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Post by runaheap on Sept 18, 2008 14:20:18 GMT -6
And why it Failed! by Tom Carhart Interesting premise that Lee's plan was to have Picket hit the center of Meade's line and Steuart and the Cavalry, swing around and strike Meade's rear simultaneously. The old "Double Envelopment", however, " Georgie Boy" spoiled it all at Hanover by taking on a Division with a Brigade. Maybe, we owe GAC more than previously thought! Lee never discussed his plan at Gettysburg, never wrote about it, but the premise is there and would lend one to believe that Steuart not Lee was having a bad week!
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Post by rch on Sept 18, 2008 15:57:20 GMT -6
Carhart made a reasonable case that Stuart was trying to get into the Army of the Potomac's rear, but he carried to the point of supplying details for the plan that I think are more Carhart then Lee and Stuart.
Because Custer's actual report for Gettysburg doesn't appear in the "Official Record," Carhart was unawre that it even existed.
Georgie Boy deserves more credit than he usually gets, but Carhart gives Custer too much credit. In any case the Republic can be grateful it wasn't represented on the field by Baby Face Benteen.
rch
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Post by ericwittenberg on Sept 18, 2008 20:03:33 GMT -6
This book is a piece of intellectually dishonest garbage. In my humble opinion, it is consumer fraud. It makes things up. It simply lies. Here's my take on it: civilwarcavalry.com/?p=5It's a festering pile of crap. Buy a happy meal. It's a much better use of your money. Eric
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Post by runaheap on Sept 19, 2008 6:54:38 GMT -6
Thanks Eric. I knew this post would garner a response and it somewhat mirrored my take on this book. Carhart is West Point and an Attorney, so duplicity against the Public for personal renumeration is not an "Honor Code" violation. I need to keep that in the back of my mind when deeling with these kind of fellows.
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Post by ericwittenberg on Sept 19, 2008 7:01:01 GMT -6
Thanks Eric. I knew this post would garner a response and it somewhat mirrored my take on this book. Carhart is West Point and an Attorney, so duplicity against the Public for personal renumeration is not an "Honor Code" violation. I need to keep that in the back of my mind when deeling with these kind of fellows. You're welcome. I'm glad to hear that you found my take on it useful. Eric
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Post by Dark Cloud on Sept 19, 2008 8:49:59 GMT -6
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Post by ericwittenberg on Sept 19, 2008 9:34:39 GMT -6
DC,
Well said. Considering you hadn't read the book, you pretty much nailed it.
Eric
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Post by Dark Cloud on Sept 19, 2008 12:28:32 GMT -6
Good. Now I don't have to read it.
McPhearson apparently didn't either. At least, I hope he was lazy and just dishonestly implied he read more than an author's summary because he was a friend and is not a liar and incompetent. If the latter, his whole output needs to be subjected to analysis.
This automatic applause and heavy breathing praise for works people have not, actually, read is far more common than admitted. I think it true for Donovan's recent book, for different reasons than for Carhart's.
This is yet another example that presence at West Point, employment as a historian, veteran status, does not guarantee honesty, intelligence, nor desire for truth. It's either in the product, or it is not.
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Post by runaheap on Sept 19, 2008 13:25:50 GMT -6
I came, I saw, I read. Very well done DC, and without the same expenditure of time I spent on this one. However, since this was a Birthday gift from my girlfriend I will not pass on this information. She recognized Mr. McPherson's preface and was aware of my fondness for some of his work and was no doubt duped!
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Post by conz on Sept 21, 2008 19:46:50 GMT -6
So much vitriol...I think y'all do protest too much...
Here are Carhart's credentials...what are yours?
Born in California, 1944, appointed to USMA from Michigan. Graduated Class of 1966, assigned to Infantry Branch.
Platoon leader of two airborne infantry platoons in Vietnam...back to back tours. Then Company Commander of a Tiger Force RVN Ranger team LRRP 67-68. Two Purple Hearts and a Combat Infantryman's badge...then medically retired as a Captain in '69.
Law Degree from U of Michigan '72; Attorney for Rand Corporation (military think-tank) and then a Government Attorney from 80-97 (retired).
Member of the US Army Center for Military History 71-73; PhD from Princeton Univ in History '98. Has written numerous military history books.
Lives in Wash DC area.
His work has been endorsed by McPherson and other professional Civil War historians.
Perhaps his perspective is a bit different from yours?
When I get around to it, I'll review the book. But the above comments do not constitute a "review" of any kind...more like personal animus and agendas showing. I'd respect a more professional review.
Clair
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Post by ericwittenberg on Sept 22, 2008 7:55:57 GMT -6
Clair,
The issue is not credentials. He proves that credentials don't prevent an intellectually dishonest work that manufactures "facts" to backfill a theory. And yes, lots of vitriol, because I am deeply offended by intellectual dishonesty trying to pass itself off as legitimate scholarship, all of which is intended to deceive the consuming public. He's a lawyer who should know better than to invent "evidence".
His "perspective" is not where I have an issue. "Perspective" is like an opinion. As my wise old father likes to say, "opinions are like butts. Everybody has one." He's entitled to his opinion, even if there is not a scintilla of evidence to support it.
By the way, if you don't like my review, please feel free to see this one, which was published in Civil War News, which I will permit to speak for itself:
Lost Triumph: Lee’s Real Plan At Gettysburg — And Why It Failed
by Tom Carhart
Maps, endnotes, index, 288 pp., 2005. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014, $25.95 plus shipping.
Several authors have recently “discovered” the horse soldiers who clashed at Gettysburg’s East Cavalry Field. Most of them assert that J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry endeavored to strike the Union rear in conjunction with Pickett’s Charge on July 3, or at the very least cause havoc if the Confederate infantry assault was successful.
Dr. Tom Carhart vociferously argues the former case. Forty percent of the book is devoted to causes of the war, the formative years of Robert E. Lee, Jeb Stuart and George A. Custer, battles in history that inspired this trio of generals, and the Civil War in the Eastern Theater. The remainder is devoted to Gettysburg, with about 40 percent of the tale devoted to the final day.
The text is peppered with errors, ranging from the dates of the Louisiana Purchase, South Carolina’s secession and Custer’s birth, to the location of John Buford’s cavalry on July 3. Endnotes are meager, and serious omissions of sources include cavalry accounts by Eric Wittenberg and Pickett’s Charge narratives by Earl Hess and George Stewart.
Meade — erroneously cited as George “C.” Meade — is lambasted for taking the defensive and using interior lines to his advantage. Contradictorily, Lee is praised for employing the same tactics at Antietam.
Readers are asked to believe that Lee, Stuart and Custer virtually conducted world history seminars prior to battles, reminiscing about wars studied in their West Point days. In the same spirit, there are battle maps of Cannae, Leuthen and Austerlitz, but only one concerning Gettysburg.
Even more perplexing are the conspiracy theories. David Gregg, believing he was in a hopeless situation against Stuart, delegated Custer (who was not in his division) to repel Stuart’s attacks, thereby sparing his own command the ignominy of defeat. Lee, meanwhile, shared his plan of a coordinated attack between Stuart and Pickett with almost no one, and was reticent afterward to protect Stuart’s sparkling reputation.
There’s inadequate space in a book review to cite each factual error, contradiction and unsupported theory. Suffice to say, this reads more like a novel than historical analysis.
David F. Riggs
David F. Riggs is a museum curator at Colonial National Historical Park, Yorktown. He has a BA in history from Lock Haven University and MA in history from Penn State. His publications include Embattled Shrine: Jamestown in the Civil War and Vicks-burg Battlefield Monuments.
David Riggs, of course, is a professional historian and the author of an early but deservedly well-respected work on the fight at East Cavalry Field. I think that his review sums things up quite nicely.
Eric
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Post by ericwittenberg on Sept 22, 2008 8:06:24 GMT -6
Or, here's B. F. Cooling's not terribly stellar review, from Civil War Book Review (www.cwbr.com):
Lost Triumph: Lee’s Real Plan at Gettysburg – And Why It Failed by Carhart, Tom
Publisher: G. P. Putnam’s Sons Retail Price: $25.95 hardcover Issue: Winter 2006 ISBN: 0399152490
Review by Cooling, B. F.
An Overarching Stratagem
The Confederate Battle Plan at Gettysburg
Will the battle of Gettysburg never cease to fascinate us? Is there a student or historian of the Civil War – dead, alive or yet to be born – who hasn’t, doesn’t or will not dream of writing some new breakthrough study on the so-called Highwater Mark of the Confederacy? In William Faulkner’s 1948 whimsy about Gettysburg in Intruder in the Dust, there isn’t a fourteen-year old Southern boy alive for whom it remains just before two p.m. on that fateful third day of the battle with all the guns laid, Pickett ready with his legion, everything awaiting Longstreet to give the word. “Its all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin,” suggested the famed Mississippi literary genius. Retired army colonel Tom Carhart fulfills this wishful thinking at its best. His new study suggests that Robert E. Lee had a distinct plan to win the third day of the battle and that it could have been won. He reminds us that each new generation revisits ad infinitum the question of “what if.”
Carhart attempts to refute the long-held belief that Lee (one of the greatest soldiers of all time, in his view) made a wrong decision in launching Pickett’s Charge to crack the center of George G. Meade’s Federal lines on Cemetery Ridge. Carhart suggests that using only twenty-percent of his total available forces for a headlong rush across open fields and under withering enemy fire (notwithstanding the preliminary depressant bombardment) was only part of a distinct plan for that final afternoon of battle. The idea that two days of fighting had tested the Yankee flanks and that one final push against the center would fold Lee’s opponent has long been a staple of the Gettysburg story. Carhart believes that Lee intended Pickett’s Charge to be simply part of a coordinated attack – the main thrust but with two supporting maneuvers, one of which was to be the now-blurred, virtually forgotten role that J.E. B. Stuart’s cavalry was to play in a Napoleonic coup de grace Lee had studied the French Great Captain earlier in his career and patterned the final hours of Gettysburg to fit the masterful strokes of Jena and Austerlitz in Caphart’s view. Of course, we have long known that Pickett’s supporting cast would come from flank commands, and even those Confederates over at Culp’s Hill would do their part to prevent reinforcements from reaching Winfield Scott Hancock’s embattled center of Meade’s position. But, the Stuart story is another matter, and here, Carhart brings back into focus that lost element of the Gettysburg story.
Of course, in addition to Lee and Stuart, Carhart injects another character calculated to sell well with the public. Carhart’s contention is that Stuart’s directed move against the Federal rear area, by circling from the York road east and south via little known country roads, was stopped cold by blue clad cavalry principally under George Armstrong Custer. With Custer joining Lee and Stuart for the plot, the only thing missing from a potential best seller then would be sex. Yet, there is enough here otherwise to make for good reading and stimulating discussion. Notwithstanding Carhart’s aim to absolve Lee of culpability for Pickett’s disaster by suggesting that Stuart once more failed his leader and then covered up that failure, the author also builds a persuasive case for a lackluster Federal cavalry commander David Gregg standing aside as the audacious Custer conducted a battle-winning, saber-swinging charge that stopped Stuart cold and therefore thwarted Lee’s plan for a coordinated assault on Cemetery Ridge. Here, the book fails in the same manner as Lee’s plan due to execution not concept. Instead of in-depth, critical re-analysis of all possible sources, Carhart wanders through repetitive writing, paeans to his heroes and various byways of history.
Even then, Carhart and Professor James McPherson, who delivers a cameo foreword, are dead wrong that past historians have neglected this part of the Gettysburg story. If the meaning and pivotal nature of the cavalry action on what the National Park Service styles East Cavalry Field have taken a back seat to Pickett’s suicidal story, that is as much the fault of the physical location of the historical site and tourism as anything else. Certainly Professor Edward Coddington explored Stuart’s role and the resulting fight with Gregg and Custer in The Gettysburg Campaign; A Study in Command (1968), pages 520- 523 as did retired lieutenant general Edward J. Stackpole twelve years before that in They Met at Gettysburg, pages 278-283, for example. What Carhart contributes then is the notion that Lee had a defined plan, entrusted its delivery to subordinates and was thwarted in its execution by those subordinates. In such assertion, there has to be much faith, presumption and assertion via inherent logic of how soldiers conduct battles rather than hard written evidence. Carhart seems comfortable using such tactics, perhaps more so than most academics or even laymen.
Carhart has a theme that warrants more extensive coverage and detail than allowed by this book. Frankly, he wastes valuable space discussing ephemera like the Mexican war, the causes of the Civil War, classical battles of history, the combat arms interoperability of the Napoleonic era as well as operations in the eastern theater leading to Gettysburg. This is a ten-chapter story (not the fifteen of this book), at best. While perhaps never reaching seminal conclusions about Lee, any plan that might have been afoot on the night of July 2/3, 1863 or how events subsequently transpired for the defeat in Pennsylvania, such a study could flatter Civil War historiography with an in-depth treatment of leadership, planning and execution during those last pivotal hours of the meeting. Carhart’s study is by no means an unimportant new work on Gettysburg, to be sure. It must remain a trade not a scholarly piece since it plays to glamorous characters – Lee, Stuart and Custer to underscore points at the expense of more balanced and probing analysis. Its’ arteries are clogged with what a demanding editor could have condensed into one chapter on what all had happened before Gettysburg in the history of warfare. Still, Carhart can be praised for reviving a long neglected element to a familiar topic. This corner of a forgotten field now stands about where Faulkner would have it – the story still in the balance with still time for it to be re-done in greater detail to satisfy the next generation of Americans seeking resolution of the ghosts of the past. For Carhart, that undulating ground east of the town of Gettysburg with the charging horsemen of Stuart, Gregg and Custer – not Pickett’s infantry miles away to the west -holds the key to such resolution and another look at the famous battle.
B. Franklin Cooling, Associate Dean of Academic Programs, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University, Washington DC, [coolingb@ndu.edu] has published numerous works in military and naval history including Civil War studies of defending Washington and the Kentucky-Tenessee theater of operations. His latest work Counter Thrust; From the Peninsula to the Antietam will appear in the University of Nebraska series Campaigns of the Civil War.
Dr. Cooling's credentials are every bit as impressive as Carhart's, if that sort of thing is important to you, and he's certainly a well-known and well-respected Civil War historian.
I think I've made my point.
Eric
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Post by runaheap on Sept 22, 2008 8:44:46 GMT -6
Pretty much sums up my take on this Book. No reflection on Carhart's credentials, however, with his resume he could have done a better job of supporting his premise. Interesting thought, but just not enough evidence to support it.
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Post by conz on Sept 22, 2008 13:41:14 GMT -6
Thanks Eric,
All these comments have really piqued my interest in this book. I wouldn't normally be prone to get it, because it sounds like he is preaching to MY choir, but I'll buy it just to study his approach.
Several items in the reviews struck me:
1. The first reviewer seemed obsessed that Carhart was promoting a theory opposite his...it comes off as too biased. Sour grapes. It seems that there are two camps of historians on this issue: Those who believe Stuart's mission was Napoleonic is scope and intent, and was the critical piece to ensure success to Pickett's charge, and those who think Stuart wasn't playing a very important role, if any role at all, in that day's mission accomplishment in Lee's mind. I see many reactions that are more emotional to this issue, than practical.
2. The second review was very good, but he gives me the perception that he missed the boat as to what this military leader was trying to accomplish in his history.
Military men like to explain battles by experience, not by "evidence." Experience in how the military works, how leaders plan and make decisions, and how you interpret past events, comprises much more of a military man's perception of battles than does archeological evidence or witness accounts. Where seeming facts conflict with what a military man believes must have happened by his own intuition, then the facts are probably wrong...historians need to go back and do better detective work, if possible.
A military man develops intuition by experience and study of history, and these two are inseparable. Nobody can study military history as well as a person with actual military experience...they don't have the experience necessary to properly interpret the historical evidence, and fill in the blanks that no history can provide. That is especially true when the issue is what is going on in a leader's mind, as in this case (and often in Custer's or Benteen's case, as well).
What Carhart seems to be doing, based on that second review, is spend 60% of the book trying to give the reader some of that intuition...the parts he thinks students don't know well enough to be able to evaluate Lee's 3rd day plans properly. That's what the reviewer may be missing...Carhart is not trying to uncover new evidence in record...he is trying to give non-military minds an inkling of the experience military men use to interpret history more accurately when the record is lacking.
Hence, his support for Stuart's mission and Lee's intent that day is dependent not upon any evidence, which as we know does not exist, but rather on military intuition. So of course you will get all kinds of criticisms that "there is nothing new," and "he doesn't support his theory," etc. He has tried to do this by imparting HOW and WHY Lee and Stuart made their plans that day. What is new is a military man trying to get others to think like a military leader would. There are very few histories like that, and I'm not sure it can be done. It sounds like this was Carhart's attempt, so it is worth buying just to study that approach, and how it might be made better.
To a military man, this is obvious. To those without such experience, they keep looking for ephemeral "evidence." I think Carhart is still more military man than lawyer or professional historian, although he is amazingly all those things. I think many have the same criticisms of my own posts on these forums, and that may allow me to have some insight into this phenomenon.
When dealing with experts in how a military leader and unit works, look more for their intuition based on experience, rather than anything you can read in a record. That intuition IS their evidence. It may behoove students to study the role of intuition in interpreting history, not just "facts," and how works may be written to take advantage of that expertise.
Clair
PS...I'll get back to this thread once I've read the book...
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Post by ericwittenberg on Sept 22, 2008 14:02:35 GMT -6
Clair,
Intuition is all well and good, and I can appreciate that factor.
However, if this stuff that Carhart claims actually happened, surely someone[/b][/u] would have documented it somewhere after the fact, and there is nothing whatsoever in any report of the campaign to support the contentions. NOTHING. In fact, Stuart's report is quite clear:
During this day's operations, I held such a position as not only to render Ewell's left entirely secure, where the firing of my command, mistaken for that of the enemy, caused some apprehension, but commanded a view of the routes leading to the enemy's rear. Had the enemy's main body been dislodged, as was confidently hoped and expected, I was in precisely the right position to discover it and improve the opportunity. I watched keenly and anxiously the indications in his rear for that purpose, while in the attack which I intended (which was forestalled by our troops being exposed to view), his cavalry would have separated from the main body, and gave promise of solid results and advantages.
And the business about making things up, such as that Gregg lied to prevent Custer from getting credit, or that Lee intentionally shielded Stuart from criticism, are completely and entirely unsupportable; in fact, the historic record suggests that precisely the opposite is true.
To hold these things out as facts with absolutely nothing to support them is intellectually dishonest, consumer fraud, and unethical, to say the very least.
That's why I am so vehemently opposed to this book and why I am so vehement in making sure that the consuming public knows about it.
Eric
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