GDG- Ewell and the High Ground

[Alan D. Brunelle]

Batrinque at aol.com wrote:
> Esteemed GDG Member Contributes:
>
>
> In a message dated 3/1/07 5:24:29 AM Pacific Standard Time, toddest at gmail.com 
> writes:
>
>   
>> It would seem that Ewell could have taken
>> Culp's Hill with a well-planned assault,
>>     
>
> But in the circumstances that prevailed, was a "well-planned assault" 
> feasible? It seems to me that inevitably a Civil War attacking force became 
> disorganized, just by the nature of things (one of which was slow, poor communications 
> in that pre-radio age), and that any attack by Ewell at that stage of the 
> battle would have had to have been  of a somewhat ad hoc character, grabbing 
> whatever units came to hand and ordering them forward in an assault without much 
> in the way of formal preparation. 
And does it even have to be "well-planned" at all?

Consider Barksdale on the next day - he just kept pushing his brigade 
forward even though they got disrupted after their initial successes. I 
don't think there was a lot of planning on his part: just a series of 
actions in concert with Lee's dictum "the enemy is there, and I intend 
to strike him there".

Alan