Hardly anyone knows his name, but 150 years ago, one of America’s greatest generals, George Meade, saved a nation
By RALPH PETERS
One hundred and fifty years ago tomorrow morning, two great armies slammed into each other outside a crossroads town in Pennsylvania. Neither army’s commander intended to fight at Gettysburg, but the battle took on a life of its own as reinforcements rushed to the sound of the guns. Soldiers in blue and gray would fight for three days, leaving almost 7,000 Americans dead and 30,000 wounded.
At the close of the battle on July 3, 1863, the Army of the Potomac, led by Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade — the most underrated soldier in our history — had won the Union’s first indisputable victory in the east. With Gettysburg’s strategic effect compounded by news of Grant’s capture of Vicksburg, Miss., on July 4, the Confederacy was left with no realistic chance of winning the war militarily (although the South’s valiant, stubborn troops would fight on for two more years). The secessionist government in Richmond could only hope to conjure a political settlement.
Revisionist historians question Gettysburg’s decisiveness, given that the war continued. They fail to note the consequences, had General Robert E. Lee and his boys in gray won: In less than a week, Lee’s ferocious ragamuffins would have marched down Broad Street in Philadelphia; the North would have been pressured to sue for peace; and England and France would have found the excuse their social elites longed for to intervene on the South’s behalf.
Gen. Meade and his soldiers in blue saved our Union on those blood-soaked fields.
UNDERDOGS
The North had the greater population, wealth and industrial might at the war’s beginning in 1861, yet poor generalship and poisonous politics led to one humbling Union defeat after another — especially in Virginia, where Lee took command in 1862 and scored astonishing victories.
Not two months before Gettysburg, at Chancellorsville, Lee had again humiliated a far-stronger Union force, driving it back toward Washington. The North’s premier army had become accustomed to losing. The situation had grown so bad that senior generals declined command of the Army of the Potomac to protect their reputations.
As Lee’s army’s rampaged through southern Pennsylvania and threatened Harrisburg, a frustrated President Lincoln sacked Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker (who had failed miserably at Chancellorsville). Lincoln ordered the relatively junior Meade to take command.
Awakened in the middle of the night three days before the first shots at Gettysburg, Meade initially thought he was being arrested because of a spat with Hooker. Instead, he learned that he was to take the reins of a dispersed, defeated army and stop Robert E. Lee.
"Mr.Lincoln's War" was the first un-Constitutional misuse of the US Army. The South had a Constitutional RIGHT to secede from the Union,and that treasonous asshat Lincoln knew it and proceeded anyhow.
He even went so far as to threaten the Supreme Court by telling them he would send US Marshals around to lock them up in a military prison for the duration of the war if they went public with their ruling against him when he wanted to go to war.
The United States WERE a VOLUNTARY Union prior to the War of Northern Aggression. None of the original colonies were conquered by military force and forced to become Union members,they all entered the Union of their own free will,and agreements were reached regarding federal power to get them to join.
Which means they had a right to withdraw at any time.
Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
Quote: Eglman wrote in post #3you must spend alot of time over at Lew Rockwell (aka Ron Paul mouthpiece)
If you define a "lot of time" as "never been there",ya got me.
I think it would be safe to define YOU as a paid-up member of the "unthinking drone-like Party People" clique because it seems like you can only envision and approve of linear thinking.
Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." Thomas Jefferson
"If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here." - Barack Obama, June 7, 2013
RIGHT'S RIGHT 
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Sun Jun 30, 2013 8:40 am
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