Please tell me what scumbag war crimes are laid at Pickett’s door.
Inquiring minds want to know.
A recent Article in “Armchair General”, that I briefly read in an airport, suggested that Jackson had an appreciation of the strength of a fortified defense, and recommended either southern use of fortified positions, or raiding attacks against the north. Jefferson Davis and RE Lee overruled Jackson.
I point out the irony that John Brown also had gained (from Kansas) an appreciation of the strength of the defense, but not having a military education, overreacted to that appreciation, not having the benefit of constraints by other officers.
I disagreed with the idea expressed in that article that Jackson making those recommendations was more correct than those who overruled him. I think that Davis and Lee had an appreciation that removing southern militia from the south would have exposed the country to servile insurrection, and southern reliance on fortification would have exposed most of the country (that could not be fortified) to northern raiders.
More Irony: Meade defeated Lee at Gettysburg using the kind of field fortifications that Jackson had appreciated. Sherman cut off Atlanta, despite the fortifications which prevented direct assault. Then Sherman’s army, after Atlanta, functioned as the kind of raider that Jackson had advocated. Wheeler, in the absence of Hood and the Army of Tennessee, could not stop Sherman, even by resorting to illegal infernal devices that were nearly sure to randomly murder civilians.
North Carolina had the distinction of being the only seceding state where the question of secession was put to a popular vote, and the proposition was rejected. Many, many Tarheels opposed secession.
When Federal troops landed and siezed most of the Carolina coast, many North Carolinians enlisted in the U. S. Army.
Pickett captured a number of federal troops at New Bern. He declared that all North Carolinians in USA uniforms were deserters; he hanged (if memory serves) on the order of 26.
Knowing he would face trial, he fled the country after 1865. The general exhaustion of war finally led several ex-union officers to interdcede for him and suggest a (completely unjustified) amnesty.