Flying Through American History

By James Casey

'Flying Through American History' is a series of essays each of which centers on major military events in American History. From a concise account of the Civil War and Custer's last stand at the Little Big Horn, to perhaps the most thorough account of the Battle of Midway ever presented. As the story approaches the present it becomes a personal account of enlisting in the US Air Force and eventually becoming a fighter pilot.

In an experimental style, James Casey presents us with a series of essays on major military events followed by his personal accounts as a new pilot in the Air Force. Casey uses this unique lens to view American history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098314613

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© 2020 James F. Casey All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN 978-1-09831-460-6 eBook 978-1-09831-461-3

Table of Contents

The Right Side of American History As I see it

The Civil War

Battle of the Little Big Horn

MIDWAY

Vietnam, Forty Years Later

UPT

The Tweet

The Talon

The Real World

The World Today

The Right Side of American History As I see it

(Vol. I)

The following are essays that I have written over the years. There is no particular correlation other than the fact that they are subjects that I enjoy writing about. I started with the Civil War and eventually lead to Vietnam where I interject my personal history from that point on. The story ends, somewhat abruptly in April of 1982. My first two years as an Officer in the Air Force were somewhat unusual. I thought that I would gauge the reactions, (if any) to these stories before I published the rest of my personal tales.

I’ve been reading books about history since I was in High School and these essays were never intended to be a feat of scholastic achievement; so, a detailed and accurate bibliography would not be possible. Instead, I will try to recommend one or two books on each subject that stand out in my mind above the rest. Much of the information is repetitive in the essays. That’s because each was written as a stand-alone piece. I apologize in advance for the redundancy.

The Civil War essay is intended as a general overview of the fighting and its motivation. Hopefully, this will pique the reader’s interest and curiosity and provide the incentive to find more in-depth knowledge. I always frustrated my sons when they were younger. Whenever the subject of the Civil War would come up, they would ask me, Who were the good guys? I would usually respond with, It’s complicated. One of the purposes of this essay, is to explain some of that notion.

The movie, Gettysburg (1993), inspired me to write this. Gettysburg is one of the best movies of the Civil War, ever produced. The battle scenes are incredibly realistic. If the film has a flaw, it’s that it attempts to explain too much. Why are we fighting, the back stories of many of the leaders, plus the tactics and events of this monumental battle, are all explained. It may be a bit much for the average movie-goer who may only have a two-hour attention span.

If you’re only going to read one book on the civil war, it should be Shelby Foote’s narrative on the subject. This three-volume series provided much of the basis for the Ken Burns PBS Series (1990). If you don’t like reading, you can get much of the information by watching the series; but you’d miss Foote’s flawless and thoroughly enjoyable writing style. His three-volumes are a true literary work-of-art.

The Battle of the Little Big Horn essay is something that I’ve been interested in for quite some time. I used the facts to expound my own theory of that entire conflict. After watching one of the best propaganda films of all time, Dances with Wolves (1990), I felt compelled to attempt to detail the other side of the story.

The Native Americans were trapped in the stone age. Life was relatively easy for the plains Indians. They had no desire to advance beyond their own primitive technology. It really comes down to your idea of what the purpose of life is. If you believe it’s simply to sit around and be happy; then the American Indians were successful. However, if you believe that life on this planet is constantly evolving, constantly changing and is a struggle for survival and dominance, then they were total failures. It’s important to understand both sides of the equation before one forms an opinion. It’s easy to feel sorry for the losers. Shedding tears for the demise of the Native American lifestyle is about as useful as mourning the extinction of the dinosaurs.

If you only read one book on this subject, it should be "Son of the Morning Star" by Evan S. Connell.

Midway was written years ago, and I recently re-edited it. I find this one battle to be fascinating. I’ve read so much about it that I felt the need to compile everything that I’ve learned into one document. A single source for all the pertinent facts. The story got a little away from me and it came out to be much longer than I had intended. It is my hope that the facts of the battle will awe the reader as much as they awe me.

The movie Midway (1976), is a reasonably good portrayal of what transpired. In fairness to the film’s makers it’s difficult to get many of the facts into a dramatic screenplay. There are some glaring omissions and additions. Apparently, the screenwriters didn’t feel as if the story was entertaining enough in its own right, so they wove in a fictitious Romeo and Juliet tale of star-crossed lovers. This romance was between a young naval aviator and his Japanese American girlfriend. The girl and her hard-working, loyal to the red, white and blue Japanese American parents, have been thrown into a concentration camp on the island, by hysterical American racists fueled by post-Pearl Harbor hatred against all Japanese. This sub-plot not only provided a break in the action, it fed into the self-recrimination about the way that Japanese-Americans were treated during the war that reached its zenith during the late 1970’s.

The true story of these camps and the reasons for them could fill a book by itself. Readers are encouraged to research the Niihau incident. This was one of the primary motivations for the camps.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, any Japanese planes that were too severely damaged to get back to their carriers were briefed to ditch their airplanes near the island of Niihau, a small island to the northwest of Oahu. The surviving crews would be picked up by a submarine there. Only 29 planes were shot down, so the operation was cancelled. But one damaged Zero made it to the island of Niihau and its pilot tried to incite the Japanese and Hawaiians on the island, to start an armed insurrection against their American overlords. He got some support initially from the Japanese in the group but, the Hawaiians eventually saw through the scheme and he was killed. The incident caused great alarm over concerns of a Japanese fifth column; a network of spies and saboteurs that were operating from within the United States.

As far as the camps were concerned, suffice to say that the Constitution was trampled on. Rights were violated but, these were desperate times. While historians laugh at the idea of Japan invading the mainland of the United States now, at that time, it didn’t seem so far-fetched.

There were no camps in the Hawaiian Islands, as portrayed in the movie because, the islands were put under Marshall law immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred. The camps only concerned an exclusion zone that extended along the western coast of the Continental United States. This exclusion zone contained a great many vital defense plants and it seemed like the most-likely spot for Japan’s intelligence and subversion effort. The dirty, little secret of this affair is that the camps and the exclusion zone were one of the most effective and efficient programs ever launched by the Roosevelt administration. Japanese had set up an extensive intelligence operation in the Philippines, in the Hawaiian Islands and on the west Coast of the United States. This was completely negated using these camps.

Japanese Americans who renounced their Japanese citizenship and swore allegiance to the United States, were free to live anywhere else in the United States outside of the exclusion Zone. All these camps had schools and hospitals and food was always plentiful. Certainly, they were not free to come and go as they chose but they were treated far better than loyal Americans who found themselves in Japan or Germany after the war broke out. Some Japanese Americans who opted to leave the camps initially, came back and the government made them pay to stay there in order to cover their cost-of-living expenses. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who volunteered to go to a Nazi or Soviet concentration camp.

The movie MIDWAY (2019) takes a much more realistic look at the battle without going too far in the weeds with a contrived love story. The CGI presentations of the airplanes and ships are fantastic and that alone makes the movie worth watching. The film was largely financed with Chinese money and they were anxious to show how horribly the Japanese responded to the Doolittle raid against the Chinese people that helped them. This is all true. In fact, the Japanese reaction was actually much worse than depicted.

There are many great books about the Battle of Midway but, if you choose to read only one, it should be The Shattered Sword by Anthony Tully and Jonathan Parshall. It’s an outstanding work!

Vietnam is really the centerpiece of this work, as I see it. It represents years of research. Military or Political leaders have written most military histories. My account was written from the perspective of the lowliest airman in the U.S. Air Force doing one of the least-desirable jobs. I had no idea of the strategy or tactics until I read about them years later. I apologize in advance for the political discussion, but as I say in the essay; history must be viewed in context.

The two most-controversial subjects are the Roosevelt legacy and the Kennedy assassination.

The Rock is my, more personal view of the war in Vietnam. I folded it into the essay on Vietnam. If there are redundancies within this essay, that’s why. I enlisted in The Air Force when I was eighteen years old in February of 1972. I had a High School diploma but not a single college credit. I was assigned to do one of the least desirable jobs in the Air Force. Ten years later, I was piloting the world’s greatest fighter airplane, in dress rehearsals for the first gulf war. These essays tell of that adventure. I hope that the stories are compelling because, they are largely about an average person being in the right place at the right time, who is able to accomplish some extraordinary things. I’ll let the reader decide.

UPT is the story of my year in Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training. It is my honest recollection of the events of that year. It may not be exactly the way that other people remember it. It was written thirty years ago, and my intent was to put these thoughts down on paper before I forgot them.

The Tweet, The Talon and The Real World continue with my story in the U.S. Air Force. The story ends rather abruptly in April of 1982. I thought I would end it there and gauge the reaction (if any) to it. I will publish the rest of the story if anyone actually cares to read it.

The Civil War

(1861-1865)

What caused it?

Despite all the statements to the contrary, despite the obfuscations, despite the smoke screens, the simple one-word answer is slavery. It’s ironic that both sides issued statements shortly after the fighting started, denying that they were fighting over slavery when that’s precisely what they were fighting over. Certainly, there were issues with trade tariffs and embargoes, but these could have been resolved without war. Additionally, the limits of the Federal and State governments were being tested. It was an inevitable conflict that could have been resolved without war.

Slavery was something that had been gnawing away at the United States since its creation. The foundation of this nation was the Declaration of Independence. It stated the belief that all men were created equal. The Constitution of the United States went on to say that no person could be denied his rights without due process of law. Clearly, slaves were routinely denied all their rights and all their freedoms without any process whatsoever. Slavery was morally reprehensible and simply could not survive in a modern world. The framers of the Constitution turned a blind eye to it in order to gain a consensus, but it was an issue that refused to go away.

Still, both sides had good reasons to deny that they were fighting over slavery.

In the North there were many opponents of slavery but support for the cause was not sufficiently popular to warrant going to war over. Many Northerners were justifiably concerned that if the slaves were freed, they would come north and take their jobs in the factories. Accustomed to being treated like dirt, the former slaves would be happy to work for far less than their white counterparts. Initially, the Union soldiers believed they were simply fighting to preserve the Union. After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation it became obvious to everyone that the Union Army had become an army of liberation. They were still fighting to preserve the Union but implicit with this was the concept that the slaves would be freed.

The Confederate leadership had even more reasons to conceal the real reason for the war. There had been an ever-widening schism developing between the north and the south long before the war ever started. The North was well on its way to becoming a modern industrialized nation. The means of production belonged to entrepreneurs, industrialists, bankers, and investors all with many varied priorities. The South, for the most part had not really enjoyed the same type of growth to a large degree because of its climate. Until the invention of practical air conditioners, the Deep South could not expand to its full potential. It was simply too hot in the summer to operate a factory. Instead, the economy of the south remained almost a feudal agricultural society with the primary means of production controlled by a very few, very wealthy landowners all of whom depended upon slavery to run their huge plantations. Without slaves these plantations could not survive. There was a relatively small middle class of merchants and tradesmen and an exceptionally large lower class of people scratching out a living on single-family farms. Slaves were expensive commodities that were beyond the means of most southerners. Fully 95% of southerners did not own slaves or profit from the slave trade in any way. In fact, it could be said that the institution of slavery was actually harming most Southerners. The average Southerner raised what they needed for subsistence, then sold any surplus they might have on the open market where they competed against products produced by slave labor. The slave labor kept prices artificially low, to the detriment of single-family farmers. But, the wealth of the South was controlled by a relative few Plantation owners virtually all of whom not only owned slaves but, whose fortunes were dependent upon the continuation of slavery. Since the slave-owners controlled the wealth, they controlled the political process and the media, which is to say they controlled the public discourse on the subject. Most Southerners were probably indifferent to slavery and certainly would not have suffered and sacrificed to preserve it. So, the leadership of the confederacy had good reason to willfully mislead their constituents as to the cause of the war and they very cleverly did. They trumped up the trade issues far out of proportion, then skillfully crafted a debate about the limits of the Federal government’s powers, incited secession and insurrection knowing full well that the Federal government would have to respond with force or lose by default. When the Federals came south to put down the revolt they could be characterized as invaders. So, the Army of the Confederacy was fighting not to defend slavery but, to preserve its freedom from a foreign invader. A worthy cause that the average Southerner could easily understand. A cause worth fighting for and even dying for.

The trigger that set off the fighting was the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The Slavery issue had fractured the Democratic party and allowed the Republicans and Lincoln to win an upset victory. The Southern leadership viewed Lincoln as an abolitionist, which he was not. Acting like spoiled children, the Southern leaders determined that if they couldn’t get their way, they would take their toys and go home. Seven states, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, and Texas seceded immediately. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas joined them within a few months.

Who were the Major Players?

Abraham Lincoln; a complex man with a remarkably simple mission; to preserve the Union. As it often is with great men, Lincoln was never fully appreciated in his own time. Perhaps the most eloquent man to ever serve as President of the United States his own words express his determination to preserve the Union.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that

He was single-minded in his determination to save the Union. This is not to say that Lincoln was indifferent to slavery. He was not, but he had to wait until the time was right to enforce his anti-slavery position. When he did finally free the slaves, he summed it up by saying;

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free, honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed, this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just; a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless!

The irony was that in order to save the Constitution; Lincoln had to trample all over it. He suspended Habeas Corpus, putting dissenters in prison for the duration without any trial. He bullied his opponents and twisted facts to prosecute a war that became the greatest bloodbath that this nation would ever see until World War II. He did whatever it took to preserve the Union. Yet, Lincoln did it for a greater purpose. He led this nation through its most trying years. He suffered terrible emotional stress and depression. The people of the nation never seemed to appreciate the terrible struggle that he endured for them.

Several months after the Battle of Gettysburg, some of the state governments got together and raised money to set aside a cemetery on the battlefield for the men who had fallen there. They weren’t even going to invite Lincoln to the dedication since no Federal money had been used. At the last minute, it was decided that he should be invited to say a few words just out of courtesy. He accepted and on the way to the ceremony he jotted down a few lines on the back of an envelope. The keynote speaker was Edward Everett, a popular orator. Everett rambled on for nearly two hours and then Lincoln got up to read the short message that he had written on the envelope. It lasted only a few minutes and Lincoln assumed that after Everett’s oration no one would care or remember what he had to say. He was wrong. His Gettysburg Address is considered one of the finest speeches ever delivered by any American President.

... that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

In many ways he personally bore the burden of holding the country together. He was a great leader in that he convinced the nation to bear the terrible price that it would cost to win the war. By the time the election of 1864 came, the Union had turned the Rebel tide back and it was clear that the Union was going to win. Lincoln was re-elected. There were many people who clamored for retribution against the rebels once they were defeated. The cost of the war in human lives had been staggering and many in the North believed that revenge should be taken on the Southerners because they had clearly caused the war to begin. Lincoln was not among them. In his second inaugural address he stated.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves and with all nations.

The post war years and reconstruction era would have been much easier on the South if he had survived. He came from the humblest of beginnings and rose to lead this nation through its most desperate hour. He was, quite simply, the greatest American President of all time.

Robert E. Lee was the kind of man that every military officer aspires to be. A true military genius, Lee earned the undying respect and confidence of his men. He inspired them to accomplish great deeds. Given the tactical situation that Lee commanded, an ordinary officer might have settled into a siege that would have inevitably favored the Yankees. Lee was not ordinary at anything. He was never content to just sit and wait for his enemies to attack him. He had an uncanny knack of knowing precisely when to counter-attack. He personally knew the generals who faced him in battle, and he seemed to be able to predict their actions in any given situation. He was a gambler who was not afraid to take chances. He made one Union General after another look foolish and inept. Yet, Lee was not a man without flaws. The finest officer in the Union Army, Lee was the logical choice to lead the Federals against the rebels. When Virginia joined the secessionists, Lee turned down the top post in the American Army, choosing instead to fight with the Rebel Army. Historians generally regard Lee as an honorable man who fought for his homeland even though the cause, ultimately was not an honorable one. He said that he could not raise arms against his home state, yet he seemed to have little difficulty raising arms against his home country. The average Southerner can easily be excused for having been misled into believing that they were not fighting preserve slavery but, Lee was a powerful, influential, and highly intelligent man. He should have known better and if he knew and chose to fight for that cause anyway, he wasn’t as noble as many still believe him to be. With Lee in command of their Armies, the rebels had a chance. Lee more than any other single person bears responsibility for the terrible blood bath that was the U.S. Civil War. But this was not Lee’s only flaw. The war basically divided into three tactical arenas: east, center and west. The battles in the east generated the largest headlines in the newspapers but, strategically, developments in the west were much more important. While Lee very successfully defended his home state of Virginia, the Yankees were slowly strangling the Confederacy in the West and Center. Lee showed little interest in either of the other fronts. When he did finally respond with some reinforcements to help defend Atlanta it proved to be too little and too late. Richmond may have been the capital of the Confederacy but, Atlanta was its economic heart and soul. Lee clearly failed to grasp, or chose to ignore, the strategic reality of the situation. Still, in demeanor, bearing and intellect, Lee was the finest military man that this country ever produced. He was far above all the rest. It is therefore ironic that he gained his fame, not by defending this country but by trying, and nearly succeeding, to tear it apart.

Ulysses S. Grant was, in many ways, the direct opposite of Lee. Lee had an almost regal aura around him, a commanding presence. Grant had the appearance and demeanor of a very ordinary man. Lee had always been on the fast track to success. At the age of 38 Grant’s life was almost a complete failure. He had quit the Army and failed at business. He was working as a clerk in a leather goods store that was run by his younger brother. Lee was known for his finesse in battle. Grant had all the finesse of a bulldozer.

Grant seemed to be able to consume a great deal of alcohol but, despite rumors to the contrary, he never led his men into battle while under the influence of alcohol. Grant was a highly intelligent, very humble man who had an unwavering sense of duty. Grant was extremely devoted to both his family and his country. He was an emotional man who experienced and fully understood the terrible consequences of war. His campaigns were not models of perfect military execution. His campaign in the west nearly ended in disaster at Shiloh and his campaign in the east suffered a devastating and unnecessary defeat at Cold Harbor. It is true that he always outnumbered his opponents and had much greater stores of supplies. But, so did all his predecessors who commanded the Army of the Potomac and yet, they all failed. Grant commanded at a time in history when running a large-scale offensive campaign into enemy territory was a difficult operation to conduct successfully given the nature of the weaponry and the tactics of the day. Even the master himself, Robert E. Lee attempted two such operations and both failed (Antietam and Gettysburg). Grant successfully conducted two of them. One that focused on Vicksburg and the other that focused on Richmond. Certainly, missteps were committed, but at the end of the day Grant had achieved his objectives where so many others had failed. He defeated the Rebel army, but he did not gloat about it. He was extremely courteous and deferring to the great man as he accepted Lee’s surrender and later defended Lee as President Johnson and others sought to prosecute him for treason. Grant threatened to resign his commission in the Army if the prosecutions went forward. They did not, primarily because of Grant’s intervention. He served two terms as President of the United States and although there were rumors of his administration being corrupt, he didn’t seem to be in on it. He died nearly penniless. Grant was a very ordinary man who accomplished great deeds. In the end, he deserves to be remembered as a genuinely great leader and the embodiment of the American dream.

What Happened?

The Civil War occurred during a period when conventional tactics had not kept pace with improvements in weaponry. The balance of power had shifted heavily in favor of the defenders. The average infantryman was firing a rifle instead of a musket. The rifled barrel improved range and accuracy. These early rifles still had to be loaded through the muzzle, but gunpowder was packaged in pre-measured packets, eliminating much of the guesswork, and decreasing the time needed to reload the weapon. A stationary infantryman could fire about two or three rounds a minute. Unfortunately, it was difficult to reload while moving, so defenders had a great advantage over attackers. Additionally, conventional tactics dictated that units advance shoulder to shoulder in order to mass their firepower and to maintain unit integrity. The massed formations of men made excellent targets for rifle-wielding defenders. In battle after battle attackers were decimated as they advanced toward well-defended positions. The soldiers of the Union were forced to attack by the nature of the conflict, so they suffered the greatest casualties.

The first real battle of the Civil War was known as Bull Run to the Yankees and First Manassas to the Rebels. It started off with a great deal of hope for the Yankees. Initially, the Rebel Army fell back as the Union soldiers advanced. Timely reinforcements arrived by rail, halting the advance and a rebel counterattack sent the Yankees running all the way back to Washington D.C. Bull Run insured that the War would be a long and bloody affair.

Clearly, the Union Army needed to re-group and retrain. A change in leadership was also in order. Once Lee left to fight for the Confederacy, the next best-qualified officer in the Union Army was George McClellan. A highly intelligent and inspirational leader, McClellan saw himself as America’s Napoleon. He was an expert at training and equipping an Army. He was good at strategy, perhaps even the equal of Lee and he developed outstanding plans for deploying an Army. Unfortunately, his greatest flaw was that he didn’t know how to use an Army in combat. Lincoln had to practically force him to move his Army out of Washington.

McClellan moved the Army of the Potomac by ship to Fort Monroe near the City of Newport News, Virginia. From there a quick advance up the peninsula might very well have taken Richmond with relative ease. But, the pace of McClellan’s advance up the peninsula in Virginia could, at best be described as less than inspired. McClellan had lost the tactical surprise. Still his forces did advance to where they could hear the church bells in Richmond ringing on a Sunday morning. Unlike Lee, McClellan was not a gambler or a risk-taker. No matter how many soldiers he had, he always believed that his opponents had more. In a week-long series of battles east of Richmond, McClellan was forced to fall back. His peninsula campaign came to naught.

Lee, now in direct command of the Army of Northern Virginia, decided to seize the initiative by invading Maryland. The Confederates were careless and Lee’s battle plan fell into McClellan’s hands, but he did nothing for 18 hours and negated his advantage.

The battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862) ensued. Like two chess-masters, Lee and McClellan moved their armies across the battlefield. The battle caused carnage on a scale that had never been seen before. 23,000 Americans died in a single day. More than had died in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Mexican American War combined. As was typical, the battle went back and forth. The Union troops came tantalizingly close to destroying Lee’s Army but, rebel reinforcements, led by General A.P. Hill, arrived just in time to prevent disaster. Either side could have made the point that they had won but, with the Yankees in control of the battlefield at the end of the day, their claim seemed more legitimate. It was a marginal victory at best but, it was the best the Union had been able to achieve to that point. Lincoln used the occasion to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

McClellan’s lethargic prosecution of the war eventually caused Lincoln to sack him. McClellan had his own political ambitions and would unsuccessfully run against Lincoln in the election of 1864.

Lincoln appointed Ambrose Burnside to replace McClellan and goaded him into attacking immediately. Burnside moved his Army quickly to Fredericksburg, VA, but then he hesitated, and the delay allowed Lee to take up extraordinarily strong positions behind a small stone wall south of the town.

The Battle of Fredericksburg (12 Dec 1862) was a disaster for the Union as wave after wave of Union soldiers advanced toward the stone wall only to be decimated in the process.

Joseph Hooker took over next and set in motion a brilliant plan to dislodge Lee from his positions behind Fredericksburg. Hooker trapped Lee between two pincers and his defeat seemed certain. But Lee was a gambler and in a stroke of genius, he ignored the force to his east and concentrated his entire force on the army to his west. If Hooker had known what was happening, he could have crushed Lee from behind. But Hooker did not know, and Lee used his superior knowledge of the terrain and the road network to appear seemingly out of nowhere and destroyed the Yankee Army on his west flank. The Battle of Chancellorsville was a huge tactical victory for the rebels but, may have been a strategic defeat. Thomas Stonewall Jackson was Lee’s most capable Lieutenant and his leadership at Chancellorsville was outstanding.

After the battle concluded, Jackson was accidentally killed by one of his own troops. His death was a severe blow to the Rebel’s cause. All the while a series of seesaw battles were being fought in the center part of the country generally favoring the rebels but not decisive in any way.

In the west General Ulysses S. Grant was slowly and methodically wresting control of the Mississippi River from the rebels. Whether or not Grant realized the true strategic significance of the war in the west or not was irrelevant. He was assigned a task and he set about accomplishing it. Grant took rebel forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee and continued south. Caught astride the Tennessee River he nearly suffered a devastating defeat at a small church in Tennessee called Shiloh (April 6-7, 1862) but he managed to turn the tables on the rebels and turned defeat into victory.

Continuing south he finally wore the Rebels down to one last fortification at Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Rebel position was strong to the north and to the west. Grant tried everything he could think of to defeat the Rebels even going as far as to attempt to redirect the river away from the fortress. Finally, he came up with a plan worthy of Lee himself. Breaking communications and severing his supply lines Grant moved through the swamp to the south and west of Vicksburg circling around the city and crossing the river downstream of Vicksburg. Then he moved northeast and captured the capital of Jackson, MS. Having accomplished