Tuesday - October 13, 2009

More about Sickles

Ok, I stole this video from Theo’s today ...






But isn’t the music lovely? It’s called Ashokan Farewell, by Jay Unger. It was the theme music from the Ken Burns Civil War mini-series.




So I bought a copy of James Hessler’s Sickles At Gettysburg after my post last week, and I’ve been reading it whenever I’ve had a chance. The author looks at tons of information, and winds up with a middle of the road opinion: Sickles, a man with a dark and inglorious past, was NOT the big hero of that battle as he spent 50 years trying to convince everyone. Yet he was also NOT the big screw up that his detractors have painted him as. My take at this point in my reading is this: had Sickles not extended the Union line, Lee and Longstreet’s battle plan would have gone off without a hitch, and the entire Army of the Potomac could have either been a) completely surrounded and wiped out on Cemetery Ridge, or b) encapsulated and held in that position while a major part of the Confederate Army did an end run around them to the south and marched on Washington DC. And won the war. So Sickles’ action prompted the main battle into being, and made everyone change their plans on the fly, which altered everything. He thought that the elevated ground in the Peach Orchard was high enough that Confederate artillery placed their would destroy the Union lines on the Ridge. It really wasn’t, but Lee and Longstreet had the same thought, and that was the move they were going for. Sickles’ “misunderstanding” kept that bit of ground out of their control until quite late in the afternoon of July 2nd, at which point it became worthless. You can’t aim cannons very well in the dark. Not in those days.

You can play a lot of what-ifs with Gettysburg. What if Sickles had actually had some military training? Well, then maybe on his march north east into Gettysburg he would have seen the value of the Round Tops, and positioned his artillery and more of his troops there. [ Only maybe, because nobody else on either side realized it either! Ok, both Meade and Hancock wanted the left flank covered, but occupying those hills was so important that they should have said such explicitly, and they didn’t ] Based from there he could have extended his lines at least partway to the south end of Cemetery Ridge, leaving a hole that VI Corps could have filled. The bloody mayhem in the Peach Orchard, the Devil’s Den, and the Wheat Field would never have occurred; with cannons on those commanding heights, he could have destroyed Longstreet’s troops before they ever got near the battlefield or got their own artillery into range. Not only that, but putting the big guns up there would have provided flanking fire all the way up to the south edge of town, which means Pickett’s Charge would have been reduced to Pickett’s Stumble in a very very short time.

Hessler did a really good job with this book. I recommend it. I’m at the point in the book where the post-battle recriminations and investigations are underway, and Sickles is painting himself as The Hero, playing politics and ghostwriting letters under the pseudonym Historicus. It’s a dirty tale that I never knew about.

Another dirty tale that Hessler pointed out is that Sickles may have been the guy who effectively lost the battle of Chancellorsville a couple months before Gettysburg, since he was the voice of authority that said the rebs were retreating, when in fact they were taking a road that lead away from the front lines and then back around to the Union’s right flank. Oops.

A comment by the author on the purpose of this book:

I want the book to accomplish 5 things:

1) Produce something that Civil War enthusiasts will enjoy reading and referencing.

2) I’m a “Day 2 guy” and to really understand that day, you have to understand Sickles’ actions.

3) I also wanted to understand why he moved forward. What seems like an increasing number of Gettysburg studies ascribe some pretty sinister motives behind his move to the Peach Orchard (he supposedly wanted to be President, or he did it simply because he hated Meade, etc.) I think when you examine the baggage that comes before Gettysburg, and then the chain of events on the morning of July 2, it becomes alot less “sinister” and more explainable. That doesn’t have to mean that Sickles was right, but it can give a little balance to his historical image by giving some more rational reasons for his actions.

4) I basically just wanted to know more about this guy because like Chris said, he sure had an interesting life.

5) Produce something that Civil War enthusiasts will enjoy reading and referencing. (Hey, I already used that one!)

The bottom line is: the book obviously doesn’t support everything he does, but tries to see him as a real (and really interesting) person with alot of flaws but maybe not the monster that some Gettysburg students have been conditioned to expect.

I think Hessler has achieved his goals quite nicely.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/13/2009 at 12:39 PM   
Filed Under: • History • War-Stories •  
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