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(More customer reviews)Kent Masterson Brown has spent more than twenty years researching and writing his 500+ page book on the retreat from Gettysburg. I first met Kent ten years or so ago, and I was aware that he was working on this project then. He has spent years and years on it, and it shows.
This book appears destined to become a standard reference work on the subject. The bibliography is 28 pages long, and he found a tremendous volume of primary source manuscript material that is unfamiliar to even me, who has also been studying the retreat for more than ten years. The work is extremely scholarly in nature, but yet is amply mapped and amply illustrated, making it attractive to less sophisticated students of the Gettysburg Campaign. There are also unpublished photos that I have never seen before that add a lot to the story, including a photo of Capt. George Emack, the company commander who held off Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick's entire cavalry division at Monterey Pass for much of the night on July 4.
Brown's primary thrust is the logistics of the retreat, and he shows that there are many complex reasons why the definitive fight did not take place on the north bank of the Potomac River after Gettysburg. Those who are inclined to criticize Meade may well reconsider their positions after reading this.
Congratulations to Kent Brown for writing a terrific and much needed book that addresses a too-often overlooked aspect of the Gettysburg Campaign in the level of detail that it has long deserved.
This book definitely needs a place on the bookshelves of any student of the Gettysburg Campaign, and also on the bookshelves of any student of army logistics and how they can make or break a campaign.
Highly recommended.
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In a groundbreaking, comprehensive history of the Army of Northern Virginia's retreat from Gettysburg in July 1863, Kent Masterson Brown draws on previously unused materials to chronicle the massive effort of General Robert E. Lee and his command as they sought to move people, equipment, and scavenged supplies through hostile territory and plan the army's next moves.
More than fifty-seven miles of wagon and ambulance trains and tens of thousands of livestock accompanied the army back to Virginia. The movement of supplies and troops over the challenging terrain of mountain passes and in the adverse conditions of driving rain and muddy quagmires is described in depth, as are General George G. Meade's attempts to attack the trains along the South Mountain range and at Hagerstown and Williamsport, Maryland. Lee's deliberate pace, skillful use of terrain, and constant positioning of the army behind defenses so as to invite attack caused Union forces to delay their own movements at critical times.
Brown concludes that even though the battle of Gettysburg was a defeat for the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee's successful retreat maintained the balance of power in the eastern theater and left his army with enough forage, stores, and fresh meat to ensure its continued existence as an effective force.
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