by Scott Bowden, Bill Ward
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Product Description
Long after nearly fifty thousand soldiers shed their blood there, serious misunderstandings persist about Robert E. Lee's generalship at Gettysburg. What were Lee's choices before, during, and after the battle? What did he know that caused him to act as he did? Last Chance for Victory addresses these issues by studying Lee's decisions and the military intelligence he possessed when each was made.Packed with new information and original research, Last Chance for Victory draws alarming conclusions to complex issues with precision and clarity. Readers will never look at Robert E. Lee and Gettysburg the same way again.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Very Entertaining, 2008-08-20
I'm giving this four stars for its entertainment value and an unqualified recommendation for any detail oriented civil war buff. Not because it is perfect but because like a lot of David Irving's stuff it examines historical events from a unique perspective and a slightly different point of view; offering a necessary balance to anyone who wants to objectively understand the events that took place.
Bowden and Ward's study, "Last Chance for Victory," focuses almost exclusively on events and actions on the Confederate side of the Gettysburg campaign. The time saved by this limited focus allows them room for a host of analysis, speculation, and critical commentary. For the most part this is quite effective.
It is quickly clear to readers that Bowden and Ward have an agenda, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. And they are often irreverent, brutally frank, and even sarcastic. For example, here is their description of Joe Johnston's mindset in Mississippi: "Despite his call to Pemberton for action, Johnston arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, just in time to do what came natural for him in the face of an aggressive enemy - retreat". At times, particularly when dismissing the opinions of other historians, this stuff gets a little whiny but is nonetheless entertaining reading.
The central thesis of the book is summarized by Lee's description of his intentions at the start of the campaign: "I shall throw an overwhelming force on their advance, crush it, follow up the success, drive one corps back on another, and by successive repulses and surprises before they can concentrate create a panic and virtually destroy the army". The authors amplify this throughout the book with what they refer to as "Napolean's Maxims" such as: "The greatest disaster that can happen is when different corps of an army are attacked in detail, and before their junction". The reader is regularly reminded of Scott Bowden's Napoleonic expertise.
My biggest criticism is a failure to apply the above thesis consistently. Bowden and Ward pontificate endlessly (yawn) about the nature of Lee's contradictory orders to Ewell the first day of the battle; i.e. not bring on a general engagement vs attack Cemetery Hill (including detailed semantic analysis of things like: if practicable...if possible...with discretion...discretionary). Which is generally irrelevant because had Ewell actually taken Cemetery Hill that day about all he would have gained were a few hundred prisoners from Orland Smith's Brigade of the Howard's Corps (and maybe Howard himself). The rest of the broken First and Eleventh Corps would have been streaming south to the Pipe Creek Line in Maryland, where Meade planned to concentrate and fight Lee. Meade's July 1st order, known as the Pipe Creek Circular (also called the Pipe Creek Order), informed his corps commanders that the Pipe Creek Line would be the Union Army's line of defense and operations for the impending engagement, and that the Army of the Potomac was to concentrate there.
So for Lee to "drive one corps back on another" he would first need to lure additional Union troops to the Gettysburg area. Driving the Federals from Cemetery Hill on July 1st would have ended any chance of doing this. Ewell might have gotten away with unobtrusively occuping portions of Culps Hill, but anything more tactically aggressive would have doomed Lee's overall strategic plan. Bowden and Ward completely ignore this consideration, which may or may not have occurred to Lee at the time but seems quite obvious now. And they further damage their credibility at the end of the book by citing Dick Ewell failure to pursue on July 1st as the second most important of the 17 (yawn again) reasons Lee was defeated at Gettysburg.
And although the real strengths of the book are its chapters about the plans and the attacks of July 2nd, the authors again fail to adequately address three items as important to the events of that day as anything else; all examples of Lee's good and bad luck that day. 1. The gift from Dan Sickles when he placed his troops in a position they could not hope to defend. 2. New commander George Meade's impulsive mistake to support Sickles by the piecemeal feeding of Second and Fifth Corps units into a buzzsaw. 3. Meade's unexpected decision to strip his right of most of its strength.
Meade should have positioned the Fifth Corps where Sickles was supposed to be, pulled Humphreys' Division back to the Cemetery Ridge line and had the rest of Sickles Corps fight a delaying action before pulling back to Houck's Ridge. He compounded Sickles imbecility and sacrificed two Corps instead of one. On the other hand, his panicked pulling of units from the Cemetery Ridge positions to reinforce his left crossed up Lee; who "correctly" viewed the union right as the most critical sector and believed demonstrations by Ewell against that portion of the line would insure that the Federal units there were unavailable for action elsewhere on the field. The fortunes of war.
Otherwise the authors seem right on in their examination of the second day's fighting, crediting Lee's planning and Longstreet's execution for getting the army to a point where a decisive victory was a real possibility. And hanging most of the blame for coming up short on Anderson, Hill, and Ewell, plus the bad luck of losing Hood and Pender.
Most important they put to rest the myth that Longstreet's desire to fight defensively impaired the execution of Lee's attack on the second day. Pointing out not just the legitimate nature of the delays but also how this provided time for Sickles to commit his huge blunder, which the First Corps was then able to fully exploit.
The treatment of the third day of the battle is the weakest portion of this book; and the only area where I disagree with the author's defense of Lee. Insert ill-conceived and poorly executed. Fortunately it is the portion of the battle most understood by both casual and serious students of the engagement.
And be advised that Bowden and Ward are often somewhat "imprecise" in their descriptions. For example they sum up the Battle of Brandy Station with: "Fleetwood Hill, the site of Stuart's Headquarters, witnessed especially heavy combat and changed hands several times". Although Fleetwood Hill was heavily contested in the very final stages of the battle, it was always occupied by Stuart's forces and was never actually taken by Gregg's troopers-who had been extremely late arrivals on the battlefield, taking the field six hours after Buford's Division had began the battle. Buford's troopers had been fighting "all day" over a mile east of Fleetwood Hill.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Well deserved selection for CSAF 2008 Reading List, 2008-06-25
Addition to my review made years ago...
This is a modern classic, no doubt. Its strengths have been mentioned already by those of us who have taken time to carefully read it. So I'll just mention a couple of other things relevant to 2008.
The more I study Bowden and Ward's book, the more I believe that the analysis alone is worth much more than its price, and is one of the reasons I consult it as often or more than any other book on the battle
All in all, this is a well-deserving selection by the Chief of Staff Air Force in naming it to the 2008 Reading List. It should not be missed by any student of Robert E. Lee and of Gettysburg.
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
 What?, 2008-06-20
These two writers spend almost as much time criticizing other writers as they do giving their own opinion. In a nutshell, the book is yet another attempt to honor a commanding general who finally blew it after so many great battles. Lee had lost perspective on what his men were capable of by 1863. They got lucky at Chancellorsville because Hooker was scared of him, and Jackon was able to surprise the idiots in the 11th Corp. Instead of riding his lines at Gettysburg during the battles, he hid out in the seminary and watched the battle through binoculars rather than take control like Meade did. Every one of Lee's errors in judgement is blamed on someone else, rather than the commanding general who might as well have stayed in Virginia for all he was worth in PA. If you like excuses, you will like this book. These guys take shots at everyone including Coddington and Pfanz. Ever heard of these guys, no, but everyone knows Coddington and Pfanz. Guess why, their take on Gettysburg is way off unlike the real scholars of the battle. Pass on this one.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Great Gettysburg Study!!!!!, 2008-01-03
Gettysburg has its share of great books, and this is one of them, no question. Excellent scholarship and smooth narrative rounds out the authors' superb treatment of Lee by placing his decisions in their proper, historical context. As good as those aspects are, my favorite aspect of this book is the no-nonsense, hard-hitting analysis that gives real depth to Lee's generalship and its proper historical perspective. This is one of my very favorite works on American history.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Houston we have a problem!!!!, 2007-09-20
I have read most of the reviews of this book and all are written so eloquently and with deep thought and meaning and fact based. I will get to the point. This book is a must. We can talk of Gettysburg until the cows come home and what if the scenerio to death. As a Woman with no children and never wanted children, I would have bore Lee 12 I loved him so much, but having said that. What a mess Gettysburg was. Yes you have to take into perspective the times and the comunication issues, or lack there of, but, in all reality, the fault I do believe does lie with the great one himself. Yes, I understand the vocabulary of the time, yes I understand that Lee was the epitome of what a true Southern Aristocrat consisted of, but just for a minute, try to imagine Nathan Bedford Forrest in that posistion. Do we really think that Nathan would have stated if at all practicable take that hill? Um,,NO. It would have just been take the damn hill. He would have been all over Longstreet as he delayed his assault. As much of a fan as I am of Longstreet, that was very questionable for me. And let us not forget my Louisiana Fightin Tigers who basically had the battle won the first day if yet they had the support that was needed.
If Lee was indeed sick at the time, who will ever know. Almost everyone dropped the ball on this three day battle, wether intentional or not. As I make my pilgramige to Gettysburg yearly and I walk Picketts charge, this plan, how ever crazy it may have appeared to everyone else, I understood. To cut through the middle and they almost made it. Poor Fella's.
Get this Book, it is great.
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