Gettysburg
By Stephen W. Sears
Houghton Mifflin
623 pages; $30

To read Stephen Sears' outstanding account of the Battle of Gettysburg is to understand why the Calvinists in the Conference on Faith and History are so reluctant to say anything about God's action in the past. It's a strange phenomenon easily observed: the Calvinist, quoting the Genevan himself, says that, ultimately, "nothing happens except what is knowingly decreed by God."

The inquirer asks how this view applies to Robert E. Lee's Pennsylvania campaign of 1863 (total combined casualties: 57,225), and is met with uncomfortable puzzlement or a reproachful assertion of divine sovereignty. That's partly because, as Sears repeatedly shows, 140 years of study have not done much to clean up the awful messiness and contingency that marked this devastating struggle. Nor has it done anything to stem the view that things really could have turned out differently.

"I think that our lines should have advanced immediately" after the failure of Pickett's Charge, Union General Winfield Hancock said, "and I believe that we should have won a great victory." In a letter he never sent, Abraham Lincoln gently chided the Union general, George Meade, for letting Lee escape back to Virginia following the Confederates' defeat at Gettysburg. "[Lee]was within your easy grasp," Lincoln wrote, "and to have closed upon him would … have ended the war." Sears disagrees with Lincoln; he thinks Meade's decision not to attack Lee immediately after Gettysburg was smart militarily, for then Lee would have had the advantage of defense—and Lee's men were hungry for revenge.

As for Lee, Sears' assessment is mostly critical. Where General Meade remained well informed, Lee stood almost aloof, employing ...