Did the South Lose the Entire Civil War Because One General Got Lost at the Battle of Gettysburg?

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 July 2023

⏱️ 58 minutes

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Summary

Did the Confederacy lose the entire Civil War on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 because one of their generals showed up late to a battle site? That’s a very simple answer to a very complicated question, but as early as the 1870s, former Confederate generals like Jubal Early offered such an explanation, laying the war’s loss at the feet of Lt. General James Longstreet, who was hours late to a battle because of faulty intelligence delivered to him by Captain Samuel Johnston.

Longstreet’s countermarch and Samuel Johnston’s morning reconnaissance are two of the most enigmatic events of the Battle of Gettysburg. Both have been viewed as major factors in the Confederacy’s loss of the battle and, in turn, the war. Yet much of it lies shrouded in mystery.

To explore this event, and determine whether or not the war was really lost in one day, is today’s guest Allen Thompson, author of In the Shadow of the Round Tops.

Though the Battle of Gettysburg is one of the most well-documented events in history, the vast majority of knowledge comes from the objective words and memories of the veterans and civilians who experienced it. In the Shadow of the Round Tops focuses on individual memory, rather than collective memory. It takes a personal psychological approach to history, trying to understand the people and explain why the historiography happened the way it did with new research from previously unused sources.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This guy here with another episode of the History and Plug podcast.
0:08.0	After the Confederacy lost the Civil War, Southern generals immediately began asking why
0:12.4	they had lost.
0:13.6	Some explanations were the untimely death of their brilliant General Stonewall Jackson,
0:18.4	or the surprising loss at Gettysburg, or the simple, overwhelming resource advantage
0:22.6	the North Hat.
0:23.6	But after a few years, others got more granule and pointed to specific events that lost
0:28.9	the War for the South.
0:30.5	Confederate General Jubal Early accused Lieutenant General James Longstreet of being late
0:35.3	for an attack on the second day at Gettysburg, who was supposed to show up at a battle site
0:39.4	in the morning, but due to faulty intelligence, didn't show up to the lay afternoon, and
0:43.1	this failure supposedly caused Lee the battle and the Confederacy the War.
0:47.2	This is part of a historical narrative that enshrined Lee as a military genius who only
0:52.0	failed because he was let down by those around him.
0:54.7	Lee became the Confederacy's stainless hero, and Longstreet was scapegoated.
0:58.6	This was easy to do because Longstreet published articles in the 1870s and 1880s, displaying
1:03.5	the jealousy of Lee's reputation and that of Stonewall Jackson, and said that it wasn't
1:07.8	the southern military that failed, but the southern culture itself.
1:10.9	Now, is this really the reason that the South lost the Civil War, or is this just historical
1:15.5	revisionism?
1:16.5	To talk about this one afternoon of a battle, it could very well be the hinge of an entire
1:20.8	war, is today's guest, Alan Thompson, author of in the Shadow of the Roundtops.
	...

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