Why did General Meade choose not to attack Lee after Picket's Charge?

This item nicely lays out the tactical ideas at work here.  This is also a not fair what if idea, just as Midway was not a lost opportunity either.  In a victorious conflict with your enemy visibly withdrawing, all your intel will be offside and out of date.  Chasing into a trap is a huge real risk because it certainly was not a rout.

The fact is he had the first northern victory against Lee and 25,000 confederates dead on the field.  his position also blocked any possible threats to Baltimore which was an obvious Strategic objective close to hand.

Lee was now mauled and weakened and had to escape once he understood how bad his position was.  This then set the stage for the following war of outright attrition led by Grant. in which going for the throat was an option always.  It still took many fights to finish it.

Why did General Meade choose not to attack Lee after Picket's Charge? Was it possible for him to successfully destroy Lee's army without suffering heavy losses?

Steven Haddock ·

Studied at York University (Canada)Jun 8

Quora.com

The Army of the Potomac had a mission. Union intelligence showed that the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee was planning a sweeping attack into Pennsylvania to attempt to cut off Washington D.C. from the rest of the Union, most likely by attacking Baltimore. The problem was that no-one knew were Lee’s Army was and the area to be defended was quite large. The mission was to find Lee and disrupt his plans.

In the 1860s that area was mostly wilderness, so finding Lee was going to be quite the challenge. As the Army of the Potomac was sent out under General Hooker, Meade was merely a Brigadier General and he and Hooker didn’t get along. However, Lincoln and Hooker were clashing too and Meade was sent a telegram. He thought that maybe he was going to be court martialed, but instead Lincoln had promoted him and removed Hooker, leaving Meade in charge.

Lee had managed to hide his army from the Union as the Union made its way north to try to intercept them. As it turns out, Lee was getting ready to turn south when the Union intercepted him.

When by sheer chance Union scouts had run into Confederate scouts seeking out shoes in a small town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg (the Confederates had intercepted a newspaper advertisement) reinforcements rushed into the area and after four days in the top job Meade was faced with the choice of meeting Lee at the place chosen by accident or retreating to somewhere he thought he might have a better advantage.

Meade, who remember had just been made the boss and had a history of not getting along with people was not terribly certain of his position, so he called his senior officers together and asked them their opinion. In the 1860s, this was nearly unheard of and many of his men thought it made him week. However, after the meeting, Meade and his men were in total agreement that this was the place to make a stand and Meade started making plans to face the man no Union general had managed to get the better of in three years of warfare.

But Meade wasn’t stupid. He knew Lee preferred flanking attacks, so he placed most of his force between two hills near the town, essentially daring Lee to take a hill to get the advantage. On July 2, Lee nearly succeeded taking Little Round Top, but a daring Union maneuver and the sudden appearance of a small Union force that had thought to be destroyed but was merely hiding thwarted him. On July 3, Lee tried to take Cemetery Hill but never came close. On July 4 he made the fatal decision to attack the Union center thinking that the Union must have weakened it to prop up the flanks, but it was a fatal miscalculation and Lee’s troops were massacred and never got close.

At the end of the battle, both sides had lost about 25,000 men, but the Confederacy was much smaller to begin with and Lee was probably down to about 50,000 troops. Meade had at least 70,000 at his disposal. Lee had no choice but to try to escape.

But by the time he got to the Potomac River, it had swelled with recent rain and there was no way his army could have crossed it. He had to hope the Union would not arrive because had they done so, Meade could have pretty much slaughtered them at will.

But Meade never arrived. The river subsided the next day and Lee made it across. Meade soon found out and decided to call it a day - he had accomplished his mission by ending Lee’s threat to Washington. He telegrammed Lincoln telling him that he had driven Lee out of the country. Lincoln was upset and wrote a letter, which he never sent, reminding Meade that Virginia was still part of the country. Meade remained at the head of the Army of the Potomac for the rest of the war, but never got another opportunity to meet Lee on his own. In March of the following year, Grant was made a three-star general and made Meade’s superior.

So could Meade have destroyed the Army of Northern Virginia in early July of 1863. Most definitely yes. Could he have done it without having tens of thousands of casualties on his own side. Definitely not. Lee’s army was still substantial and in the position they were in would have been fighting for their lives with no possibility of retreat. Civil War weapons were deadly from long range and massive casualties in battles were common.

So Meade, just having got the job and having scored what was to that point the biggest Union victory of the war and ended the Confederate threat for the duration had done an outstanding job. He was probably reluctant to risk the rest of his force against a still formidable foe. He lost an opportunity to be sure, but it was an opportunity he created thanks to his leadership and, had the battle gone poorly for the Union it could have been a disaster.