Last week, we ran throughout the school gathering notes about every battle that took place during the Civil War. Each student was given one battle to research, but chose them simply by looking at the description of the battle, and had to find out which battle it was based on that given information. Once the battle's identity was identified, we researched the battle's date, location, theater, and reasons that the battle began. Once all of the information was put together, we each made a shareable Google Doc that provided all of our information for other students once the scavenger hunt started. We then made a QR code and put a picture of that QR code along with the battle number and bit.ly link as a poster, and hung them all around the school, with directions to the chronologically correct next battle. We all then went throughout the school starting with the battle after ours, and proceeded to scan in to the various Google Docs using the QR code, and gather all of our notes about all of the battles. To wrap up the lesson, we went on our class padlet.com page, chose two theaters (eastern, naval, or western), and explained which army had the advantage in the theater.
Throughout the eastern, western, and naval theaters, there were relatively clear overall winners. In the eastern theater, the overall victor was the confederate army. The confederate army won far more battles in the eastern theater than the union army. Their victories in the eastern theater included the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas), the Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas), the Battle at Fort Sumter, the Battle of Cold Harbor, the Battle of Fredericksburg, and the Battle of Chancellorsville. In the western theater, the overall victor was the union army, in which the union army won far more battles than the confederate army. The battle which they won in the western theater was the Battle of Vicksburg. The union navy completely dominated the confederate navy, winning every naval battle. The naval battles included the Battle of Baton Rouge, the Battle of Shiloh, the Battle of Hampton Roads (Battle of the Ironclads), the Battle of Fort Donelson, and the Battle of Fort Henry.
There are many commonalities between the strategies of the victorious armies in the battles that they fought in the theater in which they dominated. In the western theater, the union army was able to claim their victory by forcing the confederate soldiers into surrendering and retreating by coming out of the gate strong and winning the first few crucial battles to weaken confederate forces later on. They also relied on the confederate army's already being in a weakened state. For example, at the Battle of Vicksburg, Union victories at Champion Hill and Big Black Bridge caused confederate forces to weaken, forcing them to surrender and retreat to Vicksburg's defenses. The confederate army was also already weakened because of their high number of deaths, and missing and wounded soldiers. The confederacy also employed similar tactics in their wins in the eastern theater in using a powerful initial attack to weaken union forces, and relying upon union forces being previously weakened. For example, in both the Battle of Chancellorsville and the Battle of Fredericksburg, the confederate army hit the union army with a powerful initial attack on top of the fact that they had many missing and wounded soldiers. The union army had 13,300 initial casualties in the Battle of Fredericksburg, and in the battle of Chancellorsville, their general was mortally wounded by his own men. In the naval theater, the union navy also utilized powerful initial attacks or powerful attacks early on in battle to force the confederates to weaken their defenses until their defeat or retreat. For example, in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the union fought back at the confederates' sinking of one of their ironclads by engaging four more to ultimately win the battle using so much force at once. In the Battle of Shiloh, the union navy was too strong for the confederates two unsuccessful counterattacks, leading to their eventual retreat to Corinth.
It is very apparent throughout all of the battles that were fought during the Civil War that the most effective strategy that was relied upon most to be victorious was fighting hard immediately to weaken the other army right from the start to put them at an immediate disadvantage. Both the union and confederacy, regardless of which theater they were in, also relied a lot on disadvantages that the opposing army already had such as a lack of supplies, higher death toll, lack of reinforcements, and more wounded or missing soldiers.
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