Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 31, 2019 8:14:54 GMT -8
The Killer Angels I found this book at my online library via the Libby app. I’m 13% into it. I’ve become a true believer that a good historical novel is far superior to non-fiction in regards to understanding history. In just the brief descriptions of the major players by author Michael Shaara, I know more about these men then what I had previously read or seen from all other sources. Lawrence Chamberlain, of Maine, is musing about the war: Chamberlain is tasked with handling about 120 Maine soldiers who have deserted. He has been given permission to shoot them if necessary. He can’t do that to fellow citizens of Maine so he has to resort to speechifying them. All but six of the deserter from Maine re-joined the army.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 31, 2019 9:00:11 GMT -8
This book starts out by framing the question of Gettysburg (or adventurism up North by the Confederate army):
Longstreet, in particular, has doubts about the wisdom of this campaign.
Longstreet also thought the army should have gone to the aid of Vicksburg. Speaking of Robert. E. Lee, Shaara writes:
To the best of my knowledge, no large armies were every destroyed….certainly not like German 6th Army which was captured by the Russians and where 91,000 Germans were taken prisoner.
What I understand is that armies were attritted, they were bloodied. But never dissolved. If the Confederates had triumphed at Gettysburg, wouldn’t it have been more like the Union triumph at Shiloh? Plenty of men dead, but both armies intact and still functioning.
In fact, it seems to me that the North had enough manpower available, you could have lost the entire army and have replaced it fairly quickly. And if the army had been lost there were two likely outcomes: The North would face a Yorktownian end. Not defeated militarily, but seeing there was no end in site, it would give up and make peace. Or (and I think this much more likely) there would have been mass outrage (combined with more than a little panic) and enlistments would have soared, Lee more in the position of the Japanese after the attack of Pearl Harbor.
Whatever the case may be, it seems that Longstreet had a point. And why not come to the aid of Vicksburg (a real tactical situation in need of aid) instead of rolling the dice on some pie-in-the-sky supposed strategic outcome up north?
It seems to me that Lee shouldn’t have listened to the lunatic, Davis, and instead listened to Longstreet. Was Lee’s decision to go ahead with the charge at Gettysburg sort of a “fuck this” moment? I remember Foote saying that at this point in the battle, Lee’s blood was up and he saw a target and he simply wanted to smash it.
What also is interesting is that Longstreet is pretty sure that Jeb Stuart is out “joyriding.” Lee and Longstreet learn from a spy that the Union army is on the move north but no one has heard anything from Stuart. But they trust the spy and act on his information. That’s an amazing bit of dereliction of duty.
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Post by timothylane on Oct 31, 2019 9:34:05 GMT -8
Actually, it was Lee who proposed the invasion. This had been planned, at least as an idea, for some time. Jackson's mapmaker, Jed Hotchkiss, had prepared a detailed map of the area that included who owned which farms. Much of his goal was simply to acquire badly needed supplies, and this he accomplished, though not as much as he could have if he'd been able to stay longer. Incidentally, when the Confederate Cabinet voted on whether or not to approve of Lee's plan, the sole "no" was cast by Postmaster General John H. Reagan (who actually made a profit with the postal system and was the only Cabinet member to serve in the same spot for the whole war). He was a Texan, and knew that losing the Mississippi meant cutting him off from home.
If the Army of the Potomac had been wrecked, Lincoln would undoubtedly have brought troops from other theaters to rebuild a new one. This would have interfered with campaigns elsewhere, though it would have been too late to save Vicksburg.
It was a long way to Vicksburg over the rickety Southern railways. I doubt anyone from northern Virginia could have arrived there in a month. Realistically, it's doubtful that Joe Johnston would have accomplished anything with them anyway. He was too cautious, too afraid of losing, to take the sort of chance he needed to do in order to relieve Vicksburg. Grant had a lot of troops waiting for him if he did try. Similar problems would probably have come from sending troops to Tennessee for Bragg to mishandle.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 31, 2019 10:39:51 GMT -8
It may well be that Lee proposed the invasion. What the book says (assuming the book sticks to the facts as known at the time of the writing) is that Lee and Davis overruled Longstreet’s objections. It says nothing of the source of the plans.
I agree with this assessment. The Confederates might even have occupied the White House, although it’s my understanding that Washington D.C. at the time was the most fortified city in the world. I would assume that even if the Army of the Potomac had been wiped out, it would have taken at least weeks, if not months, to overcome the dug-in defenses of Washington D.C. I assume also that the letter from Jefferson Davis to be placed on the desk of Lincoln was probably not going to be done personally. Nor would Lincoln have remained in Washington if the city was in dire risk of falling.
Ain’t that the truth. In what I read of Sherman’s biography, he was the only West Point graduate on the field that day among the six division commanders at Shiloh. And without him propping up one of his nearby commanders (who was turning to jelly), there would have been an early disaster.
That is, one gets the feeling that this was not the German army that blitzkrieged France and the low countries. Foote, as I had noted, mentioned that much of the carnage was due to battlefield tactics not catching up to the weaponry of the day. I think that’s certainly a fair statement, and he would know far more about it than I would.
But it also seems to be that just basic competency was in short supply. The most competent commander (I forget his name) turned down the post that basically was thrust upon Meade. In this book, Buford is on the scene (Gettysburg) with his calvary and begins making plans above his rank as to what to do. He sees the high ground and:
Obviously that is not what happened. But what a great passages that certainly is justified by what had gone on so far in the war.
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Post by timothylane on Oct 31, 2019 11:01:20 GMT -8
The general who rejected Army of the Potomac command was John F. Reynolds of the I Corps, who was killed early in the Battle of Gettysburg. He wanted control of the command at Harpers Ferry, and Lincoln and Halleck wouldn't give it to him. (They did give it to Meade, but he may not have asked. Perhaps that was the difference.)
It should be noted that at Fredericksburg, Reynolds already commanded I Corps, and Meade was a division commander, leading the Pennsylvania Reserves and actually breaking into the Confederate line before being ejected. (This was on Jackson's front, where the ground wasn't as good as on Longstreet's.) Meade in fact was one of Reynolds's subordinates.
Meade was given command of V Corps after that, while the Pennsylvania Reserves recuperated and recovered in the Washington defenses. Two brigades were sent to Gettysburg, serving in the V Corps, although by the time they made it Meade was in command of the whole army and Sykes commanded the corps.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 31, 2019 12:09:11 GMT -8
Ah yeah. That name rings a bell now. In the book it says he didn’t take the job because he didn’t want to have Halleck running things from D.C. It mentions in the book also that both Lee and Longstreet assumed it would be Reynolds since he was the best man. Meade they weren’t afraid of although Longstreet noted that Meade, from Pennsylvania, would be familiar with the area.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 1, 2019 8:55:28 GMT -8
I’m 42% into The Killer Angels and it’s going well so far. It’s a breeze to read and I’ve breezed through this, even at my normal slow pace. I’m guessing it’s a book on the short side (for me to so easily be 42% into it). Plus, I understand it has a rather large bibliography at the end to anchor this historical novel in fact. And as far as I know, this is tightly based on the facts.
The author does something so rarely seen in a book, fiction or non-fiction. He gives you the graphics you need (maps, in this case) as you go instead of piling them all in the front of the book. Each chapter (or so) begins with a map showing the disposition of the forces in and around Gettysburg at a certain time of day (to the point you’ve progressed to in the story).
What I’m confused about, and I’m sure the braintrust here can set me straight, is why Gettysburg? Lee is loping his army along in the valley defined by South Mountains in the west and whatever ridge of hills there are on the east in Pennsylvania.
He’s blind because he hasn’t heard from Jeb! (the other Jeb!). He has no idea of the location of Meade’s Army of the Potomac. But he veers through a break in the hills to the right (which may follow today’s Highway 116) and heads toward Gettysburg. The vague picture presented is that he wants to get between Meade and Washington D.C. But if he doesn’t know where Meade is, this just seems to be a case of wandering around with your army and hoping for the best.
But they run into Buford’s calvary and the Gettysburg battle sort of happens there by complete accident. The Union puts up a good defense while waiting for the rest of the Union army to catch up. Some Union infantry does come in time to reinforce the lines. But eventually they are driven back and up into the hills. (Cemetery Ridge, Cemetery Hill, Culp’s Hill, etc.) and the Confederates consider this a great victory.
In a recurring theme for both sides, Lee orders his generals (Ewell and Early, I believe) to follow up on their success and route the light Union forces from the high ground before they can reinforce their positions. Of course, they don’t for various reasons that don’t seem to make all that much sense.
Longstreet sees the problem now with the Yanks in charge of the high ground and tries to persuade Lee to move his army toward Washington to get in between Meade and Washington and fight on his own terms. He’ll find a nice spot of high ground and then let Meade waste his men trying to dislodge him because Meade will surely be at least politically forced to try to dislodge him at all costs.
Instead, we know what happened. The general impression is that Lee is getting a bit weary of the war and just wants to strike at the target he does have rather than fighting a more defensive war. It apparently still stings him that he was heavily criticized for previous efforts to dig in. He had been castigated in the newspaper as “The King of Spades.”
He was well aware of Longstreet’s propensity for fighting a defensive war. These are some intangibles that likely played a huge role in the psychology of Lee. It’s interesting to remember that Lee was the first student to graduate from West Pointe without a single demerit. Thus what people thought of him was extremely important to him.
In hindsight, we know that he should have listened more to Longstreet. And we have no idea what Jackson would have counseled but the general assumption is that Lee was harmed by the lack of Jackson’s viewpoint.
At times it seems like the author knows way more about the mindset of these participants then is likely. But perhaps he’s done the careful research to back up what he is writing. There’s a particularly engaging scene at Longstreet’s field headquarters were much of the top brass (except for Lee) assemble for what amounts to a friendly bull session and poker game.
This is definitely a fraternity of brothers, and one that extends fully to those on the other side. At one point, Armistead asks Longstreet if it would be appropriate for him to meet with his old friend, Union General Hancock. Longstreet basically tells him to have at it. No problem.
And if the real George Pickett is as he appears in this book, if you saw a character like this portrayed in a movie you’d think they were going too far. But the man apparently was a character. He was the butt of their jokes but in some strange way this was part of the good relationship he had with his fellow officers. They kidded him about his perfume, his hair, and the fact that he was married to a woman half his age. And Pickett took it all in stride and in good humor.
They kidded him about being last in his class at West Point. But he was considered by Lee and Longstreet to be a dependable (if not too bright) soldier. If he was pointed in the right direction — with continued observation to make sure he knew what to do — he was considered reliable.
Longstreet is portrayed as sad, moody, and depressed (but extremely competent). Fairly recently he had lost all three of his children to some kind of plague that was making the rounds. He could no longer enjoy many of the things he used to (such as a good poker game). He was considered a master poker player but could no longer be induced to participate in a game.
Lee is suffering from heart problems and is just overall feeling his age. He recently had fallen from a horse and had caught himself on his hands which were giving him a little bit of pain. And that’s a constant theme in this. This is June of 1863 and many of them have accumulated quite a few injuries. A couple of his generals are barely fit for duty for one reason or another. Although their spirits appear to be high (and army morale is considered excellent at the moment), the indication is that the tank is beginning to run dry.
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 1, 2019 10:42:21 GMT -8
Pickett never forgave Lee for ordering the charge. Years later he would apparently say something like, "That man destroyed my division" to anyone who would listen.
If you like the book, you may like the movie based on it titled "Gettysburg." I liked Richard Jordan as general Armistead. The close friendship between Northern and Southern generals is a highlight.
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Post by artraveler on Nov 1, 2019 11:04:47 GMT -8
Well Brad, You have captured the problem Lee had at Gettysburg. The initial fight on the first day went well for Lee although he did not capture Culp's Hill. It is right here that the death of Jackson is most critically felt. Jackson would not have needed any prodding to take the hill and fortify it, for the certain Federal attack. It is an obvious point. Had Jackson held Culp's Hill the entire Federal line would have been exposed to ranged guns and there would not be a day two or three. Stewart's Calvary was in the Harrisburg area and could have flanked the Federals and prevented a flanking move by Mead. Longstreet's corp would have reinforced in the middle instead of the extreme right of the Confederate line. Mead would have been a fool to attack.
Under these circumstances Mead would have withdrawn towards DC and Lee would have been free to roam the PA countryside. Mead would have been under intense pressure to attack Lee, and Lee could have selected the ground for the battle. Gettysburg would have just been a skirmish in the larger war.
Don't forget that it was the combination of losses at Gettysburg and Vicksburg that delivered such a crushing blow to the South. Still, the war continued for another 18 months, becoming increasingly move violent and costly for both sides. Over 50% of all the deaths happened after Gettysburg and Vicksburg.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 1, 2019 12:27:25 GMT -8
I think that's a brilliant analysis, Artler. I certainly jibes with what I'm reading. And I get this impression of Longstreet frequently and internally rolling his eyes as Lee refuses to adapt to the situation.
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 1, 2019 13:59:55 GMT -8
Something similar happened to the Axis in early-mid 1943. They suffered something between 650-900,000 casualties (depending on whom one reads) at Stalingrad. (Ended February 2, 1943) Of those 90,000 of so German POWS who surrendered, about 5,000 lived to tell about it after something like 10 years in captivity, as I recall. The rest died in Soviet camps.
In early May of 1943, about 250,000 surrendered to the Allies in Tunisia.
The Axis Powers could not recover from such loses, but fought on for another two years. I believe the highest loses in the war occurred in this period.
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Post by artraveler on Nov 1, 2019 18:25:50 GMT -8
I believe the highest loses in the war occurred in this period. This is true with almost every war. In the Peloponnesian War, roughly 30 years long, the highest rate of causalities were in the last few years. The same is true of the 30 Years War, English Civil War, Napoleonic War, WW I, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Part of the reason is one side senses victory while the other has glimmerings of defeat. Both sides renew their efforts to win or hold off defeat. The last stages of a war are also the part where the highest civilian casualties occur, and I believe, the most war crimes.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 1, 2019 20:34:11 GMT -8
Apple TV is now available as a channel to add to my Roku device. I discovered it while searching for that Gettysburg mini-series. They have it for $2.99 rental or $3.99 for the “director’s cut” which adds about 7 or 8 minutes to it. I’ve bookmarked that movie.
But having just finished the book, I might be up to my ears in Gettysburg at the moment. However, every time I’ve seen anything on it in a documentary, I was also left feeling like I still didn’t understand it.
I now understand it, at least to a passing degree, after reading The Killer Angels.
Remember, I’ve taking this guy’s research as gospel. There’s no good reason to doubt it. I haven’t run into a bunch of Amazon reviews calling this guy a fraud or anything like that. I’m just guessing it’s a rather solid history (inside a historical novel).
And it’s not really a historical novel as much as it is (I think) the author extending the dialogue into a narrative based on scattered facts that he’s put together. There are no romances going on in this thing. This reads more like a history book than a historical novel. It seems to be something in between.
One reviewer writes:
My conclusion might seems surprising. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see (again, based on the picture laid out by this novel) that Robert E. Lee was not completely himself. He died in 1870 from his heart disease. And his discomfort with this heart is a major theme in this novel in and around Gettysburg.
The decisions he made I don’t think can be put down to “He got his blood up and was stubborn.” And this is not in the least meant as an insult, but I think it’s very possible he simply was suffering from oxygen depravation due to his weak heart. That is, he was indeed not thinking right.
Again, you have to wonder why we aren’t at least two nations today due the the North’s horrible generals. Meade apparently wanted to retreat and took a vote on it. And this was when they already had the high ground well fortified. All his generals voted against leaving the battle.
I can’t say I really knew any of these characters to the point it would be fair to say this novel changed my mind about them, although I think we do get a much deeper portrait of Robert E. Lee. But I do now see George Pickett in a whole other light. Let’s face it. His glamour photo you usually see of him with the frilly locks makes him look to be an air-headed dandy.
And it’s not that he wasn’t that. But he wasn’t just that. The man was no back-seat general who would feign bravery but then send his men to the slaughter. We learn of a brave action by him in some Mexican campaign. And in Pickett’s charge, he is indeed charging with them and, quite incredibly, makes it out alive.
That charge (and the entire battle plan) was so flawed, you have to wonder why Lee stayed so blinded to the better alternatives offered by Longstreet (and others, including Hood). I’ve told you what I think. But I guess we’ll never really know.
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 1, 2019 21:11:07 GMT -8
I believe I have said this before; one of the greatest boons to successful ventures is good health. I believe it is undeniable that most of those historical figures who achieved great success, were healthy hardy men. It is difficult to rise to the top and stay there if one is frail and having to constantly battle ill health.
Of course, there are exceptions, but less than 150 years ago, only the robust and lucky survived into adulthood and most who did started breaking down pretty quickly once maturity was gained.
I find what Alexander the Great did was amazing. His continuous travels alone would have killed many, less robust than he and his Macedonians. As I recall, some of his soldiers were in their 50s and 60s when he died. They had been fighting for for decades for Alexander and Phillip before him.
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 1, 2019 21:19:37 GMT -8
I suspected as much. I believe your reasoning behind this is pretty solid. Mankind is fairly predictable throughout history. I don't believe history repeats itself so much as it is variations on a number of themes which make up our expanding historic performance.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 1, 2019 21:43:20 GMT -8
When you look at the shear energy levels of Churchill or Teddy Roosevelt, that is undeniably so.
The Confederate generals (and probably the Union ones as well) were getting pretty beat up by 1863. And obviously more than a few (Jackson) had been killed. Like an injured football player, they had to do the best they could to play with a little pain.
Another central theme of this was the Confederate soldiers and officers gorging on cherries (with the expected results) as they swarmed their way through Pennsylvania. Many wonder if they could grow these cherry trees back home. They were enthralled with them.
In one interesting interlude (I think it was the first day of battle), the Union soldiers (including Chamberlain, at least in this retelling) come across a very black man who is a runaway. He speaks no English and is the first black man many have seen, at least this intimately. The man is wounded and is terrified. And it turned out a woman in Gettysburg shot him when he had come looking for food or help.
Chamberlain gives some nice introspection. He considered himself completely without prejudice. And yet he admits he is feeling some uncomfortable emotions as he views the man who seems barely human, or at least another type of human.
It’s delicately handled. In the end, Chamberlain recognizes that spark of a soul that each man has . . . while one of his rougher friends there gives a good diatribe about how most people (with a few exceptions) are pretty bad and show no such spark at all.
This is mostly a story about the battle and the men…basically it’s a re-creation of the event. But the author is capable of some interesting and insightful asides now and then.
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Post by artraveler on Nov 1, 2019 21:49:31 GMT -8
I now understand it, at least to a passing degree, after reading The Killer Angels. Brad, you have taken a big step to understanding the South and our continuing fascination with a war that has been over for 150 years. Few people in the north understand what southerners call, a sense of place. It is a lot of things, some sounding simple, even trite. "you can take the boy out of the south, but you can't take the south out of the boy." And it can take on profundities of literature Faulkner, Williams, even Margaret Mitchel. For all the simpering in GWTW Scarlett is a strong woman and altogether a Southerner. I do not believe had the South managed to reach a peace with the Federal that it would hav been two countries for more than a generation. Slavery was a doomed institution in North America and technology would have made the practice uneconomic by the 1890s, more likely sooner. Economic competition between north and south would have driven the two sides together to keep out the Europeans. Mexico once had a French Emperor, that didn't work out well. The arguments continue to this day. The what -ifs, could be's and maybe's fill millions of pages. Just look at the volumes we four have contributed in just a few days. Counter-factual history has a place. I helps you to examine the real history, not for truth, history can not lie, but the people who write it do. We live in a marvelous age. The information highway used to be confined to library and academic study. Today anyone can learn anything with a few mouse clicks, of course, that is also a problem. You might even want to visit a meeting of the SCV in Seattle. Camp Name: R. E. LEE CAMP 587 MEETING LOCATION: SEATTLE, WA Division Washington
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Post by artraveler on Nov 1, 2019 21:58:29 GMT -8
A short story about Lee. Told by Col Freemantle Her Majesties Coldstream Guards.
Shortly before 1 July 1863 Lee was watching troops move into PA and Freemantle was with him. A regiment of Hood's Texans passed by and to Freemantle's shock many of them did not have seats on their pants. Lee said, " It's very good sir, the enemy never sees the backsides of my Texans"
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 2, 2019 7:28:41 GMT -8
With a “sense of place” largely having been replaced by “a sense of politics,” I would say few people understand a concept of “sense of place” other than cities, places of progressive utopia.
This distinct lack of a “sense of place” helps fuel the no-borders crowd, for having a “sense of place” is “exclusionary.” The problem with the South’s “sense of place” was its addiction to slavery.
But then it was a much more hierarchal, aristocratic place. That “sense of place” can be a straightjacket. You mention that slavery would have eventually faded away on its own due to modern technology and such. And yet modern technology and such had for decades been used in the North and not the South. A people less wedded to a hierarchical “sense of place” are much freer to change methods and think different thoughts.
We have, of course, run wild with this. Now no custom is safe. Tradition itself is seen as something to be overturned like a sport. From Horwitz’s book, I get the distinct idea that consumer culture has made many long for that “sense of place” which is rooted deeper than a Taco Bell or a strip-mall.
All in all, there was a very ugly side to the South but also an irreplaceable one. Gone With The Wind is a so-so story. There are a bazillion period dramas like that on TV. And many of them I like for the same reason: They take you to a grander place and time. The Left would shove us all in high-density housing. But in the grand old times, there were vast estates. They were the “open spaces” that the libtards so long for today but which (in many areas) are basically open as gigantic sewers for the “homeless.”
To some degree, we much choose between a grandness with faults or modernity that is plastic and meaningless.
Thanks for the info on that Seattle group. That’s an option. I wonder if they sit around and talk about the real cause of the war being homelessness.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 2, 2019 7:44:07 GMT -8
Michael Shaara’s son, Jeff, picked up where his father left off. I found a number of his books in the online library including The Smoke at Dawn about “the last great push of the Army of the Cumberland sets the stage for a decisive confrontation at Chattanooga that could determine the outcome of the war.” It’s interesting so far. They also had Gods and Generals but the reviews of the book didn’t pique my interest. Had Last Full Measure been available, I might have checked it out, but it wasn’t. Jeff Shaara makes an interesting comment from inside The Smoke at Dawn: Not until Vicksburg did I get the sense that the North had a more strategic purpose militarily. Up until then it seemed a case of one army hitting another. One did a little better and “victory” was declared. But both armies remained intact. No territory may have been permanently taken. In The Killer Angels they have Longstreet commenting on this, that the day of the “one-day big battle that decides everything” is over. And that perhaps gives an insight into these early Civil War battles. The expectation seemed to be that one side or the other would achieve such a crushing victory that the other would naturally capitulate. That seems a good context to view Lee’s adventurism in the North. It seemed to lack constructive purpose, driven by the “one big battle” idea. He didn’t plan on holding any territory. But certainly in this book, in 1863 and post-Gettysburg, they are fighting over territory, railroad junctions, etc., and the army (Grant) means to keep what he takes.
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