by Joseph Stromberg

Created on: August 26, 2009   Last Updated: January 11, 2011

In the first three days of July, 1863, ninety thousand men dressed in blue met seventy thousand dressed in gray. In those three days, outside the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg, the fate of our nation was decided by those men as they were locked in mortal combat. The first day of conflict resulted in a tactical victory for the South, as they pushed the Federal army out of their positions. However, that result would prove to be a strategic victory for the Union army, as they were able to secure the high ground, thanks in large part to the foresight of Union cavalry commander General John Buford. Day two saw a series of bloody encounters but left the two armies essentially where they were at the end of the first day.

On the third day of battle, the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, the legendary Robert E. Lee, ordered a massive charge of fifteen thousand men across a mile of open ground and into the center of the Union line that was perched atop Cemetery Ridge. The charge was carried out by the division commanded by General George Pickett, and was repulsed at the expense of massive Southern casualties. That night, under the cover of darkness, the Confederates were forced to concede defeat and commence the long and miserable march back south. The Battle of Gettysburg proved to be the turning point in the American Civil War, and two years later Lee's Army of Northern Virginia surrendered unconditionally at a place called Appomattox Courthouse, effectively ending the war.

The question that historians, both professional and amateur, have obsessed over for the last 146 years and counting is: why would Lee have ordered that massive charge (known as Pickett's Charge, after the division commander) that was doomed to fail?

Lee ignored the warning of his closest military adviser, General James Longstreet, who proclaimed "General, I have been a soldier all my life... It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arranged for battle can take that position."  Indeed, using the perfect visual acuity that hindsight grants historians, it seems that only a man deserted by common sense would have ordered such an attack over open ground, through the teeth of artillery fire, and into the waiting arms of a heavily entrenched foe that boasted superior numbers. Lee's reasons for ordering such an attack cannot be easily dismissed, however, and they are both varied and numerous.

Lee's reasons include both military and political ones, as well

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