250th Birthday

[Murfreesboro]

My husband knows his military history, and yesterday we had what I thought was an interesting discussion. We were watching a documentary about the WW2 battle of Kursk, the biggest tank battle ever, when the Soviets defeated the Germans on the eastern front. So I asked my husband what moment in WW2 was comparable to the Battle of Gettysburg for the Germans.

My husband said that Gettysburg wasn't really the key battle in the American Civil War, that Lee actually lost that war at Sharpsburg in late 1862. It was his first foray into the North, and his loss enabled Lincoln to make the Emancipation Proclamation, which put off any European allies the South might have had. That proclamation transformed the optics of the war, making it about slavery in the eyes of the world, very politically savvy, because the war originally had been about a constitutional issue, whether or not the states had the right to secede (in fact, they did, which is why Southern leaders were never prosecuted for treason after the war. The North didn't want those arguments going to the Supreme Court.)

Anyway, as a military guy, my husband distinguishes between strategy and tactics. Strategy is the overall vision, tactics the nitty gritty of getting the battles won. He said that Lee lost the war strategically at Sharpsburg, but tactically at Gettysburg. Similarly, he said the Germans lost WW2 strategically at Stalingrad, but tactically at Kursk.

I asked him if Lee knew he had lost the war at Sharpsburg. He said he thought Lee knew from the outset that winning was a very long shot and that the only hope the South had was to win it fast. He said if Lee had taken Longstreet's advice, retreated from Gettysburg and fought on ground of his own choosing between there and Washington, there's a chance he might have won and that the North might have sued for peace. Lee was such a brilliant general otherwise, one of the greats in world military history, that his behavior at Gettysburg is mystifying. Some people actually think he was ill and suffering from a fever that clouded hus judgment at that crucial moment.