Lost Triumph: Lee’s Real Plan at Gettysburg–and Why It Failed

Thanks to Tom Carhart’s painstaking and absorbing reconstruction of events, we now have a clear comprehension of what Lee planned for July 3-and why it went wrong. -James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom

This is a fresh and fascinating new look at one of the most pivotal moments in American history: the Battle of Gettysburg, when Union forces repelled the brilliant Robert E. Lee, who had already thrashed a long line of Federal opponents-just as he was poised at the back door of the nation’s capital.Conventional wisdom holds that Lee made one profoundly wrong decision on the last day of the battle-launching Pickett’s Charge uphill across an open field against the heart of the Union defense. But why would he have employed only a fifth of his forces at such a crucial moment?

Now, Tom Carhart offers a bold thesis-that Lee’s heretofore unknown strategy at Gettysburg was to combine Pickett’s frontal attack with a daring rear assault by the great Jeb Stuart to break the Union Army in half. Only in the battle’s final hours was Stuart stopped by a force half the size of his own, led by a young, unproven general-George Armstrong Custer-who helped turn the tide of the war.

Destined to be controversial, Lost Triumph is a provocative reassessment of this monumental battle and a vivid, indispensable contribution to Civil War literature.