On July 3, 1863, Confederate artillery officer Edward Porter Alexander received orders to command the guns supporting Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. His mission was to shatter the Union lines along Cemetery Ridge and clear the way for the infantry assault. Alexander later wrote that the intent was to tear the enemy “limbless” before the foot soldiers advanced. His guns opened fire, but the barrage failed to achieve its purpose.
The Confederate artillery effort, Alexander concluded, had been fatally disorganized. While he directed the main bombardment, batteries from other corps operated independently, each chief artillery officer working alone. General William Pendleton, Lee’s artillery chief, had assigned Alexander nine howitzers to support the charge, yet when the assault began, four or five of those guns were missing. Alexander later discovered Pendleton had redirected them without notice.
Lieutenant General A. P. Hill had placed sixty-five guns on Seminary Ridge but employed none to assist the infantry advance, even as the troops passed beneath their positions. Worse, Hill had wasted ammunition earlier that morning in fruitless skirmishing.
Lieutenant General Richard Ewell’s artillery missed a chance to provide flanking fire against the Union’s “fish hook” formation; only one of his five battalions joined the bombardment. Alexander blamed the chaos on the absence of centralized command. The disorganization allowed Union Major General Henry Hunt to endure the barrage and prepare his defenses unhindered. The assault failed.
Gettysburg turned against the Confederacy, and with it, the war. In the decades that followed, Alexander, who survived the conflict and wrote his memoirs, offered a damning analysis of the campaign. He identified five fatal blunders that, in his judgment, doomed Lee’s army before the battle was lost. The first blunder, according to Alexander, began before the fighting started.
On June 22, 1863, as Confederate troops advanced north into Pennsylvania, General Robert E. Lee ordered his cavalry commander, J. E. B.
Stuart, to take his horsemen northward and screen the army’s movements. The exact wording of Lee’s orders remains a matter of historical debate, but the consensus holds that Lee instructed Stuart to divide his cavalry, guarding mountain passes and shielding the flank of General Richard Ewell’s corps. Stuart, however, pushed farther east than Lee likely intended, seeking supplies and disrupting Union operations. That decision allowed Union forces to position themselves between Stuart’s cavalry and Lee’s main army.
Stuart was forced to detour northward and did not rejoin the army until late on July 2, after the first two days of battle had already passed. Lee spent those critical days without his cavalry. Horsemen served as the army’s eyes, tracking enemy positions and movements, and without them Lee operated blindly at a crucial juncture. Alexander condemned Stuart’s actions as a grave error.
Detaching the cavalry, he argued, violated the core military principle of concentrating force. Such raids rarely produced battlefield gains, but they invited severe risk. Alexander insisted that unity should have taken precedence over speculative maneuvers. Had Stuart been present from the outset, he contended, the battle’s outcome might have differed.
Full Confederate strength early could have unlocked opportunities for victory. Most historians have agreed with Alexander’s assessment. Stuart’s absence altered the course of the battle, whether through his own choices or through Lee’s ambiguous orders. The second blunder occurred on the battle’s first day.
On June 30, a brigade from General Henry Heth’s division entered Gettysburg in search of shoes. Heth believed the Union army under General George Meade was still fifteen to twenty miles to the south, and he anticipated no resistance. As the Confederates approached, however, they encountered entrenched Union cavalry. Heth withdrew and returned on July 1 with his full division, reinforced by Dorsey Pender’s reserves.
When Heth and Pender’s twelve thousand men reached Gettysburg, they faced General John Buford’s three thousand Federal cavalry. Outnumbered, Buford’s troopers held their ground until Union reinforcements arrived. The First and Eleventh Corps swelled Union numbers to twenty-three thousand, and Heth and Pender suddenly faced overwhelming odds. Alexander emphasized how errors compounded the crisis.
Without Stuart’s scouts, Lee lacked intelligence on Union positions. With proper reconnaissance, Alexander asserted, Lee would have prevented two divisions from engaging two Union corps and cavalry. Alexander also criticized Heth’s imprudent advance, comparing it to the cautious orders Ewell received about Cemetery Hill that same day. Similar restraint should have governed Heth’s mission, he argued.
The consequences were devastating. Heth’s lead brigades suffered near total destruction, crippling his division. Pender’s unit also endured heavy losses. Alexander lamented that these sacrifices were made for a trivial objective that weakened Confederate power without strategic gain.
Though reinforcements stabilized the Confederate lines later, the depleted divisions hampered Lee’s efforts for the rest of the battle. The third blunder came on the night of July 1 and the morning of July 2. After the first day’s fighting, Union forces held Cemetery Hill, a formidable defensive position. General Richard Ewell faced a choice: attack on July 2 or withdraw to Seminary Ridge.
Alexander later wrote that while the Confederate position was strong, it paled next to the Union’s high-ground advantage. He believed the Confederate line was defensible and could not have been overrun. Lee attacked anyway, fearing his army was too distant from its supplies for prolonged operations. Alexander dismissed that concern.
The Confederates remained at Gettysburg for four days and later foraged successfully when stranded at the Potomac River for over a week, proving Lee’s supply fears were exaggerated. Alexander insisted there was no need to attack. A defensive posture on July 2 was the wiser course. Through skillful maneuvering, he contended, the Confederates could have forced Meade to attack under unfavorable conditions.
By attacking, Alexander estimated, Lee sacrificed sixty percent of his chances of victory at Gettysburg. He deemed this the decisive turning point of the battle and the campaign. The fourth blunder involved planning and reconnaissance. Alexander conceded that Seminary Ridge was defensible, but he called Cemetery Hill the strongest position of the war.
The Union army fielded ninety-four thousand men against seventy-two thousand Confederates, and the Federals held superior artillery. Combined with the elevation of Cemetery Hill, Alexander deemed the Union defenses impregnable. And yet, he noted, no proper reconnaissance was conducted on the night of July 1, and no nighttime preparations were made. This allowed Meade to reinforce his defenses unchallenged.
“Verily that night, it was pie for Meade,” Alexander wrote. He also faulted Ewell’s corps deployment. After relocating near Gettysburg, Ewell requested permission to seize Culps Hill. Lee agreed, but Ewell failed.
Alexander believed Culps Hill was unassailable, yet Ewell’s corps remained stranded near Cemetery Hill in an ineffective position. Alexander protested that Ewell’s men and guns were squandered there, immobilizing a major Confederate force during the battle’s climax. He blamed the failures of July 2 on inadequate planning and reconnaissance, which enabled Meade to cement his dominant position and doom Confederate hopes. The fifth blunder was the fragmented artillery command that ruined the bombardment preceding Pickett’s Charge.
Alexander, who commanded the first corps artillery for the assault, watched the coordinated firepower of the Confederate army fall apart under divided leadership. The failed barrage left the Union lines intact, and the infantry advance that followed was destroyed. Taken together, Alexander argued, these five flaws sank southern hopes at Gettysburg. He did not believe the defeat was inevitable.
It was, in his account, a cascade of blunders and squandered chances. One clearer order, one wiser choice, or tighter coordination might have altered the outcome. Instead, Lee’s army lost not just a battle but the war.
Alexander’s memoirs, written decades later, preserved that bitter judgment for history.