Lee ’ s Mistake : Learning from the Decision to Order Pickett ’ s Charge

Robert E. Lee is widely and rightly regarded as one of the finest generals in history. Yet on July 3, 1863, the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, he ordered a frontal assault across a mile of open field against the strong center of the Union line. The stunning Confederate defeat that ensued produced heavier casualties than Lee’s army could afford and abruptly ended its invasion of the North. That the Army of Northern Virginia could fight on for 2 more years after Gettysburg was a tribute to Lee’s abilities. While Lee’s disciples defended his decision vigorously—they blamed James Longstreet, the corps commander in charge of the attack, for desultory execution—historians and military analysts agree that it was a mistake. For whatever reason, Lee was reticent about his reasoning at the time and later. How commanders digest information, draw on experience, weigh options, and make decisions in the face of urgency and uncertainty are concerns as old as human conflict. Yet these concerns are more critical than ever in the fast, unfamiliar, wired warfare of the information age—all the more reason to learn about cognitive performance, good and bad, from military history. Lee’s thinking at Gettysburg is an especially intriguing case to study: the facts are known, there is wide agreement that his decision to attack on July 3 was flawed, yet the cause of his misjudgment remains elusive. In the pages that follow, our hope is to reveal lessons of value in improving today’s military decisionmaking. We examine the facts surrounding Lee’s state of mind and his decision, offer and test alternative hypotheses on how he was thinking, draw some conclusions, and apply those conclusions to matters of current interest. We begin with a general framework for analyzing cognition in combat, hoping that it will help explain Lee’s decisionmaking at Gettysburg.