re: #364 Scottish Dragon

I tend to agree with those that a rapid pursuit was simply not going to work after Gettysburg. The Union Army was badly battered and had lost a LOT of senior experienced cadre. There was no tactical reserve sitting around to exploit this sort of thing. If he had tried, he might just as well gotten mauled running head long into rebel defense lines at the Potomac.

His fuck up with the Battle of the Crater is something else entirely.

It is very true that Lincoln chided Meade for not attacking Lee during the retreat.

However, I agree with Deirdre.

The specific incident was at the very end of the retreat. What remained of Lee’s Army was strongly entrenched along the Potomac. They were rebuilding washed out bridges to cross back into Virginia. To get there, the Confederates had used multiple roads.

The Union Army was scattered all over Pennsylvania and Maryland trying to figure out which road the Confederates took, and where they were actually headed. When the first Union troops found the Confederates, they scouted the Confederate positions and were highly impressed with how well the Confederates were fortified.

By the time the Union Army had concentrated enough troops to even consider attacking, everything but the rearguard had crossed over.

Additionally:
- Meade had only taken over the Army of the Potomac a few weeks previously; After the Campaign had begun. Many of his supposed subordinates did not view themselves as such.
- Fredricksburg, where the Army of the Potomac had been slaughtered while unsuccessfully attacking entrenched Confederate positions had occured barely 7 months previously.
- Many of the Union Troops around Washington DC, Maryland, and Northern Virginia were seperate commands that Meade could not touch. (A major reason Grant came east the next year, was to fix this problem.
- As Deirdre points out, the Army of the Potomac was badly shot up and fought out after the Battle of Gettysburg. (As was the Confederate Army, which lost thousands of soldiers during the retreat.)