Campaigns in Mississippi and ...

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//-->The U.S. Army Campaigns of the Civil WarCampaigns inMississippiand TennesseeFebruary–December 1864Cover: The Battle of Nashville,by Howard Pyle, depicting the attack on Shy’s Hillby Brig. Gen. John McArthur’s division, 16 December 1864(Minnesota Historical Society Collections)CMH Pub 75–15Campaigns inMississippiand TennesseeFebruary–December 1864byDerek W. FrisbyCenter of Military HistoryUnited States ArmyWashington, D.C., 2014IntroductionAlthough over one hundred fifty years have passed since thestart of the American Civil War, that titanic conflict continues tomatter. The forces unleashed by that war were immensely destruc-tive because of the significant issues involved: the existence of theUnion, the end of slavery, and the very future of the nation. Thewar remains our most contentious, and our bloodiest, with oversix hundred thousand killed in the course of the four-year struggle.Most civil wars do not spring up overnight, and the AmericanCivil War was no exception. The seeds of the conflict were sownin the earliest days of the republic’s founding, primarily over theexistence of slavery and the slave trade. Although no conflict canbegin without the conscious decisions of those engaged in thedebates at that moment, in the end, there was simply no way topaper over the division of the country into two camps: one thatwas dominated by slavery and the other that sought first to limitits spread and then to abolish it. Our nation was indeed “half slaveand half free,” and that could not stand.Regardless of the factors tearing the nation asunder, thesoldiers on each side of the struggle went to war for personalreasons: looking for adventure, being caught up in the passionsand emotions of their peers, believing in the Union, favoringstates’ rights, or even justifying the simple schoolyard dynamicof being convinced that they were “worth” three of the soldierson the other side. Nor can we overlook the factor that some wentto war to prove their manhood. This has been, and continuesto be, a key dynamic in understanding combat and the profes-sion of arms. Soldiers join for many reasons but often stay in thefight because of their comrades and because they do not want toseem like cowards. Sometimes issues of national impact shrinkto nothing in the intensely personal world of cannon shell andminié ball.Whatever the reasons, the struggle was long and costly andonly culminated with the conquest of the rebellious Confederacy,5 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]