The aftermath of Gettysburg

Robert E. Lee
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Gettysburg campaign was the last significant invasion of the North. About a week after the battle ended, CS Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan led a cavalry raid into Indiana and Ohio to disrupt the flow of supplies to the Army of the Cumberland; beyond some bridge and railroad damage, and tying up some cavalry in chasing him, his most significant accomplishment was to get captured.

Surrender may be the logical end of defensive warfare, but it isn’t the inevitable or necessary end, as had been shown by the Romans in the Second Punic War, the Americans during the Revolution and the Communists in Vietnam. As long as Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia stayed in Virginia, they had the blessing of interior lines and intimate knowledge of the terrain, as well as friendly hosts. From that perspective, the invasion of the North wasn’t really necessary.

As well, materiel had always been the Confederates’ biggest problem. Half the size of its foe, the Army of Northern Virginia still found it necessary to augment what weapons and ammunition Richmond could send them with whatever they could capture from the Yankees. While in Pennsylvania, the ANV could live off the land. But the orchards didn’t grow bullets, and the wheat fields provided no powder. The further Lee led his army into Pennsylvania, the further his supply line was stretched and the more vulnerable it became. Eighty-one years later, Field Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery would lead British and American forces on a similar push into Holland (Operation Market-Garden), which failed its objective with severe consequences for the Allied advance.

Gettysburg — Day Three

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

—Proverbs 16:18

The sun rose on 3 July 1863 to show the Army of the Potomac still occupying the high ground southeast of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Gettysburg, 3 July 1863
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

To many in the Army of Northern Virginia, this likely came as a surprise. CS General Robert E. Lee’s Confederates had been dominating the bluecoats since the afternoon of the first day, when they pushed the Federals south through the town. And the day before, they had definitely given the Yankees a bloody nose when they’d pushed it too far away from the high ground. By now, the previous commander, Joseph Hooker, would have retreated. So would have Irvin McDowell, or Ambrose Burnside. Heck, George B. McClellan would have boasted of the success of his brilliant retrograde movement in the face of “overwhelming force”!

But those men wouldn’t have been in the upper ranks. Leaders like Lee and his “old warhorse”, Lt. Gen. James “Pete” Longstreet, knew that they’d accomplished little besides shoving a salient in the Union left back to where they would be strongest, the tactical crest of Cemetery Hill. The bloody nose had hurt the Confederates as much, if not more, given their numerical inferiority. The Union commander, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, didn’t have to leave his position: as long as his lines of communication were secure and his men held the most advantageous position, they could wait the rebels out.

Now would have been a good time to disengage, swing around to the south, cut the Union supply line and force Meade to give chase again. But for some reason — to the end of his life, he never explained why — Lee simply could not let go of the battle. Perhaps, as novelist Michael Shaara said in his novel The Killer Angels, he thought his men would never understand why they turned their backs and left an undefeated enemy in possession of the ground; however, they had done so once before, at Antietam a year before. I think it’s more likely that Lee, a Virginia aristocrat who was the son of a Revolutionary War hero and related to George Washington by marriage, was impatient for the battle and the war to end, and rationalized that a thumping defeat of the Army of the Potomac so far into the North would precipitate that end.

Gettysburg — Day Two

The sun rose on 2 July 1863 with the Army of the Potomac on the high ground south and east of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A good stroke of fortune had allowed Union commanders to find this ground before the conflict began, and the bulk of the previous day’s fight had been devoted to holding off the Army of Northern Virginia until the bulk of their forces could arrive.

Now US Maj. Gen. George G. Meade’s forces formed a fishhook-shaped line starting at Spangler’s Spring and Culp’s Hill to the southeast, running north to the northernmost point of Cemetery Ridge, then falling back south along the line of the ridge to fetch up against Little Round Top. This gave Meade the advantage not only of visibility and artillery range but also of interior lines, which allowed him to move units and materiel to reinforce any part of his line without exposing the reinforcements to enemy fire. By contrast, while the Confederates could move units out of the Federals’ range, the length of their lines, which roughly paralleled the Federals’, meant reinforcement could be a slow, time-consuming business.

Most of the morning was consumed in consolidating the lines, as the bulk of both armies arrived on the field. On the positive, from Lee’s side, was the arrival of Lt. Gen. James “Pete” Longstreet and his First Corps. Moody, taciturn and profane, Longstreet was a competent, occasionally brilliant, tactician who became Lee’s right hand after the death of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. However, his corps was missing Maj. Gen. George Pickett’s division, which would not arrive until after the day’s action. Even more disturbing was the absence of Maj. Gen. Jeb Stuart’s cavalry; without their eyes, Lee’s knowledge of the Union dispositions was imprecise. Stuart finally arrived around noon, but played no part in the day’s action.

Believing the Federal left to lie along Emmetsburg Road, Lee ordered Longstreet’s corps to flank them en echelon, a maneuver in which succeeding units attack in intervals to prevent the enemy from shifting reinforcements. Longstreet disagreed; an advocate of defensive warfare, he argued that Lee should swing the ANV to Meade’s south, cut the Federals’ lines and force them to fight on grounds of Lee’s own choosing. But Lee was determined to fight and defeat Meade where they were; Longstreet, a career soldier who had served with distinction in Mexico, eventually accepted his orders.

Lee had left the timing of the attack to Longstreet’s discretion, which was just as well; as the First Corps was moving into place, they stumbled upon a Union signal station in their path which could have blown the plan open. Nor could the soldiers simply about-face and march to the rear; to preserve the order of attack, the line had to double back on itself. Not until late afternoon, between 4 and 5 p.m., were the two divisions in place to attack.

Gettysburg — Day One

The Army of the Potomac had been chasing after the Army of Northern Virginia for almost a month when a cavalry division commanded by Brig. Gen. John Buford rode into Gettysburg on 30 June 1863.

The Gettysburg campaign, 3 June - 3 July 1863
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

CS General Robert E. Lee knew Napoleon's dictum was true: "The logical end of defensive warfare is surrender." For that reason, he knew he had to take the ANV into the North, where he could put both military and political pressure on Washington to end the war and allow the Confederate States their separation. Accordingly, on 3 June 1863 he sent his army in two wings into the Shenandoah Valley to clear the Federal garrisons and secure his lines of supply and communication, while his cavalry screened the move on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The invasion proceeded successfully, as the right wing under Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell defeated the garrison at Winchester (Second Winchester, 13 June) and the two wings moved up the valley first into Maryland and then into Pennsylvania. The cavalry screen was also successful, up to a point. Lee had ordered Maj. Gen. J.E.B. "Jeb" Stuart, his cavalry commander, to cross the Potomac, delay the Federals and protect Ewell's right flank. But when Stuart encountered US Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock's II Corps, he decided to ride around the Federal army to the south, which took him out of contact with Ewell's right and rendered the ANV functionally blind. Lee had allowed his forces to become strung out, from  Chambersburg to York and Harrisburg.

Meanwhile, US Maj. Gen. Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker finally realized that the ANV was on the move north when Ewell attacked the garrison at Winchester. His initial plan was to seize Richmond while it was undefended, but Abraham Lincoln reminded him that his primary target was Lee. So the Army of the Potomac moved in a parallel course through Virginia and Maryland, mirroring Lee's advance to the point of having their cavalry screen on their left. By 28 June the Federals had reached Frederick. Alerted by a spy that the Federals were closing in and fearing defeat in detail, Lee ordered his forces to concentrate in the Cashtown-Gettysburg area.

By then, the Army of the Potomac had a new commander, its fifth commander in just over two years. Hooker had argued with Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, the nominal General-in-Chief, over the defense of the armory at Harper's Ferry and petulantly offered his resignation; Lincoln, frustrated with Hooker, accepted it and put Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, a bad-tempered martinet, in charge. Meade hadn't expected the order, but kept the forces moving forward, ordering them on 30 June to move towards Gettysburg while establishing an alternate position south of the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. The stage was set.

How to build a straw man

AJ Antonin Scalia official portrait.
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

If you want to see a very good example of a straw man argument, I suggest you read Daniel Fisher's attempt to take down AJ Antonin Scalia's dissent in United States v. Windsor, posted in Forbes. It's witty, light reading and betrays very little grasp of Scalia's argument or his judicial philosophy. In fact, it demonstrates just about everything that's wrong with the media and political discourse today.

Here is my best attempt to reconstruct the steps Fisher took to write his article:

1. Skim through Scalia's dissent, pulling out of it some juicy quotes on the fly. This isn't hard to do, because Scalia's writing is eminently readable, remarkably free of legal jargon and obscure polysyllabic words.
2. Go back to Scalia's dissent in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius and do the same thing. This is a longer process, because it actually involves three separate cases that were combined, and covers four different aspects of a very long Act.
3. Convert judicial restraint from a general approach to an absolute principle.
4. Write your post, making sure you keep it within Forbes' word limit.

Step 3 is where the shape of the scarecrow is put together. The transformation is something like the conversion of William of Ockham's "law of parsimony" into "Ockham's razor": A principle that merely admonishes one not to introduce unnecessary elements into an explanation somehow became a reductive, misleading idea that true explanations are always — or at least usually — simpler than untrue explanations.

Thank God for the First Amendment!

While you're getting prepared for the annual 4th of July festivities, you might spend a little time on your knees praying the Litany for Liberty, one of the prayer resources being offered by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops for The Fortnight for Freedom. They also offer another prayer that's being printed on the back of prayer cards, the front of which will have a picture of Mary Immaculate, Patroness of the United States. The same prayer is also offered on the back of cards bearing Our Lady of Guadalupe (Patroness of the Americas and of the unborn) and St. Thomas More (Patron of Religious Freedom).

As I've written before, the point of the First Amendment is to protect the right of the people to have a voice in their governance. That's why we find the "establishment clause" paired with the "free exercise clause", and why we find them included with the rights of speech, the press, peacable assembly and petition. Just now, though, we find the freedom of religion threatened both directly and indirectly — directly through enforcement of the HHS mandate, indirectly by a possible declaration by SCOTUS that neither Congress nor the several states may defend marriage as an essentially heterosexual institution.

Setting a new low in the pro-abortion fight

The Media Research Center's Brad Wilmouth brings us this desperate attempt to pass off anti-white bigotry as political analysis:

On Saturday's Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC, substitute anchor Ari Melber hosted a panel of liberals fretting over Republican efforts to restrict abortion, with one guest even theorizing that Republicans are motivated by a racist desire to prevent white women from having abortions as a way of "reproducing whiteness, white supremacy, white privilege."

Melber seemed quite accepting of University of Pennsylvania Assistant Professor Salamisha Tillet's preposterous idea of pro-lifers being motivated by racism as he responded:

And you're talking not only then about a potentially religious view about life, [How unreasonable! How crass! To think that someone might let religion influence their view about life!] you're talking about social control. [What's the difference between a lawful, well-ordered society and social control? I guess it's who's writing the laws.] I mean, that goes to some of these programs that are different than just necessarily a position that people disagree with. They also say, no, we need to go into the doctor's room, we need to tell women under threat of, as I mentioned, criminalization of their doctor's conduct [Scandal! Who could reasonably consider a doctor to be a criminal?] or as a prerequisite to doing anything, how they should analyze their medical care, whether to have an ultrasound. Do you think that is a piece of it, too, the social control, Raul?

Without noting that a disproportionately large percentage of women who have abortions are minorities, Assistant Professor Tillet theorized that Republicans are in a "panic" because of the growing number of minorities and characterized "women of color" as being "caught in the fray" when Republicans try to restrict abortion. Tillet:

Well, I think, the Census just released data, so part of it is the changing racial demographics in the United States. For the first time in American history, children born under the age of five are racial, the majority of them are racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S.

So I think that there's a kind of moral panic, a fear of the end of whiteness that we've been seeing a long time in that I think, you know, Obama's ascension as President kind of symbolizes to a certain degree. And so I think this is one response to that sense that there's a decreasing white majority in the country and that women's bodies and white women's bodies in particular are obviously a crucial way of reproducing whiteness, white supremacy, white privilege. And so I think it's just a kind of clamping down on women's bodies, in particular white women's bodies, even though women of color are really caught in the fray.

In other words, it's all about forcing white women to breed so we can make up for the immigration of black and brown people. Not the most efficient way to maintain supremacy, is it? This isn't the most idiotic theory I've ever heard.

On second thought, yes it is.

Happy Father's Day!

SSgt. Franklin E. Layne, USAF(Ret.) (1928-2002)

Not "Happy Sperm Donor Day". Not "Happy Mom's Boyfriend/Girlfriend Day". Happy Father's Day. And a great big "thank you" to all the men who step up, show up and participate in bringing up their children rather than just writing a check every so often — you guys rock!

The right to keep and bear children

In 1968, an ecologist named Garrett Hardin wrote an article for Science magazine titled “The Tragedy of the Commons”. A utilitarian and Malthusian, Hardin argued that the modern welfare state made it possible for people to gain the advantages of large families while socializing their costs. Therefore, the solution to overpopulation must be based in part on “relinquishing the freedom to breed”.

Forty-five years later, Peter Singer — also a utilitarian and Malthusian — essentially repeated the “tragedy of the commons” argument at the Women Deliver Conference in Kuala Lumpur. Ironically, given his hero status among progressives and the venue at which he was speaking, Singer began to speak of “reproductive rights” as though they would very soon be a thing of the past and that the nations would soon need to force contraception and abortion upon the unwilling.

It’s possible of course, that we give women reproductive choices, that we meet the unmet need for contraception but that we find that the number of children that women choose to have is still such that population continues to rise in a way that causes environmental problems. … [We] need to consider whether we can talk about trying to reduce population growth and whether that’s compatible with the very reasonable concerns people have about women’s right to control their life decisions and their reproduction.

 If it weren’t for his invocation of climate change, Singer’s faith in the population bomb would make him look like the last man on earth still concerned about the Y2K demon. In fact, to certain of the attendees, Singer appeared to embody the old colonial fear of brown people. Said Kavita Ramdas of the Ford Foundation in New Delhi, “We have been there before. ... We have seen forced sterilizations. We have seen the fears that the West has of brown people overrunning the world. We are tired of being slaves to colonial masters.”

Read the rest at Catholic Stand!

In Memoriam: Rev. Andrew M. Greeley, Ph.D. (1928-2013)

I might have drifted completely away from religion between my 21st and 41st birthdays except for two writers. C. S. Lewis kept me a Christian. Father Andrew M. Greeley kept me a Catholic.

I was twenty-five when I read How to Save the Catholic Church, which Fr. Greeley co-wrote with his sister, theologian Mary Greeley Durkin. Over the next fifteen years, I read quite a few of his books, at first only his non-fiction, then his fiction. Two books in particular I recommend for Catholic apologists: The Catholic Myth, an exploration of the Church through Fr. Greeley's model of the analogical imagination, and Faithful Attraction, a study of marriage and the factors that help make it work. Although as I reverted back to full communion with the Church I came to disagree with certain of Fr. Greeley's positions, I also knew that, in many respects, he and Dr. George Weigel had more points in common than many people would think (including them).