"The East was the most important theater?" Topic

Please watch first and then discuss.

link

I did not watch but the west was the most important. However , the war could be lost in a day if a battle was decisive in VA.

West, starting with the fall of New Orleans, and the use of penetrating river systems to thrust into the heartland of the south, until the march to Savannah finished the rebellion basically.

The war in the east was just a matter of armies fighting back and forth over a patch of ground leading from Richmond to Gettysburg, year after year.

The naval war blockading the coasts prevented most outside help for the south.

The diplomatic "war" prevented any outside intervention.

Watch the video, Dr. Gallagher makes a good argument that the East is the most important theater. Both capitals are 90 miles apart. The East is the population center of both countries. It is closest to Europe. The principle armies are there.

You can lose an entire army in the West and still the war would go on. If the AOP or ANV are destroyed the war is over. There is a reason why Grant when made General of all the armies, attaches his headquarters to the AOP. There are many more good points he makes. Watch the lecture it is interesting and humorus. He is an excellent speaker. Watch the video.

The East was the most important. In the event, the west was the most decisive.

I confess I expected this to be about WWII.

I watched the entire video and questions, very interesting and insightful.
I would like to see him talk about the eastern and western theatres in WW2 Europe, I think the comparisons are striking!

advocate +1

Didn't watch this particular video but have seen Gallagher speak on You Tube in a number of others and yes indeed, his view is the East is more important for those reasons mentioned above.

He also mentions the fall of New Orleans, but his take is that this already meant navigation of the Mississippi was not as important as at the start of the war, as access to the sea was already cut off by the time of Vicksburg etc.

I don't like the either-or nature of the debate.

As others have pointed out the east was the theatre where a single decisive victory could have determined the outcome of the war. It was the one theatre where either side had the potential to win that single decisive victory well into the war. It was the inability of the Confederacy to win a decisive victory after First Manassas and the ability of the Confederacy to avoid a disastrous defeat until April 1-2, 1865 that allowed the so called western theatre to become the one where the outcome of the war was decided. However the western theatre was too big for a single decisive victory to give the U.S. victory. The same would probably have been true for the Confederacy after the fall of 1862. Likewise once the Confederates lost their bid to control Missouri the the trans-Mississippi theatre was to remote for events there to decide the war.

There is an argument that the most important was the naval/coastal theatre. U.S. control of the seas allowed the U.S. to cut off Confederate access to resources. It interfered with Confederate transportation of the resources it had. It allowed the U.S. to open up fronts "behind Confederate lines" which in turn tied up Confederate forces as well as assisting U.S. forces.

It's kind of like playing a game where rolling boxcars is an automatic win. The Union kept chipping away at at Confederate territories in the West and along the coast, but one or two major losses in the East and the war would have been over.

The East could have been the most important, but it was not. The theory vs practice thing.

The Eastern Theater may very well have been the 'most important' theater because Lee had to be defeated.

But the South lost the war in the Western Theater, which makes it the decisive theater.

There are arguments for both views, but the fact remains that the war went on until the Union won in the East (Appomattox) despite the fact that they had captured almost every other point of importance and destroyed every other Confederate army in the west and deep south.

Good discussion Gentlemen,
However the OP asked a Poll question so…

-The East, two capitals nuff said (plus all the other stuff you said)
-The West, key rivers for transport amount of square miles
-The Naval, blockade both imports and exports
-The Diplomatic front, held off help from other countries
-The Guerilla war, sweeping behind lines and raiding parties (Mel Gibson could make a movie of this stuff)
-The mixed answer, (the East was super important for many reasons neither could let it go badly, the Naval strangled supplies, the West sealed the back entry and drove a stake into the heart of the Confederacy)

-all the other usual poll Non-responses.

The Union objective in the East was Richmond, which was a mistake. The objective should have been the destruction of Lee's army. That didn't change until Grant assumed the billet of general-in-chief in 1864.

That was the lesson that Napoleon had taught and that Jomini missed (among other things).