The History Thread!

While still on the matter of the American Civil War, only today I heard about the West's involvement.

I'll be honest, I thought there was only North and South in the war. XP

North and South were the combatants. West was a theatre.

Get out a geographic map of the Eastern US, and a political map showing the borders of the Union and the Confederacy; you will need it.

If you look at the geography of the United States from the Mississippi to the Atlantic coast, which is where most of the fighting happened, you'll notice that, by the ocean coastline, it's mostly level and settled. The Union capital, Washington DC, is there; so is the Confederate capital, Richmond. The Atlantic Seaboard is pretty narrow, though, since it's hemmed in by the Appalachians Mountains which at the time were still dense woodland wilderness of the kind rarely to be found in Europe.

This narrow strip of geography is heavily developed, hence capable of supporting large numbers of troops. It's where the cities are. Because it's also where the two capitals are separated by a short distance and a series of rivers, it's where the two "main force" armies faced each other: the Confederate Army of North Virginia, and the Union Army of the Potomac. This was the main theatre of the war, because this was where all the people and all the stuff were. The much larger AoP tried repeatedly to drive south to capture Richmond, the much better-led ANV repeatedly repulsed it and tried to counterattack north. Between the two of them struggling up and down this narrow geographic chokepoint the war didn't get anywhere until Grant took charge in 1864; in 1865 the Union won. The two reasons are connected.

So much for the seacoast. Let's look inland.

See the big patch of land between the mountains and the Mississippi? See where the North-South border ran? Most of that was mountainous forested wilderness. Worthless land for the most part, difficult to move armies and supplies through. In the West, the north-south rivers were a godsend; the side that could take best advantage of river and rail would be the side that could out-supply and outnumber its opponent. Here was where some of the best Union generals would emerge—Grant, Sherman, Phil Sheridan, and George Motherfucking Thomas, for a sample, and where the Confederate generals were mostly outmatched by their Union counterparts, with a few exceptions like Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Union strategy here emerged as "take the Mississippi and cut off Arkansas and Texas from the rest of the Confederacy, then drive eastward through Tennessee into Georgia." Battles here were determined by rivers and mountain passes, with the Union Army steadily laying railroad track behind it as it went. What won the war for the Union was that it won in the West by 1864.

By the time of the 1864 campaigns, most of the the important border states between the Mississippi and the Appalachians had been conquered. Now the Southern heartland, the Atlantic seaboard, could be threatened from the west (Tennessee - Georgia - Carolinas - Virginia) as well as the north. Lee's Army of North Virginia had been successfully holding off its Northern counterpart for years, but now it faced Sherman coming up from the southwest, as well as Grant taking charge in the north and bootstrapping the Army of the Potomac to new levels of competence. 1864 saw Grant fighting Lee to a draw in the traditional Washington-Richmond corridor and eventually trapping Lee in a months-long siege, while in Tennessee (look at the map, now!) Sherman fought his way into Georgia, took Atlanta, and then began his march of destruction eastward to the sea and northward to encircle Lee.

John Keegan's study of the American Civil War points out the geographic influence especially, and of course you can never go wrong with James MacPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. I'm sure Parable or one of the others can explain much better than I can, as well as expand on theatres like the war at sea and the Shenandoah campaigns, but in short, you have to keep in mind that the land fighting in the Civil War took place across multiple theatres hundreds of miles away from each other, linked by rail and river, with events in one theatre influencing the rest.

edited 20th Nov '15 1:57:39 PM by SabresEdge

Ah.

Well, that reaction made the effortpost worthwhile.

edited 20th Nov '15 2:10:52 PM by SabresEdge

Well, I didn't have anything particular to say. XP

Be assured that I did read the whole thing. XD

It's ok. I appreciated it.

Its very informative for non-amercians.

Genuinely glad to hear that.

The US Civil War is a complicated topic in part because US geography is a complicated topic. There's so much going on, and all at the same time, that a simple list of major battles won't give you much idea of how the war as a whole is going unless you match them to specific campaigns and theatres.

About the only thing I know about it I dont even know how I learned any more.

And that was that the type of rock that the battleground was over, heavily affected the death-toll of the battle.

That and it is the war in which submarines, metal ships, lever action fire arms, and the gatling gun really took off.

edited 20th Nov '15 2:46:36 PM by Imca

I dunno about took off. It's certainly where they started but they weren't used that heavily.

Submarines were used as far back as the American revolutionary war, metal plating on ships even before that.

It is when they took off.

I just personally find it weird that I really am one of the few exceptions rather than the rule. I knew a lot even when I was still a kid because I was reading encyclopedias and history books in my free time (if I'm not playing computer games lol).

And then the games I play are the likes of Europa Universalis, Total War, Cossacks, Age of Sail, etc.

edited 20th Nov '15 6:35:51 PM by entropy13

Sabre; Good post. Made me wish I had a topographical historical map handy. However this animated map is fairly handy as well.

Related to the topic at hand.

Indian Warriors: The Untold Story. Basically a crash course in the history of the Native American's and their role in the American Civil War.

edited 20th Nov '15 8:22:16 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Meh, I'll need a support group from time to time to answer some of my questions on history. I've only watched a few videos from John Green's Crash Course history, and I'm looking forward to watching even more of them though there are about HUNDREDS of them.

Sigh...John Green's history is so shallow my socks don't even get wet. Start by reading a primer on the historical method, then pick a topic and find academic research for it. Green's stuff is skin-deep, and frequently dead wrong.

edited 21st Nov '15 2:13:29 AM by Achaemenid

Any particular glaring examples?

edited 21st Nov '15 6:04:54 AM by TuefelHundenIV

In regards to Koei's Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors being high on historical liberties, as Saint Deltora had told me months ago here, what would happen if current-day Koei Tecmo attempted to do a Warriors game using the Napoleonic Wars? For further questions that will get off-topic, I suggest taking them here.

edited 21st Nov '15 6:08:09 AM by HallowHawk

Huh, do you know a site that has good history then?

r/AskHistorians is a good place to start, although it's constrained to a question and answer format.

@Teufel

I already had a crack at his one on the Dark Ages a while back. On the basis of that, I'm not really prepared to recommend the series as a whole, nor am I inclined to watch hundreds of videos to find his mistakes. Put it this way: if the Dark Ages video is anything to go by, then his understanding of history is very poor.

His whining about sexism in the Greek epics is presentist as hell, too.

Ahh. Was this the much earlier dark ages discussion and not the more recent ones?

Checked out the Dark Ages one and he lost me very quickly. If his two favorite things were not dying from a number of diseases and war then Medieval Europe is the last place he wants to be.

edited 21st Nov '15 11:21:56 AM by TuefelHundenIV

There was one particular video covering the Luddites and the general time period where he was so for the new capitalist class that I shook my head.

Thing is, there's times where we have to step back and look at why these things happened, and that didn't happen. The Luddites are a prime example of this, because we need to understand why they did it, and it's about much more than just machinery for a start.

Things like that did not get covered, and it kind of makes me shake my head.

edited 21st Nov '15 8:00:10 PM by RatherRandomRachel

Syphilis widespread in Central Europe even before Columbus' voyage to America: "In 1495, a 'new' disease spread throughout Europe: syphilis. Christopher Columbus was said to have brought this sexually transmitted disease back from his voyage to America. At least, that has been the accepted theory up until now. Using morphological and structural evidence, researchers have now identified several cases of congenital syphilis dating back to as early as 1320 AD in skeletons from excavations at the cathedral square of St. Pölten, Austria"

Well now, that's interesting. I wonder if that suggests a yet-unknown pre-Columbian contact or an Afro-Eurasian origin for the disease.

edited 22nd Nov '15 7:20:07 AM by Achaemenid