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Thanks as I said I find your Civil war very interesting. One question I do have. Most battles elsewhere had the same name etc Why at stages were battles known as different names in the Civil War. You have for example Bull Run battles yet it was known as Mannassas Junction as well. Or Sharpsburg is another example. I have never been really clear on that issue.
Unfortunately Renrich I have to plead as being a neutral observer much like British Army Officers were at Gettysburg.
I have to admit though Southern Commanders had exceptional talent in battle. For example Robert E Lee and it seems to me he had the exceptional ability to gather around him good officers of the calibre of Longstreet and Ewell for examples but not only that he was admired by his own troops as a Commander. Totally different from example like McCelland who was self absorbed and Burnside etc. Lee had the ability no question about it that was lacking in some Northern Commanders greatly. Until such a time when Grant and Sherman came to the fore and it changed dramatically in another direction for the North
Manassas is the nearby town, Bull Run was a nearby river.
You could talk about Lee's brilliance all day long, but he still ordered a charge against the Yank center. Of course it was smashed and the rebel offensive was over. Perhaps this whole excursion into the North was the south's only shot at a successful outcome to the war. As sys brought up, they hadn't an icicle's chance in hell of emerging victorious in a prolonged struggle due to their piss poor industry and infrastructure... not to mention lack of a notable navy.
MK, there were more than a few southerners who thought that one southern soldier could whip ten yankee's (and vice versa).
Actually the men in the 54th were practically all free men from up north. Almost none were ex-slaves contrary to the movie, "Glory" which otherwise was an excellent and seemingly authentic movie. E-mac an earlier poster stated the the South tended to name battles after the closest town whereas the North named them after the closest sizable watercourse unless there was not one and then they used the name of the closest town as in Chancellorsville. Actually at Gettysburg Lee asked Longstreet to attack the second day as soon as practicable but Longstreet dallied until late in the day. Hood particularly wanted to swing around to the right and take Meade in the flank. Hood had sent two Texans to scout around the Union left flank and found that to the right of Big Round Top the union flank was open. Longstreet did not want to attack at all but rather to take the whole army, disengage and place it athwart the Union army's route back to Washington and force them to attack where the Confederates had chosen the ground. Longstreet told Hood that Lee had ordered the attack up the Emmitsburg Road (which he mistakenly thought would carry around the Union left flank) and furthermore it was too late to try to get around Big Round Top.
Unfortunately for the South, because of the late start for the attack, just as Hood was smashing Sickle's left flank and overrunning the Devil's Den, General Warren, the Army of the Potomac's chief engineer found the Little Round Top with only a signal unit present and he ordered two V Corps brigades and a battery onto it's summit. They got there just before Hood's men did. Actually Hood went down early in the attack. A shell fragment struck his left arm and shattered it from bicep to wrist so his division was leaderless the rest of the day.
Off of the Gettysburg subject but even Nathan Bedford Forrest at Fort Pillow offered the Union commander the opportunity to surrender before the fort was taken by storm with the surety that all of the Union troops including the black troops of which about half the garrison was comprised, would be given full rights as POWs. However the Confederate government did take the position that any runaway slaves that were captured in a blue uniform would be returned to their "owners." Quite a number of the South's officers were in sympathy with the plight of the slaves, including Lee and Jackson. And obviously very few of the EM in the South's armies owned slaves since only about 10 per cent of the South's families were slave owners.