Posted on 07/02/2008 6:08:10 AM PDT by mware
July 2, 1863
The morning of July 2 found the two armies facing each other from two nearly parallel ridges separated by a plain of open farmland. Overnight, Longstreet had arrived with the divisions of McLaws and Hood, bringing the strength of the Confederate Army to 50,000. As of this morning, Pickett's division had not arrived. The Union Army had also received reinforcements during the night, bringing their numbers to over 60,000.
While Meade's attention was directed towards Ewell's corps on Culp's Hill to the north, Lee decided to attack from the south. In the afternoon, Hood's division encountered Federal forces with hand-to-hand combat in an area of rock-strewn confusion of large boulders known as "Devil's Den." The Confederates worked past Devil's Den and for a short time nearly overtook Little Round Top before being repulsed by the 20th Maine regiment. The Confederates withdrew to Devil's Den where sharpshooters kept up a deadly exchange with Federal troops on Little Round Top.
A little later in the afternoon, McLaw's division overpowered Sickles' Federals with hand- to-hand combat at the Peach Orchard and the adjacent wheat field. However, losses were great and the Confederate push lost momentum at the creek at the base of Little Round Top known as Plum Run.
Next, Anderson made a run on Hancock's center Federal position which had been weakened in an attempt to aid Sickles. The Confederates were successfully pushing towards the Federal's ridge position when Hancock ordered the First Minnesota regiment to counterattack. Although the First Minnesota suffered enormous casualties, they managed to give Hancock enough time to establish a new line of defense. Anderson's men had to withdraw to Confederate positions across the valley.
To the north, Ewell's divisions had some success with late afternoon attacks in and around Culp's Hill. Early's division temporarily broke through Federal lines as darkness fell, but with lack of support and Federal counterattacks, had to withdraw. Lee had come close to success causing Meade to consider a possible retreat. The 2nd of July 1863 became one of the bloodiest days in American military history with each side losing about 10,000 men.
And if Lee needed a reminder then he didn't have to look any further than Kansas. When it came to the border war, neither side could claim any moral high-ground.
Happy fourth of July weekend to you N-S.
And to you.
I found several long vid excerpts from the TNT production of Gettysburg on the net through a virginia tourist website I think. here’s the pickett charge url.
http://mefeedia.com/entry/picketts-charge-part-2-the-march/6811036/
Makes you cry for all those brave boys on both sides.
This has completely slipped my mind until now. 8:00PM right now, guess that means Culps Hill.
He never assembled much more than 60,000 men from that point on, and he was limited by his own superiors and his own preference to operating in a narrow albeit important theater.
His only choice after Gettysburg was to hold on in the hopes of foreign intervention, which had no chance of coming anymore.
that last chance came in APR 65, when he failed to break the ANV & the other major CSA forces into guerrilla bands & fight on, until the north decided to QUIT.
The quitters among the Union had already been purged from both military and political life. Vallandigham had lost all credibility with one of the most ill-timed speeches in political history and McClellan was powerless. Grant was not a quitter, nor was Sherman, nor was Sheridan.
Lincoln was not a quitter either, nor was Seward, nor was Stanton, nor was Welles. Every milquetoast that tied the Union's hands behind its back was scoured out of the administration and out of the command - they were deadenders all in 1865.
Sherman was already operating on a total war footing by April 1865 - his men had become past masters at hunting down and destroying Rebel guerrilla units. Grant could have quickly learned that art as well.
The very first guerrilla raid against a Northern city would have been the last one.
fwiw, Lee did NOT have to WIN;he simply had to avoid final DEFEAT.
The entire point of the Confederacy was to hold and govern land, not to operate as a secret Mafia. Terrorism was not only beneath Lee's dignity, it did not serve his purposes at all.
Lee needed to win on the battlefield to avoid defeat. And by Appomattox he had done about 99% of the winning his resources enabled him to do.
trust me, in about DEC 1975 or perhaps MUCH SOONER, the civilians in the north would have done ANYTHING to end the war against the north-anything, especially if the guerrillas had started burning NORTHERN cities (say one a month???).
The record of the Civil War shows that such provocations only made the North more determined to punish the Confederates, not less. Antietam and Gettysburg proved that in spades. A more accurate picture is that between July '61 and September '62 there were plenty of Northerners who questioned whether the war was worthwhile. That was the window of opportunity for the cowards and the defeatists of the Union, helped along by the incompetence of the general staff and the disloyalty of one faction of Northern Democrats.
After Antietam and the successful November '62 elections for the GOP, the Peace Democrats were routed as a viable political faction.
After the Overland Campaign and the election of '64 the entire Democrat party, defeatist and Unionist, held less than 20% of the seats in Congress.
80% of the North was backing Grant and Sherman unconditionally and a guerrilla raid on any Northern city would have provoked red rage, not fear.
I've only done a very minuscule part, but there are quite a few who have made it their life's work and it is really beginning to pay off.
I visited the site 15 years ago am very much looking forward to taking the family to Washington DC with a trek to Gettysburg when the kids are a bit older.
You'll definitely find it changed for the better.
The great thing about such a vacation, if the family is patient, is that fact that Gettysburg, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, First and Second Bull Run, Spotsylvania, the Wilderness, Harpers Ferry and South Mountain are all in easy driving distance of DC, just as the entire Peninsula Campaign and the second half of the Overland Campaign are all in easy driving distance of Richmond - which itself is only 100 miles from DC.
A dedicated battlefield tourist can cover every major battlefield of the Eastern Theater of the Civil War in two weeks without having to drive much more than 300 miles.
In the Western Theater the battlefields are generally less well-preserved, much further away from one another and sometimes located in very nasty neighborhoods.
I enjoy reading about tactics and such, and when I toured the battlefield I wondered something. This being FR, I bet someone could give me an opinion.
The final charge aside, most of the casualties in the battle occurred in the wheat field and orchard. These to spots are relatively flat, open ground (except for a couple of farm houses near the orchard) and easily within range of the guns of either side. The Federals had high ground within a couple hundred yards of both. Whoever held them would basically become sitting ducks, as they didn’t look like keys to any important next move. Why did both sides expend so much sweat and blood to take an essentially worthless position? Was it because the two ends of the Federal line (Culp’s hill in the north and LRT in the south) were stalemated?
clean up your act or get off the board!
....where about in MD were your ancestors from?
All my relatives who served served in New York regiments.
I have relatives in the Baltimore area but their family didn't get there until the 1880s.
You may get your wish, if stand watie can provide the proof he claims he has that shows I'm a liar. I'll let him provide the details
From the Union side the answer would be that Sickles had chosen a really unwise position, essentially in defiance of his orders.
When Longstreet attacked his position en echelon, it was thought too late for Sickles to retreat to Cemetery Ridge in an organized fashion without offering Longstreet an opportunity to breach this weak point in the Union line.
Hence the continual reinforcement of Sickles' Corps all day long and the continual struggle by the Union to push the Confederates far enough back past the Wheatfield and the Peach Orchard to allow the Union to reorganize its line without being breached.
From the Confederate point of view, it was a probing to find a weak point or a way to breach the Union line - given the way the day was going, every Confederate commander involved was justified in believing that one more assault, one more push, might create the opening they needed.
The hope was that Hood would turn the Union flank at the Round Tops and that McLaws might provide a pincers that would enable the Confederates to encircle the Union.
In short, it was the Union trying to plug the hole in its line all day and the Confederates trying to find the hole in the Union line all day.
Thanks geo.
http://gburginfo.brinkster.net/Casualties.htm
The official casualty return compiled by Lee’s medical director in late July 1863 was manifestly incomplete: a total of 20,451, comprising 2,592 killed in action, 12,709 wounded and 5,150 missing. It was apparent at the time that this was not a complete count: the trauma of defeat and retreat and the loss of many officers prevented a proper assessment: many units grossly under reported their losses, and in some cases the returns included none of the “missing”, and when the missing were counted, it was only too often the case that they were in reality either dead or wounded... Livermore... proffered a total of 28,063 rebel casualties at Gettysburg, including 3,903 killed, 18,735 wounded and 5,425 unwounded prisoners... Bob Krick... re-assessed the casualty reports of significant numbers of Confederate units... raises the total of Confederate dead to about four and a half thousand, and the wounded to roughly twelve and a half thousand... Bearing in mind the fact that well over five thousand Yankees were killed or died from wounds received in this battle, it seems reasonable to assume that at least as many rebels were fatally stricken: after all, the Southerners were repulsed, the Union held the field, the ordeal of retreat must have been lethal for large numbers of Confederate wounded.
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Thanks george76. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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Many thanks for the reply!
fwiw, i personally wrote most of the "rear area protection doctrine" in the late '70s & early '80s (TWO 2-year tours on the faculty) for USAMPS,after we learned the lesson of RVN.
a country CANNOT EVER defeat of well-supported (by the civilian population) guerrilla movement, even with helicopters, gunships,advanced weaponry. period. end of story.(btw, may i remind you that since the 19th Century, that SPAIN, JAPAN, the USA & the PHILLAPINE government have tried & FAILED (miserably, btw) to "put down" the Huk's resistance??? fyi, the Huks NEVER had more than 10K active fighters, but they STILL hold much of "the back country".)
had Lee decided to do precisely what i said, the north would have given up & left dixie within ten years or less, especially if EVERY major industrial city in the north started BURNING. (may i remind you what the Chicago fire did??) YEP, anyone who got "caught" would have faced "a short trial & a quick rope or firing squad".) nonetheless, such guerrilla acts NEVER fail for want of volunteers!!!
fwiw, had the union army decided to "take it out on" the southern civilian population, that too would have backfired on the union & solidified dixie morale/support for the "martyrs".
in the end, the north would have "just gone home" & dixie would have been forever FREE.
free dixie,sw
My credentials are sufficient to realize that guerrilla warfare with the aim of splitting a nation in two pieces is a strategy, not a tactic.
fwiw, i personally wrote most of the "rear area protection doctrine" in the late '70s & early '80s (TWO 2-year tours on the faculty) for USAMPS,after we learned the lesson of RVN.
Anyone can claim any credentials on the internet. Suffice it to say that an obvious minimum prerequisite for authoring official military police doctrine would be the ability to construct an English sentence.
a country CANNOT EVER defeat of well-supported (by the civilian population) guerrilla movement, even with helicopters, gunships,advanced weaponry. period. end of story.
I am an American. The word "cannot" is not a given with me.
.(btw, may i remind you that since the 19th Century, that SPAIN, JAPAN, the USA & the PHILLAPINE government have tried & FAILED (miserably, btw) to "put down" the Huk's resistance??? fyi, the Huks NEVER had more than 10K active fighters, but they STILL hold much of "the back country".)
The value of the Philippine "back country" to the USA, Japan or Spain is considerably smaller than the value of the USA to the USA.
Force and resource commitment varies accordingly.
had Lee decided to do precisely what i said, the north would have given up & left dixie within ten years or less, especially if EVERY major industrial city in the north started BURNING.
Had Lee adopted guerrilla tactics and remained in the North, he would have been hunted down and killed within a few months.
Had Confederate spies started setting fires in Northern cities, anyone with a Southern accent or suspect connections would have found themselves lynched in short order. Such a strategy would have had a very short life span.
Recall the fate of the Lincoln conspirators.
(may i remind you what the Chicago fire did??)
I do remember. The Chicago fire gutted a city inhabited by 300,000 people. Three years after the fire 400,000 people lived there. That should tell you something about how effective a tactic such burnings would have been.
YEP, anyone who got "caught" would have faced "a short trial & a quick rope or firing squad".) nonetheless, such guerrilla acts NEVER fail for want of volunteers!!!
John Bell Hood, one of the bravest and most capable military officers America has ever produced, parted ways with Lee on the question of continuing resistance. He believed in a campaign of ongoing vengeance for the collapse of the Confederacy. But within a month he realized that his dreams of raising an independent command to carry on the fight was drawing almost no takers. So he gave himself up two months after Lee surrendered.
And I guarantee that his failure to raise recruits was not because the people thought Hood was a scam artist or would be an unreliable leader. It is because the will to resist was gone.
fwiw, had the union army decided to "take it out on" the southern civilian population, that too would have backfired on the union & solidified dixie morale/support for the "martyrs".
That's interesting, because Sherman adopted exactly that policy and the locals either scattered or licked his boots.
Missouri got cleaned up of guerrillas in short order too.
in the end, the north would have "just gone home" & dixie would have been forever FREE.
This kind of talk was on many Southern lips in 1865. And then, as now, 99% of it was just talk.
There was no such thing as "going home" anyway. A Union man's home is the Union, from Key West to Seattle, San Diego to Bangor.
"There have been several books written recently which cast a new light on Lee's intentions. His goal apparently was two-fold:"
First, I'm most impressed with your detailed knowledge of these matters, and much enjoy your "conversation." Seriously.
Now, I'll add what little I can, from the 2001 Bowden-Ward book (p 31):
"Ultimately, [Jefferson] Davis' decision not to strip men from Lee's army was the result of the general's cogent arguments [rehearsed at length by B-W] against such a move. In addition to voicing concerns dealing with the allocation of resources and the difficulty of getting men from Virginia to Mississippi in time to be of service, Lee asserted four other important points justifying why his army should be reinforced and mount an invasion of the North.
"First, for over a year the Army of Northern Virginia had brought unparalleled success and hope to the Southern nation with a string of remarkable victories; no other army or general had come close to delivering what he [Lee] and his men had achieved.
"Second, much of the army's battlefield prowess lay in the synergy between its commanding general and its proven combat veterans. Why, therefore, would any general, much less Lee, advocate a plan of action that denied to his side the best prospects for his country's long term goal?
"Third, the Army of Northern Virginia operated in the one theater that could do the most damage to the Northern war effort. Despite what a few members of the Confederate cabinet thought -- namely Postmaster-General Reagan from Texas -- and what a legion of other "Western Solutionists" have argued to this day, the strategically sensitive points of the North were virtually all in the Eastern Theater of operations.
"Lee understood that relieving the siege of Vicksburg in May-June 1863, desirable as that nearly-impossible goal was for the psychological well being of the South, paled in comparison to the political, psychological, and military ramifications a major victory north of the Potomac River would generate.
"A victory on the scale of Second Manassas in Pennsylvania, for example, would create more political opportunities than a string of successes in Mississippi or Tennessee -- or even Virginia. This was largely because the major psychological trigger points for the North -- which included the capital and other major cities, leading press outlets, and the foreign diplomatic corps -- were concentrated in the eastern corridor between the Potomac and New England.
"Lee had always known this. "The lives of our soldiers are too precious to be sacrificed in the attainment of successes that inflict no loss upon the enemy beyond the actual loss in battle," he had written Secretary of War Seddon on January 10, 1863. "Each victory should bring us nearer to the great end which it is the object of this war to reach."...
"Fourth, Lee was aware that the continued success of his army was key in forcing some sort of political solution upon the North. "Nothing can arrest during the present [Lincoln] administration," Lee expressed to Seddon, "the most desolating war that was ever practiced, except by a revolution among their people. Nothing can produce a revolution except systematic success on our part."
"And Lee knew the northern populace was growing weary of the war. The disaffection in various parts of the north was reported in newspapers and forwarded by spies for Lee's consideration.
"The growing fatigue north of the Mason-Dixon Line energized some Southerners, especially when coupled with word that the Lincoln administration was taking steps to ratchet up their war effort [A SURGE??] as their own people grew tired of the conflict....
"The growing unrest in the North and firm Southern resolve to the cause of independence animated Lee, who realized the political possibilities these circumstances created. If successful this year, next fall there will be a great change in public opinion at the North." the general predicted to his wife on April 19, 1863. "The Republicans will be destroyed & I think the friends of peace will become so strong as that the next administration will go in on that basis."
I think this analysis is accurate and cogent.
Who disagrees?
People in the North were getting war weary.
I think it was very fortunate that the North had victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in the same week. Without those victories or worse, defeats, the will to fight could have been weakened enough to look for a peace.
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