Lost Triumph: Lee's Real Plan at Gettysburg--And Why It Failed [Hardcover]

Tom Carhart's latest book, LOST TRIUMPH: LEE'S REAL PLAN AT GETTYSBURG -- AND WHY IT FAILED, with a foreword by James McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM, artfully and precisely explains Robert E. Lee's actual battle plan for the third day at Gettysburg and what went wrong. Believing that Lee was too astute a commander to rely exclusively on Pickett's Charge, Tom Carhart painstakingly re-examines what happened that day. His dramatic conclusions are drawn from detailed analysis of Lee's knowledge of military strategy gleaned during Lee's military career and years as a cadet at West Point, from intimate knowledge of the actual terrain and military positions at Gettysburg, and from close examination of a wide array of primary and secondary source materials.

"A lively and innovative interpretation of the greatest battle ever waged on American soil. Written with verve and a keen eye for the telling detail, Lost Triumph brings to life both the battlefield and the remarkable men who fought there. Tom Carhart has given us not only a fine work of scholarship, but a fine story."
---Rick Atkinson, author of An Army at Dawn

"With Lost Triumph, West Pointer Tom Carhart swats a stupendous, historical, out-of-the-park four-bagger. History is seldom page-turning; here, the true events of Gettysburg compose a thriller. Dr. Carhart makes the case for revolutionizing our understanding of the decisive engagement of the Civil War; elevates the renown of Robert E. Lee; improbably reanimates the reputation of George Armstrong Custer; and shows us how history should be analyzed, challenged, proven and taught.
On the way, he condenses the complexities of the military art into entertainingly digestible bites."
---Gus Lee, author of China Boy, Honor and Duty and Chasing Hepburn.

"Lost Triumph is an exciting, wonderful book rivaling anything yet written about the battle of Gettysburg. It is mandatory reading for Civil War buffs. I have always wondered why General Lee ordered that fateful attack when and where he did. Now I know. Thanks to Tom Carhart's exemplary new research and his knowledge of military matters, Lost Triumph presents the first comprehensive view of Lee's previously unknown plan to win the battle."
---Bruce Lee, author of Marching Orders: The Untold Story of World War II

"Few generals were as brilliant as Robert E. Lee and few battles as titanic -- and puzzling -- as Gettysburg. Why did Lee fail? In Lost Triumph, Tom Carhart offers a bold and provocative new assessment. Agree or disagree, it is sure to stimulate debate among even the most seasoned Civil War buffs."
---Jay Winik, author of April 1865: The Month That Saved America

Tom Carhart, Ph.D., graduated from West Point in 1966 and subsequently served as an infantry platoon leader with 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam and as an Advisor to the South Vietnamese forces. He was awarded two Purple Hearts for wounds suffered in combat. After teaching French at West Point, he left the Army and received a law degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He subsequently served as Editor of European Taxation in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Upon returning to the United States, Tom studied economics at the Rand Graduate School while working for the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, CA. He then returned to Europe as an international corporate lawyer at the Archibald law firm in Brussels representing multinational corporations before the European Economic Community. In later years, Tom again worked for the Army as a civilian policy analyst and historian. In 1998, he received his Ph.D. in American and military history from Princeton University.

Tom is the author of a number of books: Battles and Campaigns in Vietnam (1984), The Offering (1987), Battlefront Vietnam (1991), Iron Soldiers (1994), West Point Warriors (2002), and Lost Triumph: Lee's Real Plan at Gettysburg and Why it Failed (2005). Currently, Tom is completing a book on the history of the Judge Advocate General Corps for the Department of the Army and is researching his next commercial book.

He presently lives in suburban D.C. with his wife and two children, where he writes and is an adjunct professor of history at University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA.

FROM THE FORWARD BY JAMES M. MCPHERSON:
Every year nearly two million people visit Gettysburg to walk the fields where the largest battle in the history of the Western Hemisphere took place on the first three days of July 1863. Fewer than 2 percent of these tourists, however, find their way to the East Cavalry Battlefield site three miles east of the "high-water mark" at the climax of the Pickett-Pettigrew assault on July 3. Unless specifically asked, the licensed guides who give thousands of battlefield tours each year never take visitors to East Cavalry Field. Most tourists are not even aware that these 750 acres of rolling farmland are part of Gettysburg National Military Park. They leave Gettysburg after driving around the rest of the park without realizing they have missed an essential part of the battle. As Tom Carhart makes clear in this innovative and important new book, one cannot understand the battle of Gettysburg without understanding what happened at what was then known as East Cavalry Battlefield. . !
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Contrary to common understanding, however, Lee's plan for July 3 was not merely to send 13,000 men spearheaded by Pickett's fresh division against the Union center on Cemetery Ridge. Some visitors to Gettysburg learn that a renewed attack against Culp's Hill by Lieutenant-General Richard Ewell's corps was also part of Lee's plan for July 3. Now we also learn that there was a crucial third component to Lee's July 3 tactics. Thanks to Tom Carhart's painstaking and absorbing reconstruction of events, we now have a clear comprehension of what Lee planned for July 3 – and why it went wrong. . . .

* * * * *

Why haven't we known all this before? Careful students of the battle have known some of it. But until now, we have not understood how the fight at East Cavalry Field fit into the larger picture of Gettysburg. . . . Tom Carhart has pieced together the whole story from scattered bits of evidence. Lee's and Stuart's after-action reports on the battle provide only vague and incomplete references to the plan – understandably so, since success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan. From his own experience as a combat officer and military historian, Carhart has combined evidence and plausible inference to reconstruct Lee's plan and the reasons for its failure. Given the vast number of writings on Gettysburg, it seems impossible to come up with new information and insights about the battle. But Tom Carhart has done it.