A flaw in the South, a reluctance to remove from command those not up to the task. Famously Braxton Bragg, but on the scene at Gettysburg Lee’s Chief of Artillery William Penderson.
Pederson was a close friend of Jefferson Davis and Lee’s Christian Minister.
Confederate artillery poorly deployed on Day 1 such that most of its at idle close at hand. Later that day Lee actually assigns the critical task of reconnaissance to Pendleton who in turn passes it off to junior officers. The result was an abysmal result at the start of Day 2, the Confederates completely unaware of Sickles’ deployment and Longstreet’s column taking the wrong road and having to reverse and backtrack to stay hidden behind Seminary Ridge.
Time lost to that wrong turn may not have mattered anyhow as Longstreet is gonna insist on delaying the attack until his favorite Alabama Brigade could arrive coming all the way from Chambersburg.
Perhaps Lee really was suffering from an attack of dysentery as British observer Arthur Fremantle suggested, he retires to his tent that night while on the Union side Meade and his staff are up all night, traversing the field, deploying units as they arrive. One Union column, coming up from the south along Seminary Ridge, comes with 100 yards of the Confederate picket line, are warned by a tavern-keeper, and turn aside, crossing over to Cemetery Ridge.
Perhaps one should blame the fubar situation in the ANV on Stuart, trying to salvage his reputation after Brandy Station, but again it was Lee who gave him the permission to go over Longstreet’s misgivings.
Neither Lee nor Stuart could know that it would be a Meade and not a Hooker in command, and that the Army of the Potomac would move north with remarkable speed, cutting off Stuart’s return from the other side of that army and forcing him to ride north all the way to near Harrisburg before he could get around it and turn south to Gettysburg.
