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After General Lee's defeat at Gettysburg, he marched his army south to Maryland and Virginia. He managed to make it across the Potomac ahead of Meade

Meade's troops caught up with Lee as they were crossing, but the rear guard, General Pettigrew's North Carolinians, held Meade's forces off. The Union army itself was too badly hurt to make pursuit tenable.

Meade was severely criticized by Henry Halleck and US President Lincoln on this. Halleck had to remain politically correct and not publicly "correct" Lincoln on military matters that Lincoln was not qualified to make.

Halleck was certainly aware of the difficulty of totally destroying the Army of Northern Virginia. US President Lincoln was consistent with his complaints throughout the war that his generals failed, in his view of properly pursuing enemy forces.

Part of the reason for this was that Lincoln was not a military expert.

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8y ago

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