Jocko Podcast - Jocko Podcast Civil War Excursion With JD Baker Pt.6: The Battle of Gettysburg

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

By July 1863, the Confederate army’s continuing success in battle emboldened General Lee to move the war into the north. While Lee and his troops passed through Maryland into Pennsylvania, Lincoln replaced General Joseph Hooker with General George Meade, who hastily pursued Lee. On the morning of July 1, the two armies finally met outside of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko podcast, Civil War Excursion. Number six with J.D. Baker and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, J.D. Good evening, Jocco. At 3 a.m., I was aroused from my deep sleep by an officer from Washington entering my tent, George Mead wrote to his wife, and after waking me up, saying he had come to give me trouble. at first I thought that it was either to relieve me or arrest me and promptly replied to him that my conscience was clear void of offense toward any man I was prepared for his bad news

he then handed me a communication to read which I found was an order relieving hooker from the command and assigning me to it needs account suggests an equanimity that may have been more imagined than real. According to the messenger, James A. Hardy, Mead at first became much agitated. He protested that John Reynolds should have been chosen instead, that he, Meade, was totally arrogant, ignorant of the positions and dispositions of the army he was to take in charge. And that it would only make sense for him to refuse the assignment. Hardy patiently explained that all of Meade's arguments had already been taken into consideration, and the president's decision was final. As Mead absorbed this, some of his dry humor returned.

Well, I've been tried and condemned without a hearing, he told Hardy, and I suppose I shall have to go to the execution. So that right there is an excerpt from the book. Gettysburg by Noah Andre Trudeau. Kind of bringing the union leader for the Battle of Gettysburg. We've heard his name a bit already, General George Mead, how he ended up taking command. I know this, J.D., this is kind of your recommended book for Gettysburg. Yeah. If you're going to read one, I know you've read 50 books about Gettysburg, but if you're going to read

one, this is a good one to start with. Yeah, I mean, I think we got like what, like, uh, like, uh, like 10 books like out here in front of us on Gettysburg. Uh, and, and, you know, and I haven't like officially walked through and like counted how many books there are written on Gettysburg, but I would probably speculate that there's more books written on that piece of dirt than any other piece of dirt in the United States, uh, of Gettysburg. And, uh, of, of all the books, you know, I've read a ton of, and this is, yeah, if I was going to go and I was going to get one book to read on Gettysburg of the overall battle.

So I'm not, so now we can't talk about like individual people at the battle. This is like the overarching book of all the events that took place at Gettysburg. This is the go-to by Trudeau. It is, to me, man, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, easy read. How many pages is this bad boy? A few hundred, 500,

500, yeah, maybe 600 pages. So, getting to the story here, Mead's getting selected as commander. Again, he's thinking he's getting relieved. I mean, 2 o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, knock on a door.

He thinks he might be getting relieved. Instead, he's getting selected as the commander. First of all, is he the first draft pick? He mentioned some other, like, what about Reynolds? Where is he at? Why is Hooker getting relieved?

What's, is he the first draft pick? Why isn't it, Reynolds? What's going on? Yeah. I mean, and of course, you know, Mead is not, he's not the, he's not the first draft pick. Reynolds is, I mean, and Reynolds and Mead, they're friends. You know what I mean?

Like, they get along. They've been, you know, now we're coming in. We just finished out in May. Now we're coming into June 1863. both of them were West Point guys. And even if you look at Reynolds, I mean, Reynolds was like the commandant of cadets at West Point.

You know what I mean? Like, he's a big deal. He's also a Pennsylvanian. But so was Mead. Well, Meade was raised in Pennsylvania. His dad, he was actually born in Spain. And then his dad was a foreign dignitary kind of type guy. I guess you could put like state department kind of guy.

He's overseas. stuff. So Meade's born overseas, but he's raised in Pennsylvania. So they're both Pennsylvania guys. So, you know, just like you talked about it, you know, at 3 o'clock in the morning, I mean, nothing good happens after 10 o'clock at night, unless it's like the birth of a child. You know what I mean? Like you get a call, but you're kind of expecting that. You know what I mean? Like, hey, you know what I'm dilated a certain amount. Okay, yeah, I'll take my phone up with me because you could have the birth of a child. That's the only time anything good happens after 10% like a night. And Mead, he had written his wife. I mean, that's the cool thing about a lot of

the stuff that we capture about this behind the scene stuff that's going on with folks in the Civil Wars. You know, back then, they all write letters home. So he's writing a letter home to his wife. And, you know, and Mead, he doesn't get along with Hooker. You know what I mean? Like he's not a, he's not a hooker fan. And him and Hooker kind of get into it a little bit. So he's kind of like basically writing his wife saying, hey, honey. I might be out of a job. You know what I mean? Like I might be coming home.

Like I really don't know what's going to happen. And then there he is. You know, he hits the rack and, you know, one of these teenage couriers that we talk about, you know what I mean? Comes over. He's got a message. You know what I mean? Knocks on his door, comes in, hands him back.

And of course, probably the first thought going through his head is, well, this is it. You know what I mean? What am I going to do now? Because it wouldn't be the first guy that's been relieved in the Army of the Potomac. and meat opens it up and boom. It's from Abraham Lincoln, man, and it's your rodeo now. You're the commander of the Army of the Potomac. And of course, his first thought is, well, why me?

You know what I mean? Like Reynolds and stuff like Reynolds capable commander, you know, and Reynolds was the first draft pick. But Reynolds didn't take it. He turned it down. And of course, there's a lot of speculation that is about Reynolds of like, yeah, okay, yeah, he was a core commander, you know what I mean? He just wanted to stay with his core.

I kind of get that. I mean, we talked about Burnside earlier and some of the other ones. I mean, he was offered it, man, he didn't take it. And I'm sure just like with, you know, if Lincoln, if we go like how he talked to Burnside, and he's like, okay, well, Burnside, if you don't take it, we're going to give it to Hooker. And he's like, okay, I'll take it. So obviously, I'm sure that, you know, Lincoln was like, you know, Lincoln was like, well, okay, you know, John Reynolds.

He's like, okay, John, well, I mean, if you're not going to take it, I'm going to put George in. And he's probably like, yeah, dude, I'm good with George. I could only imagine, because they're friends. You know what I mean? So I could imagine, like Reynolds is like, yeah, hey, mate, he's a good dude. Now, when you look at it, you know, Reynolds, just to, you know, kind of let, you know, some of the folks kind of know about Reynolds, a huge fan of the guy. Reynolds is single.

and when he's out in California before the war, he meets a girl. And her name's Kate. Catherine is her name. And they decide that, you know, the war kicks off. They're like, hey, you know, after the war, you know, they plan to get married. And he's like, yeah, and if I don't make it through the war, you know what I mean? Then you're going to go to become a nun and you're going to join a convent for the rest of your life. So that's kind of a deal that they have.

And so she takes his West Point ring, which is a big deal. You know what I mean? And then he's got a ring that he's wearing around his neck. That's her ring. And it says, Dear Kate, as inscribed on the inside of the ring that Reynolds is wearing. But nobody knows that Reynolds has a girlfriend. And as they're coming up towards Pennsylvania, you know, Reynolds being from Pennsylvania, his plan is as they're on their way into Pennsylvania,

he's going to take Kate and he's going to introduce them to his folks and let her kind of meet the family. You know what I mean? They're kind of like secretly engaged. Well, you know, to kind of put you in the content is Kate's Catholic and Reynolds is Protestant. Well, in 1863, it's a big deal. So that's why the,

they're kind of keeping it like under the wraps. And he's not like telling anybody, even his staff guys. Like most of, none of these guys know that General Reynolds has got a girlfriend. And this is, again, this is just JD kind of, you know what I mean? When I kind of look at it is like, okay, well, if I know I'm going to go home and I've got like this plan kind of thing. And if I stay as a core commander, I've got the ability to kind of swoop away and take Kate and go introduce to the family. If I take this gig as the Army commander, I'm probably going to have to cancel my little trip with Kate

and introducing them to the family. I mean, it's just me kind of thinking because I kind of put myself in Reynolds' shoes. If I've got this plan, I'm going to bring my fiancé to come meet the family, and I'm like, but I'm going to get promoted. And it's like, that's going to screw up. Like, I'm going to have to like start formulating plans. And, you know what I mean? It's going to overwhelm me.

I'm taking over a new position. And so I think that had a little bit to do with the fact of rent. Reynolds turning down command. And again, I think that Reynolds is cool with George Gordon Mead being the Army commander. Like, hey, dude, I'll work for that guy like any day of the week. So that's a little bit. You know, we'll talk about like, we'll talk about Kate, you know, a little later, you know, instead of getting our head of ourselves with General Reynolds. And, and Mead, you know, you mentioned Mead doesn't really like Hooker.

And one of the things you, I know when you and I talk about Mead, we always throw the word, you always throw the word. Like he's an engineer like this is the kind of personality. You know, you have that stereotypical personality of what an engineer is. This is an analytical person. He's a thoughtful person. He's a cerebral person. And we're going to see that conduct. He has the mindset of an engineer throughout this, throughout the Gettysburg campaign for sure.

Right. Yeah, he's, yeah, Mead is, I mean, he's just, he's different. But the thing that, you know, if you, if you, if you pull, the string a little bit on George Gordon Mead, even at the start of the Civil War, of the battles that we've already discovered. Like, Mead is the, he broke Jackson's lines at Fredericksburg, made it all the way, you know, up the, the river road, could have gotten in and behind. I mean, this dude is like shows success.

He's not the guy that gets invited to the barbecue on Saturday, man. You know what I mean? Like, he's not one of those individuals. is he's the fun guy to be around. He's an engineer. He's very methodical. You know what I mean? That's just how he's wired.

And the cool thing about like meat is is he doesn't give a shit. You know what I mean? He just wants to show up and the dude goes to work. He wants to win. You know what I mean? And he's going to support, you know what I mean? You didn't hear anything like we talked about like some of the other commanders like undermining, you know, leadership and stuff like that.

Like of all the stuff. And I mean, we've got another book, of course, laying there. You know, Mead at Gett, Gett's. a study of him in command. Of all the books that I've read, like I've never heard of Mead. Like, yeah, he might be sending a note to his wife kind of saying like, yeah, hey, I really don't like Hooker. Okay, good on him.

You know what I mean? That he doesn't like Hooker, but he's still following orders. Like, you know what I mean? He's still, you know what I mean, going with the plan. He's not sending folks up to D.C. He wasn't jockeying to be next, which that says a lot about the character of George Gordon made yeah that's a positive thing um so last episode we left off at chancellorsville uh the union had been defeated again uh now this is only only a month's gone by

this isn't like some huge you know last episode we're only going a month fast forward uh but what's going on we got meed now went from division to to core now he's the army commander uh uh There's also we were talking about how attrition has impacted these two military forces. So talk to me about how attrition, well, first of all, there's multiple types of attrition, but you know, you can get fired, you can get killed, you can get wounded, you can get moved. So there's things that can happen to an army leader. how is attrition working out for the union? I would say that due to attrition,

the union is getting better. You know, if you look at it at the, you know, the 1860, 1861, when everybody's kind of jockeying for like who's going to get a general, you know, who's going to be in charge, who's going to get a division, who's going to be the Corps commanders and stuff like that. And, you know, when we talk all the way back,

And even on both Western side, the Western theater and, you know, this Eastern Theater of the Army of the Potomac that we've been, you know, chit-chat about over the past time. I mean, if you took a photo of the officers of the Army of the Potomac in 1861, Mead is like that dude that, like, have you ever been in like one of those group photos and you, like, you send it to your folks? Like, hey, can you see me? That's my left ear.

I mean, because I'm all the way in the back. You know what I mean? And like all the other folks, like McClellan and Burnside and Franklin and Sumner and all these dudes that like, they're not even in the Army of the Potomac anymore. They're all in the front. So due to them, like you said, I mean, there's multiple reasons. You know what I mean? They resigned. They get moved. They got killed. You know what I mean? They got fired. All of those reasons. Now if you took a photo of the Army of the Potomac in June of 1863, you're not just seeing like the left ear of Mead in the back. The dude's sitting front row, man.

And he's up there with who else, Reynolds, Hancock, you know what I mean? Even, you know, other guys that, you know, we'll talk about, you know, today of Chamberlain. You know what I mean? Some of these folks that are just moving up, so they're getting better. because finally, like, the cream is starting to rise to the top. And, you know, it's no joke of with me that, like, I'm a huge Mead fan. I mean, I like George Gordon Mead. And it's not just because of his actions at Gettysburg, but, like, throughout the so far in the Civil War, I like John Reynolds.

It's Hancock. I mean, these guys are proven. They're working their way up. And then you look west. You know what I mean? You got a dude that at this exact time that we're talking about that's going on. as they're making this next away game in Pennsylvania before the Battle of Gettysburg, Vicksburg is under siege by that dude who was selling firewood, man, on the streets of St. Louis,

that Grant guy, I think he's on a $50 bill now or something. So probably he must have been banging it. And where's that other crazy guy, Sherman, that started out the beginning? Remember at the very beginning we talked about like Sherman? And I was telling the story of him and they're going in to like get their rank. and he comes out and he's a colonel. And people are like, dude, you could have easily got in general. He's like, I'll take colonel.

I'll earn general. Well, guess what? In 63, Sherman's a freaking general. You know what I mean? So the cream is starting to rise due to attrition. We're getting the likes of some of these phenomenal leaders, in my opinion, with the Union Army. Now, on the other side, for the Confederates, how's attrition working out for them? Well, you know, at the beginning.

So again, let's, you know, you peel that back a little bit. You look back in 61. I mean, who was the number one draft pick? You know what I mean? And for Winfield, Scott and Abraham Lincoln was Robert E. Lee. So Robert E. Lee, and we talked about like Robert E. Lee, you know, we talked about Buchanan and stuff like that. Everybody, you know, a lot of the varsity folks ended up going with the Confederacy.

And if you look at mainly the Army of Northern Virginia, there's going to be a chance. change here because at chancellersville as we know stonewall jackson ended up dying of wounds received in the battle uh you know some time later so robert lee's got a finder like okay who's going to be my my second corps commander you know he's still got the old war horse he's got his first core so at chancellorsville if you looked at the overall if you look at the structure of the army of northern virginia you know you've got first core jane James Longstreet. Second Corps, Stonewall Jackson's gone. So you and I would obviously assume that, okay, I'm going to take one of the division commanders and I'm going to promote them up

to make them the new Corps commander. So he's got choices. You've got like AP Hill. We heard about him. You know what I mean at Chancellorsville. I mean, he could even, if he wanted to, I mean, hell if, I mean, it's Robert E. Lee. He could go get Stewart and say, hey, did you did a pretty banging job as Corps commander? Why don't you give up the cavalry? Now, do I think Stuart's going to give up the ponies? You know what I mean? And go hang out with the infantry. He's like, nah, I kind of did my bid. I'm going back to Calvary. But he could if he wanted to. He can select anybody he wants. Robert E. Lee ends up, for some odd reason, he's going to create a third corps. And he's going to now have three corps commanders.

So he's going to have Longstreet, then he's going to have Yule and Hill. So he's going to create two more. So remember in the future in the episodes we already kind of talked about at the beginning, they were a very flat organization. Robert E. Lee only had to deal with Longstreet and Jackson, each of whom he knew very well. Yes. Now, it's not saying that like Yule and Hill and some of these other guys,

but they've been operating underneath Jackson. And we kind of talked about how Jackson had trust issues. You know what I mean? And Jackson was very close hold with his information. So, you know, when I kind of look at it, you know, and with Stonewall Jackson, it seems like he wasn't growing for someone to take his place. He wasn't growing the people beneath him. Yes.

He wasn't creating subordinate leaders that were ready to step up and take his job. Right. I mean, you know, we've talked at numerous lengths of, you know, number one job of a leader. Make more freaking leaders, man. You know what I mean? Make as many leaders as you can. You can't have enough leaders. And Jackson, I mean, for some odd reason, he's, it wasn't like clear enough to be like, you would kind of think that like Robert E. Lee would already know, yeah, if Jackson goes down, man, Hill's getting the gig. You know what I mean, like automatically, no one. Out of the two, yeah, like rack and stack. You know what I mean? like how it is like modern day in the military. Like you're ranking your people out. You know who's next.

And then, you know, so he's also got this issue. Okay, yeah, he's got a major victory. It's May. We finished out with the Battle of Chancellorsville. Greatest flank attack history of the world. J.D. Spenion. And now he's got to decide of what he's going to do because he's got a boss. So he's got Jefferson Davis.

And Jefferson Davis, again, we've got this siege going on in Vicksburg. Well, the siege in Vicksburg of why it's so important, it's going to take you back to the Anaconda plan, that waterborne snake, the Winfield Scott kind of plan. This is like the last little piece. If we lose Vicksburg, Confederate, the union's going to control the Mississippi. And now they can start that constrict of constricting the South.

So Vicksburg is huge. And, you know, and Ulysses S. Grants down there laying the wood to him. and Jefferson Davis is kind of like, okay, yeah, that's great. You kind of dealt with that. Hey, thumbs up, man, on the chance of a little thing. Hey, hate to hear about what happened to Stonewall.

You know what I mean? But who you're going to replace with Stonewall? Who's going to be a Corps Commander? And I think I'm going to send you down to Vicksburg, man. Because if I send you down there and you can get in the rear and threaten Grant, that's going to relieve the people in Vicks. And we're going to keep the Mississippi. So that's pretty big.

You know what I mean? If you're kind of looking at, because you lose Vicksburg, man, here comes that constrictor. And Robert E. Lee convinces, you know, his boss, Davis, that, well, how about I go north again, man? You know, if I threaten to the north, that might sway. It's 63. What happens in 64? There's another election. You know what I mean?

Some of the former commanders are running on that ticket against Abraham Lincoln, talking about Little Mac. Yeah. McClellan's run. against Lincoln and McClellan politically is like a status quo guy which we've talked about and if he wins but probably just like patch things up and we can move forward you know much easier to figure out we know where Lincoln is at Lincoln's not stopping no McClellan we could probably get figure out some kind of a deal we could make this thing work yeah you know and Lee Lee so Lee doesn't want to go down to

Vicks I mean part of that's got to be just like hey bro I'm from I'm from I'm from Virginia, but I don't want to go down to Vexpert. I don't want to go all the way over there. Right? I mean, he's from Virginia. He's from that area. He doesn't want to leave. Yeah.

I mean, and he's not like a spring chicken either. No. Well, I mean, you know, we talked earlier on the first thing we kind of like, hey, let's get the note J.D. a little bit. And I told you know, like eight years old. You know what I mean? First time I go to Lexington, Virginia. And, yeah, that's where the Robert E. Lee, the tomb is and that kind of stuff.

In 63, you know, Robert E. Lee is 56 years old. Now, of course, like back then, like I used to look at like 50s. Like that dude's at his 50s, man. He is so freaking old. Now sitting across the table from you today, man, like I'm looking at it like, Robert E Lee, man, that dude's in the prime of his life. So it's all, you know, that kind of perspective of, uh, but yeah, I mean, I mean, and Vicksburg, you know, if you ever get a chance to go down there,

it's the second, probably the second most monumented battle, battlefield, military park in the United States. And it's just amazing, the topography of the terrain in and around Vicksburg. It's amazing. And what Grant did down there, Grant Stitch and stuff, and we could go on about that forever. We won't. But so he convinces his boss, Jefferson Davis, that I'm going to go north again, man. He went north again. We covered the Battle of Antietam that took place.

There was a draw. Now he convinces the boss. I'm going to go do another away game. Let's get this out of Virginia. Maybe we can help sway that vote coming into 64. We can give some relief to the folks in Virginia. Because if he leaves Virginia, that means that this army, whoever's in control, whether it's hooker, me, name it, they got to do something.

So they're going to have to leave Virginia and follow me, he's assuming, to be able to protect Baltimore and Washington. So, okay, yeah, it's going to give a relief. Like you said, now we're in 63. And here we are again in Virginia. And that second Battle of Chancellorsville, it's Fredericksburg and Chatt, man, that region, Spotsylvania County, Stafford County, that whole, Colpeper County. Dude, I couldn't imagine being a citizen living during, you know, 61, 62 time frame, man. It's just got because you got union folks there. you got artillery slunging around.

You got a lot of lead flight, horses, mules. They got intake. They got exhaust. That's a lot of horse shit, man, in Sponsavania County. So they're going to get out, and he's going to do that. But this is the crazy thing, man,

is he's going to go three-core, and he's going to go do an away game. So he's completely changing the playbook, man. Like, he's been two-core. And, you know, as he goes north, you looked at it like a, like, you know, looking at it like a football team, he's 7-0-1. General Lee. General Lee.

7-0-0. Army of Northern Virginia. That one is Antietam. Other than that, you know, with the, if you look at the peninsula, you look up, you know, through the battles have been taking place, man. Robert E. Lee is sitting around, right around, you know, 7-0-1, man. And he's going to go do an away game, but he's got a new playbook of three-core. uh and that now now he can't decide well is it that he can't decide between ewell and hill

or is he just thinking you know what it'd be really nice to have another maneuver element like hey well why why what are the downsides of saying i had two core two maneuver elements to move around the battlefield i'm going to make three now i understand that there's complexities that come with that. I understand that now we got some relationships that aren't as close. But did he, are the forces plused up as well? So now he has that many more, a third more people? No, no, no. So all he's doing is basically, he's just making smaller core. Got it. You know what mean? It's not like he's plusing up to like 200,000. You know what I mean? Like it's, he's still right around that same size. He's just going to redistribute the numbers. So it's not like it's, you

He's still got the same amount of bodies. He's just adding a layer, which we kind of talked about that with that. Remember, we talked Burnside, and he creates these like wing division commanders, and he's just adding layers. So Robert E. Lee literally added a layer. You know what I mean? And why? Why just pick one?

Yeah. You know, then you've still got the old war horse. You know, these two guys have both been with Jackson, you know what I mean? Or pick somebody else. You got one to hold them, one to skin them. you know what I mean you got your two courts pretty flat and it's worked why are you going to go to what that's like you know you win through the playoffs and then you're going to the Super Bowl you know what I mean and you're going to

you're going to completely change the way you fight we're going to start passing now instead of running right we made it through the playoffs running run and run and now we decide we get to the Super Bowl we're going to start throwing the ball right and let's bring like three quarterbacks you know what I mean and just in case we lose two along the way I got a third you know uh you know uh you You know, so that's always just kind of, and to be honest, to be honest, brother, I'm like, I don't know, like, why he did that. Other than he just didn't have enough confidence that either one of those two individuals could just solely be a core commander. Like, because, I mean, that is a bump, you know what I mean?

Like, with any job, even in the military, you know, you start out as a team leader, you got three dudes. You know what I mean? You go to the squad leader. You know what I mean? You got 12 dudes. You go to the platoon commander, man. You got like 30 of them. You know what I mean? And when you first take over, even though it's just like 30 people, you're like,

30 people. That's a lot of people to be like, you know what I mean? But when you've got 30 people, you've got three squad leaders. You know what I mean? So it's not like you're overseeing, you're overseeing three people. You know what I mean? And that's, but that's because you trust your squad leaders are taking care of their people. Well, you know, if you've got Jackson, you know what I mean? Was he getting these folks ready, you know what I mean, for that next step up. And maybe it's got to be that, you know, Robert E. Lee is assuming that, you know what, maybe I said, because, I mean, I couldn't imagine like taking over 15,000 people.

Yeah. And especially when he, when Jackson is such a performer. Oh. And now you're looking thinking, which one of these two guys are going to fill his shoes? Neither. I'm just going to leave him where they're at, make them peers and we'll move forward. Right. Right.

Like, you're looking at the guys a total stud. Jackson's winning battles for you. like unbelievably getting the job done. And now he's gone and like, oh, shit, who am I going to put it in there? Well, you know what, neither one of them. We'll just kind of keep him neutral. And we'll see how this works out. Yeah, so that's basically, I mean, he's, you know, he's going to write wrong or indifferent.

Robert Lee makes the call. He's going to go do an away game. And again, like, you know, we're talking about we finished this out in May. And when you're reading about George Gordon Mead, man, this is June. So like you said, man, this is a month. And, you know, we're in Spotsylvania, Virginia in May. You know, when we're talking about Mead, when you read at the beginning of the book, when he gets that note, dude, that dude's in Frederick Maryland.

You know what I mean? Like, because I go to Gettysburg, like I've been there a couple of times, you know what I mean? When I leave my house, dude, it's a two and a half hour drive. You know what I mean? 70 miles an hour. Yeah. I mean, these dudes are walking.

It's May. you know what I mean coming into June East Coast wool uniforms they got all their stuff you know what I mean and now they're in pursuit so when he gets that note mead is already in Frederick Maryland Robert E. Lee has already you know what I mean he's moving up in so we're in the latter part of June and Yule is already up like threatening towards Harrisburg and stuff and the route approach remember you know we had talked in other podcasts you know when you when you look at the Army of Northern Virginia they got to worry about the logistical train, just like they did before when he was going to go up and they ended up with the lost order and they ended up with the Battle of Antietam, wasn't planned for.

He's got to run his logs up, so the breadbasket of the South is still the Shenandoah Valley. So he's going to run that valley all the way up and then he's going to cross over into that Cumberland Valley in Pennsylvania. So that's going to be his log train. So that's how he's going to skirt on the outsides of D.C. and not threatening. So he's right back over there again towards Shepardstown, Virginia, which now that we get into 1863, something happened in Virginia. Now you got this new state

called West Virginia. You know what I mean? So, uh-oh, they're not as friendly over there in Shepherds Town, West Virginia. You know what I mean? They actually have West Virginia, has union folks that fight in Gettysburg. What triggered that? Just, you know, it's kind of like it's different. Like when you cross over, you know, I mean, I was born and raised, you know what I mean? West Virginia, Virginia, that whole corridor, big coal mining. Big blue collar, a lot of work and stuff like. You're not seeing farmlands.

You're not seeing plantations. You're not seeing that kind of stuff over in the West Virginia of what we have today. It's all blue collar. I mean, and it's immigrants that are moving it because it's mining. It's working riverboats. You know what I mean? So, you know, they're not necessarily that plantation white collar, you know what I mean, old Virginia money.

These dudes are like being brought over to work for that money in the mines. And I mean, you could do like a whole staff ride on just the mining and the Appalachians. So they're, you know, so they're convinced of like, hey, man, you guys can like join the union. And that's where you go to like where like Bath County, Virginia is and Covington, Virginia, and then you hit that Allegheny there and you get into Greenbrier. That's West Virginia. So that's, that's where you're starting to hit that, that mountainous region of West Virginia all the way through Beckley, all the way down. So those guys are convinced and they, they create a state and they become West Virginia in 63. And they actually stand up, you know,

regiments that are going to fight, you know, right up over on Cemetery Hill is the West Virginia Monuments right there on the Cemetery Hill. So that quickly, they've already got folks in action fighting for the Union in 63. So that's another little change that kind of takes place. But still, so Robert E. Lee's going to start running. And again, it's almost the same thing when we talked about at Antietam of where, you know, with Antietam, hearts and minds. Like when we enter and we, we, we go to the away game, man. Like, we're still, we're playing nice with the, with the civilian populace up there, man.

And the actual, the first person, like Gettysburg wasn't even really on the map. You know what I mean? Like Gettysburg is just like a small little town, but it's got like seven roads that lead to that town. So if you're going in that area of Pennsylvania, you're going to kind of have to go past Gettysburg. And they've got a rail station, you know what I mean? it's prominent roads, but it's kind of like on the way of like Carlisle, Harrisburg, you know, Chambersburg kind of area.

So it's not necessarily a prominent area like Harrisburg is. So Yule is the lead element. So as he goes north, Robert E. Lee's going to lead with General Yule and then he's going to move with AP Hill. And then bringing up the rear is going to be Long Street. So you basically got like, if you're looking at them, you've got second core, Jackson's old cores, whose Yule has. His new created third core is AP Hill. That's who Robert E. Lee is going to move with.

And then Longstreet, first core, his most competent core commander is bringing up the rear. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of find that interesting as well, too. Because, you know, we can compare, you know, in a little while of who George Gordon Mead's leading with. Because he's not using his, you'll find out later. He doesn't have Dan Sickles up there leading the charge. It's Reynolds is the lead Corps commander for the Army of the Potomac.

And as Yule is moving through, he's got to get resupplied and stuff along the way. You know what I mean? So he sends folks into Gettysburg, and they're just there to get shoes and supplies, like literally. they're not there to attack, do anything to civilian folks. But there's a militia there. The little town militia, you know what I mean? They're going to grab their muskets, and they're like, here comes to Confederates. They go out, they fire a couple of shots, and they run the hell away.

Because they're not going to, you know, this militia is not going to stand up. Because all like the fighting folks from in and around Pennsylvania, they're in the Army of the Potomac. Or they're in the defensive. So nothing against militia people in Gettysburg. They're just, you're not going to go up against a professional army. especially not the Army of Northern Virginia, 701. So these guys are going to come in and they're going to report out. You know what I mean?

Like every day you've got to send reports to the boss. So Yule reports that, hey, man, we got supplies in Gettysburg. We kind of cruised in. We had a, you know, they had a small militia because that's going to play a part later on with another Corps commander because that's information that everybody knows of like, hey, like if I cruise by, I'm going to send folks in. Maybe I'm going to go into Gettysburg. only threat that's there is militia. So that's going to play into how we get into the Battle of

Gettysburg a little bit. So that's kind of Robert E. Lee. So as this is happening, what's Mead? What's Mead's goal? So they must see this maneuver happening. What is Meade? What is the president? What's Lincoln going to tell Meade to do? Yeah. So it's the same thing. So one, you know, hey, tag, you're it. You're the commander. And he's got to kind of. to figure out of like, okay, well, everybody knows Robert E. Lee is moving north. He's, he's already in Pennsylvania. And they know this. And I'm sure that with, you know, if you look at the folks that are in the Army of the Potomac, you know, we talked about Meade, Pennsylvania, Reynolds, Pennsylvania, Hancock, Pennsylvania. I mean, they got a lot of dudes from Pennsylvania.

And their families live in Pennsylvania. So I'm sure they're all like, yeah, dude, now it's our home turf. Now we're playing tag in my neighborhood. You know what I mean? Like these people like me now. And so I'm sure at first they're thinking, yep, we're going up there, man. We're going to get Robert Lee out. But he's got a boss. And Abraham Lincoln's biggest concern. So his strategy and his vision that he's going to give to George Gordon meat is protect Baltimore and Washington. That's the biggest commander's intent and the number one mission for me is you protect Washington DC and you protect Baltimore. Yep.

And what's interesting about this if you're, if you're listening, if you're not too familiar with the battles, that means from where, from where the Confederates are, they would be moving south to Baltimore and D.C. Because they've come up into Pennsylvania and now they would be moving south. towards DC. So, so, just so you have that in your head, because I know when I first started reading about this, I'd be like, oh, oh, they're not moving north.

You know, you think, oh, the South is going to move north to attack. They're already up north. They're north of D.C. So now they would be pushing south. So what does Mead come up with for a plan? You know, his thoughts are, you know, of course, he's looking at the map reconnaissance of the area. The good thing is, they're in Frederick Maryland in that area.

I mean, folks have been there, man. These guys, you know, these are established roads. They've got people that are in the organization that kind of know, you know what I mean, the whereabouts. And then so he's got to pick a spot because he doesn't know, again, like, where's the Army of Northern Virginia going to go? Are they going to threaten Baltimore? Are they going to threaten D.C.? Because he can't do both. You know what I mean?

He's not going to send one quarter. to Baltimore and two core to D.C. Like he, that's not how Robert Ely, you're always going to bring the army together. You're going to go after one. So there's a creek. It's called the pipe creek. So he comes up with this Pike Creek plant. I think he actually names it like the Pike Creek circular of, of his thoughts processes of how he's

going to defend Baltimore and Washington. And pipe creek is down there in that, in that Maryland area on the Pennsylvania border. But it's so that he can. anchor in. He's got good anchor. His left is going to be anchored in and his right anchored in. So it's kind of like a sack. And if Robert E. Lee turns to the south, making his way to threaten Baltimore or Washington, he's got enough maneuver space to block. So kind of like how we were talking about on the last podcast of where Robert E. Lee is moving and blocking to keep him out of Richmond. You know what I mean? Now he's doing the same thing. But the only difference with this

says, which is kind of crazy, is, uh, dude, I mean, how do you think the governor of Pennsylvania is feeling right now? I feel like New Jersey. You know what I mean? Like these dudes and we've got, I mean, if anybody wants to, I mean, you can literally like, you can see all the email traffic of what we would call today because it's captured in time and recorded. Uh, you can go back and you can read some of these letters from governors sending to Abraham Lincoln like, hey dude, we got nobody here to defend our home state because we see. sent them all for your war, brother. You know what I mean?

You need to get these dudes the hell out of my fucking state. I mean, you know what I mean? Parapar, I'm sure they didn't drop an F-bomb. I would have. You know what I mean? Because if I was the governor of Pennsylvania, yeah, hey, dude, I sent you all my able bodies. I've got women and kids back here, man. And I got the Army of Northern Virginia.

And we all read in the paper what your army did to Fredericksburg, dude. You don't think these guys who are going to come back up? Yeah, you want to, like, you know, blow our cities to hell and back and loot our stuff. we're in your turf now. You know what I mean? But luckily, you know, Robert Lee's made it very clear. Dude, we're up here hearts and minds, man. We're not looting.

You're not looking to get a bunch of free stuff, dude. You know what I mean? We're up here. This is a purpose. So Lincoln's getting pressure. And I'm sure as an Army commander, he's getting pressure. Like some of these politicians, man, they're just going to go VR direct.

You know what I mean? Like, hey, dude, you need to send somebody up here and get these people out of here. And, uh, and me, he's going to go with the boss. He's going to come up with this Pipe Creek plan to be able to protect Baltimore and Washington. And he's hoping he can do a defensive operation. So he's not going to go offensive. And with that, he's going to have Robert Lee hit him. But he's also learning.

He's not, you know, in this whole thing, we're not going to have any flanks in the air. What's his anchor points? He's got two stream better. You know what I mean? So he's anchored in. Kind of like how he was anchored in on the Rappahannock. So it's a, it's a, I mean, it's good terrain. He's selecting and he has that time and he also has enough time where he can call audibles and he's got good road systems to be able to move.

So he can go laterally as well. Yeah, Mead, again, he's an engineer and the dude is like wicked smart. So he puts some good thought into this. The only problem is, is that, you know, he's got, you know, he's got, you know, he's got, you know, you know, everybody is kind of pursuing up towards the Army of Northern Virginia. So he's in Frederick, Maryland, but his first Corps commander, because now he's in charge, his first Corps commander is Reynolds. And Reynolds is also like a wing commander.

So Reynolds has got, he's in charge of his Corps. He's still a Corps commander, but he's also got, uh-oh, Howard with 11th Corps is part of his wing. So he's got Howard following in Tray. So Howard is kind of following Reynolds. Are they maneuvering towards Pipes Creek? No. Is that where they're going? Nope.

They're not privy yet to the Pipe's Creek. They're just moving, chasing. They got to keep an eye on where the hell is Robert Ely going so that they're prepared. And out in the lead of Reynolds, the lead element of Reynolds is his cavalry. Yeah, he's got his reconnaissance. He's got a general that's up there, and he's running reconnaissance to basically to report the Reynolds of, he's got eyes on, the Confederacy.

He's the dude that's reporting back. That's how they know, like, the progress of the Confederacy. He's doing his job. And the guy that works for Reynolds is an interesting fellow named John Buford. He's the cavalry commander, and he's running reconnaissance for Reynolds. So we've talked a little bit about cavalry, but just to clarify, cavalry, the main purpose of cavalry is, look, you're on a horse, you can go fast, and you can go fast, you can find out what's going on, you can then report that information back up the chain of command.

That's what the purpose of cavalry at this time is to go out, do recon. And so that's what's happening. And as so we already had Ewell pushed up. He passed by Gettysburg. Sent some people in there for supplies, ran into a little militia, no factor, kept going. Now we got AP Hill. He's now passing Gettysburg. And as he's passing Gettysburg, that reconnaissance element from the union ran by Buford, he happens to be.

in Gettysburg. Yep. And he's looking out as AP Hills passing by Gettysburg and sees him, um, sees, you know, them. And by them,

I mean tens of thousands, what do we got 40, 50,000 troops walking? Well, because, yeah, it's, it's the Macy's Day parade.

And he's over in like, uh, on the Chambersburg pike. Uh, so looking over towards that Cumberland, that mountain range that, as you're looking from Gettysburg. So,

So from Gettysburg, as you look west, it kind of sinks down, the terrain sinks down, and then it rises back up again, just gently. It's pretty gentle, gentle slope down, and then it comes back up. And in that sort of valley, closer to where it comes back up, that's where AP Hill has got his core walking up. Yep. And it's, you know, the modern day, that Chambersburg pike. And yeah, and because of the, like the reorg. So it's basically like he's got like 15,000 dudes.

It's the Macy's Day parade. You know what I mean? It's a two lane, two track road. You know what I mean? It's prominent. Like I said, I mean, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania man had been there, you know, before we were even a country. But it's those rolling farmland of Pennsylvania that a lot of people are very familiar with. So AP Hill is making his approach up.

And it's amazing. So is AP Hill hook in a right and now headed to do? Gettysburg? Yeah, he's, his approach is coming towards Gettysburg. You know, I mean, I'm sure he needs resupplies and all that kind of stuff. And he's thinking the same thing, you'll did it. You know, I mean, it's just like if I'm ahead of you by a couple of days and I'm like, yeah, hey, Jocko, man, hey, don't stop at this gas station, man, they're out of this and this gas station's got this. Make sure you go to a Wawa, they're out of Jocko. You know what I mean? Fuel. You need to give them a call real quick. So, you know what I mean? And it's like, oh, okay,

yeah, that place. So you're going to take the recommendations of the reconnaissance that's done before you. So he's like, okay, well, I can head into Gettysburg. So he's making an approach coming out of Chambersburg, and he's making the approach coming towards Gettysburg, but he's still like, you know, he's still like 10 miles out, you know what I mean? And but Buford gets eyes on him. I mean, you're moving that amount of people, man. In June, that's a lot of dust.

There's a lot of animals. You know what I mean? That's just, that's like trying to hide the Macy's Day parade in the freaking desert, man. you're going to see him from a long ways away. And he's got good eyes on, and that's his job. So Beaufort sees this, you know, the Army of Northern Virginia. He doesn't necessarily know at the time, like, which core. But he knows that like there's folks up threatening up around in Harrisburg,

Carlisbury, that's just north of that Chambersburg and north of Gettysburg. So he knows he's got a body that's up there. And then he's got one that's right here, Chambersburg, and then he doesn't know where Longstreet is. Nobody's got eyes on Long Street. So he, yeah, so you've got to, Beaufort, he sees this, and he's got to make decisions of what he does. But like you said, he's cavalry,

and the job of cavalry is reconnaissance. And if you're in reconnaissance, you literally are told that, you know what I mean, you can't do reconnaissance if you're dead. So don't go get in a gunfight, man. You know what I mean? Just get the reconnaissance, come back and tell us, unless you get in a little skirmish chance contact.

Yeah, okay, take a couple of shots, swing your sword a few times, shoot a shotgun, but get the hell out of there. Because you can't do recon if you're dead. So that's his job is to go back and report the Reynolds. And at the same time, he's thinking there's some terrain that I'm sitting on right now that if they get going to be a problem. So at the same time, he's thinking, hey, I know my job is to run back and tell my boss what's going on.

At the same time, he's thinking, wait a second, And if we just let these, if we let this, this army roll, these Confederates roll in here, they're going to be in a really good spot. And it's going to be a big problem for us. So he's got a little bit of a decision to make. Yeah, because his boss, Reynolds, is about 10 miles east of Gettysburg, coming his way. So you got these two folks and he's sitting on McPherson's Ridge. So, and as we know, like Buford made his way through Gettysburg and he's doing reconnaissance.

He's doing map updates. He's looking at terrain, defensible positions. I mean, dude, Beaufort is a competent cavalry commander, man. A guy has been there, done that T-shirts and hats, man. He is love the guy, as you can kind of tell. So as he's coming through town, yeah, it's just like you said, he's up on McPherson's Ridge. And he's like, if those guys get. So in Gettysburg, you've got three Ridge lines, right?

You've got McPherson's Ridge, which is the closest to, you know, AP Hills Corps. then you've got the seminary ridge. McPherson's Ridge is sort of just what would you say northwest of the town of Gettysburg. Yes. So just if you're trying to picture this in your mind, you got three ridges we're about to talk about. The first one,

McPherson's Ridge is the furthest northwest. It's northwest of the little town of Gettysburg. That's the first ridge that we're talking about. Yep. Second Ridge. Second Ridge. Seminary Ridge. Because it has the first.

Lutheran Seminary ever established in the United States. It's a prominent building still there. If you've seen the movie, you'll see the cupula, all that kind of stuff, the steeple, basically. So you've got the seminary ridge, and they're in between McPherson's Ridge and the seminary ridge is that low kind of farm field that still is there, you know what I mean? So it's got like barley or corn and, you know what I mean, that kind of stuff growing. flat valley and then it's you know and we've been there multiple times you know it's not really a big rise up onto the seminary but it's enough to where like that's a you got a primary line and you got

a secondary line that can support the same mission yeah so yeah it's so seminary rid and then eventually you're going to go you know lose a little bit of altitude again you're going to get to the town of getysburg and then it's going to go up on the final ridge which is cemetery Ridge. Cemetery. And it's pretty easy to find because there's like a lot of these white stones up there. It's a freaking cemetery. Right. And cemetery, and it's even like a lot of folks, when you go there, you're like, where the hell's the ridge? I mean, but the ridge is just like that. I mean, it's just enough of a rise because again, between the seminary and the cemetery, it's another drop down. And you do have the town, but south of the town, it's all far. Open. Yeah.

Open. I mean, and then it's got that slight little rise. And what would you say, Jaco? It's like maybe like three quarters of a mile in between cemetery and seminary Ridge. And then it's probably less than that. McPherson to seminary is like, what, maybe a half a mile? I mean, you're within range. I mean, that's 308.

You know what I mean? So, yeah, I mean, so you're looking at those three series with a little bitty town. I mean, Gettysburg's not a banging town. No. No, even right now it's like a little tiny town. Yeah. And at the top, at the north end of cemetery, you've got some other terrain features as well. Yep. You got a, you got what's called Colp's Hill. So you got Cemetery Hill where the cemetery is. And then what is that like a little bit like west, like just west of it? Like, I mean, not very far at all, man. Like not, less than a mile. You've got Culp's Hill. You've got Culp's Hill. which is a woodlot for the Culp Farm that's over there on that side. Then you've got Wolf Hill that's farther to the east and a little bit north. And then you got Bender Hill. You know what I mean?

It's another little prominent terrain feature. But those ones that are there aren't as like Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill next to the town. Like those are the prominent features. And then if you run south down the cemetery ridge, it's going to drop. down low and the next thing you know it's going to kick up and you're going to gain some elevation and you're going to get like back in 63 they just called it the round top in 2022 you've got the first little spur is little round top and then you got a little draw and then it kicks up to big round top and that's all a part of cemetery ridge so if that kind of i mean i feel like i'm literally there

right now, which, yeah, love it. So that's where Buford's at. Buford's at that first ridge, McPherson's Ridge. He's there. He's looking. He sees AP Hill, 15,000 strong that he can kind of, you know, the dust, the animals. Like, he sees what's going on. He's got a decision to make.

What should I do? And I'm going to go to this book by John Buford. the book is called John Buford, a military biography written by a guy by the name of Edward Longacre. And so here's what he says about this decision. By early evening, armed with reliable reports of enemy movements in the vicinity, Beaufort appears to have convinced himself that he could pull off something never achieved in this war. A defense in depth by dismounted cavalry against a large force of foot soldiers. with full artillery support.

Of course, it would be a risky proposition. His scouts had informed Beaufort that not only would he face a good portion of Lee's army outside of Chambersburg and Cashdown, he would also have to contend with veteran infantry along roads from Carlisle and York. To oppose these several columns, Beaufort could place perhaps 2,200 troopers

on the firing line after subtracting from his aggregate force, the one man in four who would serve as a horseholder. Tell me about the job of a horseholder. What's going on with that? Yeah, so with the horseholder kind of thing is if we're at a four-man team, right? So they're going to dismount and they're going to fight like dragoons, like infantry guys. So these guys are going to like rock, paper, scissors from the four of them. And whoever wins, they're going to take all the horses because that's our escape route.

like the horses are very important to the cavalry and they're going to take the horses and they're going to go all the way back over behind seminary ridge and they're going to hold all four horses so after i'm like picked to hold the horses you know jaco'd be looking at me like jd dude dude don't don't you fucking leave with my horse man i don't care how bad it gets dude you better be there because i mean it's it's going to be game on yeah i mean what he does here is incredible as a cavalry commander. But one of the major points there is that we just gave up a quarter of our fighting. Yeah. A quarter of our guys just left with the horses, taking care of our extraction platform, which is we're very thankful for. But that means JD's back here. He's back there over one terrain feature away, you know, chilling out with some horses.

We lost that much of firepower. So here we go. Back to the book, Against such odds, Buford could explain. to hold his ground for a few hours at best but would he have that much time although he was in contact with Reynolds and knew the wing commander would march for Gettysburg come morning Buford could not say when the nearest elements of the army would reach him by refusing to flee from Lee's path by committing himself to fight in an advanced position however favorable he risked not only his divisions

annihilation but the disarranging of General Meade's plans which were predicated on a defensive struggle among the rolling hills of Northern Maryland each of these considerations and others that came to Beaufort's mind carried its own argument against doing what he desired to do taking a long puff off his pipe he considered each argument in turn scrutinizing it from a variety of angles Then he went back over his plan and matched each of the of its assumptions with an appropriate set of consequences For a time he permitted the mixture of pros and cons to simmer in the end the strength of the defensive position he had selected for his army as well as an irresistible Enthusiasm for calculated risk overpowered whatever misgivings he might have entertained

Before sundown on the last day in June, Beaufort had committed himself in thought and indeed to the greatest challenge of his career. That challenge being trying to hold off 15,000, trying to hold off the Army of Northern Virginia with 2,000 guys. Yeah, and I mean, you made a great point earlier, Jocko, when you were talking about like a force. So, okay, so he's got 2,000.

So how many, you take a quarter of that, that's not 2,000 anymore. You got 500 dudes holding horses. I mean, that, and for cavalry, man, to just go up against infantry. Because infantry's bringing artillery with them. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, this is something that you don't necessarily see every day.

But, you know, Beaufort has a vision. you know what I mean as he rides along and the other thing that's cool about Beaufort is Beaufort is 37 years old at this time man I mean 37 he's young you know what I mean looking at it of those of course now I think he's young

back when I was a lot younger I thought he was an old man too but I look now at 37 like that dude's a young punk you know so he has a vision because he knows because he's so in tune with situational awareness of what's going on in the Army of the Potomac that all the Corps spread out. And he knows with the new commander, Mead is slow and methodical.

He's an engineer. And if AP Hill and Robert E. Lee can get his Corps together and gain these high grounds of Gettysburg, then he's going to roll up First Corps. Then he's going to roll up 11th Corps. You know what I mean? He's going to piecemeal these guys because he understands how fast the udalup of Robert Lee moves. So it's just incredible that Beaufort can see this of what's going to happen to his army. And he's got to make a call and he's got to make a stand. He's got to slow this machine down and buy time for his commanders.

Yeah. And really that point of knowing that he, look, he doesn't have to necessarily stop them. What he's going to intentionally do is slow them down. And they go like into a, into like a Russian defense, right? Like, hey, we're going to get out there. We're going to scrap with you a little bit. You start doing well. You start kicking my ass a little bit.

Cool. I'm going to pull back. I'm going to pull back to this next little micro terrain feature. I'm going to pull over this little, over this little knoll, into this little ravine. Oh, behind this stone wall. And they're just going to harass and slow down and just retreat. bit by bit, but make these guys, I mean, dude, you're moving,

we're moving 15, 20,000 people. Like, cool, you're walking down. You know, here's me and JD. We're walking down the road all of a sudden, crack, crack, we're getting shot at. We're running over. We're laying down. Somebody's yelling orders to us.

We're reloading. We took our backpacks off. We're fighting. We're waiting. You know, okay, can we get up a move now? You get up, oh, no, we got shot at again. Another 15 minutes. I'm not moving.

You're moving. I'm not moving. So you can see where this is going. Like that's what exactly what they do is is Buford's guys, they push out and it's great when you're on Gettysburg, when you're at Gettysburg, when you're on McPherson's Ridge, you can see they kind of push down, down off of McPherson's Ridge a little bit to start to intercept them early.

And that's exactly what they do. And so now they are able to fight as dragoons, which is awesome. And, and slow them down. Now, part of this is Beaufort and Reynolds, too. Like, they have an outstanding relationship. And Buford sends a note to Reynolds. Like, hey, boss, here's what's going on.

I got 10 or 20,000 people heading my way. I'm doing my best to slow down. Get up here, please. Yeah, exactly. because it's not like the cavalry guys are like going to dig in, you know what I mean, and go like, oh, yeah, we're going to hold these folks off. It's exactly what you were talking about. You know, like earlier we kind of talked about like, you know, if we went home and said,

hey, you know, we tell the wife and kids, let's go get in the car. You know what I mean? We're going to go out to dinner and it's going to take like 15 minutes. Easy. Well, if you put like one person outside shooting at us, it's going to take a hell a lot longer than 15 minutes because you're going to be trying to get the kids. Hey, go out and go ahead and start the car. Like, I'm not going to hell out.

there, man, or somebody out there shooting at me. You know what I mean? And so that ability, again, so he's looking at it, you know, that time, distance space and his relationship that he has with Reynolds. I mean, we've already talked about John Reynolds, man. I mean, obviously, he's very well thought of if Abraham Lincoln, it wants him to run the army. If two, you know what I mean, a lot of the folks, like the troops love Reynolds. You know what I mean?

I mean, he's just, he's a great guy, great commander. And then he's got a great relationship with his reconnaissance officer. That's John Buford. So these guys have a great, that's his eyes and ears. Like, you know, everything, he's a directed telescope of the commander. So Reynolds trusts Buford. And like I said, and Buford's got to, I mean, in that book written on John Buford, you know, I mean, Buford's got time where he learned this kind of stuff because he was out west.

Remember, like, on future episodes, we talked about how big the army was at the beginning of the Civil War. And all those companies were all out west. Well, he was one of those guys out west, and he was fighting against the Native Americans. And they learned really quickly, cavalry and shooting a rifle off of a horse. It doesn't really work out that well. Get the hell off the horse, man. You know what I mean? and fight like dragoons.

So he's going to bring that kind of tactic to Gettysburg. And then he's just, I mean, he's a student of the game. To him to be a cavalry guy and to understand that defense in depth, the time, distance, space. You know what I mean? That is what's just amazing to me with John Buford. And then he's going to send that note back. And he also knows, because, you know, it's a.

a big risk for him. He doesn't know what Reynolds is going to do, and he also doesn't know what kind of the rest of the Army's doing. Like, Buford doesn't know that this pipe creek kind of thing's coming out, but Reynolds and the Corps commanders are getting word of this. You know what I mean? That, hey, man, this is kind of kind of beat. I mean, they have to expect, like, you get a new commander, he's going to come out with orders. And with that, as soon as Reynolds gets that note, you know what I mean? He giddy-ups and starts making his way towards Gettysburg. And again, he's got about a 10-miler.

You know what I mean? Well, again, 10 miles, man. And he's got pretty good roads. But he's going to make his way because he understands that he's got 2,000 folks and he's reporting that there's 15,000 people heading that way. Reynolds is a smart guy, man. He can do the math quickly. And he's like, if you get here and you can hold

this high ground man you're going to lay the wood to those Confederates coming up this road. So Reynolds is going to giddy up and he's going to get his way. He's not stopping at Starbucks to get a frap-a-lap-a-ding-dong, man. He's getting on the pony and he's riding.

Yeah, much different than, you know, we spoke a lot about McClellan and how McClellan would exaggerate what was happening. There's this many troops. And so, like, you get a report from McClellan. Like, hey, I need help. I got, you know, 20,000. You're like, oh, whatever.

He's like, I'm blowing this guy off. But when you have that trust, you have that relationship, then it's, oh, if Buford's telling me that I need to get up there, let's go, let's go. So that trust up and down the chain of command and that relationship up and down the chain of command is what allows this to be successful, at least this early stage of the battle. Yeah, because, and even it even goes farther with that. Now you're looking at, I mean, it's a whole different dynamic that we're dealing with here in the Army of the Potomac.

Like, when you brought up like Little Mac and like, you know, his info, I mean, if that was him at McPherson's Ridge, there's 198 million people down to Chamberburg. You know what I mean? Like the whole Confederacy is moved to Chambersburg. You know, with these guys, so he's going to get that information from Beaufort. So guess what Reynolds is going to do? He's going to send a freaking teenager man down and he's going to let the other folks know. He's going to let his boss know because of his relationship with Mead.

and anything coming from Reynolds to Mead, you think he's going to be like, oh man, what the hell is Reynolds doing up there, man? I got this whole plan. I've been working on. I mean, you know,

typical engineer. You know what I mean? You know, my dad, you know, he's got nothing against engineers. I love them. But, you know, he's like, man,

I'm sure he put a lot of thought into that freaking plan. Into Pipes Creek. Yeah. Into Pipes Creek. And now Pipes Creek, he's getting that's kind of getting thrown out the window. Yeah,

because now you've also got these other core commanders that are down in Maryland. So if you're going to shift from down at Pipes Creek up to Gettysburg, you're causing a lot of your peer core commanders. They're going to have to make a pretty significant move. 40-something miles. Right. So instead of Reynolds going, let's say, 30, 40 miles to get down there. Now, if they establish this is going to be where go time is, now all of those folks to include the new.

new army commander. It's got to come from Frederick, Maryland to Gettysburg. So he's literally putting the entire army in motion. And all the other, his peers have already seen the Pipe Creek circular. So what do you think they're all doing? Getting their folks ready to go to Pipe Creek. And then here's John Reynolds, sends a note back. And this guy, Buford, who's a cavalry guy, is making this call. You know, it's just amazing. The relationship between Buford to Reynolds to Mead. I mean, we're seeing something that we haven't seen in the Army of the Potomac.

You also see open minds, you know, which we've seen a lot of closed minds. I haven't really used that time. I use it all the time when I work with people and talk about leadership. We've seen a lot of closed minds, i.e. we're at. Chancellorville, I get a report that the Confederates are moving to my flank. And I go, I don't want to hear that, right? There's a lot of these closed minds. But to have an open mind and think, oh, the battle is not what I thought it was going to be.

My mind is open. What adjustments do we need to make? Now, we've also talked about the fact that Lee likes to pick his battlefield. He likes to choose where he's going to fight. And it seems like this is not his at this point this is not he's not looking at this as an advantageous place to get into a Scrap with his whole with his whole army So this is a point where he's saying look You're gonna go into Gettysburg. Okay, there might be some militia in there okay

But we don't want to fight here we you know and his orders are Don't get into a general engagement. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's what Lee,

he doesn't want to get into a big fight here. He's, he, he hadn't chosen this. You know, maybe he hasn't gone up there looked at himself or he's got some other thing in mind or

he's seeing the vision of where he wants this battle to take place and it ain't in Gettysburg. So he tells his guys, all right, hey, you're going to go in, get some stuff. Don't, don't get,

you might get some resistance, okay, but don't get into a general engagement. how's that work out for him yeah in your spot remember you know these three core are all separated so he's you know and if he's going to go into about he's every battle that we've talked about there's one thing that's for certain the union always has more people than the confederates like everyone that we've never talked about like man robert lee's got him like three to one like he's never seen those odds so yeah and he likes to see the truck

Robert E. Lee is that he's an engineer as well. He's just got a really cool Ooloo. You know what I mean? Like the dude can, I mean, he can figure shit out quick. That's why a lot of the folks, you know,

when you study Robert E. Lee and there's, you know, tons of stuff written on Robert E. Lee as well. So, you know, he's got a bunch of teenage couriers that are hanging out with him as well. So he's, you know, when they get up in the morning,

you know, of July 1st, you know what I mean? He's got to send a yellow sticky out to his core commanders, just like he had been doing forever. And you were spot on, man. He's going to send a note out that says, do not get a general engagement. Primary reason being, well, primary reason being is like, hey, look, Yules up north.

Yep. Longstreet's still down south. Like, we're not, we're not unified. And we don't want to get a fight. Like, hey, I walk into a bar by myself. I'm going to wait until Echo and JD show up before I start hitting people, right? That's, I don't want to get to a general engagement. Like, I might talk a little smack, but I'm.

I'm going to like keep it cool. So that's what he's saying. He's that, look, we're not unified right now. Don't get, and, and I haven't seen the terrain. I don't know about the terrain. This, I haven't decided this is where I want to fight. So he tells everybody on his little yellow stick, he's courier sent out, don't get into general engagement.

Yeah, and you can only imagine that also with Robert Lee, you know, he had his two core and he had his defensive mindset of James Longstreet, and he had his offensive mindset of Stonewall Jackson. Well, that's gone. So he's also got two new core commanders. So I could imagine he wants to, yeah, he wants to keep him in close. And I can imagine on an away game, I think offensive is not something that he's like,

he wants to get into a position to where he can be attacked. Because he's always outnumbered, his resupply. I mean, his resupply, man, running all the way back down to the valley, I mean, it's like, I mean, he's got, it's like 20 miles, man, of a log train. I mean, huge, because he's got to bring all his stuff with him. If you look at the Army of the Potomac of Frederick, Maryland and all that, their supplies, you know, they got Baltimore and Washington, literally to their southeast with road networks. So, like, their resupply depot is as good as it's going to get. As good as it's good. Yeah.

And also the road network comes right up in and behind Cemetery in Culp's Hill. So, I mean, that's good terrain. It's like ideal. Ideal. And, and yeah, of course, yeah, Pipes Creek would have been banging too. But that's kind of, they're still accomplishing the mission of the boss. They're just at a different location protecting Baltimore and Washington. and the trust that he has with those commanders to select that position for him is something

that's different in the Army of Northern Virginia. You see what I'm getting at? It's like Robert E. Lee wants to pick. That's 7-0 and 1. That one is because Robert E. Lee didn't get a chance to pick. It was forced upon him. So he's going to send that yellow sticky out to all the Corps commanders that don't get in a general engagement. And again, Robert E. Lee is.

moving on the Chambersburg Pike with AP Hill. And they're making the approach to Gettysburg. And they don't know that that's John Buford up there. You know what I mean? They don't know that because everybody's always going to like, we might as well just go ahead and throw this out here on the table right now, man. Everybody's like, oh, well, they didn't have cavalry. No, they just didn't have Jeb Stewart.

There's there's freaking cavalry with the Army of Northern Virginia. It's just not Jeb Stewart. So when people are like, oh, he didn't have cavalry. No, he had cavalry. He didn't have Jeb Stewart. So they still could have done a better job with reconnaissance? Yeah. They could have been running reconnaissance just like, but you know, and that could be a downfall of Robert E. Lee.

I mean, he really likes, you know, Jeb Stewart. But Jeb Stewart, man, is, you know, he's off doing like Jeb Stewart shit. You know what I mean? Which is what? He's out riding around. further south. Yeah, he's south and coming up on the other side. I mean, he's notorious for, you know, doing his ride around the entire army.

You know, I mean, kind of doing it, disrupting logistical trains, you know, ripping up rail line, tearing up bridges, cutting telegraph. I mean, doing all that stuff that's just like that, that just running around being an asshole, man. Dude, he's an asshole, man. You know what I mean? Like, and everybody just hates it. You know what I mean?

Like that son of a bitch, because it's just like anything else. You don't even have to fire a shot. You cut the line and they're all using telegraph. We're not getting a response back. That son of a bitch cut the fucking line again. And that's going to take time. And that's the most perishable is time. That's the only thing you can't get back, man, is time.

So as this is episode, there's not real great reconnaissance. and you got, you know, it's actually, what is it, Heath at the front of the push into Gettysburg. Heath is at the front of the Army of Northern Virginia, front of the Confederates. Heath is out front. And, you know, you always, when we're up there, you always do a pretty good, you always do a pretty good reenactment of, you know, generally, and maybe it's AP Hill and they're kind of riding on their horses heading to Gettysburg. and like, they hear some gunfire, you know, like bang, bang, and they're like, oh, and generally he kind of looks over like, what's that? Well, probably just, you know, some of those militias they were coming up against.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, militia. And then they hear bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and they hear, what was that? Maybe a little more militia resistance? And then they started hearing cannons. And then they start hearing a lot of, a lot of rifles and bus gets fired. And all of a sudden start sounding out. hell of a lot like a general engagement. Yeah, I mean, when we're up there, you know, like up on Oak Hill, if you're ever up there

because I always, I mean, you're talking about Robert Lee here, man. I mean, now that Jackson's down, like, he is the Confederacy. And, you know, and he's riding with AP Hill. And this is AP. Heath works for AP Hill moving with the third core. And, you know, and he's probably just like, is just like me, you know, if I was, if I'm in your APL and I'm looking over you and I'm like, Jocko, you got the sticky, right?

Yep, yes, sir, I got the sticky. Don't get into General Gates. Did you pass that on to your subordinate folks? Well, of course I did, sir. Those are like, that's artillery up there, brother. You know what I mean? But again, to go back to your point of not running reconnaissance, the last reconnaissance information that they had in Gettysburg,

was it was militia. You know what I mean? So failing to run, you know, I mean, you're a core commander, man. Come on, AP. You know what I mean? Throw some guys out, man. Get some eyes on before you're going to just get on the road and start hey, diddle-diddling your way up there, man.

But he's got Heath and he's making his way up. And just like you said, like, I mean, Beaufort's playing it's smart. He's got those guys down there in that valley. Like when we stand up there, man, by the barn. Like, you can't get a better view, man. And then the other thing is, you're standing in the exact spot of John Buford. I would go to Gettysburg just on that,

just to do that. I just want to stand in the same spot as that dude. And if you want, like, wonder why I got like a man crush on him and stuff like. If you get a chance to watch the movie of Gettysburg, Sam Elliott plays John Buford. And it's in my opinion, if you die and Sam Elliott plays you in the movie,

you were a badass. You're good to go. Oh, you're good to hook, brother. You know what I mean? So, I mean, in my opinion, like, his balls need to be carried around in a dump truck for what he's doing up there on McPherson's Ridge. Just my, that's just shady. Love the guy.

So here comes Heath, and he's approaching, just like you said, but down there in that swamp, that creek that's down there in the bottom. And you can kind of see there's houses there now, but that was, you know what I mean? So, yeah, now they're going to start taking those shots. And Heath and the commanders are like, yeah, they're not. up front and they got the privates, you know what I mean? And these dudes are getting shot at. So, of course, yeah, they're going to get down and they're going to deploy out. And they're going to start shooting back. And then they're going to be like, hey, man, we got some resistance up here.

And I could just imagine the commander's going, yeah, hey, dude, it's a militia, man, get up, we'll just push on. And then they start pushing, and you know, that incline coming up, the McPherson's Ridge. It's pretty prominent. So now you're going uphill. And then when you hit that farmland? Like, dude, there's nowhere to hide out there. And you got these dudes that are up there on that ridge and they're going to start, and he's got, you know, he's got the horse artillery with him. So they got artillery up there, you know what I mean? Not as much as an infantry, but he's got, he's got some guns. So now you're getting hit with artillery. And of course, now if you have artillery, you got counter-artillery. So he's going to bring up artillery. They're going to

start deploying and Hill and Lee are riding up. You know, they're like five miles back. Dude, you can hear that shit. You know what I mean? And I can only imagine like, dude, that is a straight up engagement going on up there. And by the time, you know, when we go up there on Oak Hill and it's a great vantage point to oversee Gettysburg, the town. And you can see the cemetery hill from over there because you're elevated enough above the town to see it. You could see Culp's Hill from there.

You can see the Wolf Hills a little bit off into the distance. And this is where Lee ends up. This is where Lee ends up by the time he ends up. So he ends up in a place that is north of Gettysburg Town. And it's called Oak Hill. And like you're describing right now, it's a very good vantage point to look at everything. And that's what he's, now he's looking and going, well, yeah, this is a full on general engagement. we got a battle, but basically a battle going down here.

I mean, just to kind of put people into like the perspective of what's happening is like by the time Robert E. Lee gets there, because everybody's like, I mean, it's not like he's got a helicopter that can fly him up there and he could do a quick buzz over. I mean, by the time he gets there, like the Confederates, they've already gotten a general officer and, like, captured. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, they're McPherson's Ridge. They've already pushed back. And now they're in that, that valley that you and I talked about in between seminary Ridge and McPherson's Ridge. And, you know, you'll agree because we've ended up there a bunch of times.

When you look down off of Oak Hill, that's a prominent drop. And then it's just straight flat into the town where now, like, I mean, it's flat enough to put it in a perspective. like Gettysburg College, that's their sports fields. You know what I mean? So you don't play sports fields on a freaking hill, man. It's flat. It's a valley. So he gets up there and AP Hill and his folks,

they're successfully pushing that first core of John Reynolds back off of McPherson's Ridge by the time Robert E. Lee gets to Oak Hill. How's Reynolds doing? Unfortunately, also by the time Robert E. Lee gets down there, John Reynolds is not the senior commander on the field anymore. He is like literally, I mean, from where we stand there at the McPherson Barn on McPherson's Ridge, like, I mean, what would you say, man, like 200 yards down in that wood line a little bit back off of McPherson's Ridge is, You know, Reynolds get shot and killed. Like out of the gate. Like out of the gate, man.

You know, and I always kind of, you know, because obviously I've spent a lot of time standing up there and just thinking about John Buford and what he did that day. But I could imagine when he's up there just like laying the wood, you got 1,500 guys. And then you look back to the east and you got the seminary and you see Reynolds making his way up. Bro. Oh, yeah. I bet he's like, son of a bitch,

he's here, man. Because now, guess what? It's his rodeo. You know what I mean? Like, he's now the senior commander. And Reynolds is that guy. You know,

he owns it. I mean, you want to talk about a guy that's got extreme ownership? One, those two. They own it. Reynolds didn't come in and like, dude, I can't believe you picked this spot.

He's just in it and he is in the front lines. I mean, he's on me. He's not sitting back. He very well could have stayed back at the seminary ridge right next to the seminary and sent folks forward and observed the battle from there. But you know as well as I. If you're on seminary, you can't see down over on that, on the, uh, on the western slope of McPherson's Ridge. So he comes all the way up to McPherson's ridge and there's a flipping gunfight. It's a battle going on. And he takes one and goes straight

down. And Reynolds is killed on McPherson's rear. There's a marker that's there. It sits tucked in over by the wood line a little bit. But you can see a path going to it because a lot of people. There's a Reynolds monument that's up there on the Chambersburg Pike of him on his horse that sits there as well. That's not where he got killed. That's just where his monument is. So you got to go over to the south and you can see where the marker is of where he actually got killed and as soon as he goes down man they get him off the field quickly because they don't want the troops to see that Reynolds is down because that's a morale booster general Reynolds goes down man who now became the the senior guy on the on the field Howard that's uh that's not a morale booster

a while this is happening we also have to remember that yule is Was further up north and now he's heading south. He got word. Hey, this is what's going on. Get down here. So, so you got Lee gets to Oak Hill. You got Yule heading south to and again, I always just just to remind everybody the confederate forces are moving to the south to engage because they had swept up to the north. That's why they're moving south even though it might be counterintuitive. But, but, but you will is heading south to to get in the, engagement as well. And you got Lee up on, up on Oak Hill, and he's looking at the battlefield. And, you know, we got these, these, these ridges that we're talking about, this high ground, this available high ground. And he's starting to think the same thing. Like, all right, well, I'm here.

You think at this point he's decided this is where it's going to be? Yeah, you know what I mean? Again, you know, Robert Lee, man, he's a smart guy. And just so folks now, like we were talking earlier of when he gets to O. Oak Hill, and I encourage everybody go to Oak Hill. You can look across and you can see Cemetery and Culp's Hill, but you can also look up to the north at Carlisle. I mean, because it's flat farmland. There is no major terrain feature. So yeah, so you got Yule making that approach. Like everybody, just like you said, they're all turning towards Gettysburg because it's not

like they're up there just traips it around. Remember what Robert E. Lee's trying to do. He's trying to sway the votes, man. It doesn't really even matter if he gets into a battle. You know what I mean? If he can politically put enough pressure on folks up there, you know what I mean? And threatened D.C., you know what I mean? He could force the hand of the union without even a battle. So now he's got these folks moving in. And when you're up there at Oak Hill, so he sees the approach of how you'll is going to come in and he's going to hit Gettysburg from the north. So you got AP Hill coming from west to east and now you've got this other core of second core coming from north to south. That's pretty good geometry and you're pushing. They have pushed them off McPherson's Ridge.

They're pushing them back through to Seminary Ridge. Some of them are starting to make their through the town of Gettysburg. And they're starting to, that third line is the cemetery hill and cemetery ridge. Nobody's going to Culp's Hill because that's behind it. They're just going to the next high ground. They're not going to hang out in the town. They're just running through the town and they're ending up on cemetery hill, which is where Howard is hanging out.

And they're watching this unfold. So when Robert Lee sees that geometry, he's going to call an audible. You know what I mean? It's kind of like the quarterback. He gets the kind of play from the coach, but if he walks out there and he gets a look, he's like, I don't like the way the linebackers are looking here, man.

And he's going to call Omaha. You know what I mean? And they're going to call an audible. And he's a smart enough guy. His Oudaloo's kind of running. He's looking at the math. Yeah, push him here. That's going to expose the right flank of the Union Army.

And he knows that it's not the entire army of the Potomac. Like, he knows, I mean, George Gordon Meade at this time is still. literally in Frederick Maryland, man. And he's got a couple of corps down there with them. So, man, this is a huge advantage for Robert E. Lee. It's almost the vision that Buford had. And he's going to do it without Longstreet.

So he's going to send a yellow sticky down to Yule that tells Yule sees the heights beyond the town, if practicable. Keyword in this podcast has been practicable. So recap, you got Yule heading south. You got Lee up on Oak Hill. He's looking down. He measures the geometry, runs the calculus. He's like, I got this.

Here's what we're going to do. We're going to take that high ground that I can see. That General Lee can see. You can see that high ground back beyond the town. So he sends that message to Yule. seize the heights beyond the town if practicable. Now, what's really cool when you go there on the ground, we get to do this. You and I have done this many, many times now.

We stand on Oak Hill. We look and we look at what heights are beyond the town. Then we get in our cars and we drive down to where Yule is approaching. Over by Barlow's. Over by Barlos. And it's a totally different picture. Totally. Totally different picture.

So, you know, when you look at, you ever seen those weird pieces of art? If you listen to this right now, you ever seen a weird piece of art where they, they take a bunch of like marbles hanging from the ceiling. And you look at them, it just looks like a big blob. And then you walk over to the right. And all of a sudden it looks like a horse. Right. It's perspective. Yeah.

Perspective has changed. So that's exactly what happens here where when Lee's looking up, he can basically see from that perspective on Oak Hill. It looks like there's some kind of a ridge beyond the town. That's what it looks like. Just a general ridge, just some high ground. You go over to where Yule's looking at it from. What does it look like from there? You're looking down to valley, dude.

There is no high ground beyond the town. And when you look at a town, you're kind of looking at the steeple. You know what I mean? Because it's still there to this day. I mean, like we said, I mean, it's not like Gettysburg's a big town. And you get over there like on the Barlow's knoll and you're getting that perspective. of looking down and you're like, dude, I'm looking down a valley.

And it's not like he doesn't know where Robert E. Lee is sending the message from. Yeah. Which is another thing. He's like, hey, dude, I'm here and this is how I'm looking. Just a cardinal direction. I'm looking from west to east at the town. Yule is a smart enough dude that he could be like, okay, he's looking at it. So there's the town.

Bobby's looking at it. He can't call him Bobby yet. They're not that tight. So he's looking at it from from west to east. I'm looking at it from north to south. So if I put a map just literally on the ground and just like draw, do a quick freaking terrain model, like rub the dirt a little bit. You can draw the arrow.

Okay, Lee must be here. Here's the town. This is it. There's the heights. Got it. Because his perspective, he's going to be like, okay,

he must be somewhere over there because he knows he's moving with AP Hill. Right. But AP Hill dude is like, They're spread out. McPherson's Ridge. 20,000 people. You know what? Ridge.

So he's looking over and he's like, okay, just like I explained before, like at the beginning. So you look over at the heights and it's like you can like from there, you can barely pick out like the cemetery. Yeah. Just because of that angle. Yeah. You can't see the round top. Like, you know what I mean? So you're in defilade enough to wear that low ground.

You're in a valley. But you can see Coles Hill. You could see Wolfhill and you can see better. Well, that's three. I'm good with like, just tell me. None of them, none of them are beyond this town from your perspective. Yeah. None of them are.

If you would have given a freaking cardinal direction, hey, seize the heights south of the town, we could have at least worked with it a little bit. Like, work with me a little bit, man. You know what I mean? It's like, if you set me out to lunch, you know what I mean? And it's like, hey, Jock, there's three sandwiches on the menu. and you're just like, just get me a sandwich. And then I come back, but you're like,

hey, get me one with meat, if practicable. Well, when I get there, it's not practical to get meat sandwich. So I come back with like, just like a veggie, little veggie wrap for you. Yeah, we got problems. Yeah, you could be pissed. So that's the other key. We've talked about this on one of the earlier podcast, but the word if practicable,

the problem with that word is it, there's such a wide range of perspective on what is practicable and what is not because look somebody says oh i can take that hill with you know no more than 20 casualties that seems practical to me someone else's like hey i'm not going to lose one person trying to take this hill you don't want you want me to lose any guys do you someone else like oh you know jackson would be like oh you want me to take that hill practicable oh it's practical i don't care what the cost is so you'll so you'll so you'll decide's going to try and do something right yeah so Yule is going to make the approach.

You know, after a while, they can kind of figure out which height, because that's where all the union are kind of running to. But then, you know, when you look at Culp's Hill, Culp's Hill is higher in elevation than Cemetery Hill. And remember I said earlier, there's nobody on Culp's Hill. You know what I mean? Because, like, you and I have been there. Like, I mean, if you leave Cemetery Hill, you know what I mean? If you're looking at it on a map, you're like, oh, that's not very far. That terrain in between the two, man.

Like, if you get up in the morning, like before the staff ride, you know what I mean? Go on a walk and just, because you could go right behind the hotel because the hotel is literally on Cemetery Hill. Walk over to Cope's Hill. You know, I mean, just walk it with nobody shooting at you. You know what I mean? In daylight, you know what I mean? It's a beautiful walk. But I, because people love the just, they love the, let's all just drag out Yule and let's

just, you know, pounce him around a little bit because he didn't take the freaking hill. Where are those guys coming from? Carlisle. Where had they been? They've been walking from Spotsylvania, Virginia, in June, all the way up to Harrisburg. And this isn't like, you know, they're doing a through hike on the Appalachian Trail, man.

You know what I mean? Like, these dudes are in wool underwear, man, making their way around up there. And then now they're going to push south coming from. Carlisle and they're going to get resistance. They're going to go right into, I mean, these dudes have got to be tired. They're dragging all their stuff with them. And then you're going to get there and he's going to get to Culp's Hill. But before he wants to go up the hill, he's going to send a reconnaissance up there.

He's not just going to commit everybody because what if somebody's up there? And you know as well as I do, man, that's a steep little climb man to get up to Culp's Hill. And it's a woodlot. So it's wooded. Now they let the farm animals and stuff like eat the underbrush and stuff. So it's not like if you go there today, you're going to see like a lot of underbrush. You could see through the trees, but you can't see well enough because what's also happening towards the end of July 1st. The sun's starting to go down and it's going to be dark soon.

Well, we've remembered what happened the last time a commander went forward in the dark. There's only a month ago. that's his core he has now. Hmm, where's Jackson? He went out and monkeyed around at dark. You know what I mean? So he's going to send, you know what I mean? Like a reconnaissance of a picket kind of.

Hey, you know what I mean? Go on up there, man, and take a look and see what's up on there. Even if it's a company. You know what I mean? Send a company up there and they're kind of like online and they're moving slowly up the top of Colp's Hill. You know what I mean? Before he's going to do a full-on commitment.

And he also, as he looks at it, he sends a note back to Robert E. Lee. And he wants to know if like, hey, man, can I get like somebody from AP Hill? Can he send me like a division over to kind of like help me out, a brigade? You know what I mean? Can I get some of his folks? I mean, he is the one that got us in a general engagement here. You know what I mean? But AP Hill is kind of spent by this time.

If you could imagine, I mean, he's been in battle all day. McPherson's Ridge all the way to He's made it all the way to the seminary. And he's pushed them all the way through the town. So, you know, so Robert Ely gets this note from Yule. You know, hey, can I get some reinforcements here, man? And he goes, he basically says, I'll support you with long range artillery. Well, dude, long range artillery is not going to do anything.

So no. No. Yeah. And Lee has the ability to be like, hey, AP, send a division over. over, send him over, and you're going to attach, just like you had seen before at Chancellersville. I mean, there was two divisions that were fighting with Second Corps. I mean, Lee has that capability. For sure.

He's what you would call the dispatcher. Yeah. Now, we're, I mean, the union is also looking at Colp's Hill, luckily, and we got other troops arriving on the battlefield at this time. Yep. And so what happens with the Indiana? Oh, yeah. So the Indiana Regiment, because when you do that little morning walk up to Colpso, you're going to see this little small monument up there for Indiana. And you're like, huh.

If you're from Indiana, you're like, oh, man, Indiana's up here. Bad ass. How did they get there is kind of the interesting story. So, you know, you've got a logistic train. And then you've got this asshole that's out riding around trying to disrupt all your logistics. So you got to take infantry and you got to put. them with the log train to protect the log train. It's an important job.

You lose logistics. You're done training. So this Indiana regiment is back there, and they're supposed to be protecting a log train. Well, they're infantry. Nobody's thrilled when it, because you're always looking at it like, man, Jaco must not like me because he stuck me with the log train and everybody else is up there. You know, Jason and Steve and them are up there running around Gettysburg,

and I can hear the battle going on. and they're going to be telling stories, man, and I'm missing out. And so that's what these Indiana dudes are standing back there. And I can imagine with the colonel and stuff, you know, they got like the privates and shit. Sure would be nice to get in the fights or can't believe you're back here doing this bullshit. You know, typical private stuff. And the colonel's like, you know, he's kind of listening to it. Hey, man, this is a job.

This is important too. Finally, the colonel's like, dude, we're in. They look at the dudes at the log train, you know what I mean? They're just like, these are like contractor folks that are, you know, just dragging wagons and shit, you know what I mean? And they're like, hey, dude, you're on your own. We're getting in this. So Indiana leaves the log train, and they don't tell anybody. They just freaking leave. And they make their way. And of course, you can hear the gun, there's a lot of activity going on. You know what I mean? And everybody's up on Cemetery Hill. So these dudes make their way up

Cemetery Hill. And of course, you know, Howard and any commander that's up there, they just see, they got a fresh infantry regiment. They didn't ask them, hey, how'd you get here? What were you supposed to be doing? They're just like, hey, you guys, Indiana? Yeah, hey, how about go up there and get up on culpsel and occupy culpsel? Because nobody's there yet. And it's higher than them and they need to get somebody up there.

But they also got to worry about what's in front of them. So they got this like, they're looking at it as like, hey, man, folks are starting to arrive here. And so Indiana gets up on to Culp's Hill. And I mean, dude, this is like minutes. So Indiana leaves Culp's Hill, or as you were, leaves Cemetery Hill after they've been told, get up there on Cope. They make their way down and through the little valley,

and they make their way up onto Culp's Hill on this woodlock. And it's like they get there like literally like a couple of minutes before that reconnaissance efforts. being pushed up by Yule. So you could imagine, like, these dudes in a gunfight, the privates from Yule, and they're moving up toward, I mean, they're going up that hill. One, who wants to fight going up that freaking hill, man?

Not me, even still to this day. Because it's a prominent terrain feature in Gettysburg. The Indiana gets up there, and they're just stoked to be there. And here they get up there on the military crest, kind of facing to that northerly direction, because that's where all the threats kind of coming from. so they get into position. And the next thing you know, man,

they see bodies moving up towards Culp's Hill. And what do they do? They just, it's time to, you know, lay the wood. So they start firing down into these Confederates that are making their way up there. What are the Confederate guys do? They turn, they run their ass back down the hill. And, of course, they got officers down there waiting.

You know what I mean? Like, hey, what's going on up there? They're shooting at us. How many? A hell if I know. you want to take your ass up there and go look but it's dark you know what I mean I'm not going back up there so they report that they report to the command you'll of colp's hill is occupied that now it becomes not practicable which I mean come on man I mean this dudes have done a lot of movement it's not like

they haven't done anything that day and I mean and if it's occupied and you've been there I mean it's different if you read the book and you kind of oh shit if I was there I'm going to take him Colp's Hill, baby, yeah, whatever, dude. You know what I mean? That's a steep climb. So then the bad thing is with the privates is that kind of look at it is. So when he pulls his folks back off of Colps Hill and they kind of set up in a defensive position, so you got AP Hills over there on the seminary, on the seminary ridge, and then you kind of over on the north to northeast side of the town, you know what I mean,

towards like that area closer to Culp's Hill, that's where Yule's going to set up. His folks are going to be spread out all facing, you know what I mean, south towards Gettysburg, the town, and then towards Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill. So that's, they're going to set up there, and then AP Hill is set up over by the seminary, and they're going to set up their lines on the seminary, and that's going to pretty much end day one. you got I mean

Reynolds is dead which put Howard in charge yeah how does Mead feel about that yeah when Mead gets the word again it gets it all the way down and he's down in Frederick

Maryland and the dispatch comes down and letting him know what the actions because you know these guys are sending couriers back man all the time keeping the commander in the loop so the commander's getting that stuff back Mead gets it and he's like, man, Reynolds is dead. First thing he does, he's looking at this map. He's like, man, who's a senior guy on the board?

And they're like, it's General Howard, sir. Uh-oh. So, interesting is, he's got his second core down there with him. And the second core commander of the Army of Potomac, a guy by the name of General Hancock. And I know we've kind of talked a little bit about Hancock. He's a good dude. He's a Pennsylvania as well, very, very well respected.

I mean, the pure leadership in the Army of the Potomac has trained dramatically. I mean, you still got a couple of outlier, core commanders that are run around the Army of the Potomac. We'll talk about later. But for the most part, like, you know, Mead has got some good dudes and he's got a really good one. You know, even though he loses Reynolds, Hancock is at that level. He's Reynolds level, in my opinion. Love the guy. So he's going to basically, he's going to turn to Hancock, and he's going to tell Hancock,

hey, dude, relinquish your core to Gibbon and make your way to Gettysburg, and I want you to take command of all actions in Gettysburg. And Hancock, you know, Hancock knows that there's a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of dilemma with this because he's junior to Howard. So now, you know, how's this going to play out? You know what I mean? I'm going to go up to Gettysburg and I'm going to tell a senior officer that even though we're both core commanders, you know how it is in the military, man. I don't care if, you know what I mean? Two Marines are in a room, one of them is senior man. You're damn right. You know what I mean? Fifteen minutes. Like, what is it? I got you. Yeah. You know what I mean? And it's just like, dude, they just lined us up for promotion by fricking, you know, by alphabetical order.

You're a B and I'm a C, so you're, yep, I got promoted 15 seconds before you boot. And Howard's the kind of guy that seems like the person that would exercise that kind of seniority all day. Oh, in my opinion, most definitely. Yeah. Howard is not going to allow. Because how is that going to look? You know what I mean? like so a junior dude came up and and he just took command of everything it's going to get out everybody's going to see it everybody in the army knows the seniority in the organization it's not

like it's a secret you know what I mean like so yeah he sees it it's going to be a problem but the cool thing about it is is uh meed has a letter when he's when he's designated from Abraham Lincoln to be the new army commander. He's got a letter from Abraham Lincoln that says pretty much, dude, you can promote, you can fire, you can put in charge whoever you see fit. And he's got this letter. And he's going to say, hey, dude, and he tells that to Hancock. Dude, I got this letter, man.

Here's the letter. I'm allowed to do whatever the hell I want. I don't care about seniority, man. You're in charge. Get your ass to Gettysburg. So he takes the letter, shoves it in the. his cargo pocket or his satchel. They didn't have cargo pockets, though.

They missed out a lot. I love a cargo market. So, you know what I mean? So he puts it in his satchel, and he's going to start making his way to Gettysburg, and he's going to leave his core there. But then the core is going to, like, so he's just not going to be with the movement, but you got to look at, like, you know, Mead. And a lot of people are like, well, why didn't Mead just, like, get on his pony and go to

mead's got a lot of stuff to do, man. He had the pipe creek circular. He's got to adjust a lot. of logistics because all the logistics were coming to support Pipe Creek. Now, in a matter of hours, it's gone from Pipe Creek that's in Maryland, by the way, to Gettysburg that's in Pennsylvania. 40 miles or something. Yeah, I mean, yeah, so he's got to make all these, you know, amateur study tactics, professional study logistics. We finally have a professional running the Army of the Potomac, in my opinion. So yeah, he's going to take, and why not, man? Let Hancock,

let Hancock go do it. He can do it. He's just as capable. Bad ass, in my opinion. So that's what he's going to do, and Hancock's going to make his way up to Gettysburg. And when he gets up there, Hancock is going to get up to Cemetery Hill,

and he's going to see General Howard. And he's thinking about, like, how am I going to deal with this guy when I get there? You know, I mean, knowing that this is just, not going to be good. But he's got some time to think. I mean, always, you know, it seems to me like we never get enough time to think. Like, I love personal time to think.

So he gets this time to think, and he makes his way up, and he gets up there to Cemetery Hill, because that's where all the action is. He comes up over on the east side, comes up onto the back. But as he's making his approach, man, you know what I mean? He's looking at the train. You know what I mean? He's looking at everything of how, okay. We got Culp's Hill, we got Cemetery, we got this cemetery ridge line that's running down.

We got the round tops. He goes, dude, this is, this is good terrain, man. Because he's literally coming up the approach route from Frederick as all the other assets are going to be making their way up. He's like, dude, this is good. And they got interior lines. So it's what like in the book and stuff like that when you come out there, it's kind of hard to, if you lay a map out in front of you and you look at Colps Hill. to Cemetery Hill and then you look down Cemetery Ridge

to the round top. It looks like a fish hook. So they're going to have these interior lines with resupply that's going to be protected by this fish hook. So Hancock goes up to Howard. He's like General Howard, you know what I mean?

General Hancock, you know how that all, you know, you got to get the formality shit out of the way real quick. And he's like, damn, sir, you've selected some good ground. If you'll allow me, I'll go ahead and like start taking over placing folks in. So literally he's convincing Howard that he, he's selected this ground.

And it's like the black belt leadership move instead of going up, hey, I'm in charge now. Here's my letter from Mead. You need to stand down. He knows that would be like drama, conflict, issues. Like just, just drama. And instead he just says, hey, hey sir, looks like you've done a great job,

select the ground, if you'll allow me, I'll start putting the troops in some spots. And it gives them a little ego massage, you know, about what great ground he selected. And, you know, uh, uh, he's like, yep, that sounds good. Go ahead. Go ahead, Hancock. You go ahead and carry on with that, right? Just, and that's what they do. Oh, I mean, yeah, I mean, the, the black and, and you know what I love about, because this is another thing that, like, that I think of, when I'm up there and I always think of, of with Hancock, Hancock, Hancock has the best interest of the private in mind because he knows that if they get into this pissing contest up there

and he, I mean, he doesn't even break out the freaking letter from Mead. Like it never even comes up. Because, you know, Hancock knows what's Howard going to do? Howard's going to get one of these teenage kids. He's going to write a message. Okay, well, how long does it take to write a freaking message? You know what I mean? Then he's going to give this message.

to a little freaking teenager. I've been told that I've been relieved by Hancock, and I want to debate with this. And I am the senior man. I got to wait for him to go all the way back down, two hour, three hour courier on a horse and get with Mead. Mead's got to write something back.

But now the fight's over crying out loud. Yeah, I mean, and who's suffering? The freaking private. That's what I love about Hancock, man. He's just like, and then he immediately just goes to work. And Howard just steps off to the side. Well, of course, you know, a horse boy. Get my tea in crumbets.

You know what I mean? He goes and does Howard shit. You know what I mean? And Hancock goes to work. And then as this is, of course, now what's Hancock going to do? He's sending a note back to his boss, man. Like, yeah, dude, it's on. Yep. This is a good spot. This is a good spot, brother. You know what I mean? And, of course, what's me going to do? He's going to start to get his way and all the other forces are going to start to make their way to Gettysburg. That's awesome. So they're on their way. And you get this, again, like you're talking about this. hook that ends up the lines of the union end up looking like a fish hook the top of it is like colps hill cemetery hill they kind of they kind of go east to west and then it hooks down and then running north to south all the way down to little round top is a big chunk of land a couple miles long and that ends up being this fish hook shape yeah get that right yeah yeah yeah and and for folks to

get a visual light, if you take your right hand and with your, you know, your pointer finger and your thumb and you make it in the shape of a fish hook, and then you kind of look at the knuckle of your thumb, that, that first knuckle. Yeah, that first knuckle that's kind of like right in there. So that would be like Colp's Hill. Then you drop down to where the knuckle of your pointer finger, that would be cemetery. And then your pointer finger, that's the cemetery rich. So that is, that's you're looking at the fish hook. And then the logistics is running in to that, to the fish hook. So you've got road networks coming in and that's interior lines. I mean, look how easy it is to like move resources around inside that fish hook. Now, Robert E. Lee on the other side, if you look on the outside of the

fish hook, over there by that knuckle of the cemetery hill, you got the town and then cemetery ridge is what, three quarters of a mile away? Well, that's over to the seminary. Well, then you got Yule, he's another mile and he's not even, he's on the other side of the town, man. And then when Longstreet finally comes in, well, he's all the way down on the southern end of Seminary Ridge. So for them to move people in and around on those exterior lines, man, that's a lot of movement. So, yeah, I mean, Hancock and these guys getting, getting cemetery. And you know, you got to look back at Buford, man. He saw this, man. Like, dude, somebody's got to be able to occupy this high ground. Like if we don't occupy this high ground, if Robert E. Lee would have ended up,

you know, up there on the cemetery and would have gained Culp's Hill, man, game changer. But again, you know, if... Well, then Mead hopefully wouldn't have fought him there and just stayed down by Pikes Creek, Pipes Creek and, yeah, so cool, come and get D.C., I guess. Yep, that's probably what he would have done. He wouldn't have, like, thrown more resources and just like he's not going to go up there and then just like throw resources and start attacking to try to take

you know cemetery hill it doesn't mean shit to him that's not his he just has to protect bald you can stay in Gettysburg all day long brother as long as you stay out of D.C. in Baltimore I'm keeping my job so that's where we end up on the end of day one

is you know you got the fishhawk form with the union troops the you could say that the Confederate troops are also in a fish hook. It's just way, way, way more spread out, more expanded. It's like just a giant arching, arching, you know, spread out of troops that they're in. Yeah, a huge 180, man. I mean, because they're trying to cover that entire frontage.

I mean, and again, they don't have as many people. And yeah, like you said, you know, the first core commander of Jen, James Longstreet for the Army of Northern Virginia. He's not even a player of day one. So he's going to show up, you know, that night coming into Gettysburg. And then Mead is putting the rest of his army. And they're all moving towards Gettysburg. So now it's all like, let's all giddy up and let's see how this is going to go down.

And the other cool thing about after the end of day one, once Mead takes care of all of his, like, general stuff and sends notes back to, because he's got his boss. He's got to keep the boss informed. He sent his stuff back to D.C. He's got a little bit of a ride to get to Gettysburg, and it's at night. You know what I mean? So it's late in the evening. He packs up his camp, and he hops in to a back of a – he's going to jump in the back of a wagon.

He's going to get the back of a wagon, and he's going to take a nap on the way to Gettysburg. Because he knows when he gets there, it's game on, and I need to be – there's nothing he can do. on the ride up. So I think that's pretty cool that the commander, he understands, like, I'm not going to get rest for the next couple of days. I'm going to go up against the dude that's 7-0-1. You know what I mean?

This isn't the pipe creek plan. I've lost John Reynolds. You know what I mean? And this is, and he knows what's happened to every commander before him. Like, you're going to be out of a job quickly. you're going to lose and then you're going to get fired. Yes.

I mean, we know there's a certain sequence that it's not like anything that's like mind-blowing. So he jumps in the back of an ambulance, you know, he's going to ride up in the bag and he's going to take a nap. And the other cool thing about meat is is when he does get the Gettysburg that evening and he gets up there to call him, he is personally going to ride the lines. And he's going to sketch the lines. personally. And he's going to, he knows in his mind how the units are going to arrive, the other core. You know what I mean? So he knows these other core are going to be approaching.

And he wants to know what chunk of the line because he's an engineer. He knows you give me, you know what I mean? You give me 5,000 people. This is how many, this is how much space 5,000 people can take. And then I got another 5,000 and I got another 5,000. So he's going to literally sketch out at night, riding his lines personally so that when these folks arrive

they're not waiting around like if you ever gone somewhere and you're like waiting around waiting to be told what to do we love that you know what I mean I love when you like show up somewhere you immediately know what you're doing

Hey here's your piece of terrain here's where you want your people here's where your fields of fire are you good to go yep good to go yep I mean everything's already done we know exactly what we're doing I mean it's like us we show up here at the beginning of the week

I wouldn't like standing around waiting, munking around, like two or three days, what the hell we're doing? Dude, we've been at it, like literally. You know what I mean? It's been game on every day, you know what I mean? Because we know what the fuck we're doing? You know what I mean? Like, we've got a plan.

I love that. And that's what Mead does. There's a lot. So Mead's a good dude. And at some point, Lee decides it's on. We're going to fight here. Oh, yeah. Like, this is where we're going to do it.

Day one, because at the end of day one, And we've had a lot of discussions about this because everybody always likes to discuss. Okay, so you're at the end of the day one. You got the Union Army. They're over on the cemetery hill in the fishhook. And then you've got the Army of Northern Virginia. The Confederates are over on the seminary. So like who won day one?

Yeah, well, that depends on your perspective. Yeah, doesn't it? You know, I mean, the, the, Confederates killed one of the premier generals you know killed they pushed they pushed them back off McPherson pushed them back off seminary and all the way on to Cemetery Ridge so that feels pretty good but that being said you got you got the union and the union has now kind of aligned themselves on a really nice prominent terrain feature kind of you know I wouldn't I you know they do they do this thing with the

UFC now where they do they show what the odds are at the end of each round they're like oh at the beginning of the fight you know everyone thinks this guy's going to win now at round two after you saw round one who's winning now that's kind of what we're doing right now and it'd be it'd be a hard one I don't think the I don't think you could call it any easier right now than you could before day one because you're like well I mean they both have some advantages like we got some momentum like if I'm in the Confederates I'm like hey we got some momentum we pushed you off of of two terrain features. We killed some of your leadership.

Like we pushed you all the way back to this last terrain feature. We'll be up tomorrow morning ready to kick your ass again. Meanwhile, the other side is like, well, we did a nice defense in depth. We took some casualties, but now we've got awesome reinforcements coming in and we're in a prominent terrain feature. Good luck tomorrow morning. Yeah. And the only thing that we know is is both coaches.

Mead and Lee, they're both, the message they're sending out to their people is, damn right, we won today. You know what I mean? We're going to smoke check them tomorrow. And when you look at Mead, Mead wanted to be in a defensive position. Yeah. And he's in a, I mean, that's what, I mean, you got to come up to Gettysburg, you know what I mean, to see it, you know what I mean, of where they are and the location on there, man.

and Mead is in a good spot. But again, I mean, dude, 30 days ago, we were just talking about like Robert E. Lee and Jackson with like three to one odds and went out 14 miles with a freaking teenager as a scout and smoke checked him. You know what I mean?

So don't be thinking he's over there. And so, and Mead knows what he's up against. I mean, this is Bobby Lee. And so, you know, Robert E. Lee is going to immediately his ootloops going to go into thought of day two and Long Street arrives and Long Street's going to come into the tent and Lee, he's going to want to fight here at Gettysburg

and Lee's going to come up to where his initial plan is that he briefs to Long Street and the Corps commanders of this is what we're going to do tomorrow morning, this is what we're doing. He's going to have, you know, basically he's going to take, Hill is going to stay in position. So he's basically, you know, he's going to be like the support by fire position. He wants Longstreet that wasn't engaged at all on day once. He should be pretty fresh.

He's got some fresh guy. Now, they did walk there. I'm not going to take anything away from the hike. But they didn't get in it. They haven't fired around yet. So these guys are fresh and it's his old war horse. So he's going to be the focus of main effort. So if, you know, on that road, when you're sitting up on the seminary road,

If you look down behind the seminary back towards the west, there's that black horse tavern road that runs back down there. But there's not really good roads back there. But there's enough to where he can drop down off the military crest and then he's going to head south. And then he's going to come and cross over of what is the Emmetsburg Pike Road, you know, that Emmettysburg. Because if you go south of Gettysburg, you're running to Emmettburg, Maryland. You literally, Gettysburg is very close to the Maryland line of Emmetsburg. And then he's going to cross over the Emmetsburg road. And then just like we talked about how Jackson did on the Plank Road,

when we talked about Chancellville, he's going to straddle that road. You know what I mean? And he's going to push from the south to the north. You know what I mean? And he's going to get that extreme left flank of the Union Army. And so basically, basically Lee is like, hey, remember Chancellor'sville? Remember what we did down there?

We flanked them. And that's what we're going to do here. You're going to kind of, we're on this, we're on the seminary, which, just bump back off the ridge a little bit. They won't be able to see you. Walk south. Once you walk south far enough, hook a left and you're going to be on their left flank. We're going to roll them up just like we did down at Chancellorville.

that's that's the essentially what lee wants to do yeah i mean that's what and and lee sends a reconnaissance you know what i mean he sends a couple of his engineers around there prior just to to get eyes on you know what i mean he wants to run a reconnaissance and long street sends some of his guys with the guys with lee so he's sending some of his own folks on this reconnaissance and they get it around it And if you go south off the seminary and you get on the Emmitsburg Pike Road and you come back up north like you're coming into Gettysburg, up there you're going to see like it's very prominent, the peach orchard. And when those guys go out and around and they're kind of like sneaking up, they're trying to get a little, they don't want to get the gunfight, they're doing reconnaissance. When they look into up there on the peach orchard up there, there's like maybe not even a couple hundred guys. and then they're going to make their way back out and around

and they're going to come back over and they're going to tell Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet you know what I mean? And the commander's there that, yeah, dude, there's just a couple hundred dudes, man. And the flank is kind of in the air. Yeah, oh, it's in the air. Like we just rolled up there. Yeah. Like, dude, let's giddy up and go.

And Longstreet, he has a different vision of what he thinks they should do. And he tells Robert E. Lee, tells Bobby, he's like, hey, man, why don't we just like screw Gettysburg? And let's go south and east. And let's get in between D.C. and the Army of the Potomac. Kind of like what Meade was going to do. So he's got the same vision as Meade. Get in between them. We can pick the defensive ground.

It's going to force their hands. to come down and hit us, man. Let's not do this offensive thing. Let's go down there. And a lot of people, I mean, is that a viable plan? Sure. But if you go down there and you threaten,

I always look at it. It's the only reason why, because you got to kind of look at the fence of like, okay, why wouldn't Robert Lee do that? That makes perfect, freaking sense, man. Is that going to leave your logistics exposed? you go down there, man. You know what I mean?

Like if you push in and get in between you, that doesn't mean that George Gordon Mead has to come hit you. He could go straight for your logistics. I mean, your logistics train, dude. Like, you're not set up logistically like the Army of the Potomac is. Your logistic trains running back to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, man. You know what I mean? So logistically, he's on borrowed time.

To be able to do all this movements, where is he going to get the food? Where is he going to get the forage? How is he going to take? You bring the army together. You know what I mean? They're going to like when we talked about it on the previous podcast about like how many horses are there. If you look at the fields of Gettysburg, if you put all those horses there, 25,000 horses, that place is dirt in a day. They're going to eat every ounce of grass and you're going to have dirt there.

Like, there's just not enough to support that many people. I mean, you're bringing in, coming into the little town of Gettysburg, now you've got both armies, and they're literally in a six-mile square radius. And there's 165,000 people there with their horses. That town can't support even today. Like, at the 150th anniversary of Gettysburg, there was. a few years back. Dude, they had to redo the bridging.

They had to like structurally get ready for the 150th anniversary because millions of people were coming to Gettysburg. So they weren't back then. Like that's just a lot of people. So he's on borrowed time. And Robert E. Lee wants to get him and wants to get him now. Let's just let this over with. So he comes up with the plan.

He lets Longstreet kind of have this piece with him in the tent. And then he tells James, This is what we're doing, and this is what I want you to do. And James Longstreet leaves the tent because everybody else of Hill and Yule are like Long Street's the focus of main effort. So everybody else is kind of waiting on him to move. So everybody else is standing by. Because once he executes this flanking maneuver from the south, Yule and Hill are then going to

also attack. Is that right? Yeah. Well, Yule's more or less going to be that support base. you know what I mean of hitting them because they're all within artillery range you know what I mean you've seen like hills lines are like right across so they can stay there but yeah then like then Yule is going to start attacking Culp's Hill right you know because that is still the most prominent terrain fee to let everybody kind of know when you go to Culp's Hill if you control Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill you control that road network at Gettysburg that is why Why it is so key. Like everybody wants to go down and everybody gets up on the roundtops, right?

You know what I mean? Which is, it is going to come into play later. But you don't control any road networks from the roundtop. When you control the roundtops, you just control the roundtops. That's it. Not much to control there. No. So, so, you know, we have a big leadership discussion about the fact that, you know,

Lee's basically says, shut up and do what I told you to do. It's basically what he says, which if you're in a leadership position and that's where it comes to, you're probably not you're probably not doing the right thing. There's probably so you probably should open your ears a little bit. Listen to what people are saying. It's never a good sign when you have to tell someone, hey, I'm the boss. You be quiet. You go do what I told you to do. And that's essentially what happens here. And it becomes pretty evident that there's like resistance from Longstreet with this. plan because he doesn't you know he doesn't suck it up say hey Roger that boss got it I'm on board going to execute he doesn't really do that he kind of slow rolls and and pauses and hesitates and instead of this being like a pretty rapid action which by the way we know that none of these actions are that rapid when you got 30,000 guys you got to move and if you're not if you're not making it happen if you're not hey if we're going to get in here This is what we're doing.

This is how we're actually. If you're not doing it, if you don't have that sense of urgency in your freaking voice, like as step number one, if people can't hear it in your voice, you're already lagging, right? When I go down and say, hey, this is the plan, guys. Like, already, we already lost 15 minutes from the tone of my voice. So when I go down there, hey, listen up, jents. This is what's happening.

Okay. I just gained four minutes, right? People understand that. So the sense that I get, and I'm kind of making a caricature out of this, of like Longstreet's. slow rolling this thing. I mean, how many, doesn't Lee have to go down multiple times? Like, bro, what's going on?

Yeah, because I mean, you, you know, from, you know, when you're there at the Virginia monument, where his headquarters are, I mean, you can, you can see right down the seminar. And when you're moving, like, when you're moving 15,000 people, it's not like you're hiding, you know what I mean? Like, everybody can see.

And he's looking down there because he knows he's got to drop off the military crest back by the black, Horse Tavern Road and he's got to make his way south and Lee's kind of looking down there like why isn't anybody moving because you remember 30 days ago when we were talking about like when you read with Jackson like was up before everybody else was already people on the road and you know what I mean like already got a scout already got maps man he's he's on he's on it yeah and like you said like long street and whatever it is yeah maybe Lee should have been like why are you not like what am I not explaining this one did you're

guys not get to go over and look in the peach orchard man there's a couple hundred dudes over there man their their flank is in the air like what what what what what why do you have a problem with that man like what what what's up i mean i get you're my defense guy i got it you know what i mean but we need to go off that you can play both sides of the ball man even when long street goes like hey man why we just go down there and set up you know we'll make them attack us he's like hey listen bro i get it that would be cool our logistics can't handle that here's why explain it to him so yeah you know what you're right. I didn't really think of that. Cool. Let's go do this. Let's get it done. Let's get it over. It doesn't sound like that happened. Doesn't sound like there was good unity of command behind this thing.

Yeah. And, you know, and this is where you're kind of, you're kind of seeing behind the curtain, the command climate's kind of taking a little bit of a change in the Army of Northern Virginia. You know, on the approach route, 7-0-1, man, dudes are stoked. Now you're kind of seeing a little bit of friction. coming in in the Army of Northern Virginia in that command climate was just like you said, the command climate can change with just in less in seconds, you know what I mean,

of a change of command, going from one person to the night. I mean, literally. The outlook, the tone of the organization can change. I remember on one of the podcasts, you were talking about when Jackson by himself showed up

and the troops are like, hey there's Jackson we're good to go now you don't have them anymore you know those were long streets guys by the way that was like we're good we got Jackson just showed up we're good so yeah there's like uh maybe they're not quite as confident as they were yeah and and so he's gonna go back and you know how that's all gonna kind of it's all going to play out with some of the folks of you know he's got uh you know his his division commanders of of hood and some of the folks that are there so going to see this. And they already know because, you know, in a core, they're going to have discussions before Longstreet goes in the tent. Longstreet number probably doing maps to it. So they

can figure out like, hey, when we go in there, we want to have a plan for the boss. You know what mean? Like if you're going into the meeting, normally you prep and you're like, okay, I'm going to try to convince the boss. This is what we're going to do tomorrow. You know what I mean? So Long Street's not an idiot, man. I mean, he's a competent core commander. I'm not taking anything away from him. But then when he gets out and he's not necessarily, you know, Lee's not buying in with the plan. So he's going to walk out and he's dragging his feet. And then he's going to, yeah, if Robert Lee has to get on his freaking horseman and come down a couple of times, even one time of like, why aren't you moving yet, man? Because that reconnaissance effort, dude, that's old news, man.

So the longer you wait. So it literally is going to go like all day, man. because now again, just like you said, you're trying to move that many people. Okay, 15,000 people you're going to drop down. You're going to go south. You're going to get them out. You're going to deploy online. You're going to straddle a freaking road.

That takes hours. At best. Yeah, at best, man, hours. So by the time he gets out and around and straddles the road and starts to make his way, like as if he's going to go into the attack, you can see the peach orchard. Well, the peach orchard doesn't have a couple. a hundred folks in there, man. There's a couple of thousand dudes in the peach orchard now.

Well, no shit. It's been six hours, man. You know what I mean? Like, so now Robert E. Lee, and now he's looking at it like, that's more than what we were expecting. So now they got to call an audible. So now it's not a flank. And then now it's when they're,

so him and Robert E. Lee are going to come up with this in echelon. And to it. Before we jump into the echelon, though. how do we end up with a few thousand people in the peach orchard? Because when we look at this, when we do that we need to get out our right finger, our right hand and we look at this fish hook, the peach orchard is not on our index finger. It's not on the fish hook.

It is what almost a mile pushed out? How far is it? How far is the peach orchard outside of the fish hook? Three quarters of a mile. Yeah, three quarters, easy. So it is not part of the fish hook. So you end up with this unit out there that's not unified with everybody else. Tell us about how that happens because there's a story behind that one.

Oh, and it's funny you should ask like what the hell. I mean, they're not out there picking peaches. I can tell you that. And if you look at it to give that descriptive, like, you know, when we stand up there, like if you stand at the north end of little round top where the road is that's right there at the base and you drop down. You've got, you drop down and it's that the plum run valley. So you've got this plum run, which is basically a creek.

But it's low area and it's always like, you know, it's kind of marshy. And then you kind of come up and and as you're coming up, you've got this, there's the wheat field. So now you've got a wheat field. And then you get to the beach orchard. So yeah, it's easily three-quarter. three quarters of a mile all the way up to that Emmetsburg Road. And at the Emmitsburg Road, that is where, like, when they, the peach orchards up there, that's where a couple hundred, now there's a couple of thousand, and you're spot on, man.

Like, the peach orchard is not even anywhere close. Like, you couldn't screw it up. You know what I mean? If it's like, hey, I want you to put your people here on the cemetery ridge. Like, it is not a part. You go down and through a valley across a creek up through a wheat field to get to the peach orchard. Dude, you were nowhere near the cemetery freaking rip. So Mead has this perfect line drawn out, this perfect fish hook. He's got every position laid out. He puts these guys in the fish hook.

The person that's in charge that he puts in position is this guy named Sickles. And like you said, Sickles, because look, in the spot where Sickles was at on the fish hook, when you don't see the big picture, it doesn't feel optimal, right? Because like you said, you're looking a little bit up. Hill like there's some better terrain out there as you look out. So you can see where if you don't take the whole plan into consideration, if you don't think about what the guys on my right, what the guys on my left, what the guys, two, three, four units to my left, two, three, four units to my right. If you don't think about what they're doing and how my unit plays into this, completing

this picture, that's where you run into a problem. and that's the problem that Sickles had. Sickles isn't thinking about the unity of this whole line. He's just thinking about himself. So what's up with Sickles? Yeah, you know, like I believe like every, every time we talk about a general, I'm always like, well, you know, he's a West Point grad. And you're like, well, that doesn't seem to be had enough to much.

Well, this time I'm going to blow your hair back a bit. And Dan Sickles is not a West Point grad. He's a politician from New York. And he is very well connected all the way to Stanton. You know what I mean? Like he's that kind of connected. New York City, you know, Senator, you know what I mean? Even still to this day of 2020, man.

You know what I mean? New York, Europe, I mean, that's a big deal, man. But Dan Sickles, he's the third Corps commander in the Army of the Potomac. and, you know, he becomes a, I mean, one thing that I, the one thing, he's brave. You know what I mean? Like, he's, he's brave, but he doesn't know what he's doing. And Dan Sickles, I mean, he's. Brave and stupid is not a great.

Yeah, I mean, yeah. No, not at all. Especially when you're in charge. Look, you get a nug that's brave and stupid, bro. That guy might be getting a silver star or a Navy Cross or something. That, that's just how it might go down. you get someone that's in charge and they're brave and they're stupid, we could get a bunch of people killed.

Right. So he gets that sex in the line and jaco, you were spot on. I mean, if you're standing there like where he was kind of supposed to be on the cemetery, but he doesn't, he doesn't understand the big picture. He doesn't care the big.

I mean, he's legally insane. Like legally. And that happened, you know, so Dan Sickles, you know, he's,

what is he's 43. Gettysburg. And he's got a wife and she's like 16. Well, Dan Sickles, being the politician that he is, he has a stable of women that he kind of has on the side to include his wife. And his wife doesn't necessarily care much that her husband is keeping a stable of women on the side. So while he's off, you know what I mean, doing his stuff, and she's, and they're living right there in D.C., you know what I mean? He's, you know, for the center. See, they're in D.C. She decides to get a boyfriend. Well, then when, like, Dan Sickles finds out about this boyfriend, he's pissed.

Well, you know, when I say the last name of, like, back in those days, like, Keys, like, if you ever heard of that song, the Star Spangled Banner written by that dude Keyes? Well, this is Keyes' son that's having an affair with Sickles' wife. So Sickles is literally going to call the dude out at Lafayette Park right across from the White House in Washington, D.C., to a duel. And he's going to shoot this dude multiple times and kill him right in front. I mean, in D.C. And Stanton is going to defend him. and Sickles is going to be the first person in American history to get off on a temporary insanity plea.

So this dude is, and you're kind of like, you're staring at me like right now, like every time whenever you hear the story, because you can't just make this stuff up, man. It's just like crazy stuff. And you're like, well, how the hell does this guy become a general? I thought you had to be like a West Point grad. Well, yes.

But if you can recruit. a lot of people to come in, they're going to give you rank for it. We even still do it today in the military. You send me home on like recruiter's assistant. You know what I mean? They're like, hey, JD, if you can convince two of your buddies to join the Marine Corps,

we're going to make you an E3. And I'm like, really? Yeah. Bad ass. So I'm going to bullshit these guys to get them in because I can't wait to be a Lance Corporal. I'm going to be in charge of shit. You know what I mean?

Well, this here, man, like if you recruit 10,000 people, dude, we're going to make you a freaking general. So how does he recruit how those people? Well, if you're a senator and you're in New York City, he's just going to shut down all the firehouses and he's going to put all the firemen and put them into the army. Bam, I'm a general. And that's exactly what he did.

Yeah. So up there right outside of the peach orchard, there's actually a super cool New York monument. And it's a monument. It has a fireman and he's standing next to a soldier. You know what I mean? It's right there, up there by the peach orchard. And it's showing that, you know, one, because when some of them are like, well, hey, dude,

like the folks in fire, both wildland fire, structure, fire, you know what I mean? The brotherhood inside that, man, is just huge. And it's no different in 1860. I mean, those guys that are in the firehouse, man, they are just, phenomenal human beings. And it's like, okay, if one goes, dude, we're all going. So they all come. But that's how sickles.

And when he goes into the peach orchard, it's not like he's like in any kind of like defense. He forms this salient, which is a salient is like a V. So if you're in this V formation, if orientated, if you're looking at the peach orchard, So he's basically the pointy end of the V is basically facing west. And then you've got the left side of the V. Well, that's where Long Street and those guys are coming up from the south. The north side of the V can't shoot over at anybody coming up from the south because you're literally shooting through your own piece.

people. So you've basically taken out half of your force. Then, man, he's trying to cover such a large area with his core that he doesn't have enough people. So he's got gaps in his line. So here's how genius this guy is. He's going to fill the gaps with artillery. Now, artillery, you know, they've got a different job than infantry. Like they kind of like, this is a big piece of and it takes more than one person to operate it. You know what I mean? So you got this artillery crew, you know what I mean? And they're kind of focusing on the gun.

They can't focus to see who's coming at them. So normally you have infantry supporting the artillery to protect the artillery. I mean, even artillery back there, even in still to this day, I mean, artillery is considered the king of the battle. you know what I mean? I mean it's a so you have artillery unsupported by infantry

dude that is a that's a huge mistake because these guys are trying to like load the gun aim the gun fire the gun reload the gun and oh by the way this gun when you fire it it's not like on TV that piece of artillery

jumps about 10 to 12 feet back when they pull the lanyard dude this thing is jumping you talk about something that you weigh in tons jumping 12 feet back. So it's a dangerous job. You know what I mean? Just within itself of being in the artillery back then.

And they're not carrying rifles. They don't get a rifle because their job is working the gun. That's why you put infantry with them. So Sickles is also going to have artillery filling in gaps and they're unsupported by infantry. He's just, I mean, just incredible of what Sickles. does. And the bad thing about it is is people find, you're always under observation. So as soon as Sickles starts

making his way out to the peach orchard, word's going to get back to George Gordon Mead. George Gordon Mead is going to send people out there. He's going to tell Sickles six times to get his people back on the cemetery ridge. six times.

I don't know if everybody heard that. Six times he's going to tell. This is an army commander, telling a corps commander, get your people. And this is before they're not in battle yet. You know what I mean? Like nobody's hit him yet.

He's told him. George Gordon Mead has his son that it's there and working on his staff. His son goes out. And everybody knows it's George Gordon, Lieutenant Meade. You know what I mean? He comes out, you know, sir, general.

You need to get to get. get back to the seminary. Yep, whatever. You know what I mean? He's legally insane. I do whatever the hell I want. It finally takes George Gordon Mead, who probably has some other stuff to do. Now personally, it has to leave his headquarters and make his way.

So you remember where his headquarters? He's over there closer to the cemetery hill. So he's kind of like, and he's close to the line. I mean, he's like right up on the line. He's like 100 yards or something from the line. Oh, dude. Yeah, 100 lives right on the military crest. And he's going to get on his horse.

and he's going to ride all the way down the cemetery ridge and out to the peach orchard where he's going to meet with this guy Sickles and he's going to like tell Sickles and Sickles kind of sees him coming. He's like, oh shit, really boss is here. So he's like looking at Mead and he's kind of like, okay, yeah, hey, I'll get him. And it was almost like on Q, Mead looked at him and said, I don't think they're going to let you. And here comes the Confederates.

And they've caught them all out there in a salient. in the peach orchard, in the wheat field, spread out gaps, and it's just not going to go good. Yeah, unsupported, you know. We were going to talk about cover move. Like these guys got themselves. They couldn't even cover for themselves. Like you said, they'd cut off their own firing.

They couldn't support each other, and they weren't supported by the rest of the line. It's just a complete nightmare. Those guns, you got kind of a badass with those guns. Bigelow. Oh, yeah. One of my favorite stories is the retreat by Prologge, right?

Talk me through that what Bigelow has to do. Because he's got these guns that weigh several tons. They're getting pushed on hard. It's not like they got time to, you know, hitch horses back up and turn them around and tow them out of there while totally unsupported by infantry. So he takes another method. Yeah, and we still do them to this day, man, gun drills.

Yeah, machine gunners do it. Artillery does it. Mortars guys do it. I mean, they operate gun drills. And if you see a good gun crew, you know what I mean? It's like, it's theater, man. Like, I mean, that shit could be on Broadway. You and I were talking the other day, like the first time I saw Marine Corps mortar team.

I was like, hmm, I could watch this for a while. I want to video this. This is what professionalism looks like. Yeah. I mean, it's, and I'm terrible at it. You know what I mean? Like, I'm just 0-3-11 rifleman. Yeah, I can pull a bolt to the rear and put it back.

That's my capabilities. Mortarmen, next level. Like, artillery guys, man, next level with these gun drills. Well, you know how, like, not every gun crew is the same because they all have their own leader that's in charge of that gun crew. And some gun crews, man, like Bigelow is that kind of a cruise. crew leader that he is constantly drilling the basics, like just repetition to where, like you said, like when we were chit-chatting the other day, Matt, about the mortorman. I told you, like,

with Eric Carlson, he's probably the best mortarman I've ever seen. Like, like, it's phenomenal. And I can't do Eric Carlson. There's no way. He's just that good. That's Bigelow, man. He's just that. And he's just repetition with the crew. And of course, the crew's kind of like, they're looking at the other crews like, man, those dudes are sitting in the shade. man, they're like, you know, drinking you-hoo's, having a good time. And here we're over here, man, just constantly do it. Like, Bigelow is such an asshole, man. But when Bigelow's preparing them for this moment,

because everybody knows that Bigelow runs the best gun crew. And, you know, when we talk about, like, this pro-launge, to try to, like, it's a leather strap. Like if you've got, and everybody who has seen this, if you've got a vehicle and you're towing a camper, right? You've got this hitch that goes on to the ball, right? Two inch, three inch, whatever, you got the hitch. But then you also, you get these chains that you can then hook in. And that's like the secondary way to move it.

That's not the primary way. But do you ever practice towing with just the chains? No. Well, Bigelow does. You know what I mean? So that's the pro launch of the piece of artillery. It's this leather strap. You know what I mean?

So these guys know how to operate using the pro launch. So literally as everybody, because Mead has to make a decision. He can't leave Sickles' core out there just to hang to dry. So he immediately goes back. And oh, by the way, his horse gets spooked. And he gets, like, rode off for a little while. You know, just, you know, when shit's going wrong, like, it seems like everything starts to go wrong. So Mead on his way back, he's got to start pulling resources because now they're getting attacked.

It's Longstreet's core. You know what I mean? Sickles is not where he's supposed to be. Nothing's happening yet over at, you know, Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill. Because remember, everything's going off of the focus of main effort. And they're going to do this echelon. So he's going to have to start pulling resources to get sickles out of the peach orchard and back to the cemetery. Huge.

I mean, and as if George Gordon Mead has nothing better to do. Well, when this is all kind of happening, they're pulling the folks back and they look at Bigelow and they're like, hey, dude, you're going to have to hold these folks off while the rest of us get out. So, and when you go there and, you know, we've. We've been there. And you're looking back across the field, heading towards the cemetery ridge. He's literally going to hold off the Confederate infantry, and he's going to start jumping his artillery guns,

10 to 12 feet at a time all the way back across the field. You know what I mean? While still fire. Like, you know what I mean? Like with artillery. I mean, it's just, it's incredible. So that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's a, that's, uh, you, you, you started to go into it before I kind of cut you off and, and asked you about bigelow.

The ash, the new echelon plan that's come about. Yeah. So when you, when you, when you say like, it's all French terms, man, everybody's out, run around with French textbooks, trying to figure out what they're supposed to be doing. You know what I mean? So they're going for the last guy, you know what I mean? of it's the Napoleon. So this is this in echelon.

So probably pretty much everybody in America, even if you don't like it, you've probably watched a football game once in your life. So it's basically they're going to try to pull off a draw play on a massive scale. So meaning with that is they're going to attack with a 4 o'clock attack and then a 5 o'clock attack. And then what's this doing is it's,

it's drawing the resources down so that when you get a six o'clock attack, there's not enough resources in the line and you break through the lines. Does that kind of make sense? And Longstreet, because they can't, it's not just a regular flank anymore. Right. Because there's too many people in the peach orchard. So that thing is out the window. So now they're like, all right, that's not going to work out. A regular flank's not going to work out. So this is the beginning of an echelon attack. You're the four o'clock. o'clock attack. Longstreet, you're the four o'clock attack. You're the initial assault. That's going to start drawing union forces down. Then we're going to hit him with the next guy up at five o'clock.

That's going to draw even more people down at six o'clock. Hopefully so many people are drawn down that we can get through. And we'll keep doing that all the way up, you know, the, the Confederate lines. Yeah, because not only are they changing the game plan on the southern end of the battlefield, He's also got to send the note up to Yule. So he's basically doing two draw plays, one at the south end, four, five, and six, and then Yule's going to do 7, 8, 9 to be able to draw again because, dude, they still want Coles Hill. So he's going to have, you know what I mean, a 6 o'clock, a 7 o'clock, and, you know, all the way through. So you kind of kind of get these draw plays.

The problem is, and they're going to use, like, divisions with their brigades. You know what I mean? So these brigade have drawn them out. And it's this huge draw play, getting everybody to one side of the field, and then you're just going to scoot right around the other side with a little bit of resistance. You know what I mean? You're going to get a touchdown. So it makes sense, right?

But they're calling it on the fly. And the other kind of problem of it is is, like I said, the wheels are coming off the cart, man, because you're like, okay, well, if they're doing this echelon, How the hell do we end up over on the roundtop? Well, that's because when that first four o'clock attack decides, yeah, I'm not going to the peach orchard, I'm going to the roundtops. He just disobeyed order. So instead of going north, he just turns east and heads towards the roundtops.

He sees, who's that? It's hood. Hood. Hood sees the roundtops. And they're nice looking terrain. Especially when you look at them from that far to the west, because when you look at them that far to the west, it looks like you just got a nice flat kind of roundtops. run up to him that you can get up on this high ground.

Yeah, it looks like because it's a wheat field. So you see the peach orchard to the wheat field. And you and I, we talked about the plum run and we talked about that marsh area, but we left one little key terrain feature that's down that you can't see from up there. No. And that's what we call devil's den. Now, devil's den, when you get to see devil's den, like, and you're up there and you drive down. boulders and stuff.

I mean, it's just amazing. And it didn't get the name Devil's Den from the battle. That's what the town folk called Devil's Dead. Devil's Den was like one of those areas. They was like snakes and stuff and that's where the devil hung out. So I always kind of look at it as like, you know, when you're a teenager, you know what mean, you want to like, you know, you want to go on a date. You're going to go park out of Devil's Dead because it's out of town.

You know what I mean? You got these cool rocks. I look at it like if you created. like a video game battlefield where you're just going to have like obstacles and rocks and just weird looking cool stuff that you'd want to run around in a video game. You'd make devil's net. That's what it looks like. Oh, yeah.

Most definite. But you don't want it. So as he's making his way to the round tops, you know what I mean? Then you run into this formation of rock, like a spine that just comes up out to where now you've got this rock formation. and then you've got the plum run and then you've got to go uphill to get to Little Round Top. So we'll basically be talking about

because in the books and a lot of the readings they just call them the Roundtops. But when you're there, there's a definite difference between Little Round Top and Big Round Top. And the rock formations when you look at the front of Little Round Top are pretty prominent up there.

Just that granite rock formation that's up there. and when he goes for that roundtop, I'm not going to doubt anybody that it is, it's good high ground. I mean, little roundtop, but the problem is, is like a lot of people mistake it

because there's this nice road now that gets up there. The only actual road, like you couldn't farm the roundtops. So just like Colpsoil, the round tops, you're using that stuff as like woodlots. So there's on the east back side, there's a way to get up,

but it's just like a logging road. to get up there to access. So this is not going to be an easy feat for the Confederacy to get through Devils Den. Plus, like, you know, you've got that salient that they created. You know what I mean? So you got folks, so this is where in the readings and the books, man, this is where you're going to get in to the Peach Orchard and the Wheatfield and Devil's Den. And it's like you're just like orbiting this giant hairball, man.

I mean, it's just a conglomeration, man, of a, like, things are not going well for both sides of the armies. And as they start approaching, like, when you look at the wheat field, you know, and if we want to talk about like the wheat field, the amount of just utter destruction in the wheat field, it was said that the wheat field, you couldn't walk across the wheat field without stepping on a body. I mean, that's the type of carnage. Yeah, and the wheat field is big. Yeah.

You know, the wheat field is probably five or maybe, I mean, maybe 10 football fields across. Maybe it's like a thousand yards by. I mean, it's a big chunk of land. Yeah, it's a big chunk of land, man. Yeah, and it's because now people are just starting to disobey orders, man. They're just not doing what they're told. I mean, you start off with sickles. You know what I mean?

Just not doing. Blatently. Just not doing what he's told. How hard is it? Cemetery Ridge. Got it. Put your line there. Because if he would have been where he was supposed to be, like literally when Longstreet tried to do this flank attack, and if they would have gone through the peach orchard and there would just been like a few dudes there, they literally would have exposed their entire right flank to the cemetery ridge because it's deceiving looking from seminary ridge over to cemetery ridge. It's deceiving there. You know what I mean? You don't see the wheat field. You don't see devil's den. You don't see plum run. You can't see any of that.

So Lee and them are just assuming that that cemetery ridge is right up there next to the peach orchard. They're assuming that. But it's actually back three quarters, which no offense. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that you just can't see. You're just, you make a call and you go do it. So these guys are doing this. So that's how we end up to where at that point in time, it's almost like what's taking place on day one up on Coles Hill. There's nobody up there.

Nobody up on the round top. On the round top. The round top's prominent terrain feature at the south end of the union line is these prominent terrain features and there's no one on them. Yeah, because he doesn't have enough bodies. You know what I mean? Yet to come in to occupy all of it. You know what I mean?

And again, if you control the roundtop, like you said, you just control the roundtop. You don't control the road network. You know what I mean? So Mead, it's more important controlling Colps Hill, Cemetery Hill. and that road network, but he still has to worry about, you don't want to give that up because now you're going to lose a lot right there at the edge. So there, it is occupied, and it's occupied by a guy by the name of Governor Warren. Occupied by one dude.

Yeah, one dude, and he's got his signalman with him. So he's got some dude with flags. Two dudes. Yeah, he's got two dudes with flags. So Warren, like when you get up there up onto the little roundtop, And, you know, they got that cool little statue of Warren standing up there. He's a chappy-looking fellow. You know what I mean?

He's got his little binos and stuff. And he's standing up there on the rock. But that's a great viewpoint of the entire south end of the battlefield, man. You can see over Devil's Den. You can see down into the wheat field. You can see up to the peach orchard. So, I mean, you've got a great viewpoint. So, and he's the chief engineer, and he's a good friend of,

George Gordon Mead. So he's a directed telescope for Mead. And he's up there because they use the wigwag signal, you know what I mean, kind of stuff. So it's just like baseball. You know what I mean? They're doing signals. And everybody's always trying to figure out each other's signals. You know what I mean? They could have done a Houston Astros and beat on some shit cans or something. Whatever it takes to win. You know what I mean? Like, okay. So he gets that. So he's going to do whatever it takes to win. And he's standing up there and he's like, dude, he can see Hood and these guys coming. I mean, it's very blatant. You can just see it. So he sees this and he looks at his signal guys and he's like, hey, dude, just start waving your flags like there's a lot of shit going on.

And the dudes are like, so he doesn't really mean it. Nope, I don't care. It just start waving flags. So they start waving flags. Well, if they can see the Confederates, then the Confederates can see them up there. And especially if you're standing on a little round top, waving flags, everybody's going to see you. But if they see you, waving flags, you're kind of like, hey boss, Jocko, do you see that shit? They're waving the shit out of those flags. What do they mean, J.D?

I don't know, but it must be something because they're waving them a lot. And at that time, then, you know, so he's got a yacht, he gets a sticky out, talking about Governor Warren. He's going to send a note back to Mead. So he sends a note with a courier back to Mead,

basically saying, we need to get some bodies up here on Little Round Top, man. Like now. Like these guys are coming. You need to get bodies. And of course, like we said, Mead's got other stuff going on as well,

but he trusts Warren. And when he sees that note, he sends it over, because he's sending resources of some of the other core that are coming in because he's sending folks into the wheat field and into the peach orchard to get sickles back.

You know what I mean? This is like that rescue effort to get sickles and third core back. So he sends a note, and as the note, if you could always imagine, like, you got this teenager riding around on a pony, and he's looking for a general officer. So he's looking for this general officer, and this dude by the name of Strong Vincent, who's a brigade guy, sees this guy riding around. He's got this note, and he's, Vincent, Strong Vincent is supposed to be taking his folks with his brigade. They're supposed to be heading over to the Wheatfield, right? So on his way that we feel, but he sees his kid come by.

He's like, hey, dude, give me that note. And he sees the note and he reads it. And he's like, this is from Mead. Mead's approval. We need to get bodies up onto the roundtop like now. So he makes a decision without anybody else, and he's going to take his folks, and he's going to take him up and around,

and Strong Vincent is now going to occupy the roundtop, little round top. And he's going to bring him up in behind so that he's not exposing them. them on the front. So he takes them on that eastern slope and he brings them up onto the approach of Little Round Top and it just takes

action. Now you know, so again, he's supposed to be in the wheat field because this is going to have a little bit of effect later on. He's supposed to be in the wheat field, but he ends up going up and occupied he just takes action and he

goes up and he's going to occupy Little Round Top. Yeah. And you know, we talk about like what this effort what it what it's like walking and um going going back just to hear a first person account going back to elijah hunt roads again for from all for the union and he's he's rolling in i mean these guys you get to living through campaign and battle after battle here he is rolling in to gettysburg he says this on the night of july first we were in camp near manchester Maryland rumors of fighting in Pennsylvania have been heard all the days but the distance was so

great to the battlefield that we knew little about it the men were tired and hungry and laid down to rest early in the evening at nine o'clock orders came for us to move and we in great haste packed up and started on the road towards Pennsylvania General Hooker had has been relieved and General George G. Mead of Pennsylvania assigned to command the Army of the Potomac. What does it all mean? Well, it is none of our affairs, and we obey orders and march out into the road. We struggle on through the night. The men almost dead for lack of sleep and falling over their own shadows, but still we go on in the warm summer night.

Little is said by anyone, for we are all too weary to talk. Only now and then an officer sharply orders the men to close up. up. Sometimes the column would halt for a moment as obstructions were met in the advance and then we would run to catch up. Daylight brought no halt and what little hard bread we had was taken from the haversacks and eaten on as we marched. On the morning of July 2nd, we heard the firing in the front and then we understood the reason for such great haste. I was taken sick upon the road and fell helpless to the ground. The surgeon, Dr. Carr, gave me a remedy and a pass for admittance to an ambulance.

I lay upon the roadside until several regiments had passed when I began to revive. I immediately hurried on and soon came up with my company B. The boys received me well, and I went on without further trouble. The firing in our front grew loud and more distinct, and soon we met the poor wounded fellows being carried to the rear. At a place called Littles Town, we saw large numbers of our wounded men and all kinds of carriages were being used to take them to the hospitals. At about 2 o'clock, PM, we reached the battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,

having made a march of 34 miles without a halt. The men threw themselves upon the ground exhausted. But we're soon ordered forward. We followed the road, blocked with troops and trains until 4 p.m. When the field of battle with the long lines of struggling weary soldiers burst upon us. With loud cheers, the old 6th Corps took up and double quick. And we're soon in the line of battle near the left of the main line held by the 5th Corps. The 5th Corps were in reserve, but as soon as we took their place, they moved forward and took part.

in the fight our division was finally sent to the front and relieved general skikes division of regulars picket firing was kept up until long after dark when we were relieved and returned to short distance the men threw themselves upon the ground and oblivious to the dead and dying around us we slept the sleep of the weary so that's what these guys be that's what that's what this is like that's what these guys are going through um as they as they go into battle and as you said you got strong Vincent he's moved he takes the initiative to go and take the round tops take little roundtop which is the one that they can take he's assigned to him as the 20th main under Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and he's assigned by Vincent to hold the left flank and we need to go to Chamberlain himself to hear what that was like for him. So here we go with Chamberlain and he says this. Passing to the southern slope of Little Roundtop, Colonel Vincent indicated to me the ground my regiment was to occupy,

informing me that this was the extreme left flank of our general line and that a desperate attack was expected in order to turn that position concluding by telling me that I was to hold that ground at all hazards. This was the last word I heard from him. My line formed I immediately detached Company B, Captain Morel commanding to extend from my left flank across this hollow as a line of skirmishers with directions to act as occasion might dictate to prevent a surprise on my exposed flank and rear.

In the midst of this, an officer from my center, inform me that some important movement of the enemy was going on in his front beyond that line beyond that of a line with which we were engaged mounting a large rock I was able to see a considerable body of the enemy moving by the flank in the rear of their line engaged and passing from the direction of the foot of the great round top through the valley toward the front of my left. We opened a brisk fire at close range, which was so sudden and effective

that they soon fell back among the rocks and low trees in the valley, only to burst forth again with a shout and rapidly advanced firing as they came. They pushed up to within a dozen yards of us before the terrible effectiveness of our fire compelled them to break and take shelter. They renewed the assault on our whole front and for an hour the fighting was severe.

Squads of the enemy broke through our line in several places and the fight was literally hand to hand. It did not seem possible to withstand another shock like this now coming on. Our loss had been severe. One half of my left wing had fallen and a third of my regiment lay behind us dead or badly wounded. at this moment my anxiety was increased by a great roar of musketry in my rear on the farther or northerly slope of little roundtop apparently on the flank of the regular brigade which was in support of hazlitz battery on the crest behind us the bullets from this attack struck into my left rear and i feared that the enemy might have nearly surrounded the little roundtop and only a desperate chance was left for us my ammunition was soon again My men were firing their last shot and getting ready to club with their muskets It was imperative to strike before we were struck by this overwhelming force in a hand-to-hand fight Which we could not probably have withstood or survived at that crisis

I ordered the bayonet the word was enough it ran like fire along the line from man to man and rose into a shout with with which which they sprang forward upon the enemy, now not 30 yards away. The effect was surprising. Many of the enemy's first line threw down their arms and surrendered. An officer fired his pistol at my head with one hand while he handed me his sword with the other. Holding fast by our right and swinging forward our left, we made an extended right wheel before the enemy's second line broke and fell back, fighting from tree to tree, many being captured until we had swept the valley and cleared the front of nearly our entire brigade.

Meantime, Captain Morel, with his skirmishes, sent out from my left flank with some dozen or 15 of the U.S. sharpshooters who had put themselves under his direction, fell upon the enemy as they were breaking, and by his demonstrations as well as his well-directed fire, added much to the effect of the charge. Having thus cleared the valley and driven the enemy up the western slope of the great roundtop, not wishing to press so far as out to hazard the ground I was to hold by leaving it exposed to a sudden rush of the enemy, I succeeded, although with some effort to stop my men who declared they were on the road to Richmond in getting the regiment into good order and resuming our original position.

400 prisoners including two field and several line officers were sent to the rear These were mainly from the 15th and 47th Alabama regiments with some of the fourth and fifth Texas 150 of the enemy were found killed and wounded in our front So there you go that resulted in as he said 150 enemy killed about 400 prisoners the 20th Maine had over 100 wounded and they had 30 who were killed in action. And this is, you know, Joshua Chamberlain receives the Medal of Honor for this, this bayonet charge. And that holds the flank. Yeah.

I mean, just incredible of what, you know, one, for strong Vincent, you know, he's a, He's a brigade commander as a colonel. And like I said, he was supposed to go to the wheat field. And you know, when you read about Chamberlain of why are they low on ammunition? Because their logistics chief thinks they're in the wheat field. So where are they sending logs to? You know what I mean? And it's no, that's no like nothing against like strong Vincent, man.

I mean, that's like the like these dudes like when I stand up there, man, and you're just like when we're there, and you're looking down at Wheatfield, Peach Orchard, like, you know, Devil's Den, Round Top, you know, just all these events that's going on. Yeah, logistics is probably the last freaking thing on my mind, man. And, you know, when you spoke in there of strong Vincent, I mean, he gets killed. You know, he loses him up there, patio Rourke with New York. You know, he goes down. I mean, there's carnage going on.

I mean, the Alabamaans and Texans, man, it's not like, I mean, they're attacking multiple times. And you and I have walked up that same approach route that to Texas and Alabama. That is not an easy route that I would want to take. I mean, it's just so on both sides. But man, you know, with the 20th main. And then with that Captain Morel, and you know, you mentioned there, because we didn't really talk about it. Just because, I mean, there's like so much stuff to talk about at Gettysburg.

But yeah, there's Bredan sharpshooters that were over there on the, the south end of the battlefield. And it was also the first time that anybody was allowed to wear green uniforms was the Bredan sharpshooters. So that's where you get your Army OD Green comes from the Bredan sharpshooters. And these dudes could lay the wood with a rifle. And as they're sharpshooting against the Confederates, they're kind of making their way up and over the big roundtop,

because they don't want to come through friendly lines. You know, nobody wearing a green tree suit wants to go through friendly lines. This is not a good idea, even still today. So they jump in and join in with Captain Morrell. So, I mean, just the actions of 20th Maine. And, you know, you guys have heard quite a bit about Chamberlain so far, not just at Gettysburg, but, you know, at the other battles and stuff. I mean, this guy to get folks to, you know, do a, where he only gets to say bayonet,

you know, and like we encourage all of you all to make your work. way to Gettysburg and mount that rock. I mean, if there's like one rock that you want to get on, dude, that's it. You know what I mean? Like, because you get a whole different perspective. Yeah. Like just what is it, like four feet up?

Yeah, probably a four foot tall rock. You're standing on the ground and you're looking and you're like, well, I can, I'm not really sure what's over there. Can't really see this area. There's dead space over there. But then you step on that rock and it just totally changes your perspective. Yeah. You got to get all the rock.

Yeah. And you might feel it a little bit too when you step up on the rock. I love running to that rock. That's always, I mean, I love that rock. Like you just said, I mean, there's so much going on. And, you know, I mentioned it earlier when I was talking about Rhodes book. Like, he throws out a sentence that's like, you know, we fought in the woods for an hour at close fire and hand-to-hand combat. Like, that's happening all over the place.

Like for like a couple square miles is people engaged in close combat heroics at all kinds of different levels And when you start talking about heroics that we can't talk about all of them But you got to talk about the first Minnesota, right? I mean you just have to talk about the first Minnesota and what they did because you got as this As this echelon attack is happening it's in some places is working. Oh yeah, especially people that stuck with the plan because there's some people that didn't decided not to execute you know you were talking about the morale earlier and you know you had long street that's kind of executed but kind of like did it on a slow roll the original original plan you got some of these Confederate forces that are like we're not going yeah we're not going yeah some of them went

some of them made progress uh there's a brigade from Georgia that actually starts to break through and is making their way up up cemetery up towards cemetery ridge like they're going to get there oh yeah like i mean it's i mean they're there uh and when you stand it because it's like really flat right there at that area you know what i mean and it's not it's not very probably but it is when you go to the east it does drop off pretty prominently back there to that road and like you said this draw play on this massive scale is working uh So yeah, these Georgia guys, they're going to start seeing it. And now we're over in the second core area, and that's Hancock.

So this is like his area of line of responsibility. But they're also, you know, I mean, there's, like you said, man, there's just so much stuff going on. Because, oh, by the way, while that draw play is going on, then what's going to kick off over here towards the Colpsoil? Well, now here comes Mead. I mean, Mead's got to deal with these guys because he's got, that's now going to start executing his draw play.

So it's just like, holy shit, man. You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of stuff going on. And as Hancock is riding the lines, you know what I mean? He's up and like, and everybody, like, I mean, when you, when you get the picture of the, the union generals at Gettysburg, even on day two, man, like, it's not like you got to go far to find one. they're all up there on the line. I mean, you've got folks moving in and around, pulling troops, pushing troops, because it's chaos.

And Hancock sees to where these folks are about ready. They're getting up onto the cemetery ridge, and as more resources are pulling up, here comes this unit, and it's the first Minnesota. And first Minnesota, I mean, pull the string on those guys. They're the reason why they're first. They are the first regiment from the state of Minnesota. These dudes have been in the war since the beginning.

They are a very proud unit from Minnesota. And there's some people that think that if it wasn't for the first Minnesota, you know what I mean, it could have been a different outcome, definitely with the Battle of Gettysburg for what these guys. So how they end up getting into this, Winfield Scott is seeing this, and he knows that it's going to be a disaster. And he looks over, and he sees,

and he yells down at the Minnesota. He doesn't know who they are, but he just sees a freaking regiment of it. And he's like, who is that? And of course, Colville, the colonel, First Minnesota. You know what I mean? He's like, of course it is the first. Like, these dudes are like First Minnesota.

And he looks and he says, you see those colors pointing at the Georgians, right? And he's pointing at them. You know what I mean? You say, take those colors. And I mean, so the Minnesota, and it's not going to go. You got the first. And just to throw some numbers out here.

Yeah, throw some numbers. I mean, well, how many guys we got in the first Minnesota at this point? Like, 250? Yeah, just less than 300. And how many are in this brigade of Georgians? thousand? Yeah, close to a thousand. You know, I mean, because yeah, go to the numbers because

at the beginning of the war, like a regiment's supposed to have a thousand people. Dude, we're in 63. We've had a lot. There's not a thousand people. They got just under three hundred. Well, as you just covered, I mean, it's like just going back to the book, Gettysburg here, Hancock broke from his thoughts

and looked at the first Minnesota as if for the first time, my God, he exclaimed. Are these all the men we have here? He demanded to know. and was told the regiment's name. Colonel, do you see those colors? He asked Colville. Colville, like you said, is the Minnesota commander,

pointing to some of the rebel battle flags bobbing among Wilcox's brigade. When Colville said he did, Hancock gave his orders. Then take them. The first Minnesota moved down the gentle slope. Bayonets fixed. A line of battle, perhaps 100 yards from end to end. The soldiers came under.

fire right away men stumbled and fell recalled an officer in those ranks some stayed down but others got up and continued the charging line of Minnesotans drove into the advanced screen of Wilcox's brigade and hustled it back to a second line which fell back to the main body this last some 1,000 strong was not going to be scattered by 250 or so Yankees. The men of the First Minnesota halted along the dry stream bed of plum run, firing for all they were worth. A torrent of Confederate rifle fire lashed into the Yankee regiment from Wilcox's men in their front and from some of the Lang's Florida troops who got an enflayed position. After enduring a few minutes of this, the union survivors ran back to Cemetery Ridge.

This was the final straw for Cadmus Wilcox. His request for reinforcements had not been answered, and both his flanks were exposed. Without support on either my right or left, he reported, my men were withdrawn to prevent their entire destruction or capture. And the Minnesota, I mean, they took like somewhere around 80% losses. Yeah, yeah, it's anywhere between 80, 83%. And you know what they were most proud of?

everybody was present. Nobody stayed back. I mean, the Minnesota one goes, man, they all went. Yeah, I mean, and that monument that's there for the first Minnesota, because, you know, it's right there next to the biggest monument on the freaking battlefield, you know, that big white domy thing of Pennsylvania because the Pennsylvanians are proud of their boys that fought there, which, yeah, of course. But that Minnesota, man, it's just, it's a cool monument.

just because it's just one rifleman. And he's like, you know, he's carrying his rival. And he's kind of like bent over like he's in that charge, man. It's just one dude, man, running right into that melee. And he's representing like all of Minnesota. I mean, it's just, I mean, it's incredible. Like you said, I mean, there's just so many acts of just complete, just bravery. and leadership.

I mean, we could spend just years up there. You know what I mean? It's just, so, yeah. Well, you know, the Minnesota, the first Minnesota is able to stop. That's the closest that they get to breaking through the lines. And they were halted by these 250,000 were stopped by 250,000, and that was kind of the closest they got day, this is day two.

and that kind of closes out day two. Like this is, they're kind of there. They're kind of back to home. They're kind of back to where they started. At the end of day two, really not a lot of progress has been made. There's been a lot of fighting. There's been a lot of death. But you end up with, you know, seminary ridge.

You end up with Lee and the Confederates over there on Seminary Ridge again. And on Cemetery Ridge, you got the fish hook. That's where you end up with at the end of, at the end of day two. Now worth mentioning the Minnesota were close to breaking through, but also like in the center of the line where Lee was watching, there was another brigade that almost broke through, right? Yeah, he's over at his headquarters and you could see.

So as he watches this one brigade break through the lines there, you know what I mean? And like get into the line. I mean, these guys are in the line. lines with Minnesota and then they're they're on seminary on cemetery ridge they're in the lines and Lee it has a profound effect on Robert E. Lee and just like you said like you know just like hood going for the round tops not doing what he's told some folks just decided I'm just not going to attack and you know cadness Wilcox has to pull back out same things happening over on

copse hill with that whole thing with yule folks are just deciding yeah just not going to attack You know what I mean? So this is like, this is something, this hasn't happened in the Army of Northern Virginia. But yeah, Lee is observing, you know what I mean? And he sees this brigade that is successful. So Lee thinks, hmm, because as everybody's like pulling back, like you said, day two, we're done. So everybody's got to like get what they can and make their way back to their original starting positions. So literally, we're right back.

like you had said, seminary, cemetery. Everybody's back to where they were, except now we've got folks occupying, and we're going to keep them up on the little roundtop. Like, okay, once we got it, we're going to keep it. So good call. I don't want to give that up again, but you could imagine, I mean, there's a lot of loss. I mean, these armies are getting pretty wrecked. So the lines are going to start to get pretty thin.

I mean, when you've got a regiment of First Minnesota, and you're taking over 80% casualties, I mean, So the lines are getting thin. But, you know, the Union Army's got good resupply coming in. Now you've got to look at the resupply that's coming in over with the Army of Northern Virginia. You know what I mean? They're getting kind of low. So Lee's got to come up with another plan and he's got to bring his Corps commanders back in that night.

Because he's got to issue another order, right? So Lee, as he's observing the day battle, and he's got a pretty good vantage point to observe that, he's like, dude, if one brigade can get through that line, what if I stuff 11 brigades through the center line? So here comes pickets charge. So that's why, on day three, what he sees happened success. on day two, I'm going to stuff 11 brigades right across that, three quarters of a mile, right in the middle. Frontal assault. Frontal assault, man.

And, you know, so you've got Longstreet in there. So, I mean, you know, how that kind of went down on July the 2nd, Longstreet when he showed up. He wasn't on board with the plan. and then goes out, you know, slow rolls, whatever, you know what I mean, it gets all the way out and around. It goes from 200 people into Peach Orchard, a couple of thousand people into Peach Orchard. Hood is, he's not doing what he's told. You've got other guys that are refusing to advance.

I mean, it's just like, what, what, yeah, like, what's going on with the Army of Northern Virginia here? And now, I can only imagine. So Longstreet walks into the tent, he's like, hey, boss, yeah, but wasn't a good day. No shit. But I could imagine like Longstreet might be looking at it like, what do you want to do today? And then Lee's going to say, I want to stuff 11 brigades. Yeah, you would think Longstreet would be like, hey, you know, boss, look, we took a crack at it. Might be a good idea.

You remember what I was talking about a couple days ago? Like, how about we move somewhere else to get defensive? What do you think, boss? Like, this isn't working out too well. That's what I would be hoping for if I was Longstreet. Right. But that's not what he gets. No.

He gets, we're going to do a frontal assault straight up the middle. So, you know, Longstreet pushes back against that plan. Yeah. And luckily, we got some documentation here. Once again, going back to this book, Gettysburg, you know, if you, how strongly does he push back against, you know, General Lee, who is the Confederacy at this point, right? Here's what Longstreet tells him. General I have been a soldier all my life I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples

by squads companies regiments divisions and armies and should know as well as anyone what soldiers can do it is my opinion that no 15,000 men ever arrayed for battle can take that position and the number next line in the book is, Lee was unmoved. Yeah, unmoved. Which is crazy to think about.

Like, this is, I mean, even guys that I didn't really, you know, if I had one of my subordinates come to me and say, hey, Jaka, look, the plan that you just came up with, I've been doing this for a while, this ain't going to work. Even if I didn't know that, you know, even if my trust level was low, I'd be like,

oh, damn, this is going to make me reconsider some stuff. So, the fact that Lee is just like, unmoved, It's scary to think about it's scary to think about and I'll tell you what when you go over and you stand on on the Confederate side and you look up across that field It's it's a nightmare. It's a nightmare you got this big open field There's barely any cover. They got these They got these fences right like these these these these these these these fences out there that are going to bog you down.

The unions in like a little bit of an elevated position where they're shooting down. I mean, it's a nightmare. But that's the command. Yeah. And the funny thing is, is like, even though Longstreet makes that response. And it's crazy that Lee is unmoved. And then who's he going to pick to be in charge of all of this? Long Street.

So again, you got a guy that is not, like, I mean, he's definitely not on board with the plan. So then he's got to go and he's got to coordinate with AP Hill because he's going to take some of his guys too. I mean, this is, like you said, I mean, there's over 12,000 people. I mean, when you look at that field, the front it, like people think, like when you think about it, oh, it's just pick its charge. Yeah, they're all just going to be in this little tight. No, I mean, it's across the field. field frontage. You know what I mean?

And they're going to come up out of like, okay, yeah, I'll give, there's a little bit of defalate. Yeah, there's some, some little areas. Little areas. But you better be skull dragon and wearing a gilly suit, man, like, if you think you're going to get across that field, unscathed. And then, you know, we talk about like, it's, now you're coming into July 3rd. You've been out there fighting a battle for a couple of days, right?

And you've, we don't have smokeless gunpowder yet either, do we? So there's no wind. It's freaking hot. It's humid. It's July. So all of that just smoke is just sitting in that low area across the fields. Because to kick this thing off, just like a lot of infantry attacks kick off, they kick it off with bombardment, with a massive cannon bombardment. And that's what the, that's what the Confederates do.

But like you said, well, when you shoot a cannon, you look at where you hit and then you make some adjustments, right? Well, when everything is covered by smoke, you're only getting a couple rounds off before you can't really even see what you're shooting at anymore. Yeah, so you're effective fire. Like in today's day and age, dude, you could have like the artillery all the way back over in the Cumberland Valley. And you got an F.O. guys. And we could be calling in Artie. And you don't even know where they are.

Well, back then, this is just like a big-ass rifle on wheels. It's got like even a little peep sight, you know what I mean? Like on the front of it. And it's got like one of those little sulky chairs like on a tractor, you know what I mean? So you got the guy and he's going to cite the piece. So meaning I got to be able to see Jock and I got to cite it. And then I got to, you know what I mean? So there's a lot going on here.

And then, you know, one of the other things that we didn't bring up that we always talk about when we're over on McPherson's Ridge of range estimation. You know what I mean? So you're talking about range estimation. And like nowadays, you know, we got like Likas and cool stuff with like laser range finders. Like everybody's got one. You know what I mean?

Back then it's kind of like you're looking at it. And it's like, you know, so like you got to look at like large objects. Well, in farmland, the most prominent features on these battlefields are barns. Right? So you got a barn. And, uh, and the barns, if you're from the south, the barns are like two-story, right? You know what I mean?

So when you're looking at you're, if you're from North Carolina, you're looking at a barn, and whether you're shooting a rifle or you're shooting an artillery piece, you're like, hey, that barn, you probably hold out your fingers. You're like, hey, for me,

when I hold up my finger to a barn, if my finger can cover both stories, that's this many yards away. If it's half of my finger, oh, it's this many yards away. If it's really close, it takes two fingers a couple. So you get a way to sense, like the same thing happens with hunting like elk, right?

If you can, as often as you can, you go out and you look at and you shoot at life size elk targets. Because after a while you go, oh, I can see, I can just a quick estimation like, oh, I can see how big it is just by understanding the size of an elk and how big it is in my vision right now. Okay, that thing's 80 yards away. Oh, look at this other one over here. Oh, that's things this big in my vision. It's 40 yards away. So these guys get used to. You're in the South.

You're looking at a barn. You know that the things roughly, what's two stories, but it's 20 feet, 22 feet. You know what it is, and you can do range estimation on that. Right. So the Army of Northern Virginia has, how many times have they been north so far? Once. For one day, right? And they got out.

One day. and they only saw a couple of barns. You know what I mean? So now they're back up there again. Well, you know what I mean? I live in Virginia. The barns in Virginia are smaller than the barns in Gettysburg

because it gets cold up there. So they've got that bottom story to where they can put the livestock underneath there. We're out there at like McPherson's Ridge because we always go back and around the backside of the barn. and you can now see it.

You know what I mean? So range estimation is going to be a big deal. You know what I mean? It's called a miss. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because it appears to be closer. So you're going to short-round it.

You know what I mean? And these guys are only three-quarters of a mile. So it doesn't matter if you're, the green tubes, you know, that are out there are the Napoleon-style artillery, still three-quarters of a mile. The black tubes are painted black because they're steel. So for erosion, those are still a mile. Those are still a mile and a half guns, you know what I mean? But you still have to see.

You know what I mean? And you're still going to cut for the range estimation of how far you want this big, massive ball to blow up, right? So it's going to be off. So that's going to be a huge effect on the Army of Northern Virginia as well. And they're just going to, yeah, they're going to start with that artillery barrage. And then it's, here comes pickets charge. Pickett's charge is like you said it's 12,500 men they're going on look is there some is

there some places to hide along the way is there is there a little knoll to get behind is there some dead space you can work through yes but eventually if you're going to move forward you're going to have to get up and you're going to out of that so there's very little cover there's not even that much concealment it's three quarters of a mile there's these split rail fences that you're You're bogged down on. You have to either break it, which is going to take you time, or you've got to climb over it.

Now you're even more exposed. And this just turns into a death march as they move forward. Yeah, it's, you know, as they, now, do they make it all the way across the field? Yeah. Some of them do. Some of them. But it's not enough to make any matter. And a lot of folks, you know, when you read, you always get to the, you know, the high watermark of the Confederacy that's over there.

And it's not, it's just like that. It's that little bitty white, like marble looking, like looks like a scroll. And that is where, like, what makes it even more famous is that's where Armistead and Hancock, they're friends. So that's where Armistead falls and dies and literally Hancock comes out. But that high watermark of the confederacy, that's as far north as they ever got. Yeah. And like it's a death, it's a field of death. But like you said, some of them do make it.

There's hand-to-hand combat. And, you know, you go there. It's amazing because you're like standing at the stone wall where some of the Confederates made it over that wall. They're in there. They're killing each other with band. It's like the fact that they made it that far is incredible. But once they got there, that was it. The guys that made it there were the guys that made it there.

There was no one else coming. Yeah, nobody. And the thing about it is, like, at that high watermark, how far would you say we're actually from Meads headquarters? 500 yards? No more than 500 yards. I mean, it's like literally right over the military crest. You're there. I mean, that's how close these dudes are.

And it, yeah, it looks like, like nowadays. I mean, it's just like just, I mean, it's a beautiful battlefield part. But I mean, that day at the end of Pickett's Charge, man, of what's taking place in the center of those lines is just freaking carnage. You know, so yeah, it's a it was game on. So that, yeah, so when you go there, when you hear the referral of the high watermark and the and the cops of trees that people talk about, those cops of trees are just like a just a little bit off to the. left of the high watermark is just like this. And you can't miss it because the park service put a big, like, rod iron fence around the copse of trees.

Those cops of trees is where it's supposed to be the trees that are high enough. Because like when Jocko and I were kind of talking a little bit earlier about like you can't really see stuff, but the trees are up above all the smoke and stuff. So it's giving you a guide. So while you're trying to get across this field, you can at least see those trees in the distance. And there's debate over whether or not it was those cops of trees or whether it doesn't make a shit. You know what I mean?

There's trees and it's like a guiding because once they go, it's like as everybody goes towards the cops of trees, that's why everybody's kind of funneling in to that center of the line. And then that's where you get the high watermark of the Confederacy. So that's how when you're reading through the book and you're trying to like kind of figure out your head of like what's going on. You know, if you, if you, you know, come out to Gettysburg and you see it, like all of it, just bam, it just comes right to you. And it's amazing, you know what I mean, that, you know, that's pretty much the end of day three. You know what I mean? And then you've got the high watermark, and then you're looking at the casualties of that day.

You know, you're starting out, you get, you're sending across 12,500 folks. I mean, that's a lot of people, but you could imagine at the end of day three. man of the battle at Gettysburg. Yeah, I mean, just, just on that, it's 1,123 killed 4,000 wounds. So like half. And 3,750 captured. So more than half

of your troops are gone. Or there are at least casualties that aren't going to be able to fight anymore. And you know, you it's so frustrating. when you look at that battlefield and you know you understand you know this is this is

about leadership and just that to know that the relationship wasn't there you know when again look if you're a historian and you want to pull up some letters that I don't know about okay from my perspective as I look at the relationship between Longstreet and Lee they didn't have a good enough relationship where where Lee is going to listen to long street and say hey I'm giving you the strongest possible personal recommendation not to do this and Lee says no we're doing it and and then you just send you know half of your men to be wounded killed or captured it's it's horrible thing to look at at and it's it's a very depressing thought from a leadership perspective so yeah like you said

I mean this is after that the the confederate moves back and and basically day the next day they get up and they start their retreat to the south and I mean Lincoln Lincoln's fired up It's like, hey, pursue. It mead's like, yeah, boss, okay, you know, we'll do our best. But, I mean, there's, the casualties on the union side are absolutely immense. And so it's a win. It's definitely a win for the union. Now, interestingly, you would think that this would be the big news of the day.

You would think. You would think that this would be the big news of the day. generally the most respected military commander out there on either side just got defeated the people that are the the Confederates who have been on a winning streak winning streak winning streak winning streak winning streak all of a sudden they've been defeated you would think that this would be the big story but the big story actually isn't Gettysburg the big story is what happens on July 4th in Vicks and that is that Vicksburg falls it's been under siege and Vicksburg falls.

Grant, our boy Grant is out there and he's like proven his leadership skills. And this puts, you know, Grant or puts Lincoln to a position. He's, you know, he's paying attention. See who's got it that's out there kicking ass. And he's starting to see Grant as a guy that's out there kicking ass. And Lincoln's thinking, I'm going to bring this guy back east and and let him take over all the armies. So even though but even though this wasn't the story of the day

Certainly This became this battle became legend And you know years later At a dedication To a memorial to the 20th May on little roundtop Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain He gave a speech up there And this

This speech you know just to give a little A little small excerpt of this speech of what he said. He said this. We rose in soul above the things which even the Declaration of Independence pronounces the inalienable rights of human nature for the securing of which governments are instituted among men. Happiness, liberty, life.

We laid on the altar of offering. or committed to the furies of destruction while our minds were lifted up to a great thought and our hearts swelled to its measure we were beckoned on by the vision of destiny we saw our country moving forward charged with the sacred trusts of man we believed in its glorious career the power of high aims and strong purpose the continuity of great the onward upward path of history to God every man felt that he gave himself to and belong to something beyond time and above place something which could not die so all those things that in the Declaration of Independence life liberty and the

pursuit of happiness these men on that ground put all those things on the altar of sacrifice and yet despite all that suffering and all that sacrifice the war was not over Then there would be more suffering and there would be more sacrifice Required in order to preserve the Union and we will continue that on the next civil war Excursion and that's the plan so we've got to July of 1863 We have to go all the way until April of 1865. It's going to start to turn into the Lee versus Grant story.

We're going to start seeing Sherman back in the game. We've been here. J.D. and I have been here for a week out here in San Diego, California doing this. We aren't going to be able to do this immediately. But the plan is in the next several months, we'll come out and we'll give you the second half of what's going on the second half of how this unfolds some of these details some of these lessons learned you know you know jd it's uh so awesome to be able to sit here with you because you know i i'm a jiu jitsu guy probably if there's well i guess i know i know probably the best

skill i have or no the but the most knowledge i have is probably about maneuvering elements on a battlefield small elements on the battlefield that's probably the most knowledgeable thing I have because that was my profession for a long time. But Jiu-Jitsu is right up there. And like when I'm learning Jiu-Jitsu, if I'm learning a new move and somebody shows me something, for me, because I have a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge and a lot of context, I can take that move and I can incorporate it usually pretty quick. And what I love about having you here is the context that you have around this information.

It's like incredible. It is not just a it's not what I really like about is not just a mental picture that you have. You don't just have like, hey, I know this character. I know that character. You have an unmatched terrain association where when we're talking about a place on the battlefield, you know that place. You've been in that place. You've been in that place.

Like when we're talking about Vicksburg, we just threw a random, a random show. Vicksburg, we haven't talked about Vicksburg yet. We just throwing a random thing out there about Vicksburg, the Csburg. the siege ending and the Confederacy falling in. You're like, you know where that happened. You've walked those grounds. You've been through that. So it's awesome to be able to sit here and have you share that context and all these different things, man.

So I appreciate you coming out to do this. I appreciate you having me out, man. This is a huge, great experience, man, being on here. And again, like I've told you numerous times, when you read Chamberlain, and the folks that are out there and the characters that we're talking about. I mean, these are great Americans, man. Like, everybody in America should know who John Frick and Buford is, man. They should know Chamberlain.

They should know Mead. You know, as many times as like we've done staff rise together. And you know, like the first day when everybody gets there, first thing we're always like is like, hey, put your hand in the air if you know who George Gordon Mead is. Nobody puts their hand in the air. I say, well, who knows Robert E. Lee? The whole room goes up. And it's like he beat Robert E.

Lee here. Like he fought for the union, man. Like Mead, you know what I mean? It's a great guy. Hancock. You know what I mean? We talked about that stuff earlier today. Like, I mean, you don't know who hand.

I mean, these are just great. So I mean, dude, I love being on here with you, man. And, you know, folks can learn and hopefully, you know, get these books, man, and read through them. I mean, they are just phenomenal. Yeah. A caveat that I should have put out, like on the first one that we did. is, look, first of all, we can't cover everything.

You know, we just can't cover everything. And we know that there's stuff we're skipping over. We know that there's letters that were written that we didn't. There's just all this stuff to go through. And you could see, I mean, we're on Gettysburg today. We're at three hours and 42 minutes, by the way, right now. So three hours and 42 minutes, we could have done this. We could have done seven, eight hours on it.

And when we go to the battlefield, when we go to Gettysburg, we do eight hours a day plus dinner, plus breakfast. Like, we're just, it's like 28 hours of freaking Gettysburg, just Gettysburg. So that's the caveat. Also, look, like, obviously, I'm not, I'm much less knowledgeable than you. I'm throwing in my spin. So if anyone's mad that I said, Lee thought this or, or, you know, Longstreet thought that or Chamberlain should have done this. I apologize for my opinions.

That's my assessment. Sorry. you know, don't, don't subscribe, you know, but those are my, hey, it's my podcast, I'll have my opinions. But, but honestly, not that it's my podcast, I'll have my opinions, but for me, I always want to know from a leadership perspective, from a human nature perspective, what can I glean from what I see? And if I'm not trying to figure it out, well, then I'm not, in my opinion, I'm not trying

to put my context around. I don't have the context that you have around the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, characters, the actual terrain. But I got care, you know, I've got my context of interacting with a bunch of people for a long time. So I apologize to anyone out there that's mad about some take I had on something. That's my take, man. And hey, if I'm, I look for, I'm sure a lot of people will reach out and say, hey, you know, Lee never would have said that because of X. I will appreciate that feedback. I'm open to, obviously open to it. I know I don't know everything. But seriously, there's so many lessons to learn in these and and going to these places. Look, do you,

do you want to come and go through one of these battlegrounds with Eschalonfront? Sure. Do you want to go with OMNA International, which is JD's company? Sure. If you don't go with us, you don't need us there. I would just encourage you to go out, walk these battlefields. I mean, this, when you look at the elevated the elevated vision that Chamberlain has of this country and you realize that's what these guys were striving for now look was every private striving for this elevated vision no no no I get that is every you know Lance Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps is every private in the army got this elevated vision of of America and that's what they're fighting for no not all of them but I'll tell you what you take a unit and that elevated vision

of America is there. And that's what these men fought for. And so you go out, pay respect on these battlefields, and you're going to take away something, not just about leadership, not just about combat, but you're going to learn to appreciate what sacrifices were made so that we could carry on this incredible nation that we have.

Anything else, JD? Yeah, that's it, man. Love it. Awesome. That's the plan everybody. We'll see in a few months for the rest of the Jocko excursion Civil War podcast with J.D. Baker. In the meantime, if you want to support, go to jocco store.com, joccofuel.com, origin USA.com, Eshlamfront.com, the o mn.a.com.

We appreciate it. And until next time, stay free. This is J.D. and Jocco.