East vs West: Determining the War's Most Important Theater - Part III
This advantage began in spectacular fashion with the Union breakthrough at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in February of 1862, and continued through the bloodshed of Shiloh, Perryville, Stones River, Missionary Ridge, and other battles. (Compared with the East, the armies in both the Western Theater and the Trans-Mississippi were often smaller, and many of the battles were on a lesser scale. The effort, desire, and courage of the men who fought them were not.)
By the spring of 1864, despite missed opportunities, several close calls, and the near-disaster resulting from Chickamauga, the Union had clearly gained the upper hand over the Confederacy in the West. They had retaken all of the vital Mississippi River, captured several important cities and towns, forced the surrender of two Confederate armies, and controlled substantial amounts of Confederate territory.
The contrast with the war in the East could not be more striking. Three years of fighting in the East had furthered the Confederate goal of survival. The same three-year span in the West had resulted in exactly the opposite - the advancement of the Union goal of denying Confederate survival.
Again, if we were to view the Civil War strictly in terms of the Western Theater, then the wonder is not that the Union won the war, but that they did not win it sooner.
That they were unable to do so can be attributed largely to their lack of success in the Eastern Theater for the first three years of the war.
The Fourth and Final Year
The war's final year was also the war's bitterest year. The East witnessed what may have been the worst six-week period of the entire war, ending in a prolonged siege and yet another stalemate, this time at Petersburg. The West saw the transformation of northern Georgia into a giant chessboard for Union General William T. Sherman and Confederate General Joe Johnston, with the prize being Atlanta. Later, after Sherman's victory at Atlanta, both sections saw the transformation of southeastern Georgia and later South Carolina into a giant swath of destruction.
Somewhere during the process, the outcome of the American Civil War was decided.
Most historians would say that the moment came somewhere between the fall of Atlanta in September of 1864 and the re-election of Abraham Lincoln that November. It could very well be that without the former, the latter would not have taken place, thereby casting the war's outcome into doubt.
In reality this
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