Last Chance For Victory Quotes

“The Confederate Army’s fight against overwhelming odds, is one of the most glorious moments in Anglo-Saxon history.” —Sir Winston Churchill”
― Scott Bowden, Last Chance For Victory: Robert E. Lee And The Gettysburg Campaign

“Finally, it should be obvious to anyone who has read this far that Last Chance for Victory is a critical examination of General Lee and Southern leadership during the campaign. Therefore, it does not examine equally the role played by General Meade and his top subordinates; that task we leave to others.”
― Scott Bowden, Last Chance For Victory: Robert E. Lee And The Gettysburg Campaign

“Our approach and method of presentation is also radically different from traditional fare. For example, the complex series of decisions, movements, and fighting on July 2 are always—always—broken apart and tendered to readers in separate chunks. The fighting around Devil’s Den and Little Round Top is usually handled in one chapter, the Peach Orchard salient in another section, Cemetery Ridge in yet another chapter, and so on. The consequence of this customary method of presentation compartmentalizes these phases of the engagement into mini-battles comprising separate actions. And that is how most students of Gettysburg have come to view them. But they were not unrelated sequestered endeavors. Rather, they were part of one overall interlocking strategy of attack that came much closer to breaking apart and decisively defeating Meade’s army than anyone heretofore has fully explained. Thus, Chapter 7—all 137 pages of it—is presented as a single fluid event so that readers may fully comprehend what Lee intended to accomplish with his echelon attack, how the attack was progressing, where it broke down, and who was responsible—and just how close Lee came to realizing his bid for victory on Northern soil.”
― Scott Bowden, Last Chance For Victory: Robert E. Lee And The Gettysburg Campaign

“Because all men are but reflections of their upbringing, education, and experiences, we also expend considerable effort scrutinizing both the man and the general who led the Army of Northern Virginia north that summer. Robert E. Lee was trained as an engineer at West Point, studied extensively the campaigns of the Great Captains of military history, and learned the art of command and maneuver at the elbow of General Winfield Scott during the Mexican War. The aggregate of these experiences had a profound and demonstrable influence on his generalship. It is against this backdrop of education and experience that Lee’s decisions during the Gettysburg Campaign must be examined, understood, and judged.”
― Scott Bowden, Last Chance For Victory: Robert E. Lee And The Gettysburg Campaign