The podcast is sponsored again this week by Simon & Schuster, publisher of Lincoln and the Fight for Peace by John Ablon, which is available now.

In the spring of 1865, Abraham Lincoln took a dangerous two-week trip to visit the front lines.

His example in the closing days of the Civil War offers a portrait of a peacemaker, revealing his belief that a soft piece should follow a hard war.

Lincoln and the Fight for Peace is available now wherever books are sold.

It's also available as a downloadable e-book and audiobook.

Hey everyone, welcome to episode 379 of our Civil War podcast. My name is Rich.

And I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Thanks for tuning into the podcast.

As y'all will recall, with the last show we looked at the aftermath of Pickett's Charge and got the Confederate started off on their retreat from Gettysburg.

With this episode, before we continue talking about the Confederate retreat to the Potomac and the Federal Pursuit, what we thought we'd do is take a few minutes and grade Robert E. Lee and George Mead on how they performed at Gettysburg.

And we're old school, so this won't be a certificate just for participating or even pass fail.

No, we're going to give Lee and Mead an honest to goodness letter grade on how they performed at Gettysburg.

Okay. Well, let's start with Robert E. Lee.

After all, it was his army that kind of stumbled and fumbled into a fight at Gettysburg, but it was entirely Lee's decision to escalate that fighting into a major battle.

Exactly. Now, we could break this down and look at Lee's decisions each of the three days of the battle, July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

But, if you've been following along through this entire story arc, then you already know that we haven't really pulled any punches in saying that we think Lee made some terrible decisions throughout the course of the battle of Gettysburg, leading up to his staking the whole pot, winner take all gamble on day 3 in the form of the big artillery bombardment and infantry charge, that he hoped would smash the enemy center,

and be the knockout blow he had been trying to land against the Yankees.

Yep, so since we've covered all of that, what we thought we'd do here is go right to what we believe are the root causes of Lee's failure at Gettysburg, and I say causes because we think there are two.

Right. Well, first, we keep going back to how badly Lee mishandled his cavalry during the campaign.

As y'all know, Jeb Stewart became a convenient scapegoat for the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg.

When among those who rushed to heat blame upon him, his weak long ride from Virginia to the crossroads town in Pennsylvania was portrayed as a giant, inexcusable dereliction of duty.

And, as a result of Stewart riding off and leaving poor Robert E. Lee in the dark, when the Confederate stumbled into a battle on July 1st, they not only knew nothing about the opposing army, but nothing about the battlefield either.

But, among those who heaped blame upon Stewart, it seems to have largely escaped their notice that the entire situation was due to Lee's serious misjudgment

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