Gettysburg GIS

Smithsonian Magazine has a nice Battle of Gettysburg GIS up online [LINK]. I don’t know enough about military history to feel like I can assess the conclusions, but I know enough about GISes to be impressed by the presentation of the data.

I visited Gettysburg National Military Park a couple of years ago. It’s the most commemorated patch of terrain I’ve ever seen. Monuments and statues everywhere.

I found this article to be fascinating on a number of levels, but primarily how narrative forms our perception of history and the lessons we take from it. Also interesting to see how narratives change over time based on a number of factors.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/...il-war/277022/

150 Years of Misunderstanding

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World War II undercut this anti-war stance. Nazism was an evil that had to be fought. So, too, was slavery, which revisionists--many of them white Southerners--had cast as a relatively benign institution, and dismissed it as a genuine source of sectional conflict. Historians who came of age during the Civil Rights Movement placed slavery and emancipation at the center of the Civil War. This trend is now reflected in textbooks and popular culture. The Civil War today is generally seen as a necessary and ennobling sacrifice, redeemed by the liberation of four million slaves.

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Originally Posted by Bill Moore

I found this article to be fascinating on a number of levels, but primarily how narrative forms our perception of history and the lessons we take from it. Also interesting to see how narratives change over time based on a number of factors.

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I read that one soon after it went online and quite liked it. The monuments at Gettysburg certainly lend the sense that the participants in the battle fought knowing that those three days were going to be when the war was decided. But my understanding is that it was only retrospect that the battle came to be understood that way.

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Originally Posted by ganulv

I read that one soon after it went online and quite liked it. The monuments at Gettysburg certainly lend the sense that the participants in the battle fought knowing that those three days were going to be when the war was decided. But my understanding is that it was only retrospect that the battle came to be understood that way.

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I would argue the war was not decided on that day. Yes, if the Union had lost the war would have changed considerably, but the CSA loss did not have as great an impact as Vicksburg.

For that matter, I would contend the war was "won" between the Appalachian MTS and the Mississippi.

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Originally Posted by bspeer

I would argue the war was not decided on that day. Yes, if the Union had lost the war would have changed considerably, but the CSA loss did not have as great an impact as Vicksburg.

For that matter, I would contend the war was "won" between the Appalachian MTS and the Mississippi.

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I’m no military historian, but my understanding is that the Federal generals were trying to physically break the South’s back, whereas Lee was trying to break the Republicans’ political will. So it makes sense to me that a victory at Gettysburg would have meant more for the Confederacy than it ultimately did for the Union. Again, speaking as a non-expert.