The Institute will be heard from Today

150 years ago today at the Battle of Chancellorsville- Stonewall Jackson uttered those famous words before leading the brilliant flank attack that unhinged MG Hooker- and found Jackson shot and fatally wounded that night. That loss was felt by the Confederates a few months later at the Battle of Gettysburg.
http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/chancellorsville.html?gclid=CPrykaOn97YCFUJa4Aod3BMA9w

It was probably the best planned and executed attack in American History. One of the greatest generals. His death made it a victory for the United States. He would have taken those hills in Gettysburg after the first day nine weeks later.
 
It was probably the best planned and executed attack in American History. One of the greatest generals. His death made it a victory for the United States. He would have taken those hills in Gettysburg after the first day nine weeks later.

Yes he would have. Would that have resulted in a different ultimate outcome to the campaign, let alone the war? Could have, but I'm not convinced.
 
Yes he would have. Would that have resulted in a different ultimate outcome to the campaign, let alone the war? Could have, but I'm not convinced.

Maybe, but could you imagine driving a car named Mcclellan after the US President who would have probably been elected in 1864 instead of the car named Lincoln. Possibilites of that too.
 
Interestingly - there is a Statue of Fighting Joe Hooker on the State House lawn in Boston. Though Hooker is mostly remembered for his loss at Chancellorsville- he did later redeem himself at the Battle of Lookout Mountain. But Sherman didn't like him and eventually Hooker left Sherman's Army. Interesting guy whose nerve failed him at the critical moment. And of course - the origin of the term "hookers" is forever linked to him and all of the camp followers with the Army of the Potomac when he was commander- so he achieved some degree of immortality after all. the two are pictured below- the one on the right every VMI cadet knows well- or at least they know what his butt looks like:eek:, having saluted it hundreds of times as a Rat leaving Jackson Arch
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Heard some where that the attack at Gettysburg was actually to close to the major finicial institue of the super rich elite of the North-East and that moved them sponsor the war even more...I wonder what they would have done and how much more they would spent if Lee and Jackson won Gettysburg....would they have sponsored more Shermans?
 
Maybe, but could you imagine driving a car named Mcclellan after the US President who would have probably been elected in 1864 instead of the car named Lincoln. Possibilites of that too.

Does that mean I'd be living in a city called McClellan?
 
Maybe, but could you imagine driving a car named Mcclellan after the US President who would have probably been elected in 1864 instead of the car named Lincoln. Possibilites of that too.

My Pappy said: "Son, you're gonna drive me to yellin'
If you don't stop drivin' that Hot...Rod...McClellan."
 
General Bee: "rally on the Virginians". That was Manassas (as my brothet in law a graduate of VMI calls it). Gettysburg might have been quite different. He would have taken the high ground overlooking the pike and the town in a minute. That assumes that he was in command of the first on the scene. Even Longstreet was way back and would probably have taken the heights if there during the initial contact. A great historical event based on some shoes.
 
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The Battle of Gettysburg, the 2nd most northern battle of the Civil War. Does anyone knowwhat was the northernmost battle of the Civil War?
It was the Battle of Shrute Farm. Look it up if you don't remember it.
 
Yes he would have. Would that have resulted in a different ultimate outcome to the campaign, let alone the war? Could have, but I'm not convinced.

Arguably one of the most significant of the many "what-ifs" regarding the outcome of the war.

The thing that always fascinates me is how, despite the inevitability of the Union victory from a military and logistics point of view (no way that the South survives the war of attrition), the North still almost lost its will on the home front. Would a few more military setbacks have caused the draft riots to spread and increase? Would a few more military setbacks have changed the US election? Seems like the tendency to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is never far from the surface.
 
Arguably one of the most significant of the many "what-ifs" regarding the outcome of the war.

The thing that always fascinates me is how, despite the inevitability of the Union victory from a military and logistics point of view (no way that the South survives the war of attrition), the North still almost lost its will on the home front. Would a few more military setbacks have caused the draft riots to spread and increase? Would a few more military setbacks have changed the US election? Seems like the tendency to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is never far from the surface.

You are, of course, absolutely correct. OTOH, if you assume the three corps on Cemetery Hill were shattered, one has to believe Meade would have fallen back on the Pipe's Creek position. Impossible to figure what Lee would have done at that point. Attack Pipe's Creek? Move on Harrisburg? Perhaps with the Union elections still more than a year away, they may have weathered the storm, especially as news of Vicksburg spread.

The what if's are certainly fun though. I've read many a fiction book dealing with the what ifs. Newt Gingrich had a what-if book where Lee took Baltimore after outflanking the Union position at Gettysburg on the second day by occupying Pipe's Creek himself.

One of my favorites from the scifi realm, "Guns of the South" had apartheid era South Africans using a time machine to equip Lee's army with AK-47s just in time for the Battle of the Wilderness. That sure changed the outcome. But Lee went on to end slavery as the Confederate President. :biggrin:
 
I too love what ifs. (here is one from the otherside of the coin)
To give a little background I am from an extremely conservative rural county in Northern New York. (My village in 1972 had more for Schmitz (sp) and Anderson than Nixon (high teens to low teens)
Many of the old time farmers I helped with field work as a kid did not like southerners (kind of like the feeling a lot of northerners get when they go to the rural south.)
One of the farmers who was about 80 at the time would actually tell me how much he hated the south because of what they did to his grandfather (lost a leg and an eye) and what they tried to do to the country. But he had a very interesting (and scary) what if: He told me that there was a movement in the North to do the following:
1) Declare all lands and properties in the south forfeited (due to treason of the land owners)
2) Award this land and property to the soldiers and sponsors of the armies. (basically legalized looting in the south) (The British colonization model)
The scary “what if” is what would have happened if the north lost the Battle of Gettysburg but won the war, because the fear of losing the war or the war reaching into the north caused the above to be enacted.
BTW I believe this would have lead to an extremely morally bankrupt country and the US would not have survived into the 19th century, but then again it could have lead to an extremely expansionist country and 90% of the world would be speaking “American” now.
 
I guess it was much closer to happening than I knew!!!

http://www.mackinac.org/1278

The Confiscation Act was, as I recall, mainly designed to provide clear legal authority for Union forces that they were not to return slaves who escaped to Union lines to their Southern owners. It was generally seen as one of the precursors to the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which established that all slaves in areas of the Confederacy still in rebellion on Jan. 1, 1863 would be "forever free."

After the War, there were those in Congress who argued that large Confederate landowners should forfeit their land. Lincoln had opposed any such measure, as being contrary to goals of reconciliation, and Andrew Johnson's Presidential Reconstruction plan was explicit that no property other than slaves (no longer even legally property because of the 13th Amendment) was to be forfeited. It does not appear that there was ever a Congressional majority close to supporting land forfeiture and redistribution.

Very interesting to hear of "old Yankees" (literally) -- as is often the case, the winning side tends to move on and it's the losing side that dwells on battles and wars lost, so one doesn't hear those sorts of stories as often as on the Southern side of the Mason - Dixon line.
 
The Confiscation Act was, as I recall, mainly designed to provide clear legal authority for Union forces that they were not to return slaves who escaped to Union lines to their Southern owners. It was generally seen as one of the precursors to the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which established that all slaves in areas of the Confederacy still in rebellion on Jan. 1, 1863 would be "forever free."

After the War, there were those in Congress who argued that large Confederate landowners should forfeit their land. Lincoln had opposed any such measure, as being contrary to goals of reconciliation, and Andrew Johnson's Presidential Reconstruction plan was explicit that no property other than slaves (no longer even legally property because of the 13th Amendment) was to be forfeited. It does not appear that there was ever a Congressional majority close to supporting land forfeiture and redistribution.

Very interesting to hear of "old Yankees" (literally) -- as is often the case, the winning side tends to move on and it's the losing side that dwells on battles and wars lost, so one doesn't hear those sorts of stories as often as on the Southern side of the Mason - Dixon line.

A very good one-volume history of the Civil War, which includes social and legal history as well as military, is Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson.
 
DevilDog: I knew it was an attack from Canada by Confederate Forces but I had to search for the attack on St. Albans Vermont. Good call:thumb: Remembered it as a footnote but couldn't remember where or the outcome. Obviously it didn't work. Remembered it from an old History Class but could not place it.
 
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"The Winner Writes The History". Old Proverb.:thumb:

Quite true, as is "Victory Has a Thousand Fathers, Defeat is an Orphan."

HOWEVER . . . I once heard a University of Virginia professor say "The North won the war, and the South won the history of the war." I wouldn't bore you with the specifics, but it had the ring of truth. Civil War historians have even developed a term "the Myth of the Lost Cause," for a lot of the post-war history that grew up around the Civil War (a great deal of which has been adopted in the popular American collective memory of the war).

If you're interested in the subject of how the war came to be remembered -- and how the collective memory was shaped by politics and other factors -- a couple of pretty good books are:

1. The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History, by Gary Gallagher; and
2. Race and Reunion: the Civil War and American Memory, by David Blight
 
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