Tomorrow is our one year anniversary! To celebrate we posted our first ever Bird’s Eye View episode. This format allows us to take a step back and discuss the definitions, theories, and common features of an aspect of asymmetrical warfare. Today we’ll discuss what a civil war is and isn’t. Be warned, this episode contains mild dives into political theory.
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Continue readingToday is the first week of July, an important week for American Civil War buffs. During this week, a 150 years ago, Lee took a great gamble at Gettysburg and lost, and Vicksburg finally fell to General Grant’s army.
While the Battle of Gettysburg is an important battle and has reached mythical proportions in the American mindset, I would argue that Vicksburg is just as important, if not more so, and had a longer, far more reaching impact on the war as a whole. This doesn’t negate the importance of Gettysburg, but Gettysburg legacy and its aftermath cannot be properly understood without acknowledging the affects Vicksburg’s fall had on the Confederacy. Consequently, Vicksburg may not have meant anything if Lee had won at Gettysburg. The battles, occurring separately, feed into each other, one affecting the other, and we cannot understand this important week if we don’t understand both battles.
Therefore, I decided to write about Vicksburg this year.
My favorite museum in Chicago, the Pritzker Military Museum and Library, was having a book sale this weekend. I may have bought a few books…haha. I thought it would be fine to review what I bought, since they were bought in a whirl.
