So far as has ever yet been made apparent, every plan which Lee formed for the battle of Gettysburg, every order which he gave, was wise and right.  We do not except even his management on the third day.  It is easy to find fault with dispositions when they have failed of happy results.  Men have said that instead of attacking in front on that day Lee should have drawn Ewell from the left and thrown him to Longstreet’s right, manoeuvring Meade out of his position.  But in this matter, too, Lee’s judgment was probably good.  Changing his plan of attack would have been a partial confession of defeat, to some extent disheartening his men.  The Union Sixth Corps, fresh and free, General John Sedgwick at its head, was sure to have pounced on any troops seeking to trouble Meade’s left, and, had Meade been successfully flanked and forced back, he would have retired to Pipe Creek and been stronger than ever.

Of course, Pickett should never have been sent forward alone.  You could wade the Atlantic as easily as he, unsupported, could go beyond that stone wall.  But, from all one can learn, Lee was in fact not responsible for Pickett’s lack of support, although in almost guilty nobleness of spirit he assumed the responsibility, and silently rested under the imputation of it till his death.

Had Lee’s great subordinates, Ewell at nightfall on the first day, and Longstreet on the other two days, seconded him with the alacrity and devotion usually displayed by them, or had Stonewall Jackson been still alive and in the place of either of these generals, the issue of the battle would almost to a certainty have been very different from what it was.  A soldier who had often followed to victory the enterprising Graham of Claverhouse, but, under a weaker leader, saw a battle wavering, cried out, “O for one hour of Dundee!” So must Lee often have sighed for Stonewall, the loss of whom at Chancellorsville made that, for the Confederacy, a sort of Pyrrhic victory.

Lee’s skill at Gettysburg has been questioned in that he fought his army upon the longer line, the big fishhook described by his position lying outside the little one formed by the Federal army.  But Lee fought on the outer line also at Second Bull Run, winning one of the neatest victories in modern warfare.

John Codman Ropes, the well-known military critic, says of this battle:  “It would be hard to find a better instance of that masterly comprehension of the actual condition of things which marks a great general than was exhibited in General Lee’s allowing our formidable attack, in which more than half the Federal army was taking part, to be fully developed and to burst upon the exhausted troops of Stonewall Jackson, while Lee, relying upon the ability of that able soldier to maintain his position, was maturing and arranging for the great attack on our left flank by the powerful corps of Longstreet.”