? One must be willing to change their opinions when presented with historical facts in a manner that we didn’t know 20-30 years ago. We now know that General Longstreet was an excellent field commander. Longstreet didn’t want any part of fighting at Gettysburg and he was right. But the South needed a scapegoat. Now we know why General Meade didn’t immediately “reach out and grab the Army of Northern Virginia.” As he pointed out, “Chase General Lee with what?!” Why did General Buford dismount his Calvary and not simply report back to General Meade where the Rebels were and what they were doing? The Town held no military value whatsoever. It was like everything these Generals were taught at West Point and were told what to do by their Commander officer went out the window? Dan Sickles was a glory hound and he put General Meade’s entire Army at risk with his shenanigans! Dan Sickles reminds me of another lousy American General and that General is Mark Clark. Who was another glory hound instead of doing his job! Unfortunately, a lot of the Yankee Commanders were glory hounds. As a Yankee myself, it’s unfortunate so many people (on both sides) had to die because of their Commanders mistakes.

I still think Longstreet was slow on Day 2. He gave an assignment clown like Sickles a path to "glory." Meade was probably smart not to pursue Lee. Lincoln did not like it but that's war.

Or he just did a ton of research work.

Napoleon commanded individual gun batteries at times, it really is not so strictly defined where exactly a good commander delegates or takes command. Because the line is in how necessary and well received the command is rather. So saying what the "job" of an army commander would be in the same situation is only up to his direct superiors and not something that is objective across all armies battlefields and situations. If everything under his command is his responsibility then everything he commands he should be personally responsible for. To that end, it should be left up to lower commanders only if those commanders are able to bear that portion of responsibility. Recognizing when your subordinates are unable to do the job and helping them to get to that point by teaching, showing, and doing, is absolutely the commanders job. All that said he could have just been a micromanager or tradition had not yet empowered lower level commanders with those kinds of decisions. A modern private can make decisions generals of old were never allowed to after all.

Interesting and I think fair comment, especially as a cause of Lee's failure was because he failed to coordinate the attacks on the second day. @@BeKindToBirds

A commander's job is to be at the point of decision, and to take the most critical actions. At that point those brigades were what would win or lose the battle. In addition, Meade had just had Sickles ignore or confuse his orders. He would not have allowed that to happen again, exactly as the enemy - at full strength - was beginning his attack against a defense not yet established. We've seen Patton directing traffic at a single road intersection, because restoring movement was the most important task at the moment. This is much the same.

Not really- it's a rule of thumb that a commander concerns himself with the dispositions of up to three echelons below him. For a Civil War Army commander that would be Corp/Division/Brigade.

Sickles was considered nuts, even by the North.

when you don't execute your primary mission, you get no points for wagons or cut telegraph lines ... Stuart's mission was to screen the ANV and keep the commanding general informed of the AOP's location -- he did not do that.

@@markharnitchek9205 But the Army of the Potomac didn't launch a surprise attack on the ANV : Lee 's force wasn't 'ambushed' for want of Stuart's intelligence about his enemy's location. After Heth's division found the Federals at Gettysburg, Lee chose to fight Meade there. I think Lee's decision-making was badly flawed at Gettysburg - verging on arrogance - and Day 3 suggests he was near to unbalanced.

​@Baskerville22 Lee wasn't ambushed, but he certainly didn't realize what he was walking into before it was already underway. I see it like a blind man stumbling around and eventually bumping into someone, his eyes were not doing their primary job. Yes the raids on the AOP hurt them, but can that really make up for the failure to inform Lee? I'm not an expert on the Gettysburg campaign, so correct me if I'm wrong.

Not to mention it was pouring down rain making the roads muddy and difficult to traverse

There is simply not enough grass. Horses and mules are hell on the grasses that make up North American pastures. They need approx 3 acres per horse or mule. That is approximately 450 square miles of just pasture. That is about a rectangle 20 miles by 22 miles, if there are no roads, trees, fences, tents etc on the land.

Grasses have different nutritional values for the horses and mules. One army manual for cavalry specified what grasses to obtain, if possible while on the march. Sometimes supply officers far in advance of the columns would buy an entire crop of oats, corn or hay ready for harvest and have it ready when the army got to it.

Horses also require oats to be properly fed. Between 1-2 million horses and mules died in the civil war. The average life expectancy for the horse in the field was 7 months

Bugs me too, though I'm like that. At one point my Twitter bio was "You almost certainly mean 'complement.'"

Great comment

People forget that Lincoln never sent the letter to Meade, it was found afterward. Also, Lincoln never did replace Meade even though there was political pressure to do it.

Wow, just wow.

In the United States, "podium" and "lectern" can be synonyms in modern educated usage.

In modern usage, "podium" and "lectern" can be synonyms, as per the secondary definition below: po•di•um \"po-de-em\ n, pl podiums or po•dia \-de-e\ 1 : a dais esp. for an orchestral conductor 2 : lectern (c)2000 Zane Publishing, Inc. and Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. All rights reserved

My questions are, (and I don't know the answers): 1.) In what condition were his Cavalry? 2.) What intelligence did he have? 3.) In what state were his logistics? 4.) In what condition was his command structure? If any of these were in a state of disarray after the battle, then without the benefit of 160 years of hindsight, but based upon what Meade knew at the time, does this change our perception of the choices available to him? Edit: spelling error.

Good questions. I guess one just has to go with what Lee expected. He fully expected a counter-punch but it never came. It's just as well to be cautious - the rebs had already had their fun messing with my distant relative General Milroy at Winchester on the way to Gettysburg. Although, that very depressing union defeat was likely a big part of why Lincoln replaced McClellan with Meade 3 days later just before Gettysburg. Meade had just suffered 3 attacks successfully - why push one's luck?@@jonpick5045

Monday morning quarterbacks.

The issue being that Meade was in as bad and in some ways worse shape then Lee by the 3rd. The Army of the Potomac is short on artillery and musket ammunition, it’s extremely short on rations, it’s extremely short on fodder, and the men have spent the entire last week either on forced marches, digging fighting positions or in combat. Meanwhile the Army of Northern Virginia has captured a large amount of the Army of the Potomac’s supplies both from depots such as Carlisle Barracks and wagon trains. The Army of Northern Virginia has also seriously compromised the Army of the Potomac’s lines of communications which make requisitioning and getting supplies in a timely manor to be able to effectively pursue the Army of Northern Virginia impossible.

@@kiloalphasierra Concise, well- written summary of closing comments of this video.

That's the poy

Did you listen to the entire presentation? This was about General Mead and how he pursued the battle of Gettysburg. I think it was covered very well.