The Great Uphill Battle

 I was listening to a Trump rally this morning, just to remind myself, I guess, of how terribly perilous our national situation has become, but what impressed me even more than the usual flood of lies and vulgarities was Trump's increasingly confused mental wanderings. 

At one point, Trump declared, seemingly out of the blue, that Robert E. Lee was probably one of the greatest generals in history. He won many battles, Trump said, one after another, and probably would have won the Civil War had he not lost at Gettysburg. This loss, Trump went on, occurred because the general in charge had died which in turn caused Lee to fight uphill. "Never fight a battle uphill," Trump advised in a sage, curiously Scottish accent, as if quoting some great unnamed Scot of the past. 

How does one unravel this foolishness? Who was this general in charge, and why was he in charge rather than Lee? If Lee's previous victories had been dependent upon the prowess of this dead unnamed general, how is it that Lee was the best general ever? And how had the death of this mysterious general in charge come to cause Lee to 'attack uphill'? Why would he attack uphill if he was probably the greatest general ever and everyone knows that you never attack uphill? 

Well, it's certainly puzzling, but I finally decided that regarding the general in charge who had died, Trump must have been thinking of Stonewall Jackson, who, though never in charge of the Army of Northern Virginia, had died some two months before Gettysburg at the battle of Chancellorsville. 

It would have been difficult not to attack uphill at the battle of Gettysburg because the defenders were entrenched on a series of hills and ridges (something defenders tend to do as a matter of course). The uphill battle that Trump must be speaking of would be the assault on the Union center during the third day of the battle, I presume. During the second day, Lee had assaulted the hills on the north and south ends of the position. In the center was not a hill but a long, very gradual slope. The problem was not in attacking uphill, but in attacking across this wide open field in the range of frontal and flanking artillery fire. A pretty stupid move for the greatest general ever. 

So why was Trump, who clearly knows nothing about this battle or about General Lee, even mentioning the thing? Well, it's an old question. Why do the most ignorant people insist on being the most vocal people? I can only guess that Trump was trying to plug into the issue of the removal of statues that we have recently seen across the country, for this is the subject that he proceeded to, declaring that he had stopped all that with a presidential order. Strange, in that case, that just two or three days ago, a statue of Lee was removed from a Richmond, Virginia street. 

Nonetheless, his point cannot succeed in being clear when presented through a narrative that is either hopelessly confused or patently false. Unless, that is, his audience is as confused and as uninformed as he.