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Thread: Gettysburg

  1. #1
    Eric's Avatar Praepositus
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    in History class we are studying civil wars we strarted with the English Civil War and now we're on the American Civil War and all our textbooks say Gettysburg was the decisive battle of the ACW but it is to my understanding that the Civil War went on much longer through such battles as Antietam but how can this be if Gettysburg was the decisive battle so really just how decisive was Gettysburg?
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    Gettysburg can be seen as decisive for a few reasons. Most importantly in my opinion was that it destroyed the south's ability to take offensive actions, hence no longer being able to attack, and was on the defensive the rest of the war. Secondly being they were no longer able to undertake offensive actions that would bring about a quick decision, the only way the South could have won the war, the Norths superior industry was able to produce more of the neccesities of war, ie guns, food, cloths, boots, boats, trains, the list goes on. The South was almost completely an agricultural society with very little in the way of industry, the only had raw materials but no way of converting those materials into weapons of war. The lack of a Southern navy to end the Norths blockade of the all the southern ports, or atleast the major ports. The South didnt have a navy to speak at the begining and was playing catch up until it was all but canceled because of lack of resources, money to build and support them, and no where to build them. Which only made the Norths ability to produce the weapons, munitions, and supplies for its armies that much greater. The first reason was the most immediate, the almost complete destruction of the Army of Virginia, not sure the exact numbers of dead and wounded but think it was near 40,000 dead and wounded just from the South in just three days of fighting, Lost with those men where some of the best Southern Lt. Generals, which are the ones who lead the charges against the Northern positions. Cant remember there names at the moment. The famous southern General Stonewall Jackson was already dead, whom Lee considered his left hand, General Longstreet the right. To get a picture of the battle and events leading up and after the battle I reccomend the movie "Gettysburg" A great war movie, if you like war movies. Or a book called Killer Angels by Michael Shaara and the follow ons by his son Gods and Generals, and The South is Burning. Killer Angels is directly about the men and events leading up to, during and after the battle, very interesting read. Gods and Generals is about Stonewall Jackson from his days at West Point as an Artillery Profesor, up to his death supposedly by his own troops. And The South is Burning is abouth Sherman's march thru the South and the utter destruction they left. Hope this helps.
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    Crandar's Avatar Civitate
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    Gettysburg is a great battle to study because it involves all the fundamental elements of strategy, tactics, and logistics.

    The reason it is the truly the decisive battle of the ACW is because if you look at the time period leading up to Gettysburg, the Army of the Confederate States were actually expanding in both strength of numbers and experience. The Generalship in the south was clearly superior and had served to counter the superior naval power and industrial might of the north.

    Had Lee and his forces succeeded in forcing the union army to withdraw from Gettysburg, even if it was not a crushing rout, this would have been viewed as a great victory which probably would have lead to the diplomatic recognition of the Confederate States of America as a viable political entity by at least a few of the European powers that had stood by the sidelines until that point.

    As it was, two full divisions of the Lee's virtually ceased to exist as they were reorganized while they retreated back into Northern Virginia. Lee never again had sufficient manpower and resources to mount a full scale series of offensive maneuvers and from Gettysburg forward in time the war basically degraded into a series of attempted flanking maneuvers and pseudo seiges around Richmond while the other independent armies of the Union systematically carved up the southern states and dismantled their ability to produce both the manpower and materials to wage war.

    Gettysburg in the east and then the battle of Vicksburg on the Mississippi river in the West were an almost simultaneous double bdoy blow to the southern cause.

    You can also look to the roots of the American Civil war by exploring the patterns of immigration and clutural and economic development that had filled the previous 350 years. When the more flamboyent, cavalier, and landed gentry factions were in power in Europe, the puritan, industrial, and financier sections of the societies were somewhat pursecuted and would emmigrate to the settle in the new world to pursue greater freedoms in those areas as well as their associated religions. When the tables are turned in European countries, as wehn Cromwell was in power in England, the gentry and people of aristicratic and invested military tradition were often disenfranchised and driven out. These two major cultural and econimoc groups tende to have different social and political traditions and a significant number of the displaced people chose to settle in the Northern states or the southern states based on common choices with their peers. Over time you end up with the south being a substantial descendent of the same classes of people who had conflicted with the ancestors of the northern populations hundreds of years earlier in England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. It was in many ways a replay of other political conflicts just written out in a new and significantly larger theatre of war with a population that had already been seperated and self selected from a tradition of an allegiance to some form of central government system. The slavery issue was just a catalyst that set off the powder keg of the inability to resolve common social issues without the force of arms.
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    Eric's Avatar Praepositus
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    I always considered Antietam to be the decisive battle of te war because it ended Lee's invasion of the north
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    Crandar's Avatar Civitate
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    If you want to be a purist, the Chancelorsville was the battle that include the sibngle "Smoothbore Volley that Doomed the Confederacy".

    More than any other single event in the war, this battle seemed to literally take the sting out all subsequent military actions. If Stonewall Jackson had been alive and at the battle of Gettysburg the Confederate army would have been deployed entirely differently and the battle would have been won by the confederates on day 1 or 2 of the encounter. Pickett's charge would never have been an option and the Confederate army would have been in the position of carving up the remaining union forces who would have had their strategic mobility eliminated by the need to stay between the confederates and Washington DC. It is unlikely that Winfield Scott would have abandoned DC even under sever pressure from his former protege (Lee).
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    Originally posted by Eric@Mar 26 2005, 05:20 PM
    I always considered Antietam to be the decisive battle of te war because it ended Lee's invasion of the north
    Antietam was a huge battle, and did stop Lee's invasion but he did come again. Not to mention the Confederates scored two crushing victories over the Union at Fredericksburg and Chancelorsville. Gettysburg, however was the Army of Northern Virginia's last major offensive action. Following the defeat there the Confederacy would be on the defensive for the rest of the war.

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    At the start of the Gettysburg campaign, the Army of Northern Viginia was at it's peak in sheer numbers, and was at it's peak in confidence and spirit from the results at Fredricksburg and Chancellorsville. Then they got "whupped"! That pretty much speaks of it's overall importance as a turning point. And because of the large numbers of troops in the battle (survivors), the estblishment of the military cemetery, and Lincoln's famous speech, the battle (justifiably) grew into legendary proportions after the war.
    The battle of Chickamagua was just as large and just as bloody as Gettysburg, yet fewer people pay attention to it, because it turned no tides. But Gettysburg did, for the fact that Lee's army could never again be the threat that it was on June 30, 1863, even though it fought on for almost another two years.
    The event that totally clinched a Union victory was Sherman's "March to the Sea". That turned out to be the most important campaign of the war.


    BTW, I've been to Gettysburg on a number of occasions, the last being in 2002. As I stood on the various features and looked around, I couldn't help thinking..."if there was ever a location that cried out to have a battle fought there, then this is the place". The place drips with so much history, it's actually chilling. It's one of my favorite places on earth.
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    Originally posted by Carolus XII@Mar 28 2005, 08:55 AM

    The event that totally clinched a Union victory was Sherman's "March to the Sea". That turned out to be the most important campaign of the war.
    True, without the fall of Atlanta, there was a strong chance that Lincoln would have lost the reelection, so putting McClellan into office. The union had been on 2 offences before the elections. And at the time Grant was bogged down in trench warfare outside of Petersburg. And for a time Sherman was also stopped at Atlanta. McClellan ran for office with the goal of making peace with the South. But in the end Sherman was able to work his way around the city's defences and take the city.

    Then Sherman laid waste from Atlanta to Savannah, and then from there on into South Carolina. The funny thing is Sherman kept more about Georgia then many of the Southern generals as he had been assigned map parts of Northern Georgia before the war.

    Sherman's tactics would be a sign of things to come where he believed in Total War and how you need to also break the back of the civilian population so that they could not support the army of the enemy. This would be come so through in the next centaury.

  9. #9
    IronBrig4's Avatar Good Matey
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    Antietam is regarded as a turning point because France and Britain withdrew their support for the Confederacy. Before Antietam, both nations were on the verge of formally recognizing the CSA.

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