Gettysburg - Pickett's Charge: The Plan

General Longstreet giving orders to colonel Alexander and the commanders participating in the assault.
A clip from the movie Gettysburg, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107007/

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• gettysburg
• pickett's
• charge
• civil
• war
• robert
• e
• lee
• longstreet
• battle

[AUG351]

@xaxie1 Its just the uniforms of officers and generals but people think that all Confederates wore grey but really most never had full uniforms and many wore civilian clothes and colored them a butternut color like the guys walking by at 0:11. There were tons of different uniformers or clothes worn by soldiers in the Civil War.

[1oldgit]

@Shafeone Read about the German annihilation of 2 Russian armies at Tannenberg in WW 1 which is, arguably, the greatest 'modern era' victory by a smaller force over a much larger one as a study in tactics.

[1oldgit]

@ConstantineJoseph Excellent point that I have also thought similar to Napoleon especially the artillery [Grand Battery] bombardment on the positions prior to the assault and the probing of the left and right flanks. Do you think Lee was a 'student' of Napoleonic tactics as in 50 years very little had changed regarding battlefield tactics ?

[xaxie1]

Why are the Confederates wearing Blue?

[JobberBud]

Pickett's Charge epitomizes the term "epic fail."

[opsimathics]

yeeeehaaw

[coronaboreal]

@palibrae you must be really fun at parties ;-)

[palibrae]

Oh, and Longstreet never told Pickett, Pettigrew, and Trimble that "the fate of your country rests on this attack." He did not believe the attack would be successful and did not need to encourage these veteran officers to give their all. If he had said it, Trimble (who survived the war) would have related it in his own writings.

[palibrae]

Alexander was only in command of Longstreet's artillery, not all the guns supporting the charge. Pettigrew would hardly have identified himself with the University of NC, having left it more than a dozen years prior. The trees on the ridge were not a convergence point, but the center line of the axis of attack. Trimble had only half a division and he was in the second line, behind Pettigrew and not in front of him.

So many mistakes in one little clip.

[belamoure]

A battle is very difficult to gauge once engaged- all is so fluid, the screams, the smoke , the heat, the fatigue - it is a mumble jumble of humanity - witnesses remember only what they saw and lived around them, nobody has a general overview- just guesses. After all, was not Gettysburg's battle started by pure serendipity? Southern people looking for shoes to be found there- I was told.