Grandpa was wrong, I can say that now; Lee still could and
should have won at Gettysburg by keeping to the rule he’d used, the same one
most effective American commanders have used, from Bunker Hill to New Orleans:
stay on the offense strategically but take the defensive tactically, rely on
firepower and protected positions, don’t trade casualties with the enemy. In other
words, no Pickett’s Charge. Bleed’em and leave’em, make Meade follow you
up a ridge somewhere a few miles down the road and blast him when those poor
boys in blue come walking up the slope. They say Lee had the runs, but to me
the runs would make you retreat. What he ended up doing was more like malaria,
some fever: “Why don’t y’all take a walk about a mile through the cannonballs
and see if you can occupy that heavily-fortified position up the slope, boys?”
They had a BBQ, all right. Free grapeshot for everybody. Not the smart way to
use outnumbered elite troops. If you were going to do Pickett’s charge at all,
the way would be—God, I’m going to get letters for this—to empty out the
South’s lunatic asylums and put grey body paint on the loonies, make them the
first three ranks, have them advance at bayonet point and absorb some of the
grape.
Of course once you start down that road, you know, the
possibilities are endless. Like, why not the old “human shield” technique? Lee
had occupied a lot of Union land by that time, held the town—why not have a 3rd
of July town outing, as in “You Yankee ladies git out thar in fronta us and
tell your boyfriends in blue not to shoot at y’all so we can survive till we’re
in bayonetin’ range.”
The reason they didn’t do that is simple: they didn’t play
by those rules. This ain’t Liberia or Chechnya, and thank god for that. You
know how many civilians were killed in the whole battle of Gettysburg? One. I
dare anybody from any other country anywhere, any time, to find me a battle
with over 50,000 military casualties—and one civvies died. One! It’s
incredible. People don’t realize how amazing that is. Those were supermen,
there’s no other explanation.
Thank you, David.
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