GDG- Stuart and the historians

[Richard M Kadas]

Hi Jim,
  thanks so much for your excellent comments which help bring me up to speed on events. It was the best tjhing short of memorizintg JD's and Eric's new book. 
  Dck

cameron2 at optonline.net wrote:
  Esteemed GDG Member Contributes:


<< Absolutely true and allow me to add that one important factor that is
almost always given short shrift is the role of the Union army and its
intelligence gatherers in what went wrong with Stuart's ride. Also, as I
have pointed out in my Gettysburg Magazine series of articles, poor
coordination on the part of Lee virtually sabotaged Stuart's plan.

Let me briefly explain. When Stuart started out on the morning of June 25
his objective was to ride through the Union army not around it. John Mosby
had scouted a route for this to happen successfully. However, Lee decided
to cross his infantry (Hill and Longstreet) over the Potomac into Maryland
which triggered reports to Hooker from the signal station on Maryland
Heights supplemented by a BMI report from Maryland that Lee was moving north
of the river. This triggered Hooker's decision to start moving his army
northward on the morning of June 25, and, therefore, Stuart's route through
the army was blocked by Hancock's corps marching northward that morning.
The rest is history as they say. But it was Lee's lack of foresight about
what would happen if he moved his troops that caused the foul-up. >>

To me, the fundamental problem was that Stuart's mission was planned and ordered based on what amounted to a "best case scenario" assumption as to how things would go. As soon as anything fell short of that standard - which happened right away, as soon as he ran into the 2nd Corps where it wasn't supposed to be - things jumped the track, and never did get back on.

This mindset seemed to effect Confederate command and decision making right up through the battle itself. There's always an odd sense that all concerned, from Lee on down, expected the AOP to remain predictable, inert, and cooperative in whatever the ANV wanted to do to them.

Jim Cameron 

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