OT: Blame for the Battle of Gettysburg

[Canoerebel]

Many southern "fire eaters" thought the South's departure from the Union would be uncontested.  They thought wrong, but that's what they thought.

Many southern unionists (there were alot of them) knew it was crazy to chance war when they lived in a prosperous and peaceful land (paraphrasing the sentiment of Alexander Stephens as expressed in speeches in 1860, just before secession, and just months before he became vice president of the Confederacy).  These unionsts tended to be older men, many of whom had served in the war with Mexico.  They knew what war was like, they lived in a prosperous and peaceful land, and they looked upon their sons and shuddered.

Most of their sons were in favor of secession.  That's a common dichomotomy between the young and their elders, which I won't delve further into.

It must have been horror heaped upon horror to be a union man in the South in 1860 and 1861.  You knew you were right, you knew just how much was imperiled, and you knew how terrible war could be.  They could see what was coming, but they were powerless to stop it.

The struggle of southern unionsts = the First Lost Cause.

[Cribtop]

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

I've always wondered if the South had left, but not fired on Ft. Summter, would war have been necessary? I find it hard to imagine the North invading the south over a peacefull succession. And if the south offered to pay settlements for federal property , would there have been any legal or moral justification for the war? I've always felt that the South "wanted" the war more than the North. If there was a succession without blood shed, or "insult to national honor" , and since a great deal of the North didn't want a war anyway , I've always felt that the sides could just "grow apart". Now in a few years they might have a desire to "have a go at each other". [&:]



BTW , in answer to the original question , I must blame Robert E. Lee. No matter who was at fault, as commander he should get the blame. Maybe it's the sailor in me, but if the ships hits a rock, it's always the skippers fault, regardless who's at the helm. [:(]

An excellent point, and it shows how good Lincoln was that he maneuvered the South into firing the first shot. He put them on the horns of a dilemma with the Fort Sumter re-supply mission. Fire on the fort or the ships and the South starts the war. Let them through and the South concedes that it is not quite a sovereign nation.

Point two on this is we have yet another similarity between the ACW and the Pacific War. How many threads have we had about "what if Japan had attacked Malaya and the DEI but not bombed Pearl Harbor and the PI?"

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Many southern "fire eaters" thought the South's departure from the Union would be uncontested.  They thought wrong, but that's what they thought.

Many southern unionists (there were alot of them) knew it was crazy to chance war when they lived in a prosperous and peaceful land (paraphrasing the sentiment of Alexander Stephens as expressed in speeches in 1860, just before secession, and just months before he became vice president of the Confederacy).  These unionsts tended to be older men, many of whom had served in the war with Mexico.  They knew what war was like, they lived in a prosperous and peaceful land, and they looked upon their sons and shuddered.

Most of their sons were in favor of secession.  That's a common dichomotomy between the young and their elders, which I won't delve further into.

It must have been horror heaped upon horror to be a union man in the South in 1860 and 1861.  You knew you were right, you knew just how much was imperiled, and you knew how terrible war could be.  They could see what was coming, but they were powerless to stop it.

The struggle of southern unionsts = the First Lost Cause.

My family hails from North Georgia. There was not a lot of slave ownership there and a good deal of pro Union sentiment-or at least ambiguity about the whole thing. I have my great great great (or so) uncle's memoirs. The one thing I note is that he and his relatives joined up about the same time universal conscription was passed into law which says something about how they felt.

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: Cribtop

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

I've always wondered if the South had left, but not fired on Ft. Summter, would war have been necessary? I find it hard to imagine the North invading the south over a peacefull succession. And if the south offered to pay settlements for federal property , would there have been any legal or moral justification for the war? I've always felt that the South "wanted" the war more than the North. If there was a succession without blood shed, or "insult to national honor" , and since a great deal of the North didn't want a war anyway , I've always felt that the sides could just "grow apart". Now in a few years they might have a desire to "have a go at each other". [&:]



BTW , in answer to the original question , I must blame Robert E. Lee. No matter who was at fault, as commander he should get the blame. Maybe it's the sailor in me, but if the ships hits a rock, it's always the skippers fault, regardless who's at the helm. [:(]

An excellent point, and it shows how good Lincoln was that he maneuvered the South into firing the first shot. He put them on the horns of a dilemma with the Fort Sumter re-supply mission. Fire on the fort or the ships and the South starts the war. Let them through and the South concedes that it is not quite a sovereign nation.

Point two on this is we have yet another similarity between the ACW and the Pacific War. How many threads have we had about "what if Japan had attacked Malaya and the DEI but not bombed Pearl Harbor and the PI?"

Well the problem for the South was that the North refused to give up Federal forts of which there were many in the South. Not the best situation for sovereign states to have Alien forts at the entrance to major commercial waterways and ports. (Did somebody say China?) Sumter was just one of many. So yes, I suppose they were baiting the Southerners into a fight. And they got one...[;)]

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

The struggle of southern unionsts = the First Lost Cause.

Good points snipped, but I would disagree with this last so far as US history goes. Largely forgotten now, or at least unmentioned in polite society, are the Tories of the Revolution. No one knows exact numbers but I don't think one-third of the population is out of line and it could have been more, at least at the begining. (Varying a lot by geography.) Some left for Canada or the UK, some fought with the British, some were hanged from a local tree. But there were a lot of them.

[Canoerebel]

Well, the Tories were never referred to as "the Lost Cause."  The Confederacy has been, so dubbing the efforts of southern unionists as "the First Lost Cause" makes sense. 
 
The struggle of the Loyalists in the American Revolution is equally compelling history, but will have to use another name. 
 
P.S.  Lots of good books out there about Loyalists, including The Good Americans (non fiction) and Oliver Wiswell (fiction, but it does a heck of a job informing readers why Loyalists remained loyal).

[Cribtop]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

ORIGINAL: Cribtop

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

I've always wondered if the South had left, but not fired on Ft. Summter, would war have been necessary? I find it hard to imagine the North invading the south over a peacefull succession. And if the south offered to pay settlements for federal property , would there have been any legal or moral justification for the war? I've always felt that the South "wanted" the war more than the North. If there was a succession without blood shed, or "insult to national honor" , and since a great deal of the North didn't want a war anyway , I've always felt that the sides could just "grow apart". Now in a few years they might have a desire to "have a go at each other". [&:]



BTW , in answer to the original question , I must blame Robert E. Lee. No matter who was at fault, as commander he should get the blame. Maybe it's the sailor in me, but if the ships hits a rock, it's always the skippers fault, regardless who's at the helm. [:(]

An excellent point, and it shows how good Lincoln was that he maneuvered the South into firing the first shot. He put them on the horns of a dilemma with the Fort Sumter re-supply mission. Fire on the fort or the ships and the South starts the war. Let them through and the South concedes that it is not quite a sovereign nation.

Point two on this is we have yet another similarity between the ACW and the Pacific War. How many threads have we had about "what if Japan had attacked Malaya and the DEI but not bombed Pearl Harbor and the PI?"

Well the problem for the South was that the North refused to give up Federal forts of which there were many in the South. Not the best situation for sovereign states to have Alien forts at the entrance to major commercial waterways and ports. (Did somebody say China?) Sumter was just one of many. So yes, I suppose they were baiting the Southerners into a fight. And they got one...[;)]

As a descendant of South Carolinians, I can point out that if he wanted a fight Lincoln chose wisely to send the supply ships to Sumter. Talk about fire eaters. The old saying is that South Carolina is too small to be a country, too large to be an insane asylum. [:D]

[AW1Steve]

ORIGINAL: Cribtop

ORIGINAL: crsutton

ORIGINAL: Cribtop




An excellent point, and it shows how good Lincoln was that he maneuvered the South into firing the first shot. He put them on the horns of a dilemma with the Fort Sumter re-supply mission. Fire on the fort or the ships and the South starts the war. Let them through and the South concedes that it is not quite a sovereign nation.

Point two on this is we have yet another similarity between the ACW and the Pacific War. How many threads have we had about "what if Japan had attacked Malaya and the DEI but not bombed Pearl Harbor and the PI?"

Well the problem for the South was that the North refused to give up Federal forts of which there were many in the South. Not the best situation for sovereign states to have Alien forts at the entrance to major commercial waterways and ports. (Did somebody say China?) Sumter was just one of many. So yes, I suppose they were baiting the Southerners into a fight. And they got one...[;)]

As a descendant of South Carolinians, I can point out that if he wanted a fight Lincoln chose wisely to send the supply ships to Sumter. Talk about fire eaters. The old saying is that South Carolina is too small to be a country, too large to be an insane asylum. [:D]

I'm not sure the North wanted the fight. But consider Lincoln's point of view. If he can't supply Sumter, he can't evacuate it. So you might as well try and supply it. The one thing from a public relations view , or even a moral view , is let the garrison starve.

I'm not sure the Southern leaders wanted a war (such as SC's governor who I have always heard the quote about the asylum attributed to) , but the leaders were not in control of the mob. I suspect the leaders wanted the North to evacuate the garrison.And eventually might have negoitiated. The mob wanted blood. Unfortunately , they got it. [8|]

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

The struggle of southern unionsts = the First Lost Cause.

Good points snipped, but I would disagree with this last so far as US history goes. Largely forgotten now, or at least unmentioned in polite society, are the Tories of the Revolution. No one knows exact numbers but I don't think one-third of the population is out of line and it could have been more, at least at the begining. (Varying a lot by geography.) Some left for Canada or the UK, some fought with the British, some were hanged from a local tree. But there were a lot of them.

In that respect the war of revolution in the Southern Colonies was in all but name a civil war. Very few British troops participated in the fight in comparison to the number of loyalists.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Well, the Tories were never referred to as "the Lost Cause."  The Confederacy has been, so dubbing the efforts of southern unionists as "the First Lost Cause" makes sense. 

The struggle of the Loyalists in the American Revolution is equally compelling history, but will have to use another name. 

You said "first" Lost Cause. I was just offering an earlier one. Not necessarily a title.

[Canoerebel]

I was offering a title, not necessarily a timeline.  [:'(]

[Cribtop]

@aw1steve,

I concur that sane leaders of both sides sought to avoid war, but by pressing the issue at Sumter Lincoln applied maximum pressure on the nascent CSA and presented them with with a very tricky choice, given the confluence of pride, sovereignty, fire eating, etc. Similar to FDR, I don't think Lincoln necessarily wanted war, but if it were to come he wanted it on his terms and he got it that way.

[Blackhorse]

Yes, but by the time Lincoln was inaugurated the South (more precisely, individual states) had already seized all of the United States forts and arsenals except for two; Ft. Pickens in Florida, and Sumter.

ORIGINAL: crsutton

Well the problem for the South was that the North refused to give up Federal forts of which there were many in the South. Not the best situation for sovereign states to have Alien forts at the entrance to major commercial waterways and ports. (Did somebody say China?) Sumter was just one of many. So yes, I suppose they were baiting the Southerners into a fight. And they got one...[;)]

[Blackhorse]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

The core strength of the United States is the balance between the rights of the states vs the rights of the federal government. This fundamental element is why we are what we are today.

I'll quibble with this only to the extent of saying that the core principle/strength of the United States is balancing the liberty of individuals vs the powers of government at all levels. Federalism -- dividing powers between states and the federal government, is one tool to accomplish this, as is the division of federal authority among the executive, legislative and judicial branches.

Was the South justified in suceeding from the North? You can argue, states rights to the end of time but the simple fact that the South would have retained the instituion of slavery would have nulified any argument in my mind.

+1 !

[FDRLincoln]

I am a Northerner born and bred (and very extremely distantly related to Dan Sickles of all people) and I am impressed on how civil this discussion has stayed.
 
 

[wpurdom]

The southern leadership felt they had little choice but to attack Fort Sumter. After the successful coup d’etat by the Texas Rangers against Governor Houston (elected on an Unionist platform), southern succession had stalled and Arkansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia had all rejected secession. Most industry in what became the Confederacy was found in VA and TN. Given what happened in Kentucky and Maryland, it is likely that had the status quo been accepted, the Union would have established firm control of all those states by the fall as the fever pitch of secession passed and the border states calculated their economic interests. Meanwhile one would expect a buildup of the US Army and Navy and improvement in the northern states’ militia which were generally behind the level of readiness of southern states.
Lincoln’s strategy was to undercut the Confederacy by all means short of war. His plan was to use Sumter, Pickens, and the navy to enforce US tariff laws, and any other governmental powers he could short of war, while refusing to recognize the Confederacy. He would have had the opportunity to reinforce the effect by enforcing non-importation of arms without a license. Harpers’ Ferry, containing the machinery that was the core of Southern arms production for the first year of the war. Then the agrarian states of the Deep South are in a position of supporting the US government through their tariffs (which would be rising in 1862 under the Republican party platform), trying to support creation of a national army and arms industry, supporting the frontier wars in Texas, or leaving Texas dissatisfied at the level of support. With the prospect that Lincoln might successfully provoke a war at a time of his choosing. Given the history of Southern politics during the Civil War, the idea of secession from the CSA would have been a very real prospect.
In the end, the Confederacy would likely have collapsed with a lot less bloodshed and resistance, and no immediate abolition would have been possible.

[John 3rd]

CR mentioned Peter Cozzen's works earlier. My esteemed Southern Friend, who put me on to this magnificent author, neglected to mention his recent work on the the Valley Campaign. This book just arrived here and has a nice round 700 pages of reading within it. Cannot wait..

The discussion here has been delightful and quite well toned as well as reasoned.

[JWE]

Ya know, every year, the USMHI offers Staff Rides over a number of important battlefields. They have briefing books, and focus on all the individual actions that made for the battle. One day, two days, whatever. Gettysburg is the sine qua non. Absolutely everything from both sides is included. Three days of utter fatigue and things coming at you, from both sides, until your head explodes.

Never really understood why the Staff Ride thing was restricted to the Military, or DOD pukes, or visiting Foreign a$$holes. This is exactly the kind of thing that a righteous citizen would be interested in, and exactly the kind of thing that our Military/Government should encourage. But what do I know.

There is a monster anniversary coming up. The Govt hopes you will all forget. There will be a Staff Ride. There will be some special briefing books. You can find out the details (by righteously looking) and join on in. I encourage all who have interest in this period, to attend. You will be very pleased, because the professionals who are doing this are willing and frikkin eager to talk about the military aspects of this engagement and the whole war, in general.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: JWE

Ya know, every year, the USMHI offers Staff Rides over a number of important battlefields. They have briefing books, and focus on all the individual actions that made for the battle. One day, two days, whatever. Gettysburg is the sine qua non. Absolutely everything from both sides is included. Three days of utter fatigue and things coming at you, from both sides, until your head explodes.

Never really understood why the Staff Ride thing was restricted to the Military, or DOD pukes, or visiting Foreign a$$holes. This is exactly the kind of thing that a righteous citizen would be interested in, and exactly the kind of thing that our Military/Government should encourage. But what do I know.

There is a monster anniversary coming up. The Govt hopes you will all forget. There will be a Staff Ride. There will be some special briefing books. You can find out the details (by righteously looking) and join on in. I encourage all who have interest in this period, to attend. You will be very pleased, because the professionals who are doing this are willing and frikkin eager to talk about the military aspects of this engagement and the whole war, in general.

I have a couple of the staff ride books in my collection Gettysburg and Chickamauga, I followed through the Gettysburg book while at Gettysburg for the first two days.

The books are quite interesting taking you on essentially a guided tour of the battle field with excerpts from official reports etc.One of the interesting parts of the tour was following Longstreet's march and counter march, which takes you away from the tourists at the more visited sections of the park.

[Canoerebel]

I've been reading an article about Gettysburg in the July 28, 1863, issue of the Southern Recorder (Milledgeville, GA) newspaper.  I've only made it about two colums in, but I'm amazed at the accuracy of the description of the layout of the battlefield and the account of the attack on the Union left by Longstreet's Corps and Anderson's Division of A.P. Hill's Corps on the second day of the battle.  I figured a contemporary account would be very confused and misleading, but whoever penned this article got it right.  Some of the very topics we've discussed in this thread are referred to.  [Hope this link works; if not, I'll try to fix it.]

http://milledgeville.galileo.usg.edu/milledgeville/view?docId=news/srw1863/srw1863-0117.xml&query=48th Georgia&brand=milledgeville-brand