Posted on 07/03/2016 11:22:22 AM PDT by Beowulf9
"Historian Garry Adelman describes the events that took place during the Battle of Gettysburg from July 1-July 3, 1863."
I found this video very well done in just 4 minutes. Gave me a good start to understanding this complex battle and also something to think about on this day of Pickett's Charge.
I don't know how many of you here are well versed with the way the battle went but for me it's still a learning experience.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
My sister and her husband work on the Gettysburg battlefield and most of my extended family lives in or near the town. I don’t care how often I am there, I still get still get a very uneasy feeling as soon as I step on the grounds.
So then I guess “God’s Plan” included the torching of Richmond and Atlanta, and the economic and political subjugation of the south. Not to mention 750,000 dead. All to prove the idea that once a state joins the union, it may never choose to leave.
Doesn’t sound like something God would’ve cooked up.
I guess that would be true if you are talking about relationships between causes and effects. It may go that high. The Battle of Gettysburg has had very many far reaching effects.
Do you mean 750K casualties in four years?
I might suggest that the fleeing Confederate troops set fire to much of Richmond since they were not interested in turning over munitions, ammo and property to the advancing Union troops. While the Union armies were no saints, the southern armies were complicit in some of their own demise.
Southern Army complicity in its own demise started when the first shots were fired at Ft. Sumpter.
The political objective was independence. How shooting at a much better armed adversary with a much larger population forwarded the cause of southern independence is a mystery.
General Longstreet implored General Lee to vacate Gettysburg and march the Army of Northern Virginia on Washington DC. This appears now to have been sound reasoning as DC was roughly 90 miles from where they were. Had they done that, I suspect there might have been a wholly different conclusion to the conflict. Northerners stood in abject fear of an incursion into the Capitol and subsequent movement north through a southern sympathetic Maryland.
The southern strategy was screwup after mis~step after tragedy. If the southern states had seceded and then simply stood back and built their industrial defense base while initiating no military force they probably would have won.
Just got home (on McPherson Ridge) from the ranger walk walking the route of Longstreet/Pickett’s advance.
I belong to the Central Virginia Battlefield Trust.
If you read the correspondence of Secessionist Leaders, at the time of the firing on Fort Sumter, they were afraid that if there wasn’t a war, no further states would secede (the Virginia Convention had already voted to remain in the Union unless war came). Davis thought that without a War of Independence, the states which had seceded would drift back into the Union by shear inertia, since there was a lot of pro-Union sentiment even in the Deep South.
Correct
Neither Sam Houston of Texas nor Robert E. Lee of Virginia wanted their states to secede. Their voices carried a lot of weight.
One large contribution to the Clinton Foundation and the Chinese will build a theme park on Gettysburg.
“Sir, I have no division.”
Good to know we have a master of semantics on board to correct us on our ignorance............I feel humbled in your presence!
Guessing the plan was for a strong Christian nation to be formed that could contend with upcoming killers, theives and other evil nations in Europe and the Middle East spreading the Gospel.
Lee would never have done that. DC was heavily fortified and had about 90,000 men stationed there for the defense of the Capitol. Lee had no siege artillery, a 35 mile long wagon train and not direct means of resupply from Richmond.
I have read that Longstreet’s advice to Lee was to withdraw from Gettysburg, find an easily defensible position and allow Meade to wreck the AOP attacking Lee’s defenses.
Lee would have none of that, “That is where those people are, and that is where I will strike them”
Lee would never have done that. DC was heavily fortified and had about 90,000 men stationed there for the defense of the Capitol. Lee had no siege artillery, a 35 mile long wagon train and not direct means of resupply from Richmond.
I have read that Longstreet’s advice to Lee was to withdraw from Gettysburg, find an easily defensible position and allow Meade to wreck the AOP attacking Lee’s defenses.
Lee would have none of that, “That is where those people are, and that is where I will strike them”
Yeah. Like deciding to go to war in the first place.
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