Critic's Corner

If the South Had Won Gettysburg

By Stephen Davis · Originally published July 2017 · pp. 18–19

Quick: what do Winston Churchill and Newt Gingrich have in common? Answer: Not much, but they both wrote an “alternative history” about how Robert E. Lee won the battle of Gettysburg. Between these bookends, there is actually a sizable body of writing about a Confederate victory in Pennsylvania, July 1863. I’ve chosen to look at some of it in this month’s column. Churchill was not yet prime minister of England when, in 1930, he wrote a short story, “If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg.” Most of Churchill’s musings involve what happened after Lee captured Washington and the Treaty of Harpers Ferry is signed in Sept. 1863, allowing the South to win the war. But he hints at how the Confederates won Gettysburg. Pickett’s charge cracks the Union line just as Jeb Stuart’s cavalry, sweeping around the Yankees’ flank into their rear, creates a “panic which engulfed the whole left of Meade’s massive army.”1 If Winston Churchill’s scenario is little known today, try the one given in the speech delivered by an attorney from Savannah, Ga., Alexander A. Lawrence, to the Atlanta Historical Society in Oct. 1947. Entitled “If Longstreet Had Come Up at Gettysburg.” In this version Lee’s war horse kicks off the battle at 9 a.m. on July 2, catching Union troops unprepared. Within an hour Confederates have taken the Peach Orchard and soon both Round Tops. Ewell in turn attacks and takes Culp’s Hill. Having lost their key positions, Meade’s army begins to retire. Foolhardy Union counterattacks against Lee’s strong line on Cemetery Ridge merely bring more Northern casualties. Meade retreats southward as, the next day, July 3, Lee army pursues hard. Stuart’s cavalry rounds up thousands of prisoners; Confederate infantry and artillery pummel one Union corps after another until by 4 p.m. the Army of the Potomac is not merely routed; it is effectively destroyed. Ewell’s corps is sent off toward Harrisburg to raid and destroy Union communications while Gen. Lee, with the rest of the army, marches down and lays siege to Washington. With the Confederate navy helping to cut off Northern supplies—England recognizes the Confederacy, so the blockade soon falls apart— Lee’s troops reduce Washingtonians to starvation rations of horsemeat. Finally, after Lincoln is captured trying to slip out in disguise, the capital formally surrenders on Oct. 25, 1863. The ceremony takes place onboard the CSS Alabama, anchored in the Potomac waters. The arrogant Yankees in New York and New England refuse to give up, however. So to teach “those people” a lesson, Gen. Lee’s army (now fully 100,000 strong, filled with Rebel recruits eager to cinch the victory), crosses the Delaware in early 1864. By April 1, 1864, the Confederate flag flies over Times Square in New York City. “The surrender of Brooklyn,” Lawrence explains, “was delayed for several days by the difficulty the Confederates experience in finding any officials in that city who could conduct the negotiations in English.”2 Now for something completely different: the speculation written by Otto Eisenschiml and E.B. Long in 1948. In it Jeb Stuart joins Lee at Cashtown around June 30, bringing word of Meade’s dispositions. Lee decides to take a strong defensive position at Cashtown, daring Meade to attack him there. Ordered by Halleck to do so, Meade’s army wrecks itself in bloody repulses which come to be termed “the Cashtown Slaughter.” “Two thirds of the Union Army were left dead or wounded on the field,” the authors explain, as the survivors retreat south. Lee’s triumph is so impressive that England and France recognize the Confederacy.3 A few years later, science fictionist Ward Moore wrote a novel about historical time-travel in which the protagonist returns to Gettysburg to witness the Confederates’ astonishing victory. Southern infantry take the Round Tops on July 1 during their rout of the I and XI Corps. They bring up artillery which dominates the field on the second day as Lee’s troops get astride the Taneytown road “and into position from which they tore Meade’s army to bits from three sides.” Then, on July 3, with Pickett’s charge, “the disorganized Federals were given the final killing blow in their vitals.” The routed Yankees stream northward in “the Great Retreat to Philadelphia,” harassed by Stuart’s cavalry. Lee captures Washington, besieges Philadelphia, and runs down other pockets of resistance in Pennsylvania. The Yankees’ surrender at Reading ends the war in the east, while a “disastrous Union counter-thrust in Tennessee” brings defeat for them at Chattanooga. The peace of Richmond follows, recognizing Confederate independence on July 4, 1864.4 The granddaddy of counterfactual history, of course, is If the South Had Won the Civil War, by MacKinlay Kantor. The novella appeared in the Nov. 22, 1960 issue of LOOK Magazine. Then, slightly amended, it was printed as a paperback in April 1961— centennial anniversary of the start of the war. Kantor has the South winning the war on both fronts. In Mississippi, leading his army toward Vicksburg in mid-May 1863, Ulysses Grant falls from his rearing horse, suffers concussion and dies. Sherman takes over, approaches Vicksburg, and then dashes his forces futilely against John C. Pemberton’s fortifications. Joe Johnston brings up his army and hammers the Yankees from the rear. Sherman himself is drilled in the head by a Southern bullet. “The Army of the Tennessee,” writes Kantor, “weakened and demoralized, was trapped against the Mississippi shore” by the combined armies of Pemberton and Johnston. It surrenders on June 30. A thousand miles away, at Gettysburg, the Southerners win again. After his infantry chases the I and XI Corps through town, Lee shows uncharacteristic resolve in ordering Dick Ewell to attack Cemetery and Culp’s Hills. The Confederates storm the heights and send the Yankees packing. “The battered Eleventh Corps - or rather the survivors of that much-mauled organization,” Kantor explains, “gave way rapidly and blundered toward the rear in panic.” When Lee orders his troops to seize the Round Tops south of town before the enemy can, he is in position to dispatch Meade’s several corps as they come up. The Confederate army launches hot pursuit, “crushing the Northern forces in detail,” with vigorous help from Stuart’s cavalry. “By sunset on July 3,” the author concludes, “the Army of the Potomac had dissolved into hopeless tatters – a pitiful mockery of an army.” After Washington falls and Lincoln surrenders, U.S. officials agree to a peace conference in September, which recognizes Confederate independence.5 Pete Longstreet gets his due in Mark Nesbitt’s If the South Won Gettysburg (1980). After his infantry has routed the two Union infantry corps on July 1, Gen. Lee takes Longstreet’s advice and breaks off the battle. The Confederate army maneuvers southward, interposing between Meade and Washington. Lee forms a strong line along Rock Creek and dares the Federals to attack him there. When they do, July 3-5, Meade’s forces are bloodily beaten back, losing 12,000 men; Sedgwick is killed, Win Hancock wounded seriously. The surviving corps leaders counsel surrender. “There was no more to be done. Ammunition was dangerously low,” Nesbitt relates; “if the Confederates decided to attack they would have no problem over-running the demoralized men under Meade’s command.” Reluctantly the Union commander decides to give in, and under a flag of truce asks to meet with Lee, although, Meade tells his staff, he would rather die a thousand deaths.6 Sheldon Vanauken offers a different take in his article, “The World After the South Won.” The story hinges on the British, whose government, in conjunction with the French, offers in early November 1862 to mediate the American conflict. The C.S. government agrees; the U.S. government belligerently refuses. England accordingly recognizes the Confederacy. As Vanauken’s tongue-incheek narrative approaches its conclusion, regiments of the British Expeditionary Force, including the Coldstream Guards, are wheeling into line to help General Lee’s army crush the Federals at Gettysburg. “The Allies” march into Washington within a few days, and shortly thereafter the United States government (temporarily removed to Portland, Me.) signs a treaty of peace with the Confederacy.7 We could go on, but I’m running out of space. Edward G. Longacre imagines what might have happened if Jeb Stuart, rather than riding off on a raid, had kept close to Lee’s army in late June. Confederate cavalry feeds intelligence to Lee as Meade’s army approaches, and drives Yankee troopers through Gettysburg on July 1. Ewell’s divisions seize the town and the heights south of it, destroying the I and XI Corps. Meade deploys the rest of his army along Pipe Creek, but Lee is in no hurry to bring on battle. For weeks, gray columns forage in central Pennsylvania as an exasperated Lincoln fires Meade and replaces him with Dan Sickles. After Stuart’s horsemen sack Philadelphia, Lee finally launches his crushing blow against Sickles’ army. “The magnitude of the Union defeat – the last full-scale battle in the eastern theater,” Longacre concludes, “deserves a broader canvas than this essay can provide.”8 The richness of our topic is affirmed by publication of an entire book of essays, Alternative Gettysburgs (2002). One of my favorites is that by William R. Forstchen, “Lee’s Victory at Gettysburg…And Then What?” The author envisions “not a half victory such as Second Manassas where the Union army is sent reeling in retreat but nevertheless escapes relatively intact.” Rather, Forstchen sees Southerners achieving “an Austerlitz or Cannae, a battle of near-total annihilation.” The prospect of Robert E. Lee emulating Hannibal (Cannae, 216 B.C.) or Napoleon (Austerlitz, 1805) is thrilling indeed. On July 2, Hood and Ewell swing around their respective flanks to envelop Meade’s army, which is caught in “a classic double envelopment which triggers a panic in the Union army.” The Confederates pour in a merciless fire (Hancock, Chamberlain dead), and take 40,000 prisoners. Meade gives up his sword, and Stuart chases down the Yankees managing to escape.9 It is this same Bill Forstchen who is Newt Gingrich’s co-author in their Gettysburg (2003). As we’ve seen before, Lee takes Longstreet’s advice, marches to a defensive position south of Gettysburg and forces Meade to attack. Lee’s veterans inflict so many casualties that the Army of the Potomac is virtually destroyed. “My fault, all my fault,” a grieving Meade laments just before he is shot and killed while trying to escape. At the end of Forstchen and Gingrich’s story, President Lincoln is vowing to continue the war, wondering how he will do it. “There are so many ifs now,” he says.10

Lincoln was right. There are still so many ifs, and Gettysburg offers a whole lot of them. Endnotes: 1. Winston Churchill, “If Lee had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg,” in J.C. Squires, ed., If: Or History Rewritten (New York, 1931; originally published in Scribner’s Magazine, December 1930). 2. Alexander A. Lawrence, Tongue in Cheek (Atlanta, 1979), 38. 3. Otto Eisenschiml and E.B. Long, As Luck Would Have It: Chance and Coincidences in the Civil War (Indianapolis, 1948), 86. 4. Ward Moore, Bring the Jubilee (New York, 1952), 1, 133, 187. 5. MacKinlay Kantor, “If the South Had Won the Civil War,” LOOK, Nov. 22, 1960, 32. 6. Mark Nesbitt, If the South Won Gettysburg (Gettysburg, 1980), 146. 7. Sheldon Vanauken, “The World After the South Won,” Southern Partisan, Spring 1984, 15. 8. Edward G., Longacre, “’Absolutely Essential to Victory’: Stuart’s Cavalry in the Gettysburg-Pipe Creek Campaigns,” in Peter G. Tsouras, ed., Dixie Victorious: An Alternate History of the Civil War (London, 2004), 169. 9. William R. Forstchen, “Lee’s Victory at Gettysburg…And Then What?” in Brian Thomsen and Martin H. Greenberg, eds., Alternate Gettysburgs (New York, 2002), 325-26. 10. Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen, Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War (New York, 2003), 450, 461.