Download The American Civil War

The American Civil War
Aim
To be able to identify and explain the key
changes to warfare that occurred as a result
of the American Civil War
Starter – mind map
What do you already
know about the Civil
War?
Starter – mind map
What do you already
know about the Civil
War?
Key
Event – the Battle
of Gettysburg
Leaders
Technology
Tactics
Key features
Significance
Extra sources/detail from
own research
Task
• As a group, use the handout to fill in the
table looking at the leadership,
technological development and tactics
used in the American Civil War
Key Battle - Gettysburg
•
The Battle of Gettysburg (1st-3rd July 1863)
was fought in and around the town of
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as part of the
Gettysburg Campaign, and was the battle with
the largest number of casualties in the
American Civil War and is often described as
the war's turning point. Union Maj. Gen.
George Gordon Meade's Army of the Potomac
defeated attacks by Confederate Gen. Robert
E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending
Lee's invasion of the North. After his success
at Chancellorsville in May 1863, Lee led his
army through the Shenandoah Valley for his
second invasion of the North, hoping to reach
as far as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, or even
Philadelphia, and to influence Northern
politicians to give up their prosecution of the
war.
Day 1
• The two armies began to collide at Gettysburg
on 1st July 1863, as Lee urgently concentrated
his forces there. Low ridges to the northwest
of town were defended initially by a Union
cavalry division, which was soon reinforced with
two corps of Union infantry. However, two large
Confederate corps assaulted them from the
northwest and north, collapsing the hastily
developed Union lines, sending the defenders
retreating through the streets of town to the
hills just to the south.
• ADVANTAGE LEE
Day 2
• On the second day of battle, most of both
armies had assembled. The Union line was laid
out in a defensive formation resembling a
fishhook. Lee launched a heavy assault on the
Union left flank, and fierce fighting raged at
Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, Devil's Den,
and the Peach Orchard. On the Union right,
demonstrations escalated into full-scale
assaults on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill. All
across the battlefield, despite significant
losses, the Union defenders held their lines.
• DRAW
Day 3
• On the third day of battle, 3rd July, fighting
resumed on Culp's Hill, and cavalry battles
raged to the east and south, but the main event
was a dramatic infantry assault by 12,500
Confederates against the centre of the Union
line on Cemetery Ridge. ‘Pickett's Charge’ was
repulsed by Union rifle and artillery fire, at
great losses to the Confederate army. Lee led
his army on a torturous retreat back to
Virginia. Between 46,000 and 51,000 Americans
were casualties in the three-day battle.
• MEADE WINS
The Gettysburg Address
•
•
•
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new
nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of
that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for
those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not
hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note,
nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is
for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated
to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of
devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government
of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
• The results of this victory are priceless. ... The charm of Robert
E. Lee's invincibility is broken. The Army of the Potomac has at
last found a general that can handle it, and has stood nobly up to
its terrible work in spite of its long disheartening list of hardfought failures. ... Copperheads are palsied and dumb for the
moment at least. ... Government is strengthened four-fold at
home and abroad.
• – George Templeton Strong, Diary
• The Confederates lost politically as well as militarily.
Negotiations with the North for peace and attempts to
win foreign support, particularly from Europe, for their
cause ceased immediately. Henry Adams wrote, "The
disasters of the rebels are unredeemed by even any hope
of success. It is now conceded that all idea of intervention
is at an end." The reverses at Gettysburg and Vicksburg
(the fall of this strategic Confederate stronghold on the
Mississippi simultaneously to the battle of Gettysburg
allowed Gen. Grant’s forces in the west to cut the
Confederacy in two) in the summer of 1863 made the
Confederacy’s eventual defeat appear inevitable to many
even though they continued to resist for another 2 years.
• Some economic historians have pointed to the fact that
after the loss at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the market
for Confederate war bonds dropped precipitously.
"European investors gave Johnny Reb about a 42 percent
chance of winning the war in early 1863 prior to the battle
of Gettysburg. ... However, news of the severity of costly
Confederate defeats at Gettysburg/Vicksburg led to a
sell-off in rebel bonds and the probability of a Southern
victory fell to about 15 percent by the end of 1863."
• Throughout the campaign, General Lee seemed to have
entertained the belief that his men were invincible. Most of
Lee's experiences with the army had convinced him of this,
including the great victory at Chancellorsville in early May and
the rout of the Union troops at Gettysburg on 1st July. Since
high morale plays an important role in military victory when
other factors are equal, Lee did not want to dampen his army's
desire to fight. The Army of Northern Virginia's collective blind
faith allowed it to ignore the fact that it had new and
inexperienced senior commanders (neither Hill nor Ewell, for
instance, although capable division commanders, had previously
commanded a corps). It had recently lost Stonewall Jackson, one
of its most competent offensive generals. Also, Lee's method of
giving generalized orders and leaving it up to his lieutenants to
work out the details contributed to his defeat. Although this
method may have worked with Jackson, it proved inadequate
when dealing with corps commanders unused to Lee's style of
command.
• He not only made the case for invading the North, but
also, when the battle was joined, he took great risks in an
effort to win what he hoped would be a final, climactic
battle in the vein of Napoleon's masterpiece at Austerlitz
in 1806. He paid a terrible price when he did not achieve
this ambitious goal.
• What were the main similarities and
differences between the Crimean War
and the American Civil War?