Chapter 1: Alternative

On July 4, 1863, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia reeled away from the 3 days of Gettysburg. The 28,000 casualties they had suffered were more than 1/3 of the 75,000 effectives who had marched into Pennsylvania weeks before.

Meade’s Army of the Potomac had suffered 23,000 casualties. That was “merely” 1/4 of the 90,000 troops with which he had begun. Lincoln urged him to pursue Lee and destroy him.

Meade felt that an army which had suffered 25% casualties needed days to restructure and should proceed gingerly. Many defeated armies in history had suffered a lighter percentage of casualties. His pursuit began two days later. He asked for, and received, reinforcements, but not anywhere near enough to replace the men he had lost.

Lincoln respected Meade’s victory, especially since previous commanders had so seldom managed to overcome Lee. Still, he complained to Meade, and to others about Meade, about the tentative nature of the pursuit.

“General Meade has enough troops now who had not been engaged in that awful battle to dispute Lee’s crossing of the Potomac,” he complained to General Andrews, an officer of the Washington garrison.

“Mr. President, Meade is north of Lee, and the Potomac is south of him. With the river as flooded as it is, it cannot be forded except far up towards the headwaters. 10,000 men could hold a bridge against that army. Ten thousand men, amply supplied with artillery, could hold a bridge against any army. The Washington garrison can spare 10,000 men. Send a division of that size to the south bank of the Potomac. They could hold the Army of Northern Virginia in Maryland until Meade catches them up.”

“If Meade cannot defeat them with seven times that number, who could defeat them with 10,000?”

“I did not say ‘defeat them.’ I said ‘hold a bridge against them.’ If they got across, I would not join battle save as part of the united Army of the Potomac.”

Andrews was genuinely convinced that this was the proper course. Lincoln kept a larger garrison in Washington than was needed to defend it under any circumstances, let alone these.

He was also a brigadier general in a non-threatened garrison who knew that the post-war army would have no promotions available for officers without combat experience.

“And what if the Confederates attack Washington?” Lincoln asked.

“Then the division would be of no use in Virginia, and could be returned to Washington by ship. Lee is presently west of us and moving west. Travel by ship is much faster than travel by land. Even if he got the slip by several days, the troops could be returned to the walls days before Lee could reach sight of the city. And a siege of Washington would put him defending against Meade within cannon-shot of the walls and in danger of a sally from the garrison. He would never risk that.”

Lincoln proposed sending Andrews out with a 10,000-man division with a heavy proportion of field artillery. The army command, who had been trying to use some of the garrison for more than a year, was happy enough to send the division. Andrews, at least, had the confidence of the Commander in Chief, and he should get a reward for persuading him to use that resource. (At that point in the war, the USA had had no Lieutenant General since Washington. Putting brigadier generals in charge of divisions was not unusual.)

Lee’s army ended up in Williamsport, Maryland. A cavalry raid destroyed their bridge, and they fortified their position and scrambled to reassemble the bridge.

The Army of the Potomac reached their lines on July 12th, and put up trenches opposite them.

In the afternoon of the 13th, Andrews’ division was marching up the south bank of the Potomac while Pickett’s shot-over division was beginning to cross the bridge from the north side. Union Cavalry scouts saw the activity, and messengers were sent back. The rest of the cavalry attacked the first Confederates to have crossed.

The Union officers urged their men, who had marched since morning but had eaten well and been rested on their march, to double-time. The first Confederates got there first, but the blue-coats could travel the road faster than the grey-coats could travel the bridge. Then the first battery of field artillery swung into position within point-blank range of the end of the bridge. They fired canister at the Confederate troops coming off the bridge. Soon, there were enough bodies blocking the end to slow the progress of the live troops. The second battery managed to get one cannon directly in the line of the bridge. The cannonball traveled half the length of the bridge and devastated every unit in the length of its flight.

Meanwhile, Meade could hear the firing on the other bank. Unaware of quite what was happening, he knew that if there was a battle on the south bank, then some of Lee’s troops were there, he ordered his troops to attack. Some on the Union right flank met light resistance since most of the troops opposing them had been withdrawn from their positions in preparation for crossing the bridge.

Lee, with a force whose numbers he could not guess at facing him from the end of the bridge, and a force he knew outnumbered his attacking on his north, called off the bridge crossing except for the first three divisions scheduled; these were already across or on the bridge. He ordered that the others waiting to cross should go back to their original positions. That left two battles separated by a river.

As more and more Yankees arrived at the battle on the south bank, Confederate bayonet charges were repulsed. It turned into a fire fight, and the Confederates had begun low on ammunition. Andrews, who had been traveling in the middle of the column but was on horseback, arrived. He ordered the last artillery battery to set up on the east end of the battle lines on the river bank, a distance from the Confederate line. This had now dug in. The battery fired canister in enfilading fire. Charging the artillery would mean crossing in front of a long line -- also in trenches -- of Union infantry.

Seeing more and more Union Troops still marching up, fewer and fewer Confederates making it off the bridge, and his troops getting low on ammunition, General Pickett ordered one last charge. When that was beaten back, he surrendered his division. The units of the other Confederate divisions, whose commanders had never made it off the bridge, also surrendered.

A mere 2,000 of the Confederates on the bridge got back to the north bank.

On that bank, the Confederates were more successful. Their right flank and their center, which had been in the trenches when the Yankees attacked, held their lines. Their left flank counterattacked. They ended at nightfall with a position well behind their original one, but connecting to the Confederate center. They spent the night furiously digging in.

Lee, however, was not happy when the reports came in midmorning of the 14th. The 2 divisions which had crossed the bridge were presumably all lost. The one that had made it back was even more shot-over than it had been at Gettysburg. That was a loss of 5,000 men. Admittedly, those divisions had lost half the men they had had then in the disastrous charge at Gettysburg, but the army did not have enough divisions to lose two off its rolls without mourning them.

In the Union assault against his lines, his army had lost another 4,000 men. He could believe that the Union had lost more, but both sides had also fired off a great deal of ammunition. The Union could resupply, and his army could not until he got across the Potomac. Then, too, the lines were now longer than the ones he had originally laid out, and longer lines favored the larger force.

Meade was not happy, either. He had handed the Army of Northern Virginia almost its first defeat at Gettysburg by being on the tactical defensive for the entire time. Unless you actually drive the enemy out of his position, and sometimes not then, the force attacking entrenched troops lost more than the defenders did. Now, he had attacked entrenched Confederates, and he had lost 6,000 men. He did not know how many men the Confederates had lost, although his troops had taken a fair number of prisoners on their right where the lines had originally been lightly defended. He had no desire to attack Confederate trenches again.

Andrews’ troops, on the south shore, cleared the bridge of dead and wounded Confederates. The prisoners buried the dead from the two sides in separate cemeteries. Union troops removed the planks from 10 yards of bridge. They set up separate batteries and trench lines facing the river and facing south. Andrews did not believe that the Confederacy had the troops -- other than what Lee had across the river -- to dislodge him, but why tempt fate?

By wire from Washington, Meade had learned about that Union force on the south Bank of the Potomac. He was certain that they could prevent a crossing in either direction. Then the Confederates would soon be short of ammunition -- the prisoners taken had already been short of ammunition -- and he could resupply. His reasoning, as well as his instinct, told him to engage the Confederates in a fire fight and an artillery duel until they ran out of powder. As the first stage of that, he ordered General Hunt, his artillery commander to engage the Confederates in an artillery duel.

Hunt did so with most of his guns starting at noon. A few of the batteries needed to move to more forward positions to cover and take advantage of the advances that the infantry had made the previous day. At first, the Union firing on Confederate batteries had been answered by Confederate firing on Union batteries. The Confederate firing died down over the afternoon, however. Hunt thought it had slowed much too rapidly to be the result of damage to guns. He figured either it was lack of ammunition or the Confederates were feigning that their guns were silenced to lure the Union into attacking. Hunt had used that ploy to lure the Confederates forward in the last day at Gettysburg.

Whatever the reason, the Union guns which needed to be brought forward were mostly brought forward without Confederate shelling. They were in place by nightfall, and the batteries had sufficient parapets to protect the gunners by morning. Hunt divided the batteries between those assigned counter-battery effort and those assigned to fire on the Confederate trenches for the next day. There was little Confederate response, and the counter-battery guns were mostly silent. At midmorning, the Confederates approached under flags of truce and proposed an exchange of prisoners. That led to the guns being silenced for several hours, but then they resumed for the rest of the day.

The Confederates had more prisoners than the Union had -- on the North side of the Potomac -- and the highest Union officer, a Major Kelly, objected to the meager food that prisoners were given.

“We don’t have any more food for ourselves,” he was told. “We have been on half rations for the last day.”

“Feed us or parole us,” Kelly replied. “We will promise not to fight again until we are properly exchanged.”

The suggestion was brought to Lee, and he approved as one way to stretch the rations.

Major Kelly reported to Meade that the Confederates told him that they were on half rations.

Meade took that news as another reason for not attacking. “With their rations running out, the Southerners must either surrender, break out, or eat their horses. We shall prepare ourselves for an attempt to break out.”

That night, the Confederates repaired their trenches. They had to be ready for the Union advance which they expected the next day.

Meade, inspecting the repaired trenches through his spy glass on the 15th, was quite happy. His troops were the more numerous, the better supplied with ammunition, and the better fed. Now, they were the better rested. He called his staff and corps commanders into a meeting where they made fairly elaborate plans to counter any one of several Confederate attempts at a break out. Any daylight attack would favor the Union advantage in ammunition, and one along the whole line would have a smaller number attacking a larger one. Still, they planned for that. They divided the line into left, right, and center sections, and planned for attacks in any one section in daylight or at night.

Lee had two possibilities to consider. The Yankees would attack or they wouldn’t.

“If they knew our ammunition situation,” one of his commanders said, “they would attack along the entire line, take their losses, and roll us up when we run out of bullets.”

“If they knew our food situation,” another retorted, “they would camp where they are until August, and then send in a burial party.”

“Well, they have begun with a bombardment,” Lee said. “It is slow fire, but it has been fairly effective. That usually presages an assault. Let us be prepared for an assault today. If they do not, we must break out tonight after moonset. The question is where should we attack?” They decided to attack on their right. After breaking out, they would have to go around the Federals to head upstream on the Potomac until they could find a crossing point.

That would mean that they had to circle the Union army to head west, which was their only chance to get to a ford in the river. For that very reason, though, it would be a surprise. Then, too, breaking out to the east would create confusion in Union minds as to where they would go next.

They didn’t have the strength to threaten Washington, but the government in Washington might feel threatened.

The next day brought the Confederates more bombardment to their trenches over the entire front. They had a doubtful chance of breaking out their supply wagons, and so they distributed all the rations and all the ammunition to the soldiers.

The 16th brought renewed telegrams to Meade from the president. Why, with a reinforced army and all the ammunition he had requested, was he not attacking the Confederates? Instead of attacking, he was preparing to defend.

Each Union sector had its own reserves, as well as a general reserve. Each sector had its own cavalry, and there was a general cavalry reserve.

The colonels had been warned, and many had warned their troops, to expect a night attack in the next few nights. When none came in the early hours of the night, however, the troops relaxed. The moon was just past its first quarter, and didn’t provide much light. It set near one o’clock. Then the Confederate troops moved off. The Union had sentries in advance of their trenches. The sentries on their left heard the advancing Confederates and gave the alarm.

When the Union troops in the left sector of the trenches awoke, they responded according to plan. Assigned sergeants in the front line of trenches lit torches and threw them as far forward as they could. Once on the ground, the torches revealed the approaching grey coats. The Union fired a volley; the Confederates screamed and charged.

The Union reserves, cavalry, and the artillery back of the Union left were roused from their bedrolls. The cavalry (dismounted) joined the reserves back of the trenches. Then cavalrymen armed with repeating carbines were led forward to join the troops in the second line of trenches.

The torches did not provide much light, but there was enough behind the charging Confederates to allow their forms to be seen. The artillery had already determined the angle to fire to put canister in the space between the Union and the Confederate trenches. That space was filled with men, and the canister brought down some of them. When they got to the first trenches, Confederates with bayonets met Union soldiers who had bayonets as well. The Union soldiers were better fed and had received more rest for the past several days.

If they got to the second trenches, the confederates met not only infantry with bayonets but cavalrymen with repeating carbines. Many of the Rebs who crossed bayonets with a Yank were shot while they did that. Beyond the trenches were reserves willing to meet them one-on-one.

Few of them got beyond the first trenches. One of the problems of a night attack is that the commanders cannot see where the advance has succeeded. The forces went forward; they did not head for any holes in the Union lines.

The battle went on, viciously, for hours. When the sky lightened in the east, the Union commanders had reserves to plug the holes in their lines. Other reserves fired volleys into the mass of grey. The Confederates called off the break out.

Immediately, as planned, the Union right attacked the lightly-held lines in front of them. Their units of cavalry were ready, and when the Confederate trenches were taken, they picked their way through and then pursued the broken troops. The Confederate cavalry, who had been awake all night but not mounted, responded. The Union troopers fired until their carbines were empty, then they retreated to a place they could reload and attacked again. That appeared, to many rebel horsemen, to be a fleeing foe. Their pursuit ran into the cavalry from the center, who had ridden around to their right at daybreak. Carbines and revolvers reloaded, the cavalry of the Union right reformed and came back in units. When the Union cavalry general reserve arrived, the Confederate cavalry was not only outgunned, they were outnumbered.

Lee, who had regarded the break-out as his army’s last chance anyway, and was receiving reports of one loss after another from the troops which had not been directly engaged in the attack, sent out an aide with a flag of truce. He asked for a time to discuss terms of surrender.