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Thursday, March 13, 2008

A Gettysburg Victory's Consequences

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

You can take it as an article of faith that if Robert E. Lee had defeated the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg, that alone would not have won the Civil War. Had the Army of the Potomac lost the first day and been driven from the heights by Anderson's Corps, it would have simply fallen back on Pipe Creek. Defeats on the second day, or the third day, might have been more devastating, but war is chaos and it is very hard to catch a man running away who has thrown down his accoutrement when you still have to carry yours. Washington was still heavily fortified and stood as a bastion in which the Army could have been reorganized. A large haul of prisoners would have been an embarrassment for Lee that in itself might have forced him to return to the south ending his sojourn on northern soil.

It is not the battle (Gettysburg) itself that might have won the war for the South. The victory would almost certainly not have brought foreign recognition or intervention as a consequence, but the strategic ramifications of a major victory causing heavy loss to the Army of the Potomac could well have changed the entire character of the war.

The Civil War was not won in the Eastern Theater, it was won in the Western Theater. A victory at Gettysburg would not have changed the fate of Vicksburg, and the Mississippi would have been opened to Northern Traffic. What would have changed would have been the balance of forces. The Union troops in the Western Theater would have been reduced to bring more troops to the east to defend Washington after a disaster at Gettysburg. That would have curtailed Union operations in the theater, and opened the way for Johnston to mass his available Confederate forces to strike at the weakened Union forces. As previously demonstrated by Bragg, a new drive into Kentucky would not have been out of the question following a major defeat at Gettysburg. The Mississippi but recently reopened to Northern Commerce could have been closed again, forcing the Union troops to abandon their gain of Vicksburg. Such disasters would have emboldened the Copperhead movement in the North. Sherman would never initiate his Atlanta campaign, and without that, Lincoln would be unlikely to win re-election.

By itself, a Confederate win at Gettysburg would be little more than another battle won unless it ended with the capitulation of a major part of the Army of the Potomac. But the strategic consequences of such a defeat on Union deployments and operations could have had potentially war winning results.