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.
No, it's based on many year's dealing with you and the knowledge that nothing you have ever posted has every been correct. But hey, post that picture again why don't you? It should be good for a laugh.
Mr. Never Served? Why I'll have you know that I'm a retired Fleet Admiral!. You can call me 'Sir' if you don't mind.
laughing AT you, "Mr NEVER SERVED".
fwiw, the picture was post by the former leader of "the DAMNyankee coven of bigots, fools, "useful idiots" & DUMB-bunnies", "Whisky Papa". (to any NEW readers, "Wlat" was BANNED FOREVER from FR because he insisted on making PRO-DIMocRAT/LEFTIST/hate-FILLED comments on FR.
free dixie,sw
I'm guessing you were a draft dodger. Probably spent time in Canada.
Never did get an answer from you on the whole Blackerby thing. I've stated for the record that I'll walk away, leave FR forever, if you can produce the page where Blackerby said that there were 100,000 to 150,000 free blacks in confederate service if you will also promise to leave FR forever if you cannot produce it. So what's the matter? What are you waiting for? You're so sure of yourself this should be a no brainer for you. You chicken or something? Or unsure of your self.
it has been my experience that the VAST majority of south-HATERS/LEFTISTS (like the members of "the DAMNyankee coven", for example) are "just too important", "too busy" and/or "too good" to serve their country in uniform/get muddy/get bloody OR be bothered to do much of ANYTHING except "look down on" & HATE the people, who DID serve in the uniform.
the plain truth is that MOST of those sorts of people are COWARDS. (another thing that i've noticed is that they ALL have some weak/pitiful/SILLY excuse about why they "just couldn't serve".)
free dixie,sw.
But swattie, the only apparent coward here is the one who shot off his mouth making claims that he won’t back up. The same coward that won’t take the simple challenge to put up or shut up.
That coward is you swattie...
1. the members of "the DAMNyankee coven" are a motley collection of LOSERS, nitwits, south-HATERS,bigots, FILTHY-talking LOUTS & sanctimonious FOOLS,
2. that you were evidently were UNWILLING to serve the Union (that you CLAIM to love) in its uniform,
3. that you LIED about owning a copy of BLACKS IN BLUE & GRAY (which you claim to have bought on ebay.com last year when there were NONE sold) &
4. now you FALSELY claim that i never served & "went to Canada".
laughing AT you, as most intelligent FReepers here are.(frankly, you're becoming as big of a SICK JOKE, as the rest of the clue-LESS/ignorant/hate-FILLED members of the coven are.)
free dixie,sw
Every day, in every way, you demonstrate your crass stupidity to the forum as a whole.
You wouldn't know a fact if it bit you in your Stand Watie.
1. the members of "the DAMNyankee coven" are a motley collection of LOSERS, nitwits, south-HATERS,bigots, FILTHY-talking LOUTS & sanctimonious FOOLS,
The King Nitwit around here is you.
2. that you were evidently were UNWILLING to serve the Union (that you CLAIM to love) in its uniform,
You would be wrong on that. But where's the surprise? You're wrong on everything.
3. that you LIED about owning a copy of BLACKS IN BLUE & GRAY (which you claim to have bought on ebay.com last year when there were NONE sold) &,p> You would be wrong on that, too. I'll point out that I've named chapters, identified sources that Blackerby used, listed the number of pages, and would be willing to provide a quote from any part of the book to anyone who asked for it. How could I do that if I didn't have a copy. The one thing I cannot do is provide the page where Blackerby claimed there were 100,000 to 150,000 free blacks because he never made it. The only person idiotic enough to believe such a ridiculous figure is you.
4. now you FALSELY claim that i never served & "went to Canada".
I said I was speculating. Based on your past history, I'm immediately disinclined to believe anything you say because nothing of what you say turns out to be the truth. If you say you were an army officer then I immediately assume the opposite to be true. The running off to Canada part is a guess on my part.
M, you're becoming as big of a SICK JOKE, as the rest of the clue-LESS/ignorant/hate-FILLED members of the coven are.
And you have been a sick joke all along.
Now, enough about the claims of changing the subject, let’s get back to your challenge. You have stated before, when you produce the page from Blackerby where he claims that there were 100,000 to 150,000 free blacks in confederate service then you expect me to slink off in shame, and disappear from Free Republic. I have said, for the record, that if you can produce that page then I will do so, leave FR, never to darken your door again. In return, if you cannot produce the page then I expect you to do the same. Will you agree now, before the forum, to these terms? And the end of the day one of us will do the honorable thing and leave the forum to the one proven correct. I realize that it is the honorable thing to do, and such would be completely out of character for you, but I’m asking you to agree to it.
He won’t do it Noni. He won’t because he can’t. He can’t because his pride won’t allow him to admit that he stepped in it and made a false claim.
I predict that, in true swattie liberal style, he’ll bluff & bluster and change the subject (exactly as he did when he accused you of changing the subject), and generally pretend he wasn’t caught in yet another lie. He’ll then have another one of his spastic Tourettes episodes and calls us all sorts of names that would get nearly anyone else kicked to the curb. And all the Lost Causers will look the other way.
And then swattie will take a short nap and when he awakes it will be as if it had never occurred, so he will wander back out into traffic to cause more moronic mayhem.
Rinse & repeat.
I haven’t been a part of the WBTS threads for very long but I have gone back and reread threads dating back to FreeRepublic’s early days. They invariably follow a formula: Most, but not all, are started by Lost Causers. They have an axe to grind and grind it they do. The combatants assemble - the LC’s through the Dixie Ping, the rest through happenstance. The debate goes fast & furious until it runs out of steam and then it peters out.
Unless.
Unless swattie finds it. Then whatever aspect or topic is being discussed or debated gets lost in swatties bizarre and bigoted antics. Every so often one of the LC’s will take swatties current opponent to task in a lop-sided appeal for order, but because it is so disingenuous it is also only half-hearted.
swattie knows he has an advantage in these skirmishes and he plays to it. His preferred tactic is to attempt to enrage his opponent to say something offensive enough for the mods to intervene. When this transpires a curious sequence follows. The mods, for reasons that mystify many here, ignore the fact that it is mutual combat and ban swatties opponent. Then swattie carves another notch in his belt (as if he had actually done anything to merit it) and crows about another one banned.
The dead cannot defend themselves and neither can the banned so swattie, in his typical ignominious fashion shapes the narrative and generally embarrasses himself by strutting around on the bones of his enemies, pretending as though he had actually won something. In this thread it was Whisky Papa that swattie chose to disparage. Because swattie had brought his name up before (heck everything that swattie does is a mindless repetition!) I did some simple research to see what he was bellowing about. It turns out (no surprise here!) that swattie totally mischaracterized Whisky Papa’s posts. swattie’s specific allegation (this time around) was: “PRO-DIMocRAT/LEFTIST/hate-FILLED”, but a complete review of his posts reveal nothing of that sort at all. Simply posts that countered swattie’s POV.
The fascinating thing in all of this is the lack of interest or outrage towards this obvious disrupter. I can understand why the rabid LC’ers might not want to call attention to an unruly one of their own, but when he turns a thread into a circus their POV gets lost too. What possible advantage do they see in continuing to allow swattie to disrupt?
It takes all kinds to run a railroad - even pinheads like swattie...
Thanks for the excellent, well researched & thoughtful post.
I suspect you've done more good even that banning stand waite (which he surely deserves) would accomplish.
By the way, I noticed where stand waite claimed to be an MP 0-4.
Well, no O-4 I ever knew, even among MPs(!), sounded like stande waite.
For one thing, the US Army has always required actual brains in its officers, not just some fake naugahyde substitute. ;-)
When I say that there is a distinction between strategy and tactics, I'm not talking through my hat. That's frighteningly basic stuff.
Your failure to realize that the two are conceptually distinct is pretty telling.
fwiw, ask around the DC Chapter. everyone KNOWS who i am & what my credentials as a military planner/operative/officer are.(you might want to start with "Kristinn", "gunsareOK", "JimmyValentinesbrother" & "trooprally
In other words, I should ask other Internet posters whom I do not know from Adam whether another poster whom I do not know from Adam's claims about his credentials are authentic.
Rather than give me a resume, why don't you make a logical argument for your claims?
You can begin by explaining to all of us who do not possess your impressive doctrinal pedigree why tactics are really strategy and strategy is really tactics - or more simply, why every single military theoretician in modern history is wrong about everything.
before you start to look as SILLY & clue-LESS as the DUNCES of "the DAMNyankee coven" do.)
In other words, your entire position can be summed up as follows:
"I have a really important resume and if you disagree with anything I say you're a stupid jerk."
Take a step back and try to figure out why I find that line of reasoning less than compelling.
While it's clear that Lee's most immediate and pressing need was resupply, due to the complete and utter inadequacy of Confederate logistics, Lee was always thinking about the larger implications of every move he made - strategically, politically, diplomatically, etc.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and was especially in Lee's fertile mind. Lee did not want to fight a major battle on Northern soil: he hoped to take Harrisburg, sever its rail and telegraph lines and seize all its military stores. Even after the battle of Gettysburg started against Lee's direct orders, JEB Stuart was still involved with Harrisburg, which he believed to be the goal of the campaign.
On the question of a President McClellan recognizing the Confederacy:
That would never have happened. As I said above, McClellan's only concern was preserving the Union. He would have made any kind of humiliating and unwise concession as long as the South was willing to nominally remain within the Union. McClellan was obsessed with how history would view him, and there was no way in hell that he would be willing to be remembered as the president who agreed to break up the Union. McClellan would have agreed to any terms short of disunion.
There was a peace party in the North, but there was no separation party in the North - just a scattered band of malcontents like Vallandigham, who was already completely discredited as a crank before Gettysburg.
On the question of guerrilla warfare:
There are two basic command structures for such a campaign: one with a chain of command and one of independent cells with no chain of command.
Stand watie is arguing that Lee's decision to not assume command of such a guerrilla campaign was the only reason why such a guerrilla campaign did not materialize and win the war.
In fact, both kinds of guerrilla command structures emerged after Lee's surrender.
There was Hood's attempt to put together a guerrilla army with a chain of command, which failed.
There was Gordon's attempt to put together the KKK as a secret guerrilla army with a chain of command, which also failed. By 1869, the Klan was already portraying itself as a patriotic organization loyal to the federal government, in the craven hope that federal troops, would not crack down on it.
And there was also the attempt to create a guerrilla movement without a chain of command based on local units independent of any overarching command structure. Like Quantrill's raiders, Bloody Bill Anderson, The James and Younger Gang, etc. Anderson didn't even survive the war and Quantrill only survived it by weeks.
Lee was not necessary for the founding or inspiring of a guerrilla movement. Such a movement had extremely popular, capable and effective prospective leaders in Hood and Forrest, and the KKK's founding shows how many willing accomplices they would have had.
By 1869, all these flames of continuing guerrilla struggle were extinguished, and they were extinguished after a career than never threatened to alter Northern public opinion in the slightest about the advisability of prosecuting the war or punishing traitors.
The notion that a guerrilla force can live off the kindness of a willing populace is also a myth. Guerrilla movements sustain themselves by shaking down and robbing the local populace, and bribing local opinion leaders when their activity becomes too egregious.
A perfect example is the Confederate guerrilla unit known as the James Gang. They sustained themselves through robbery and murder, justifying their terrorist activities as political blows for freedom through their newspaper lackey Johnny Edwards. They attempted a raid on the North, namely on St. Paul/Minneapolis - they were stopped cold in Northfield and never tried again.
Eventually, James was killed by one of his confederates for cash.
And that would make lil' swattie ... what? ... King? ... Duke? ... Pope? ... Emperor?
Your secret agenda becomes clear at last, swats.
Well, there is this ...
fwiw, i personally wrote most of the "rear area protection doctrine" in the late '70s & early '80s
I won't touch that, but you could do a lot with it.
Two of Bankhead's brothers fought on the United States side, one of them as commander of the Monitor.
Thanks for a very informative post. I agree with nearly all of it.
My question has to do with the Democrat "Peace Party."
You say that McClellan would never agree to southern secession, and yet, to my knowledge, there was no SOUTHERN "peace party." No one in the South was going to agree to union, with or without slavery, short of military defeat.
So who was McClellan going to negotiate with?
Remember, Lee's goal was to win enough battles so the North would give up the fight and negotiate a peace which would recognize the South's independence.
If Lee had won at Gettysburg (which is what this discussion is all about), then he would be one step closer to his goal, and McClellan one step closer to the Presidency, seems to me.
The Confederate Congress did not, as yet, have parties.
However, there were prominent Southern politicians, like Robert Toombs of Georgia and Zebulon Vance of North Carolina who had begun to seriously rethink the wisdom of secession - and these men had a growing following as conscription and requisition became more onerous. There was organized revolt against the Confederacy surreptitiously in western North Carolina and openly in eastern Tennessee and northern Mississippi and Alabama.
David Downing wrote a well-reviewed book entitled A South Divided about the networks of Southern Unionists and advocates of reunion throughout the Confederacy.
Had McClellan won the 1864 election while the inexorable mathematics of the conflict proceeded, there would have been plenty of Southern Congressmen willing to say openly: "We could never have peace with that abolitionist blackguard Lincoln, but McClellan is a sensible man who will guarantee us our property."
In today's Lost Causer's retrospect Jefferson Davis was the tragic hero of the Southern people - but if you read the newspaper editorials of the South at the time, a much different picture is presented.
Remember, Lee's goal was to win enough battles so the North would give up the fight and negotiate a peace which would recognize the South's independence.
Indeed. But each victory was extremely costly, and Lee made his future plans on the assumption that he would eventually be reinforced by troops from the Confederate west.
If Lee had won at Gettysburg (which is what this discussion is all about), then he would be one step closer to his goal
If he had won early on the second day, that would have been one thing. Had Pickett's Charge succeeded (and it could have despite Foote's claims), Lee would have been burdened with about 15,000 prisoners, sustained 5,000 more casualties, and been unable to follow up immediately on his victory. It would have been of enormous symbolic importance to the Confederacy, but not a killing blow for the Union.
And, of course, the surrender of Vicksburg meant that Lee had lost all hope of reinforcement from the west.
Vicksburg meant that Lee was on his own for good or ill.
I also believe that the Emancipation Proclamation ended all hope for foreign intervention.
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