Had Lee won at Gettysburg he would still have been hundreds of miles inside Union territory, with tens of thousands of wounded to care for, no supply line to the Confederacy, and most of his ammunition used up. He would not have gone after Washington or Baltimore or Philadelphia. He would have gone home. He had no choice.
“...He had no choice...”
He was headed for DC two years earlier when McLellan (may he burn in military hell) stopped him at Antietam. He escaped back across the Potomac and was going back.
Had he won Gettysburg, I think he would have found a way to continue.
Sorry, but you only have logic on your side.
And, with all due respect to Lee, Washington was incredibly heavily fortified by that point.
Good point. I thought the whole purpose of penetrating north into Pennsylvania was to draw the Union forces west and away from the Confederate capital of Richmond and the rest of Virginia. That’s it.
General Lees’s supply line to the Shenandoah Valley and Harper’s Ferry military depot was never threatened. Where did you get that?