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East vs West: Determining the War's Most Important Theater - Part I

© Perry Cuskey

As many people know, the debate involving North and South began to heat up even before the shooting started, and has raged on in the years since it came to an end. Arguments over which side was right as well as what caused it all seem to come almost as naturally as breathing when conversation turns to the American Civil War.

Yet there is another geographic debate surrounding this war that also rages. Sometimes, it seems, with nearly the same intensity as the debate over North & South. That would be the debate over East & West, involving the issue of which was more important to the course and outcome of the war. The dust jacket of a recent book on the battle of Shiloh even goes so far as to proclaim, "Today Civil War scholarship is no longer viewed in terms of North versus South but rather East versus West." (Shiloh: The Battle That Changed the Civil War, by Larry J. Daniel.)

While such a claim may seem to be stretching things a bit, there is a certain amount of truth in the idea. There is also no question that strong opinions exist on both sides of this issue.

Theaters of War

The fighting in the American Civil War is generally divided into three major theaters, running from east to west - The Eastern Theater, stretching from the Atlantic seaboard to the Appalachian mountain range; The Western Theater, comprising the area between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River; and The Trans-Mississippi Theater, which generally refers to the region west of the Mississippi. (Some might wish to make the case for a fourth theater - The Far West - but that will have to wait for another day, and another article.)

Historians are in general agreement that of these three theaters, the two that had the greatest impact on the war were the Eastern and Western. The long-overlooked fighting in the Trans-Mississippi, while very likely exceeding both of the others in terms of sheer brutality and bitterness, is not considered to have had the same level of impact on the overall course of the war.

We will return to that idea shortly, but for now our focus is going to be on the two theaters east of the Mississippi.

The Case for the Eastern Theater

Almost certainly the most widely studied theater of the three, the Eastern Theater ("The East") was home to the war's best-known armies, and many of its most famous commanders. It was here that Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, and other well-known Confederates in the Army of Northern Virginia squared off against the Union's Army of the Potomac, led at various times by such officers as George B. McClellan, "Fighting Joe" Hooker, and George Gordon Meade.