PERSPECTIVE-“It is those campaigns in America that we must study.”
Historian Fletcher Pratt attributed that statement to a top German military leader in the run up to World War I.
We are approaching the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War as the Sesquicentennial commemoration of the American Civil War is entering its final year.
And if there were campaigns the Germans and other European powers should have studied, General Grant’s advance into Central Virginia in May 1864 should have been on the top of the list. It was the precursor for what developed in 1914 after the armies of the Central Powers and Allies bogged down in Northern France.
Let’s first set the stage for the situation in 1864.
The southern economy was in shambles. Surprisingly, the Union blockade was not the primary reason. As a whole, foreign trade increased in the South during the war years.
For that matter, the port of Wilmington, NC was doing four times the amount of trade it did prior to the war. Wilmington was the key source of foreign supplies for General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Lee told the Confederate commander at Fort Fisher, which guarded Wilmington, that he would have to evacuate Richmond if the fort fell.
(Read the rest … including ideas on a possible Lincoln coverup … here)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 54
Pub: Jul 4, 2014
