The Mistake of All Mistakes

[rangerrebew]

The Mistake of All Mistakes
by Phil Andrade

This is how Shelby Foote, pre-eminent among historians of the American Civil War, describes Lee’s insistence on committing his Army of Northern Virginia to the infantry assault forever after known as “Pickett’s Charge”. Foote elaborates “...And that was the mistake he made, the mistake of all mistakes....and there was scarcely a trained soldier who didn’t know it was a mistake at the time, except possibly Pickett himself...”

Gettysburg, Foote surmises, was the price the South paid for having R.E.Lee.

Even more uncompromising is the account of James Longstreet. Writing his memoirs years after the war, he recalls his attempt to dissaude Lee from embarking on the assault of July 3rd “...I have been a soldier, I may say, from the ranks up to the position I now hold.I have been in pretty much all kinds of skirmishes, from those of two or three soldiers up to those of an army corps, and I think I can safely say there never was a body of fifteeen thousand men who could make that attack successfully...”

Alongside the bloody repulses of Fredericksburg, Cold Harbor and Franklin, this is the action that is cited as an assault that should never have been made, doomed to failure ..... a sanguinary testimony of the prevalence of firepower over gallantry.

https://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/gettysburg/articles/mistakeofallmistakes.aspx