Posted on 07/23/2005 11:29:20 AM PDT by snippy_about_it
Educational Sources:
www.civilwarhome.com/gettyscampaign.htm
www.civilwarhome.com/battleofvicksburg.htm
Good afternoon, Snippy and everyone at the foxhole.
I am here.
Sorta.
*taps own forehead, feels nothing*
I'm numb!
Nooooooo!
*runs off screaming*
Thanks for posting the Saturday Foxhole, after all I know y'all ain't got nutin better to do with your time :-)
I would have to rate Gettysburg as #1 because it ended the Souths hope of taking the war to the North. Had Lee been succesful then the outcome of TWBS might well have turned out in a different manner.
This is not to down play the accomplishment of Grant at Vicksburg in any way. By capturing Vicksburg Grant and the Federal were able to effectively cut the Confederacy in two. However the military brain trust of the Confederacy would not spare the manpower from the Virgina theater to rescue Vicksburg for fear of Richmond falling.
More later, I Hope
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
On This Day In History
Birthdates which occurred on July 23:
1339 Louis I, Duke of Anjou/King of Naples (Battle at Poitiers)
1816 Charlotte Sanders Cushman US, actress (Lady MacBeth)
1822 Darius Nash Couch, Major General (Union volunteers), died in 1897
1824 Gabriel Colvin Wharton, Brig General (Confederate Army), died in 1906
1834 James Cardinal Gibbons archbishop of Baltimore
1884 Albert Warner, US producer (Warner Bros)
1888 Dr Milan Stoyadinovich Serbia, fascist Yugoslavia PM (1935-9)
1892 Haile Selassie(Ras Tafari Makonnen) emperor of Ethiopia (1930-74)
1893 Karl Menninger psychiatrist (Menninger Clinic)
1894 Arthur Treacher Brighton England, announcer (Merv Griffin Show)
1919 Pee Wee Reese Hall of Fame shortstop (Dodgers)
1921 Calvert DeForest, Brooklyn NY, comedian (Larry "Bud" Melman)
1925 Gloria De Haven LA, actress (Bog, Yellow Cab Man, Irene-Nakia)
1933 Bert Convy St Louis Mo, actor (Snoop Sisters, Win Lose or Draw)
1936 Anthony M Kennedy Calif, supreme court justice (1988- )
1936 Don Drysdale Van Nuys Calif, pitcher (LA Dodgers-Cy Young 1962)
1938 Ronny Cox Cloudcroft Mass, actor (St Elsewhere)
1943 Tony Joe White, rocker (Polk Salad Annie)
1947 Don Imus radio personality (IMUS in the Morning)
1950 Blair Thornton guitarist (Bachman-Turner-Overdrive)
1961 Woody Harrelson Midland Tx, actor (Woody Boyd-Cheers)
1971 Aimee Rinehart, Miss Missouri USA (1996)
1971 Alison Krauss, Decatur Ill, country singer (2 Highways)
1972 Marlon Wayans, comedian (Wayans Bros, In Living Color)
1982 Schottzie Schott dog mascot of the Cincinatti Reds
Gettysburg was considered the turning point in the War Between the States. Vicksburg fell a few days earlier.
Gettysburg ended July 3, Vicksburg didn't fall until July 4, so the sequence here is wrong. (Trick for remembering when Vicksburg fell - the city wouldn't celebrate the 4th of July for more than a century after the battle because it also marked the anniversary of its fall.)
Actually I prefer to talk about Bull Run and not those other two minor battles that are not really that important.
OHHHHH! I like it!!
Opps! That's my fault, I told Snippy to say that. Blush!!
I'll go with Vicksburg.
After Gettysburg, Lee still had a viable force in the field. He had the weaker force before Gettysburg, so that battle didn't significantly change the balance of power in the east. If Lee had gone into Vicksburg with the superior force and come out of it with the weaker, as with the Japanese at Midway, I would favor Gettysburg.
On the other hand, the fall of Vicksburg was a crushing blow which sealed the fate of the Confederacy.
Today's classic warship, USS Gettysburg
Iron sidewheel steamship
Displacement. 950 t.
Lenght. 221'
Beam. 26' 3"
Draft. 13' 6"
Speed. 15 k.
Complement. 96
Armament. 1 30-pdr Parrott r., 2 12-pdr. r., 4 24-pdr. how.
The USS Gettysburg, formerly Douglas was built at Glasgow, Scotland, in 1858 for employment as an Isle of Man packet. Purchased by Confederate interests in November 1862, she soon began a remarkable career as a blockade runner. Douglas arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, in late January 1863 on her first voyage through the Federal blockade. She was renamed "Margaret and Jessie" shortly afterwards. During the next nine months, she made eight more runs into Southern ports, five to Charleston and three to Wilmington, North Carolina. While attempting another passage to Wilmington, she was captured by USS Nansemond and the U.S. Army transport Fulton on 5 November 1863.
She was purchased from the New York Prize Court by the Navy and commissioned Gettysburg at New York Navy Yard, 2 May 1864, Lieutenant Roswell H. Lamson commanding.
A fast, strong steamer, Gettysburg was assigned blockading duty with the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, and departed New York 7 May 1864. She arrived at Beaufort, N.C., 14 May and from there took station at the entrance to the Cape Fear River.
For the next 7 months, Gettysburg was engaged in the vital business of capturing blockade runners carrying supplies to the strangling South. She captured several ships, and occasionally performed other duties. On 8 October, for instance, she rescued six survivors from schooner Horne, which had capsized in a squall.
Gettysburg took part in the attack on Fort Fisher 24-25 December 1864. Gettysburg assisted with the devastating bombardment prior to the landings by Army troops, and during the actual landings stood in close to shore to furnish cover for the assault. Gettysburg's boats were used to help transport troops to the beaches.
With the failure of the first attack on the formidable Confederate works, plans were laid for a second assault, this time including a landing force of sailors and marines to assault the sea face of the fort. In this attack, 15 January 1865, Gettysburg again engaged the fort in the preliminary bombardment, and furnished a detachment of sailors under Lieutenant Lamson and other officers in a gallant assault, which was stopped under the very ramparts of Fort Fisher. Lamson and a group of officers and men were forced to spend the night in a ditch under Confederate guns before they could escape. Though failing to take the sea face of Fort Fisher, the attack by the Navy diverted enough of the defenders to make the Army assault successful and insure victory. Gettysburg suffered two men killed and six wounded in the assault.
Gettysburg spent the remaining months of the war on blockade duty off Wilmington, and operated from April to June between Boston and Norfolk carrying freight and passengers. She decommissioned 23 June 1865 at New York Navy Yard.
Recommissioning 3 December 1866, Gettysburg made a cruise to the Caribbean Sea, returning to Washington 18 February, where she decommissioned again 1 March 1867.
Gettysburg went back into commission 3 March 1868 at Norfolk and put to sea 28 March on special service in the Caribbean. Until July 1868, she visited various ports in the area protecting American interests, among them Kingston, Jamaica; Havana, Cuba; and ports of Haiti. Between 3 July and 13 August, Gettysburg assisted in the laying of a telegraph cable from Key West to Havana, and joined with scientists from the Hydrographic Office in a cruise to determine the longitudes of West Indian points using the electric telegraph. From 13 August 1868 to 1 October 1869, she cruised between various Haitian ports and Key West, again helping to maintain peace in the area and protecting American interests. Gettysburg arrived New York Navy Yard 8 October 1869, decommissioned the same day, and entered the Yard for repairs.
Gettysburg was laid up in ordinary until 6 November 1873, when she again commissioned at Washington Navy Yard. She spent several months transporting men and supplies to the various Navy Yards on the Atlantic coast, and 25 February 1874 anchored in Pensacola harbor to embark members of the survey team seeking routes for an inter-oceanic canal in Nicaragua. Gettysburg transported the engineers to Aspinwall, Panama and Greystone, Nicaragua, and returned them to Norfolk 10 May 1874. After several more trips on the Atlantic coast with passengers and supplies, the ship again decommissioned 9 April 1875 at Washington Navy Yard.
Recommissioned 21 September 1875, Gettysburg departed Washington for Norfolk, where she arrived 14 October. Assigned to assist in another of the important Hydrographic Office expeditions in the Caribbean, she departed Norfolk 7 November. During the next few months she contributed markedly to safe navigation in the West Indies in surveys that led to precise charts She returned to Washington with the scientific team 14 June, decommissioning 26 June.
Gettysburg recommissioned 20 September 1876, for special duty to the Mediterranean, where she was to obtain navigational information about the coasts and islands of the area. Gettysburg departed Norfolk 17 October for Europe. During the next two years, she visited nearly every port in the Mediterranean, taking soundings and making observations on the southern coast of France, the entire coastline of Italy, and the Adriatic Islands. Gettysburg continued to the coast of Turkey, and from there made soundings on the coast of Egypt and other North African points, Sicily and Sardinia.
While visiting Genoa, 22 April 1879, Gettysburg rescued the crew of a small vessel which had run upon the rocks outside the breakwater. Her iron plates corroded from years of almost uninterrupted service and her machinery weakened, Gettysburg decommissioned 6 May 1879 and was sold at Genoa, Italy 8 May 1879.
I will go with Gettysburg.
Gettysburg more or less set up the rest of the war from tactics to numbers of troops to commander's both effective and ineffective AND it showed the North that Lee was not invincible.
Had the Union lost Gettysburg, Lee could have remained in the North and that would have more or less finished the war.
Good afternoon ALL.
Actually, though it could be said that the rebels still had a chance up until the 1864 election. A major victory in the Summer or Fall of 1864, just might have changed things. Gettysburg looks like the last hurrah in retrospect because it wasn't followed by another attack on Lee's part.
These kinds of questions pop up whenever wars are fought on two or more fronts. Normandy or Stalingrad? Nimitz or McArthur? The failure of Hindenburg's offensive on the Western Front or the collapse of Imperial Germany's allies in the East.
Neither! The more I study this war the less inclined I am to subscribe to the "turning point" concept. It makes for entertaining discussion but misses the big picture. IMHO, while these two particular battles carried enormous military weight for both moral and logistics, a victory by the South in either of these great battles would only accomplish prolonging the war. Therein lies the problem. The South prolongs a war wherein it could never match the North's industrial base, manpower resources and all this with a total and successful Naval blockade. There is too much validity for these aspects to be ignored. And the fact that foreign recognition was denied the Confederacy. In time these things would tell on the battlefield, certainly on the broader level. The North was able to bring its industry and its manpower to bear in such a way that eventually, through sheer numerical and material advantage, it gained and maintained the upper hand.
Lincoln's determination was backed by relentless resolve . . . no particular battle would have brought him to a "peace negotiation". As long as Lincoln was determined to prosecute the war and as long as the North was behind him, inevitably superior manpower and resources just had to win out.
Following Gettysburg Lee trashed Grant in both the Wilderness Campaign and Cold Harbor. And Joe Johnston's Army of Tennessee was continually formidable against Sherman at Resaca, Calhoun, Kingston, New Hope Church, etc. with Forrest in Sherman's rear constantly cutting off his supply lines. Why weren't any of these battles a "turning point" for the South? Because the North's objective and resolve was to simply wear down the South militarily, economically, politically and socially.
The South certainly did not lose for any lack of idealism, or dedication to its cause or beliefs, or bravery and skill on the battlefield. In those virtues the Confederate soldier was unexcelled, and it's my belief that man-for-man there was no finer army in the history of America than the Army of Northern Virginia.
It is be a testament to our idealism and beliefs that the South held out as long as it did.
TEXAS FOREVER!
Ooops! Ping to #18.
I played football in college but I was not very big, however I had that will to win no matter what. I played against bigger and faster people with the same will to win. I learned that when you put a smaller guy up against a bigger guy with the same desire, at the end of the game, the smaller guy will usually be in a lot of pain.
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