In Class today, we went over some very neat material and I was just thinking about the Civil war as a whole. To be honest, I feel like had quite had one overlying theme; Battles can be thought over for as long as you want, but what really matters is how well you react in the field in the heat of battle. Battle after battle the Confederacy proved this to the union. Lee along with other other southern generals capitalized on the unionist weaknesses and because of this, one battle. It seems like quite the strange thing to think if the south had one our world would be completely different. But that is a completely different subject. Overall, the civil war shows us that men with courage were successful and cowardliness led to great defeat.
On a further note, how do you guys feel about how costly the war has become? both sides have taken many lives and lost astounding amount of men. what could that tell us about the advancements and short comings of this era. Weaponry has evolved greatly sense 1812 but the tactics have stayed fairly the same. This creates a bloody massacre on the battlefield because men would line up just like targets for the opposition to shoot at them. Field Medicine hasn't changed for the new weapons either. If you got hit in the torso you were dead. If you got shot in the limb you would have to get it amputated. It was a very scary time for the common private. What are your guys' thoughts?
While many of the Union loses can be attributed to the generals' ineptitude, one also has to take in account the the planning that was involved before the battles. For example, at Fredericksburg the Confederate forces simply held their position atop the incline and repulse the advancing waves of Union soldiers. In many cases the southern victories were in fact due to superior strategy and execution rather than reactions during the battles.
ReplyDeleteNice post Dean. I believe that it would have been truly terrifying to have been a soldier in an era where medicine often had not progressed to the same level the weapons had. It likely created some issues for soldiers once the war concluded, in the same way that WWI veterans came back totally changed (and not for the positive).
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