This is a short novel that tells a different story than what occurred in General Robert E. Lee's Pennsylvania Campaign in the summer of 1863. The story is told largely from the viewpoints of Generals Lee and Longstreet, and scout Henry Harrison. Followed in prominence by Lee's Adjutant, Major Walter Taylor, Generals A.P. Hill, John Imboden, John Bell Hood, Richard Ewell, Jubal Early, John Chambliss, Lieutenant Colonel Fremantle, and half a dozen others -- mostly civilians.
The beginning chapters do depict some of the initial actual movements by Lee's army when it departed Virginia and arrived in Pennsylvania up until June 30th, 1863. From that point, however, the reader enters an alternative history campaign that runs through the end of the book. The primary reason I wrote this novel is to illuminate the use of Operational Art in the Pennsylvania Campaign, often lacking in much of the historiography of Lee's invasion of that state. This alternative scenario illustrates the fundamental importance of Objective in designing a campaign. How discipline of maintenance of that objective, pushes away distractors, and aids the facets of Arranging, and Timing and Tempo. A secondary reason I wrote this is to include national military and political strategy concerns of the Confederate leadership. How relief to Vicksburg was envisioned by Lee, but the Timing and Tempo of his initial movements were probably too late to result in alleviating the siege there. How the hope for foreign political intervention, ostensibly recognition of the independence of the Confederate States by Britian and France, was a consideration but was also not well supported by the timing of the campaign. Lastly, the Copperhead movement, and where they fit into the equation of an invasion of Pennsylvania.
It is my hope this work of fiction is instructive on Operational Art to the reader.