GDG- Winter Stomp

[James Cameron]

<< What I indicated is that Federal accounts from those s*outh* of the Copse
are unanimous that no such  breakthrough occurred there. I have no reason to
doubt their statements.

As far as the action *north* of the Copse, there is not a handful of
accounts from Yankees who held a position along the thousand feet between
the Copse and the Brien homestead, and they say very little about what
happened on July 2. Yet accounts from brigades positioned nearby (Carroll,
Stannard, Rowley) all speak of serious problems on that section of the
ridge.

Indeed, there are  a number of Federal accounts that do indicate that there
was a breakthrough of the main Union line, and several specify it was
Wright's Brigade that did so. If we agree it wasn't south of the Copse that
this happened, where else would it have been but north of the Copse?

FWIW, the standard interpretation c. 1900 was that Wright's Brigade not
only "broke the Union line" and but "reached the crest of the ridge" where
it captured more guns (that's what the Commission's iron tablet and the War
Department's bronze plaque both indicate). Also, most of the maps published
in the early decades after the battle show Wright's Brigade aimed toward the
position held by Cushing and Arnold. That is my understanding also. I am
offering nothing new, but it is an interpretation that for whatever reason
virtually disappeared during recent decades except among some Southern
historians such as Freeman, Dowdey, and Foote.  >>

If such an interpretation existed, it may be that it disappeared because 
there's no evidence to support it having happened that way.  Cushing and 
Arnold were simply never overrun, their guns were not captured, nor, were 
they retaken by Union troops.  And without that having happened, Wright's 
brigade just wasn't north of the Copse.  You can't, as the saying goes, have 
one without the other.  It's not a matter of if they didn't break the Union 
line and capture more guns to the south, they must have done it to the 
north, and the guns must therefore have been Cushing's and Arnold's.  What 
the brigade appears to have done is neither thing, with at most a brief and 
minor lodgment being gained in the Union line south of the Copse, but not a 
breakthrough such as Wright's report claimed.

Jim Cameron