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Why the South Lost

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Submitted By jhillman1
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Civil War: Why The South Lost
Jason Hillman
HIS/110
October 13. 2014
James Halm

The south ultimately lost the war because of two things, the will to fight and the emancipation proclamation. The emancipation proclamation basically took a huge chunk of what could have been Lee’s army of African Americans and welcomed them to the free Union army. The slaves were tripping over themselves at the opportunity to escape north and become free. The confederates stayed on the defensive most of the time; rarely did they go into union territory, because most of the times they did it turned out to be a big loss for the confederates. After being beaten down so many times, the confederates lost their will to fight and so started the way the south lost the war.
In June of 1863, confederate general Robert E. Lee took his army of northern Virginia into the north for the second time. The union commander George Gordon Meade was in pursuit, they would ultimately bump into each other at Gettysburg. The battle of Gettysburg started by accident, literally troops bumped into each other. General Lee heard that Meade was pursuing him and mead concentrated his army. The union vanguard is already there as well and they bang into each other north and west of town on McPhersons ridge, it’s an intense fight and ultimately the fight will grow until north of town, your had the union 11th corps, fighting against a corps under a man named Richard Uell. In the end you’re going to have 30,000 confederates out flank and whip 18,000 union troops who retreat back through town to Cemetery hill and to Culp’s hill. For the next 24 hours both sides bring the remainder of their troops here until the Union has about 90,000 troops and the southerners have about 70,000 troops. The union troops form their line in the shape of a fish hook. The confederates line up around that line on the outside; this made

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