Lee's Second Invasion of the North a Good Idea?

Well, I am back. Been pretty lax in posting, but I should be able to post more often now that school is over.

So I thought that I would post about the idea of Lee's Gettysburg campaign being a good idea or not. I have been in a discussion about this for the past day or so and I thought that I would put my ideas up and let you guys decide for yourselves.

In my view of the campaign and looking at Lee's purpose behind it, I think that Lee had some real justifications in carrying the campaign to the North again. Now, personally, I don't think the campaign was a great idea to begin with, but I will give credit to Lee for coming up with the plan. After the Battle of Chancellorsville, Lee knew that carrying on a campaign in Virginia was becoming nigh on impossible. The land had been picked clean by the operation of two massive armies operating within its bounds for two years. There was not food to be had anywhere and the supply situation for the Army of Northern Virginia wasn't looking very good. However, the areas of Maryland and Pennsylvania were ripe for the picking, and a few months foraging up north of the Mason-Dixon could give Virginia farmers time to harvest crops and get marauding Union men out of their hair for a time. There was no place else really to go for food, seeing as the whole south was trying to provide for both the armies in the field and the civilian population. It wasn't like in the North which had a vast industrial complex to provide food and supplies for the armies in the field.

Secondly, Lee wanted to try and finally break the back on the Union juggernaut. He had reason to believe that he could defeat Hooker on his own territory and very possibly bring the Union to the negotiating table. Hooker had no confidence in himself and his army was demoralized by being so badly beaten at Chancellorsville. Lee had every reason to believe that he could do it again. And heading North was the way that Lee saw to do it.

Thirdly, I think that Lee was trying to keep his men in the Eastern theater of operations. The other option that was being presented to him was to send men west to help either relieve Vicksburg, or to help defeat Rosecrans. Lee understood that to do this would take a good portion of men away from his command, which was protecting Richmond. With a corps from his army away, he would have to pull back into the defenses of Richmond and risk being besieged, which was something that he did not want to do.

I have heard some say that it would have been better to have sent men to the west, and that this was the only time that they could do it, because shortly thereafter, the rail line between Petersburg and Knoxville was cut, and if men were to be sent, they would have to take a very roundabout route. My problem with sending men west is that any of the men sent there would be placed under some pretty incompetent commanders. They would have been put in the command of Bragg, who, lets face it, wasn't the greatest general, or under Joe Johnston, who wasn't the best either. They would have been going up against men who were equal to, or possibly even better than, them in combat. The western armies were not made up of soft city boys like many of the units in the east, but rough country men who were used to the privations of war and had fought long and hard. And with commanders like Grant and Sherman, it would have been a slugging match that would have eventually taken men from the East and needlessly killed them.

I think that Lee had justifications for making a move North. I don't think it was smart that he did so, because he was fighting deep in enemy territory and with extended lines of supply and communication, that would make it hard to maneuver the farther he went. However, I can see where Lee was going, and I think that an invasion of the North was the lesser of two evils. Though Gettysburg wasn't a good idea, as hindsight tells us, it was better than detaching troops and sending them far out of support range and risking a seige. I have to agree that Lee was right in choosing to go North than sending men west.