Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command by Kent Masterson Brown

Abstract

Reviewed by: Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command by Kent Masterson Brown Timothy J. Orr (bio) Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command. By Kent Masterson Brown. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. 488. Cloth, $35.00.) In Meade at Gettysburg, Kent Masterson Brown argues that he has constructed an analytical portrait of Major General George Gordon Meade [End Page 572] that readers have “never seen before” (5). This portrait depicts Meade, not as the Army of the Potomac’s forgettable caretaker-general, but as the self-assured, rightful victor of the Battle of Gettysburg. Brown’s book shakes things up. For generations historians have marginalized Meade’s role in the Union victory, an understandable outcome given that Meade faced severe criticism from politicians and fellow officers soon after the Gettysburg campaign concluded. In March 1864, the New York Herald published an anonymous letter authored by a Union officer who called himself “Historicus.” He laid out the case for Meade’s removal from army command, arguing that Meade had wanted to retreat from the battlefield at the first opportunity, without making an attempt to secure a tactical victory. Historicus’s disparagements prompted the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to summon Meade for questioning. He survived the hearings, but over time his reputation atrophied. With the commencement of the Overland campaign, newly promoted Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant cast him into the shadow of obscurity. Bitterly, Meade complained to his wife about the creeping sense of unimportance and disgrace. He wrote, “The Herald is constantly harping on the assertion that Gettysburg was fought by the corps commanders and the common soldiers, and that no generalship was displayed. I suppose after awhile it will be discovered that I was not at Gettysburg at all.”1 Even after the war, Meade’s status continued to founder. His posthumous Life and Letters (1913) never received as much attention as Grant’s Personal Memoirs (1885–86). Further, the discovery of Abraham Lincoln’s unsent “golden opportunity” letter of July 14, 1863—which became accessible to historians in the 1950s with the publication of the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953)—further worsened Meade’s popularity. But Brown’s book retrieves Meade’s reputation. According to Brown, Meade performed capably during the Gettysburg campaign. In the author’s words, Meade was “an effective operational commander and a determined and relentless tactical commander who [was] fully aware of the strength and capability of his enemy” (5). Meade at Gettysburg is a rare gem. It offers a glimpse into Meade’s performance during the twenty-one-day campaign that is largely—if not wholly—positive. At each moment in Meade at Gettysburg, Meade’s decisions bear significance, directing the battle’s ebb and flow. Some of the book’s strongest moments occur in chapters 5 and 6, when Brown discusses Meade’s orders to Major General John F. Reynolds, the army’s acting left wing commander. Brown argues that the decision to send the left wing to Gettysburg came entirely from Meade and, further, that it suitably advanced Meade’s operational plan for July 1. This interpretation [End Page 573] departs from what others have contended. Many Gettysburg historians credit the decision to move the left wing to Gettysburg to Reynolds, who was killed during the battle’s first infantry clash. Convincingly, based on clear documentary evidence, Brown argues that this was not the case. Indeed, Reynolds’s advance gave Meade exactly what he needed: an opportunity to force the enemy to reveal its strength and position so that Meade could determine where, exactly, the Army of the Potomac should attempt to resist Lee’s invasion. Readers should be aware that Meade at Gettysburg takes a rather one-sided view of Meade’s controversial decision to refrain from attacking Lee’s defensive position near Downsville. Brown maintains that no one could have won a battle against Lee under the specific tactical conditions that emerged there. He writes, “Meade had no ‘golden opportunity’ on 13 July. His crippled, hungry, and exhausted army was facing the prospects of assaulting Lee’s elaborate and virtually impregnable defenses” (369). Since the appearance of the first...