GDG- Wrights Brigade.

[keith mackenzie]

Thanks Jim! I kind of liked Tuckers take too. and there's something familiar about them reaching the top, only to be rejected. Who hasn't felt that way at least once? I understand Posey getting stuck piddling around the Bliss farm, but Mahone is a whole nuther kettle of fish. I checked him out in Larry Taggs book, and nothing happened to the guy. No one even mentions the fact that he never moved his troops foreward. Still, he went on to what seems to be a fairly successfull carreer, ending the war as one of Lee's more competent and trusted subordinates. Did Lee have an eye on this guys career all along? Is he an example of someone who survived the learning curve to fit nicely into Lees command structure?
  K.

James Cameron <cameron2 at optonline.net> wrote:
  Esteemed GDG Member Contributes:


Keith,

Actually, I think Tucker used the correct term when he referred to what 
Wright's brigade may have achieved as a "lodgment" rather than a 
penetration. And too brief and unsupported for any possibility of either 
maintaining or exploiting it. There's still some controversy about just how 
far the brigade got. I personally think there's a good chance it reached 
the Union line, achived a brief lodgment before being forced to retire, but 
didn't actually break or penetrate it in the sense of gaining access to the 
Union rear.

Wright's report is indeed one of the more unreliable ones to be found. But 
it only serves to point out a broader problem students of the battle are 
faced with. That is, that in studying this or any other part of the battle, 
one is almost always faced with reports and other accounts, even those from 
the same side, which differ so greatly in detail that they are simply 
impossible to fully reconcile. These contradictions are inherent to the 
written record, and cannot be resolved by the kind of selective editing and 
interpretation of source material some indulge in. And attempting to come 
up with a scenario which makes Wright's report seem to make sense, by 
picking up where his brigade struck the Union line and dropping it north of 
the Copse, runs into even more intractable problems. Including, and in 
particular, the inescapable fact that the two batteries there which need to 
have been overrun for such a theory to hold water, simply were not. No 
batteries overrun north of the Copse, no Wright's brigade north of the 
Copse.

Posey's brigade could well have reached the sector of the Union line north 
of the Copse, had it been able to advance effectively and as a formation. 
Which it was not. Likewise Mahone's, depending on exactly where it would 
have advanced, which is of course hard to say exactly, since it never 
happened.

Jim Cameron


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