Was Meade right?

I've been slowly working my way through George Meade's biography by Freeman Cleaves. I love to read the biographies of the men who fought here at Gettysburg and this is no exception. So far, its a really good read....but because of all the information contained, I can only read 7 or 8 pages at a time, let that sink in, then read some more. Anyway, I found that Mr. Cleaves does make a statement about Meade's decision to NOT chase after Lee after their retreat from Gettysburg.

I used to be one of those people who would condemn Meade for not going after Lee. "If he had," I would say, "the war wouldn't have lasted as long." In my finite mind, I believed that Meade's going after Lee would have forced Lee to surrender and the war would have been over at that point. But Mr. Cleaves has changed my mind on that point. He quoted letters from Meade that said that he couldn't go after the Confederates. His men needed shoes (the ever present problem) and food. Not to mention the fact that most of his men had marched 30+ miles in the previous days at double-quick speed, then proceeded to fight for 3 days, and now they wanted them to go after these guys. I'm the first person to admit that these men were not machines. I don't know how they were able to do as much marching as they were doing to begin with, but how do you push men to do more than they are capable of?

Mr. Cleaves points out several times that if the Army of the Potomac had pursued Lee immediately after the battle, there was a good chance that the victory that had taken place at Gettysburg would have been overturned. This would not have been a good thing for neither the civilians of the North who were enjoying a major victory on their own home turf nor the soldiers who had placed everything they had on the line in order to be victorious in Pennsylvania. The morale factor would have to be taken into account.

I believe that General Meade made the correct call in slowly pursuing the retreating Army of Northern Virginia. The last thing that the North needed was another loss....something that seemed to be happening all too often. The North was victorious at Gettysburg and needed to bask in the limelight of this.....to help them realize that the Southern armies were not immune to defeat. The South was capable of being destroyed and unlike what General Lee thought, they were NOT invincible.

For anyone who has any interest at all in the soldiers who fought, whether it is the common soldier or the officers, this is a book that I would recommend....it tells the story of the life of a normal man placed in abnormal circumstances and how he made the best of it and came out victorious (and not just at Gettysburg but throughout his life).