How Did George Pickett's Charge A Failure

When asked asked why he thought his charge failed, Gen. George Pickett responded by stating, “I believe the Union Army had something to do with it” (Aron, 1997, p. 105). The reason why Gen. Pickett said that can most likely be attributed to the fact that it was and still is very difficult to pinpoint exactly what went wrong. In fact, historians still have trouble with this. Some hard facts historians do know is that was during the American Civil War, during one of the deadliest battles, the Battle of Gettysburg. It is also known that there was so much build up to the eventual execution of the charge. For example, there were two full days of brutal fighting right before Lee ordered the charge. Even though Lee had the final call, many of his subordinates were blamed simply because General Lee was a “war hero”(Aron, 1997, p. 101). General Longstreet, General Alexander, and many others were also involved in the process. In addition to individuals’ mistakes, there were great mistakes being being made as a whole. This whole host of issues have caused the great fiasco that is now known as Pickett’s Charge. The question that must analyzed is what are the great mistakes that were made and can the brunt of the blame be placed on Lee (Aron, 1997, p. 97-105)?
To fully understand and analyze Pickett’s …show more content…
To fully understand this, the background of the Battle of Gettysburg must be known. It was a brutal three day battle that started with with a skirmish involving a few divisions of Federals and Confederates, which erupted into a full fledged battle. General Lee of the Confederate army sent 25,000 to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and General Grant of the Union army sent 20,000 men. These numbers further blossomed as the battle ravaged on. With the overwhelming number of soldiers present, the stakes were enormous, and the casualty toll had the potential to be devastating (Sears, 2003, pp.