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Pickett's Charge: Nothing But Glory

At exactly 2:25 PM, Confederate Colonel Edward Porter Alexander scribbled this note and rushed it off to General George Pickett: ”If you are coming at all you must come at once, or I cannot give you proper support, but the enemy’s fire has not slackened at all. At least 18 guns are still firing from the cemetery itself.” But those 18 Federal guns began to fall silent. So, Alexander watched intently, waiting to see if the Confederate artillery barrage had done its job.

It was July 3, 1863, moments before what remains the most well-known, controversial, and roundly debated infantry assault in American military history, forever known as Pickett’s Charge. Smoke was still swirling from the greatest cannonade the North American Continent had ever witnessed as Alexander peered through his glasses, trying to fathom if the Rebel bombardment had created the necessary conditions for their infantry to advance.

He watched closely as Federal batteries limbered-up and departed the critical area (which he incorrectly thought was a cemetery), while none replaced them. After five minutes of meticulous observation, he scribbled another note, sending it off at 2:35: “For God’s sake come quick. The 18 guns are gone. Come quick or I can’t support you.”

Death of the Wooden Warship: The Monitor vs The Merrimack

It was March 8, 1862, a Saturday. On the waters of Hampton Roads off Newport News, Virginia – where the Chesapeake Bay empties into the Atlantic Ocean – the Federal warships Cumberland and Congress bobbed easily on a light chop. The sky was blue, the day warming, the morning uneventful. Drying wash flapped on a light breeze, harmonicas offered-up pleasant tunes, as sailors went about their usual duties. Then, abruptly, around 12:30 in the afternoon, everything changed.

Across the Bay, far to the south, emerging from the Elizabeth River at Norfolk, something odd, something never seen before, had just been spotted. Heads turned, fingers pointed, as binoculars and telescopic glasses were quickly yanked from their cases. A trail of black smoke could be seen rising from a smokestack, below that what appeared to be an enormous hull moving very slowly, bearing WNW. “I wish you would take the glass and have a look over there, sir,” said the quartermaster of the watch. “I believe that thing is a-comin’ down at last.”

Alexander’s Final Masterpiece – Savagery on the Hydaspes

 

For three days, the rains fell steadily, but then the downpours ceased. Riding through the mud with his lieutenants, he studies the enemy, formed in the distance along a line almost four miles in length, cavalry covering both flanks, armor glittering in the intermittent rays of the sun. Fronting the cavalry, he notices chariots, perhaps as many as five hundred on each flank, and between the distant flanks, war elephants, unmistakable from almost any distance. They defend the main battle line like a city of towers. How many are there? Two hundred? At least.

The elephants – well-trained and disciplined – are heavily armored, and on their backs carry boat-like structures in which archers and javelin throwers look down upon the earth’s mortals as if from the clouds, waiting now only the order to advance. His officers’ point toward the enemy’s infantry posted behind the elephants, arrayed in splendor, steel helmets shimmering as far as the eye can see, like a distant wave cresting the ocean. They wear uniforms in glorious colors, variously armed with lances and maces and axes for hacking. He smiles; it is an impressive sight.

He is Alexander of Macedon, the great captain, perhaps the greatest military leader known to history. From a distance, he takes in the enemy’s posting with the careful eye of the world’s leading warrior, gauging, searching for a weakness, for imprecision, for that one vulnerable place where he might strike a lethal blow – the blow that has never failed him. If he cannot determine outright that point of weakness, he will maneuver, forcing his enemy to respond, and then strike immediately and violently where weakness suddenly appears. At this, he is a master.