Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign

Most histories of the Gettysburg campaign effectively end on July 3, 1863. At most, a few sentences are added at the end indicating that Lee made his way back to Virginia. Even the sophisticated reader has had little opportunity to learn just what happened after the battle. This book changes all that. In great detail, almost every moment of the retreat to Virginia is described. The author makes great but appropriate reliance on primary sources to provide not just the only but the definitive study of these critical few weeks of the war. The book is generally well written, sometimes vivid. However, the author does spend more time than is necessary listing every pound of corn, every mule, every wagon foraged by Lee's army. This makes several pages of the book a numbing read and this data would have been better left to the appendix. This is, however, a small problem in an otherwise outstanding book. A must read for any serious student of the Civil War.

Kent Masterson Brown's "Retreat from Gettysburg" (2005) has been justly praised as the first full-length study of the Army of Northern Virginia as it withdrew from Gettysburg following the failure of "Pickett's Charge" on July 3, 1863, crossed South Mountain, and succeeded in crossing the Potomac River on July 14, 1863. Most histories of the battle devote only a few anti-climactic pages to the retreat and tell the story from the standpoint of General Meade and the Army of the Potomac. These books then either praise or criticize Meade to varying degrees for not being more aggressive in attacking Lee's army. As is well known, President Lincoln was highly critical of Meade and believed that a further attack could have severely crippled the Army of Northern Virginia and perhaps ended the War. But Brown's study not only tells a detailed story of the retreat, it offers as well a somewhat different account of Lee's Pennsylvania campaign than that offered in recent studies. The books on the Battle of Gettysburg by Sears and Trudeau, for example, explain the Pennsylvania campaign as an attempt by Lee to win a major victory, to fight a battle for the annihilation of the Army of the Potomac, and thus to bring the war to an end. Brown argues that the primary focus of the campaign was different. He sees it primarily as a large-scale raid in which the Army of Northern Virginia invaded Northern soil to secure food for the troops, forage for the horses and mules, and essential supplies for the Army. Southern soil had been decimated by two years of heavy fighting, and the Confederacy lacked an adequate supply system to keep the army moving. Thus Lee wanted to tap the rich, untouched soil of Pennsylvania for supplies to keep his Army a fighting force. And forage Lee's army did. Brown has unearthed and utilized a vast array of documentary evidence showing the extent of southern foraging. The foraging of food, supplies, and clothing began when the vanguard of the Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac and proceeded with great force during the two weeks portions of Lee's Army spent unopposed in Pennsylvania before the Battle of Gettysburg. The foraging and gathering continued during the battle and, indeed, during the long retreat. The retreat was difficult in part because the Army of Northern Virginia had thousands of wagons which formed a train extending for 50 miles as it crossed the mountains. These wagons had to be protected, no less than the troops, to keep the army together. There were some losses to Union calvary but on the whole Lee and his army managed to get the goods they took in Pennsylvania across the Potomac and to make use of them to alleviate pressure on Southern soil and transportation systems. For Brown, the Battle of Gettysburg was a serious tactical loss for the Confederacy, resulting in a defeat and in the loss of men that could not be replaced. But he argues that the Pennsylvania campaign had a strategically more ambiguous

I have read many books on the Gettysburg Campaign but never before have I been as enlightened as I have been after reading Kent Masterson Brown's Retreat From Gettysburg. Brown's well researched book vividly describes the purpose of the Campaign and dismisses many fallacies such as Lee had no Cavalry with him and that Stuart was off gallivanting in the Pennsylvania Countryside. Stuart's orders are clearly defined and followed as are the roles of many of the other major participants, such as John Imboden who Lee entrusted with an important and critical responsibility . The Author puts the reader in the midst of the Confederate retreat and one cannot help but feel the suffering and pathos of the wounded solders enduring such horrific conditions. Brown also tells the story of the effect on the civilians in the towns along the route. The book also points out the obstacles faced by Meade and how he dealt with a command structure that was decimated by the recent battle in trying to ascertain Lee's intentions after July 3rd. The important Battle of Falling Waters is finally told in detail and not just dismissed as in many prior books with a few lines casually referring to it as a rear guard action. One of the things I found most helpful is Brown's ability to connect events with an implicit time line, along with excellent maps throughout a well written narrative.

This could be the most important Civil War history published in 2005. This ignored subject is usually covered in a few pages at the end of a Gettysburg history. We all know the AoNV managed to get back to Virginia, that it was a horrible experience and that the AOP was unable to force a battle that it could win. Kent Masterson Brown has taken these few facts, coupled with extensive research and built a story of escape, pursuit and human suffering with few equals in American history. Somehow, a complex series of stories come together in a compelling narrative that engages and then astounds the reader. This story starts with the failure of Pickett's Charge and ends about two weeks later, with the AoNV safe in Virginia and Meade forever dammed for "allowing Lee" to escape. In between is hell. Rain, mud and floods on a scale that rival the more famous "Mud March", coupled with thousands of sick and wounded men being transported to safety or death. Tens of thousands of animals create an incredible amount of filth and draw every fly for miles. This book allows us to "see" what this meant in very personal human way that adds to our understanding. Interspersed are battles with the Union Cavalry, worn out, badly beat up from Gettysburg but still "game" and spoiling for a fight. Meade must determine Lee's intentions, mount an effective counter and supply his army while caring for thousands of wounded. The author details these problems and allows us to understand what this means. For the AOP, pursuit was almost as bad as retreat was for the AoNV. Short of everything, burden with the dead and wounded from Gettysburg and working blind, they group their way south not really ready to close in for a kill but hopeful. In the end, Lee has time to entrench, the Union Corps commanders advise Meade not to attack and Lee crosses the Potomac ending our story. Of note is the treatment of blacks, both slave and free, in the Army of Northern Virginia. This topic generates controversy but is present in a straightforward factual manner that adds importance to the book. Much of the personal in the AoNV's supply trains were black and most units had a number of slaves with them. Kent Brown tells the story of these men, during the retreat without sensationalism. He makes no effort to minimize the essential services they provide to the army and their masters either. Their story is woven into the very fabric of the retreat and together produces a compelling honest book.

Kent Masterson Brown has spent more than twenty years researching and writing his 500+ page book on the retreat from Gettysburg. I first met Kent ten years or so ago, and I was aware that he was working on this project then. He has spent years and years on it, and it shows. This book appears destined to become a standard reference work on the subject. The bibliography is 28 pages long, and he found a tremendous volume of primary source manuscript material that is unfamiliar to even me, who has also been studying the retreat for more than ten years. The work is extremely scholarly in nature, but yet is amply mapped and amply illustrated, making it attractive to less sophisticated students of the Gettysburg Campaign. There are also unpublished photos that I have never seen before that add a lot to the story, including a photo of Capt. George Emack, the company commander who held off Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick's entire cavalry division at Monterey Pass for much of the night on July 4. Brown's primary thrust is the logistics of the retreat, and he shows that there are many complex reasons why the definitive fight did not take place on the north bank of the Potomac River after Gettysburg. Those who are inclined to criticize Meade may well reconsider their positions after reading this. Congratulations to Kent Brown for writing a terrific and much needed book that addresses a too-often overlooked aspect of the Gettysburg Campaign in the level of detail that it has long deserved. This book definitely needs a place on the bookshelves of any student of the Gettysburg Campaign, and also on the bookshelves of any student of army logistics and how they can make or break a campaign. Highly recommended.