Decisional Dilemma Vicksburg or Gettysburg?

This book is a discussion of the events surrounding the Confederate decision to conduct an offensive campaign into Pennsylvania as opposed to an alternative course of action of reinforcement against the Union siege of Vicksburg during the summer of 1863 in the American Civil War. No primary accounts of the meetings of the Confederate War Cabinet on the issue are known to exist. This paper summarizes the existing secondary accounts of what happened in meetings between General Robert E. Lee and the Confederate War Cabinet during the month of May, 1863. It then explores the strategic environment of 1863 in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the many potential influencing factors bearing upon the Confederacys decision. The traditional instruments of national power are used to frame the discussion: economics, military capability, and politics. In addition, the increasingly recognized element of how a nation uses information as an instrument of power is applied in retrospect to further understanding of the Confederate decision. The discussion of the strategic environment of 1863 is based upon several primary and secondary sources, as well as statistical records. It is impossible to determine all of the influencing external and internal factors that may have contributed to the Confederate decision to conduct offensive action into Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863. However, given the existing conditions as outlined in the research, the paper concludes that the Confederate decision was a rational, understandable attempt to gain a decisive victory on Northern soil in order to take advantage of the political climate and bring the war to a successful close by means of a negotiated settlement. The importance of the book is that it offers an historical application of the national instruments of power and the surrounding strategic environment in order to better understand how to apply the process for present and future scenarios. In applying a relatively new and formal process of analysis (Wardens five rings coupled with nodal analysis) to events of the past, attempts to apply the same process to events of the future may result in a greater understanding and awareness of the influencing factors that weigh upon the minds of statesmen and soldiers as they seek to make decisions within their given strategic environment.