THE GETTYSBURG CAMPAIGN
Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade, Commander of the Union Forces at Gettysburg. Courtesy National Archives.
Gen. Robert E. Lee, Commander of the Confederate Army at Gettysburg. Courtesy National Archives.
Confederate strategists had considered sending aid from Lee’s army to Vicksburg, which Grant was then besieging, or dispatching help to General Bragg for his campaign against Rosecrans in Tennessee. They concluded, however, that Vicksburg could hold out until climatic conditions would force Grant to withdraw, and they reasoned that the eastern campaign was more important than that of Tennessee.
Both Union and Confederate governments had bitter opponents at home. Southern generals, reading in Northern newspapers the clamors for peace, had reason to believe that their foe’s morale was fast weakening. They felt that the Army of Northern Virginia would continue to demonstrate its superiority over the Union Army of the Potomac and that the relief from constant campaigning on their own soil would have a happy effect on Southern spirit. Events were to prove, however, that the chief result of the intense alarm created by the invasion was to rally the populace to better support of the Union government.
Statue of General Meade, located on Cemetery Ridge.