The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

First published: 1974

Type of plot: War

Time of work: June 29, 1863-July 4, 1863

Locale: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and environs

Principal Characters:

• Robert E. Lee, the revered commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia
• James Longstreet, a Confederate corps commander, trusted by Lee despite their disagreements about tactics
• Lewis Armistead, a Confederate brigadier, deeply troubled by having to fight against his old friend Winfield Hancock
• John Buford, a veteran cavalryman, the first Union commander at Gettysburg
• Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the commander of the Twentieth Maine Infantry, the Union regiment on the extreme left during the crucial second day’s battle

The Novel

The Killer Angels tells of the Battle of Gettysburg, the turning point of the Civil War. The novel has four parts: the armies’ convergence on Gettysburg; the first day of fighting, when Confederates push the Union forces back but fail to drive them from superior defensive positions; the second day, when the Confederates attempt to surprise and overwhelm the Union left; and the third day, highlighted by Pickett’s Charge against the Union center. On June 29, Robert E. Lee’s invading army is widely divided, living off the wealth of Pennsylvania. No one with the main bodies of the army knows where its cavalry is, or—since the cavalry is responsible for intelligence on the march—where the Union forces are. The pragmatic James Longstreet gets some information from a spy. Lee has an aristocrat’s distaste for information acquired thus, but he prudently decides to concentrate his army, and the roads dictate concentration at Gettysburg. In the meantime, Lee instructs A. P. Hill, commanding his leading corps, to avoid a general engagement.

In Gettysburg, Buford, with two brigades of Union cavalry, knows that Hill’s troops are coming. Buford likes the high ground south of Gettysburg, which would make a fine defensive position. Much further south, the young commander of the Twentieth Maine Infantry, former professor of rhetoric Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, takes charge of mutinous soldiers from another Maine regiment. Chamberlain, suffering the aftereffects of sunstroke, does not feel well. Neither do several other principals in the coming battle, including Lee, who suffers from heart disease.

On July 1, Buford’s troops confront Hill’s corps northwest of town. Thinking he faces only local militia, Hill presses on; the struggle intensifies, and Union reinforcements appear. Then a second Confederate corps arrives and assaults the Union right flank. The Union infantry’s commander, John Reynolds, is killed, and under the new assault, the Union troops flee. They reform south of town, on the ground that Buford had admired. Lee wants to drive the shaken Union troops from their position, but his subordinates cannot mount an attack before nightfall. Later, Lee and Longstreet discuss the situation; Longstreet, convinced of the tactical advantages accruing to a defender, advises that Lee maneuver to find a strong defensive position, but Lee wants to fight the enemy where he is. Chamberlain’s regiment, including the mutineers, is among the Union forces still headed for Gettysburg.

The next morning, Longstreet again unsuccessfully urges Lee to fight defensively. Instead, Lee decides that Longstreet’s troops should attack the Union left, taking it by surprise if possible. Meanwhile, Union troops continue to deploy. Longstreet’s assault is delayed as his men countermarch to avoid observation. The Confederates discover Union troops in unexpected positions, but Longstreet does not adjust his movement to the new situation, and the attack begins according to Lee’s orders.

As it does, Chamberlain’s regiment occupies a position on a rocky hill on the extreme Union left. Chamberlain must hold this position, or the whole army will be jeopardized. In desperate fighting, Chamberlain improvises brilliantly and successfully. Intense fighting also occurs to his right. Repeatedly, Confederate troops almost break the Union lines, but they ultimately withdraw with heavy casualties. After nightfall, the Union commander, General Meade, considers withdrawal but is dissuaded by his corps commanders. Many Confederates celebrate their near victory, but Longstreet, weighing its cost, again urges disengagement and maneuver. Lee promises to consider Longstreet’s proposal.

On the morning of July 3, against Longstreet’s continuing advice, Lee decides to attack the Union center with Pickett’s division of Longstreet’s corps. Pickett rejoices, believing that with this attack, his troops will win the war. Far less sanguine, Longstreet can only hold his tongue. Meanwhile, Chamberlain’s surviving troops move to a position behind the Union center—“the safest place in the Union army,” they are told. Pickett’s attack is preceded by a prolonged, intense artillery exchange, and Chamberlain hugs the ground as shells burst around him. When Confederate ammunition runs low, thousands of attacking troops step off in exact array, as if on parade. Chamberlain, recognizing their deadly intent, nevertheless perceives their beauty. As they approach the Union lines, their ranks are decimated by cannon fire and musketry. Armistead with a handful of followers reaches the Union lines. Mortally wounded, he sends his friend General Hancock an apology for the attack, in which Hancock, too, has been wounded.

The remnants of the attackers, including Pickett, return to their own lines. Longstreet hears Lee telling these survivors, “It is all my fault.” Anticipating a possible counterattack, Lee orders, “General Pickett, I want you to reform your division.” Pickett, pointing into the smoke, replies, “General Lee, I have no division.” The battle is over. In the aftermath, Longstreet tells Lee that he thinks the Confederacy cannot now win the war, and Lee replies that they will continue to fight because that is what soldiers do. The next day is the Fourth of July.

The Characters

Shaara uses multiple points of view. Most of the characters who are his centers of consciousness are Confederates, although if the novel has an individual hero, it is Chamberlain. Ultimately, however, the novel’s focus is collective, and the story’s closing reference to the Fourth of July underscores Shaara’s understanding, like Abraham Lincoln’s, that what happened at Gettysburg was a pivotal experience in the life of the nation.

Many historical figures at Gettysburg are presented only as flat characters in the novel. A character so flat that he is almost transparent, General Meade, the commander of the Union Army, hardly appears at all. Another example is the English observer Freemantle, who is always presented as awkward-looking and utterly uncomprehending. One simple memory of Hancock figures frequently in Armistead’s thoughts, and Hancock himself appears later in a brilliant cameo, sitting elegantly astride his horse, reassuring his troops in the midst of the artillery barrage that has Chamberlain lying flat on the ground.

The novel’s central characters are more fully developed. Shaara graphically and realistically describes the sensations of Lee’s heart disease and implies that Lee’s respect and affection for Longstreet have roots in his own physical weakness as well as in his appreciation of Longstreet’s solid merit. Lee’s aristocratic ethic shows in his distaste for Longstreet’s spy and his insistence that his troops treat Pennsylvania’s civilians properly, regardless of past Union behavior in Virginia. His sensitivity shows in his restrained reproach of his delinquent cavalry commander, Jeb Stuart. Deeply committed to command, Lee wants to repeat the success of Chancellorsville, where he gambled against great odds, attacked, and won. With another victory, Lee might win the war. He does not understand that his problem at Gettysburg is not that he has lost his trusted right hand, Stonewall Jackson, who was killed at Chancellorsville, but that not all the Union commanders that he faces can be counted on to be as inept as his opponent at Chancellorsville was.

Longstreet has been controversial in the history and mythology of Gettysburg, recognized by some modern commentators as a tactical genius far in advance of his time but blamed by many of his contemporaries for uncooperativeness with Lee at Gettysburg and disloyalty to Lee’s memory after the war. Shaara’s portrait is strongly sympathetic. Longstreet remembers not Chancellorsville (where he did not fight) but Fredericksburg, where his well positioned troops cut down attacking Yankees in great numbers. The events of Gettysburg prove him right about the superiority of defensive tactics, but the vindication comes at a price Longstreet can hardly bear: the blood of many of his men; defeat in a battle that need not have been lost; loss of any prospect for victory in the war; and loss of his respect, if not his affection, for Lee.

Chamberlain’s character is even more fully realized than Longstreet’s. Younger, less experienced, and closer to his men than the other major characters, Chamberlain is just as focused as they on the responsibilities of command. When challenged, he improvises brilliantly, first with the mutineers and then in the desperate fight on the Union left. After this fight, he remembers plugging a hole in the line with his younger brother Tom; he begins to recognize his true, hard soldier’s vocation—a vocation not unlike Lee’s.

Critical Context

Shaara wrote many short stories before his first novel, The Broken Place (1968), which presents the experiences of a Korean War veteran. The Killer Angels is Shaara’s masterpiece. More artistically written and more deeply meaningful than most Civil War romances, The Killer Angels won a Pulitzer Prize for Shaara and later served as the basis for the epic 1993 film Gettysburg. After Shaara’s death, his son Jeff found the manuscript of a baseball novel in his father’s papers and published it posthumously as For Love of the Game (1991). Jeff Shaara went on to write two companion novels to The Killer Angels: Gods and Generals (1996), which begins the trilogy, and The Last Full Measure (1998), which concludes it.

Bibliography

Coddington, Edwin B. The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command. New York: Scribner’s, 1968. A thorough, insightful, and judicious account of the battle.

Connelly, Thomas Lawrence. The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977. Psychohistory intended to counter the hagiography attached to Lee’s memory.

Freeman, Douglas Southall. R. E. Lee: A Biography. 4 vols. New York: Scribner’s, 1934-1935. The classic biography of Lee, supplemented but not replaced by works such as Connelly’s.

Luvas, Jay, and Harold W. Nelson, eds. The U.S. Army War College Guide to the Battle of Gettysburg. Carlisle, Pa.: South Mountain Press, 1987. A collection of excerpts from the battle reports by unit commanders.

Piston, William Garrett. Lee’s Tarnished Lieutenant: James Longstreet and His Place in Southern History. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989. A balanced, generally convincing attempt to rehabilitate Longstreet’s reputation.

Trulock, Alice Rains. In the Hands of Providence: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Based on letters and other family papers as well as Chamberlain’s own published writings.