Question of the Week: 11/28-12/4/22

In your opinion what is the most important mountain gap in Civil War history? Why?



10 Responses to Question of the Week: 11/28-12/4/22

  1. Hoover’s Gap – where Wilder’s Lightning Brigade demonstrated the superior firepower and maneuver of mounted infantry armed with Spencer repeating rifles

  2. Brown’s Gap: Little known, and lost in history. But in the spring of 1862, Stonewall Jackson used Brown’s Gap at the beginning and the end of his famous Valley Campaign. The result was to turn the tide of Union victories in the first half of 1862, and ultimately evict the Army of the Potomac from Virginia after merging his little Army of the Valley into Lee’s ANV in late June of 1862. There’s a parking stop these days on the Skyline Drive at Brown’s Gap.

  3. In the west, the gap Longstreet found at the Battle of Chicamauga.

    In the east, without an unprotected Thoroughfare Gap there’s no Second Manassas slaughter, Generals Stevens and Kearny, two generals who knew what they were doing, are able to contribute more to the army after September 1862, no court martial of Fitz John Porter, probably no Lost Order 191/South Mountain/Antietam. I’m sure Lincoln gets sick of McClellan’s antics anyways, so I can’t say no Fredericksburg.

    Respect to all the gaps mentioned previously.

  4. The collective gaps on South Mountain in mid-September 1862: If Confederate troops had not so vigorously defended these passes, McClellan might have arrived a day earlier at Sharpsburg and thus attacked Lee a day earlier, before help could arrive from Harpers Ferry.

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