AP® United States History · Unit 5 · Topic 5.8
The War in the East
The eastern war between Washington and Richmond dragged on for years because new weapons let defenders slaughter attackers at long range, turning old-style frontal assaults like Pickett's Charge into disasters.
The eastern theater was a tug of war between two capitals, Washington and Richmond, only about a hundred miles apart. Union armies kept trying to march south and smash the Confederate army in one decisive battle, and Confederate armies, especially under Robert E. Lee, kept pushing north. First Bull Run in 1861 showed both sides this would not be quick. Antietam in September 1862, the bloodiest single day of the war, stopped Lee's first invasion of the North and gave Lincoln the opening to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Gettysburg in July 1863 stopped his second invasion for good and is usually marked as the turning point in the east.
The deeper reason the war dragged on is technology outrunning tactics. Commanders on both sides had learned war using smoothbore muskets, accurate only at short range, so marching infantry shoulder to shoulder into enemy lines had worked for generations. By the 1860s almost every soldier carried a rifled musket, accurate at several times that range. Defenders now had far more time and distance to aim and fire before attackers ever closed the gap. A massed frontal assault that once meant minutes of danger now meant a long, deadly walk across open ground.
Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg is the clearest case of this mismatch, and it is also where Lee's aggressive style met its limit. After Gettysburg, the war's center of gravity shifts: Ulysses S. Grant takes overall command in 1864, abandons the old pattern of retreating after a bloody battle, and instead keeps pressing Lee south toward Richmond and Petersburg in a grinding war of attrition that finally ends at Appomattox in 1865.
Key terms
- Rifled musket
- A firearm with spiral grooves in the barrel that spin the bullet, giving it far greater accurate range than older smoothbore muskets.
- Pickett's Charge
- The failed Confederate frontal infantry assault on the third day of Gettysburg, July 3, 1863.
- Antietam
- A September 1862 battle in Maryland, the bloodiest single day of the war, that halted Lee's first northern invasion.
- War of attrition
- A strategy of grinding down an enemy's manpower and resources through continuous pressure rather than seeking one decisive battle.
- Turning point
- A moment after which the overall direction of a conflict shifts decisively, commonly applied to Gettysburg in the eastern theater.
Watch it explained
- How it worksWalk me through the eastern campaigns from Bull Run to Antietam to Gettysburg.
- Worked exampleTrace Pickett's Charge across the field at Gettysburg and show why it failed.
- How it worksHow does the rifled musket make the old frontal assault suicidal?
- Going furtherWhat changes about the eastern war once Grant takes command and refuses to retreat?
Check yourself
End of topic.