Confederate Battle of Gettysburg, Volume I, July 1, 1863

The Battle of Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863) was fought during the American Civil War between the Union and Confederate armies in and around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battle, won by the Union, is widely considered the turning point of the Civil War, leading to the Union's ultimate victory and the preservation of the United States nation. The most controversial assessments of the battle involve the performance of Lee's subordinates. A dominant theme among many historians is that Lee's most senior generals failed him in crucial ways, directly causing the defeat in the battle; an alternative viewpoint is that Lee did not manage his subordinates adequately and therefore did not compensate for their shortcomings. In simulating this battle, I will use the board game "Three Days of Gettysburg" by GMT Games. And in this Volume I, of the three that will make up my book on the Confederate Battle of Gettysburg, I will try to answer the first of three historically most persistent questions: 1) On the first day of the battle, if the Confederates had been more aggressive and captured Culp's Hill and perhaps Cemetery Hill, would it still have been possible for the Unionists to fight at Gettysburg?