To be sure, had George Meade possessed the unerring prescience to know beyond any doubt that Lee would attack his center on July 3; and had he therefore massed the entire Sixth Corps under Sedgwick just behind Cemetery Ridge; and had he sent Sedgwick rushing forward right on the heels of Pickett’s and Pettigrew’s and Trimble’s retreating troops; and had such doughty fighters as James Longstreet and A. P. Hill been too stunned to react—perhaps then Lee’s army might have been split asunder. Yet neither Meade nor his generals would or could have advocated such a gamble. (When Hancock later said,
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