GDG- Re: Meade and his half-hearted pursuit

[Biggsk at aol.com]

Bill Gower posts:

After  the battle, the war just stagnates as it did prior to Meade until 
Grant comes  along.
And much of that reason is the lack of a proper pursuit by the victorious  
army and its cavalry.
 
One can look back to Napoleon's 1813 Campaign and see how he was very  
worried about his lack of cavalry, which had been virtually destroyed in the  
Russian invasion of 1812.  I have several notations from the Emperor about  this - 
and if you study the battles he did win in the campaign, they were hollow  
victories because his cavalry arm was just not numerous enough nor experienced  
enough to pull off an aggressive pursuit.
 
Thus, the losing army was able to limp away to fight another day.   There was 
no Austerlitz, or more importantly, no Jena-Auerstadt and its amazing  250 
mile pursuit of the defeated Prussians that annihilated their army (save for  a 
small group that got away to join the Russians).  This was the finest  example 
of aggressive pursuit by cavalry of the 19th Century and it paid off in  huge 
dividends for Napoleon.
 
Because of this, the 1813 campaign became a giant slugfest and the  
casualties were huge, especially at Leipzig, and it showed what would happen in  the 
Civil War when armies would only damage each other and not pursue them after  
winning to finish them off.
 


Although Meade had defeated Lee at Gettysburg I still think that he  was 
intimidated by him. 

And I am sure that he felt so after Mine Run as well.
 
Michael C.C. Adams in his book, "Our Masters The Rebels" argues this point  
for pretty much every fight that the AOP has with the ANV up until Grant takes  
over and instills in them the winning attitude that they really did not have  
until he did.  To me, the most important moral builder of the AOP's entire  
career is when after their drubbing in the Wilderness, instead of going back to 
 regroup, etc. as they always had, they kept moving south towards Richmond.   
That was when they had their winning attitude epiphany. 
 
Greg Biggs