Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Battle of Bull Run

"There was a festive mood as hundreds of civilians rode out from Washington to picnic and watch the entertaining spectacle of a one-battle war.  Instead they witnessed a bloody, chaotic catastrophe."  -- p. 665

What does this quote from the reading show us about the public's understanding and role in the war?

13 comments:

  1. This quote shows that the public was right there while the fighting was going on. They would come out and watch the battles and watch people die, even though they thought they were going to see something nice and entertaining. They watched the people die and witnessed everything. The public most likely didn't really know what was going on because they were expecting to watch the "entertaining spectacle of a one battle war" and ended up seeing a "bloody, chaotic catastrophe". They clearly don't really understand what goes on in war because they were thinking that nothing bad would really happen, and that it would be okay to watch. The quote also says that there was a "festive" mood. The civilians had a festive mood? Why would they be festive for a battle? They obviously didn't really understand what was going on and didn't realize what they were about to watch.

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  2. This quote shows that the public was clueless and never really understood what a war actually looks like, which there is blood and guts everywhere. I sadly agree with Tina and saying that she is right when she talks about how they showed up to be entertained and end up being horrified. But the role the public played were just innocent bystanders that had nothing to do and knew nothing about what the war really was about.

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  3. Okay, this quote is talking about the civilians from Washington therefore they are northerners. Apparently, as Tina said, they had no idea what they were about to see until they saw the bloody pictures. Lincoln thought wrong. He thought by bringing the number of people to the battle could overturn the outnumbered confederates army and then the war would end. The coincidence was that the confederacy planed it in the same way. General Beauregard brought their main army to this battle and hoped to quickly strike Washington D.C so the War could end. Nobody liked any war. By reading the letter of a Southern soldier to his wife, I learned that people just wanted to defend their liberty and independence. They didn't want to fight in this war but neither side wanted to lose, therefore no matter how hard they tried to win this war, they just couldn't win, for four years.

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  4. The public clearly knew nothing about the war. They thought it was a game of chivalry, of fairness, and of men charging into battle cheerfully with muskets and cannons in the background. It was not until actually being there to see a battle that people began to realize how horrific and grotesque is truly was.

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  5. Although everyone in America recently came from somewhere else at this point in it's history the country was still young. It hadn't gone through much and therefore the people as well. They lacked an understanding of the entire spectacle that was the civil war. Because the war was played up to be a one and done, necessary conflict ender type of thing the people's reaction reflect that. They gave in to one of the most destructive human faults, expectations, and thus were traumatized by the reality of not necessarily the civil war but war and government based conflict in general.

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  6. This quote shows how the civilians from washington knew nothing of how the war was to be , they thought that they would have a tremendous defeat over the south. THis however, was not the case at all. Both sides thought this was going to be a short war, to last no longer than about 6 months, when instead it lasted multiple years. No one was ready for the amount of bloodshed and fighting that was about to go on, and no one wanted it either. Both sides feared of what would happen if the other side were to win, which only made each side want to fight even more, anddd made them put up with all the bloodshed as long as they were to win. Not to mention how in the letter the man wrote to his wife about how he found it absoultely ridiculous when officers surrendered, and im sure there were many other men who felt the same as him. That being a reason there was so much more bloodshed then expected because people did not want to surrender, and the people who didddd surrender most definitely did not want to and they must have had too many people die or be injured to actually surrender. Also, each side thought that they had a good strategy going into the war, and because of their good stratedgy they thought that it would be short and quick. But niether sides strategys ended up working, which caused men to become chaotic and "frenzied". The Battle of Bull run was one of the first battles to show both sides that this war was not going to be as quick and simple as they had orginally thought. Overall, the war ended up being completley the opposite of what everyone originally thought it would be, and thats why the "bloody, chaotic catastrophe" was such a surprise.

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  7. This quote shows how ridiculously overconfident the public of the North was about annihilating the rebels in one fell swoop. They expected a single spectacular battle. This was a huge problem because the public put pressure on the government to put down the rebels, so many times, Lincoln forced the army into tight situations to get that quick victory that everybody wanted, thereby inhibiting the generals to fight the way that they should have. So the public had very little understanding of the war at first, but was hugely influential in the way that it was fought.

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  8. I totally agree with Tina and Paxi. This quote pisses me off, it shows how ridiculously foolish people were. First of all they went to watch battles expecting it to be an "entertaining spectacle" but we are talking about a battle in the context of a civil war which means that people were dying. The worst part of it is that the northerners would go to see that massacre with picnics since they did not know how that would be like. It shows therefore how the public and the ones that were not fighting didn't known AT ALL what a war was and what was going on in their own country. (That also means that in the future they won't know how to manage the post-war because I don't think they expected that to happen in a war)

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  9. This quote shows why the public sentiment of the North at the time of the civil war, and the reason why Lincoln was pressured to win the civil war quickly. The population of the north had a wrong idea about how the civil war was going to be. Not only were they influenced by the newspaper articles and other public resources, but also military scientists predicted that it would only take 60 takes for civil war to end, which made the masses to believe that the war would end quickly. Because of these sentiments in the north, Lincoln had tried forced the Union army to win quick victories. When General Mcculin was criticized for his slowness, Lincoln had to fire him, not just because he didn't like him but because of the public sentiment.

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  10. That quote implies the general public's attitude toward the Civil War, public from both sides, especially the one from the North expected a quick victory. However, their expectation is the total opposite from the reality. What actually happened was that both sides need more soldier and especially the North, because of the public expectation of a quick war. The public expectation pressured the Union to put in large quantity of soldiers. As a result of this, the government issued the draft and keep on extending the ages limit for soldier till 16 to 50. Although people can pay about 300 dollars or having specific situation to avoid going to war, that still raised public anger, particularly the immigrants, who have low income and were afraid of the black taking over their jobs after the black are free.

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  11. The fact that the North had no idea how the war was going to be is proved through this quote. The North expected victory at the first battle and did not realize the strength that the South held. The bloodshed that occurred in the war was only magnified by the fear that the other side would win. The public in general did not realize how brutal the war was going to get and therefore were unprepared when the war did not end in a short period of time. The fact that Lincoln not only did not want to originally abolish slavery, he acknowledged that it was important for US stability, economically. The emancipation of the slaves was more of a bi-product of the war than the sole reason why we went to war in the first place.

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  12. the war was to be short like the punishment of a rouge child. the south would blow off steam in a effort to try and pester the stronger north while the north would dismantle the south and negations for peace and restoration would begin began. the war was more like two brothers one slightly older and the other much younger filled with tenacity and grit to overcome the odds and strength of his older sibling. the war ended up dragging out into four long years filled with war and despair.

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  13. This quote shows how from the publics perspective they did not really know what was happening in the war in the sense that they did not know how bad things were. When the quote talks about a picnic, it means like a happy, glorious time and the fact that it turned into a bloody battle to watch proves how much confidence the north had in winning because they did not expect the south to maybe be as confident and as strong as they were. Its not so much that the north didn't know what was going on, its the fact that because they went into the war closed minded with the idea that they were going to win fast, they had a hard time excepting that it was going to be a long, hard war.

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