12/17/2004

Gettysburg not a decisive battle, says Goss

Thomas Goss, author of The War within the Union High Command, has taken some trouble to refute the idea that Gettysburg was a decisive battle.

The Gettysburg fan base is not a collection of advanced history readers who are going to be able to digest this study, nor do advanced history readers need to be told what they already know. Which makes you wonder who are the readers of Military History magazine, in which this appeared.

If Goss's article is a pop culture outbreak of the new truth, rather than an argument with old truth, none of this matters. Could Goss be restating, in a comforting way, what the dullest buff has at long last figured out? Military History's letter column will tell the story.