Booknotes: Three Roads to Gettysburg

New Arrival:

• Three Roads to Gettysburg: Meade, Lee, Lincoln, and the Battle That Changed the War, the Speech That Changed the Nation by Tim McGrath (Dutton Caliber, 2025).

From the description: "By mid-1863, the Civil War, with Northern victories in the West and Southern triumphs in the East, seemed unwinnable for Abraham Lincoln. Robert E. Lee’s bold thrust into Pennsylvania, if successful, could mean Southern independence. In a desperate countermove, Lincoln ordered George Gordon Meade—a man hardly known and hardly known in his own army—to take command of the Army of the Potomac and defeat Lee’s seemingly invincible Army of Northern Virginia. Just three days later, the two great armies collided at a small town called Gettysburg. The epic three-day battle that followed proved to be the turning point in the war, and provided Lincoln the perfect opportunity to give the defining speech of the war—and a challenge to each generation of Americans to live by."

The author is an accomplished presidential historian (James Monroe) and award-winning naval history writer, and this appears to be his first book-length foray into the Civil War world. Obviously, the subject matter addressed in Three Roads to Gettysburg: Meade, Lee, Lincoln, and the Battle That Changed the War, the Speech That Changed the Nation is among the most well-trodden ground within Civil War history. I scanned the prologue for hints as to eye-catching  views and interpretations that might be developed later on but didn't encounter anything in that preview that jumped out of the page. But that doesn't mean there aren't any out of the ordinary ideas embedded in the narrative.

As the subtitle suggests, the Gettysburg Campaign and its aftermath is primarily presented through the lens of a trio of key actors in the drama: Lincoln, Lee, and Meade. More: "These men came from different parts of the country and very different upbringings: Robert E. Lee, son of the aristocratic and slaveholding South; George Gordon Meade, raised in the industrious, straitlaced North; and Abraham Lincoln, from the rowdy, untamed West. Lincoln’s election to the presidency in 1860 split the country in two and triggered the Civil War. Lee and Meade found themselves on opposite sides, while Lincoln had the Sisyphean task of reuniting the country." In sum, this book "tells the story of these consequential men, this monumental battle, and the immortal address that has come to define America."