"Confederacy's Biggest Gamble: Gettysburg!" Topic

You were asked to decide – TMP link

Which battle would you say was the riskiest gamble for the Confederacy?

43% said "Gettysburg"
16% said "Chancellorsville"
10% said "Antietam"

The battles, or the campaigns?

+1 Donlowry

Also since the War was won in the West, why are all these battles Eastern? Let me guess, general membership, not people who actually study the war.

To be fair it was the Confederacy's gamble they were asking about – the Confederacy didn't gamble as much in the West as they just plain out lost

Not that they were successful, but there are a number of significant offensive campaigns/battles in the West initiated by the Confederates…constituting "gambles" if you would. Whether they had the potential to change the course of the war like Gettysburg, can be debated. Perhaps some would put Shiloh in that category.

Shiloh
Perryville
Stones River
Knoxville Campaign
Peachtree Creek
Jonesboro
Franklin
Nashville

There were also aggressive counter punches thrown at Chickamauga and Ezra Church, which were both confederate "gambles" of a sort aimed at disrupting Union offensives.

probably firing on Fort Sumter to be honest ??

Russ Dunaway

Interesting discussion – I would say that many of the later campaigns in the West were total foolishness rather than gambles!

Disagree with a Gettysburg. The war was lost before then. After 1862 the South fought in hope of a negotiated peace.

Rudy, how does that keep battles/campaigns from being gambles?

All battles are gambles to some extent, as complete control of everything is impossible. (So is walking across the street, or getting out of bed in the morning.)

Gettysburg day 1 (with hindsight) was a pretty safe gamble for Lee; day 2 pretty risky, day 3 stupidly risky.

Some battles are more risky than others. Some appear to have almost no risk and they turn out badly anyway (see: McClellan, Peninsula Campaign).

For the Confederates I would put Chancellorsville as the most risky. Though, as the Army War College book notes, "Lee's plan works best when Hooker is the Union commander."

A gamble is a waste of manpower and vital supplies. Gettysburg was a waste. The men would have been more valuable on the defense.
I read a letter from a CSA soldier who died in a Yankee POW camp. The day after Gettysburg, he wrote a letter home to let his family know that he was still alive. About Gettysburg all he had to say was that ‘We were in a big fight, the last few days. I still do not have shoes."

I always thought Gettysburg was more risky than Chancellorsville for the CSA. The reason is not the end result; rather it is the outlook of the Commanders prior to the battles.

From what I have read about the battles it seems that:
At Chancellorsville, Lee and Jackson were confident they could win and were keen to attack Hooker's force once Hooker began to cross the river with the only uncertainty being about exactly which route would be taken to do it (despite the Union having twice their numbers); whereas
At Gettysburg, the senior commanders were anxious and uncertain about what to do or how to do it. The fact that Gen Stuart offered his resignation was a sign that the lack of information about the enemy was creating great risk for the CSA in engaging the Union at Gettysburg.

If we judge biggest gamble in terms of resources committed then I agree with Gettysburg. The question though was which was the riskiest gamble. Of the three actions named I would argue that Gettysburg was the least risky. At Antietam Lee was outnumbered two to one and he had forces coming in even during the battle. At Chancellorsville Lee was also outnumbered two to one and ended up dividing his army into three parts. Gettysburg overall the odds were close to even.

In my opinion Lee took a huge gamble to even consider the Gettysburg campaign and only followed thru because the south was running out of options.