Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Today In History: House Divided.

On this day in 1863, Lee began attacking the Union left in earnest on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Incidentally, just to give things a matter of scale, both sides combined suffered about 8,000 KIA in three days of fighting at Gettysburg. Compare this to how much more industrial and modern slaughter had become by the opening decades of the 20th Century in the post below about The Somme.

9 comments:

karrde said...

I'm certain that a large portion of the difference is the standard firearms technology involved.

The Great War was the last war that I'm aware of that was fought in the thousands-of-years-old style of men lining up and marching towards each other.

Of course, during the War 'Tween the States, technology like the Minie ball led to then-horrific numbers of casualties.

Out of curiosity, what did the ratio of casualties per men entering the fray look like in Gettysburg, relative to the Somme?

Anonymous said...

That 8000 KIA figure is only killed in action. Each army suffered roughly another 5000 missing in action. Total casualties, both sides, all categories, all causes, were around fifty thousand.

Karrde, the best estimates for Gettysburg indicate that the Union army suffered a total casualty rate of about 25%. The Confederate loss rate was even worse: roughly one in three Confederate soldiers was killed, wounded, or missing in action over the four days of the battle.

I visited Gettysburg battlefield a few years ago. Standing on Little Round Top, looking down the front face toward Devil's Den and the Bloody Stream, and the Wheatfield beyond ... brrrr. If your spine doesn't shiver at that sight, there's something wrong with you.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

The Civil War is said to be the first "modern" war, with all kinds of technical and war-fighting innovations made both during and immediately following it that led directly to the carnage of the World Wars.

Whenever I stand on Cemetery Ridge and look out to the west (something I've done multiple times), I just have to wonder what the hell Lee was smoking before he ordered Pickett's Charge, and what the hell Longstreet was drinking that kept him from being more forceful in his dissent regarding it.

If Lee had adopted Longstreet's plan of a flanking move to the right, we'd probably need passports to cross the Ohio River these days...

Anonymous said...

nathan, that question is for me to most vexing or nearly all historical "what-ifs." What the hell was Lee thinking? My greatest complaint with the film Gettysburg is that it does not go into much detail about Lee's decision, making him sound like some sort of goofy mystic. "My boys will, they MUST prevail, Suh!"

I can only conclude that even then, after Fredericksburg and Antietam, he still had not shaken off the typical Southern contempt for the Union soldier's ability to stand an take it.

karrde said...

I've visited Gettysburg once myself. It is not necessarily the place itself, as the way that the place is presented, that awed me.

Probably due to historical-themed fiction I've read, and later the film title Gettysburg, I've always been interested in the action on Little Round Top on the day of Pickett's charge. They held the right flank, though it was a close thing. Reputedly, a bayonet charge turned the tide of the action late in the day.

Not only the Minie ball (and breechloader, and rifled barrel), but even the telegraph changed the way that war was waged, and the way that war was reported to the public.

Anonymous said...

Regarding Pickett's Charge, it's useful to remember that four months later, the Army of the Cumberland staged a similar mass attack against an even better-defended position on Missionary Ridge -- and won the Battle of Chattanooga.

I think Lee's decision to send Pickett against Cemetery Ridge was an outgrowth of four points:

1) after seeing the Army of Northern Virginia win nearly every battle of the previous two years, Lee honestly believed his army was invincible.

2) Lee honestly thought Meade had diverted more of his strength to his flanks, so he thought the Union center was weaker than it actually was.

3) The Confederate artillery totally mucked up its barrage of Cemetery Ridge. Most of the fire went over the Union line and exploded just to its rear. If those guns had been on target, they might have seriously hurt the Union line.

4) Lee believed (correctly) that Gettysburg was the Confederacy's last chance. Vicksburg was close to falling -- in fact, though Lee didn't know it, the city fell that same July 3rd and the Mississippi River was lost to the Confederacy forever. With the river gone, the Southern cause was lost, unless Lee could somehow force the Union to feel beaten. He thought, probably correctly, that a major Southern victory on Union soil would do that.

staghounds said...

The charge up Missionary Ridge was through forest and steep bluffs down which the defenders could not shoot without exposing themselves to return fire.

Pickett attacked over a loooooong, flat, gentle upgrade with nary a shrub for cover.

"we'd probably need passports to cross the Ohio River these days..."

Nonsense. I can hear President Lincoln now, "What? Lee has captured a couple of hills in the Pennsylvania countryside? Carlisle and Harrisburg are threatened?

Telegraph our recognition of the Confederacy to President Davis immediately!"

Th south was beaten at First Bull Run. If Lee had gotten through Meade at Gettysburg the Yankees would have trapped the whole ANOVA with the armies on the way there, and the war would have been over three months later.

As a patriotic Southerner, I wish it had happened that way.

Anonymous said...

50 years later, someone got the bright idea of filming a reenactment of the battle, using actual seventy-something year old veterans of Gettysburg.
As the Confederate veterans were about halfway through Pickett's charge, an old veteran of Maher's Irish Brigade shouted out "No, oh Jesus Christ no, I can't do this again!".
He threw down his musket, ran down the hill, and the entire Union line followed him. Both sides hugged, cried, and talked.
As a postscript, the hotels in Gettysburg, all segregated, initially refused service a number of black veterans. Black Confederate veterans. When told they'd fought for the South, management laughed at them and tried to turn them away.
The white Confederates then threatened to leave without filming the battle unless their black comrades were allowed to stay. They slept side by side that night, three and four men to a bed, then walked the wheatfield one more time the next morning.
Interestingly, the Union never had an integrated unit. The Confederacy's top sniper, with 194 kills before meeting one of Hiram Berdan's boys, was a black sergeant commanding an otherwise white unit.

Anonymous said...

The difference between between The Somme and Pickett's "Charge" was primarily one of scale. Unit size, firepower, area involved, sheer stupidity..... yeah, especially that last one.

The basic idea was not "men lining up and marching towards each other" . It was, in both cases, men lining up and marching into the best entrenched firepower the age could muster (in the time allowed), with artillery prep that was to negate that. The whole idea reminds me of the "Communism CAN work- it just hasn't been tried harshly enough."......

Another difference-
"Each army suffered roughly another 5000 missing in action. "

- at Gettysburg, a good percentage of the MIA simply "skedaddled" and went home, or west....

- On WW I battlefields, I imagine a good portion of those MIA were blown to bits and the bits buried by heavy artillery. There isn't a lot left to recover when 100 pounds of HE detonates right close.....