Today is the anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Gettysburg, the battle that, combined with the fall of Vicksburg to Grant on July 4th in 1863, broke the back of the Confederacy, though the war would go on for almost two more years. Here’s an interesting story about the fiftieth reunion. Two years from today will be the sesquicentennial. Needless to say, there will be no veterans of the battle attending. Or if there are, they would be interesting medical curiosities, from which we might learn a lot about longevity.
5 thoughts on “The Decisive Battle”
Comments are closed.
I think Gettysburg may have been a turning or inflextion point as far as northern morale went (not inconsequential), but Vicksburg is the decisive battle of the Civil War (aside from Fort Sumter, that is. Before you can win a war you have to be in one, and it was not always guranteed the North would enter united).
The reason I say that is thus–the victory at Vicksburg removed an entire Confederate army from the map, allowing–much like in chess where one has been able to remove a queen while retaining one’s own–the Union Army of the Tennessee to act unilaterally (despite units being diverted from it to other theatres) against other Confederate armies that already were faced with opposing Union armies. Thus, in domino fashion, the Army of the Tennessee could be employed at Chattanooga, Atlanta, and then in southern Georgia and Carolinas, tipping the balance decisively in each campaign, by being the extraordinary force that the South could not counter.
If Grant had been able to execute his 1863 plan of taking that army (as it was at the fall of Vicksburg) to Meridian, down to Mobile, and then presumably up to Montgomery and Atlanta, while Johnston was pinned down by the Army of the Cumberland, the war probably would have ended much sooner and much less bloodily. Because there just wasn’t a large enough Confederate force to oppose him if he had done so. It is my view that if Grant had been able to execute the war as he initially wished, no one would ever have called him a butcher. He would instead have been the owner of one of the most elegant victories ever. To truly judge Grant, you have to look at what he wanted to do, not what he was allowed to do.
I agree. Vicksburg broke the South in two by taking control of the Mississippi River. And that was it’s strategic objective. Gettysburg was one of those accidental battles that proved to be a driver of moral/perception because of it’s proximity to eastern media outlets.
Along those lines, I am not one of those who sing the praises of Lincoln’s war leadership from a professional military perspective. Lincoln, in preventing Grant from acting as he wished, in allowing Banks his expedition, and in keeping Butler in command on the James, prolonged the war.
Unless, of course, we consider this–both Grant and Lincoln acted as they did in 1864 because they knew the knives were always going to be drawn out for them when things went wrong. They both only had a certain amount of political capital to play with. I feel that is why, in March, 1864, Grant humbly took the clerk at the Willard Hotel initially disdainfully telling him they had no rooms available (before the clerk realized who he was talking too)–because, beyond whatever his personal nature was, he knew he did not have the goodwill to spend being a prima donna.
And thus with Lincoln. I think to truly judge Lincoln as a wartime commander in chief, the answer is not to be found on the field, but in Washington and national political intrigue and how he managed to hold it off or use it. The only reason the country acted unified on the field is because Lincoln caused it to be thus. But to insure that unity did cause him to do some things that prolonged the war. This does not mean Lincoln was wrong–he did what he felt was necessary in the face of a threat (from within). The true fault lies elsewhere–with those who will always think they can do the job better merely because they have led charmed social lives.
I guess what I am trying to say, in summary, is that to judge the greatness of Grant as a general and Lincoln as a commander-in-chief, you have to consider “the dog that did not bark”–what did not happen. For Grant, the strategies he was not allowed to carry out as he wished in 1864; i.e. what he proposed. For Lincoln, the political dis-unities he did not allow to occur because of the ambitions of others; i.e., what he prevented.
My wife and I toured the Gettysburg battlefield last year — I for the first time. If you haven’t done so, put it on your bucket list. It is a wonderful way of reifying everything you’ve read about the battle.
For my own part, I realized why they picked that area for a fight. It’s full of all these monuments which would provide great cover during a firefight…