Was There Such A Thing As A Possible Winning Strategy For The South?

Military History \| How To Make War \| Wars Around the World	Rules of Use	How to Behave on an Internet Forum
US Civil War - Eastern Theater Discussion Board
Return to Topic Page

Subject: Was There Such A Thing As A Possible Winning Strategy For The South?
CJH 4/21/2007 2:18:06 PM

I believe the War Between the States was decided in the West and not the East where it was indecisive. Lee was an able defensive general but was unable to make the transition to an effective offensive strategist in his two forays north of the Potomac. He could have turned the tables on the Army of the Potomac in Pennsylvania but his ethical mores were adverse to this. I believe the Confederacy could have prevailed in the West had it fashioned an army designed for mobility and maneuver and employed scorched earth methods in the Midwest. However, in Lee's case in Pennsylvania he could have drawn Meade out of his defensive positions at Gettysburg. I remember reading about one of Rome's early wars with a neighboring city-state. Rome's enemy's army holed itself up in the walled city to avoid a battle. Seeing this, the Roman consul set fire to the crops in the farm land which supported the city. This apparently forced the erstwhile beseiged enemy army to risk an engagement which it lost. Scipio Africanus forced the Carthaginians to concede that he had control of their territory when he laid waste to their breadbasket crop lands. Lee, had he been willing, could have laid waste to the Pennsylvania countryside, casting Meade into the state of psychological dislocation born of being forced to act precipitously by newspapers, politicians to say nothing of a sense of honor. But I am sure that Lee would say that while that may have been true, a Southern victory would not have been worth being guilty of the commission of such an offense against God and humanity. If Jackson had been alive and was in Lee's shoes at Gettysbug, I wonder what he would have done.

Quote Reply

Show Only Poster Name and Title Newest to Oldest

Pages: 1 2 3 NEXT

buzzard 5/16/2007 12:28:53 PM

I think you greatly overstate the logistical capabilities of the South. There was a whole lot of people, land and industry in the North. An offensive by the South was not a very likely success. Personally, I'm of the opinion that if the South had tried a more guerilla warfare thing, they might well have tired out the North. Their tendency to try to engage in stand up fights against the North was what doomed them. Sure, they won their share of victories, but when you are fighting someone with so much more resources, you are going to lose eventually via attrition if you try to fight on their terms.

buzzard

Quote Reply

CJH 5/26/2007 9:38:11 PM

I think you greatly overstate the logistical capabilities of the South.
There was a whole lot of people, land and industry in the North. An
offensive by the South was not a very likely success. Personally, I'm
of the opinion that if the South had tried a more guerilla warfare
thing, they might well have tired out the North. Their tendency to try
to engage in stand up fights against the North was what doomed them.
Sure, they won their share of victories, but when you are fighting
someone with so much more resources, you are going to lose eventually
via attrition if you try to fight on their terms.

buzzard

On paper, as I understand it, France had a more powerful army in 1940 than had Germany. France's airforce was numerically on par with that of the Germans. Yet France was put in a hopeless situation in only two weeks. The difference, basically the will to fight and win which manifested itself in superior planning, organization and preparation.

All or most of Europe opposed revolutionary France but France wound up the military master of the continent.

Something like, was it, 900 conquistadors conquered all of Mexico.

Bellisarius with a numerically limited army tied the Goths of Italy in knots and easily defeated the vastly more numerous Vandals.

Every opponent in war has weaknesses. The job of good generals is too discover and exploit them.

The North's will to fight solidified and crystalized only gradually during the war and this process depended on successes in the field. Lincoln's re-election in 1864 was doubtful until the victories in and around Atlanta. Had a great disaster befell the Army of the Potomac, the peace party in the North would have been strengthened perhaps enough to change the composition of Congress and later the White House.

Also, foreign countries were watching to see who they might profitably back or cooperate with. A military disaster for the North might have resulted in recognition of the South by European states as a legitimately sovereign entity benefiting from the international rules of war.

Quote Reply

CJH 5/27/2007 12:17:44 PM

I think you greatly overstate the logistical capabilities of the South.
There was a whole lot of people, land and industry in the North. An
offensive by the South was not a very likely success. Personally, I'm
of the opinion that if the South had tried a more guerilla warfare
thing, they might well have tired out the North. Their tendency to try
to engage in stand up fights against the North was what doomed them.
Sure, they won their share of victories, but when you are fighting
someone with so much more resources, you are going to lose eventually
via attrition if you try to fight on their terms.

buzzard

B. H. Liddel Hart was perhaps the foremost expert on military strategy ever. I think I paraphrase him correctly if I say he wrote that the moral plane is by far the most important in war. That excludes logistics as being most important.

I believe the model for the Civil War is that of a siege. The South was under a siege. Being under siege its hope was to hold out until the North either ran out of interest or ran out of resources. Since as you say the North had a decisive superiority in resouces, the South was limited hoping for a collapse of the North's will to carry on and endure to the end.

The South may have wished to inflict a certain number of human casualties on the North over time making the North tire. But Lincoln raised that threshold with his Emancipation Proclamation making victory worth a much higher price in blood and treasure than it had been.

My point is that by aggressively attacking the North and especially its economic base the South would have really hurt it where it counts. Had the South been able to hurt the North's commerce, the courage might have gone out of its leadership.

Quote Reply

vietasianfox45 6/4/2007 5:46:06 AM

I think you greatly overstate the logistical capabilities of the South.
There was a whole lot of people, land and industry in the North. An
offensive by the South was not a very likely success. Personally, I'm
of the opinion that if the South had tried a more guerilla warfare
thing, they might well have tired out the North. Their tendency to try
to engage in stand up fights against the North was what doomed them.
Sure, they won their share of victories, but when you are fighting
someone with so much more resources, you are going to lose eventually
via attrition if you try to fight on their terms.

buzzard

Actually, there were people who wanted Lee to continue to fight, but in a guerilla warfare, but Lee decided not to. The South had no choice, but to surrender when Lee declined to fight any longer. Both sides of the war respected Lee for his leadership that he gave to the Confederacy. Lee was the first one the North offered to command the Union forces. If Lee had accepted, the South would have had no chance at all.

Quote Reply

PowerPointRanger Buzzard 9/11/2007 7:01:32 PM

I have to agree with Buzzard. The North had most of the strategic advantages: money, industry, population, infrastructure. The longer the Civil war went on, the more likely it was that the North would win.

The main advantages the South had were: it began the war with most of the best military leaders and troops, and it was able to fight a defensive war. The quality of the troops would only be a temporary advantage as the Northern troops gained experience over time. The defensive advantage was a limited one as well, given that a war fought on the defensive can only lead to the destruction of defensive resources & it cedes the initiative to the enemy.

There was another consideration at play. The technology of war changed dramatically in a way that few soldiers at the time understood. War went from favoring the attacker (with muskets and bayonette charges) to favoring the defender (with repeating rifles and early automatic weapons). The South was slow to catch on to this shift and suffered horribly from it. Aggressive Southern leaders continued to attack even as the changes in technology made this tactic obsolete. Moreover, they lacked the resources to take advantage of the innovations.

The only scenarios I can imagine in which the South could win would involve foreign intervention (which would have required an end to slavery).

Quote Reply

CJH 9/22/2007 10:10:56 PM

IIRC, Sharf's history of the Confederate navy includes his observation that the Confederacy erred in not recognizing that "torpedoes" were generally far more cost effective as naval weapons than ironclads given the defensive nature of the South's position.

IIRC, He also mentioned the brief use or attempted use of a naval mine or torpedo as a land mine during the retreat up the peninsula towards Richmond. The Confederate general in command forbade the use of naval torpedoes to mine roads when he discovered that some under his command were wanting to. He apparently considered such use to be a breach of the rules of civilized warfare.

I believe Liddell Hart wrote about Belisarius that he used his considerable ability at the tactical defensive in such a way as to form an effective strategic offensive. Belisarius seems also to have excelled at being effective against his foes while at a great numerical disadvantage. Belisarius would have been a good model for Confederate generals.

Quote Reply

Carl S 9/23/2007 6:48:10 AM

The weakness of the Unionists was political. They did not have as broad support as the sucessionists did in the South. The Republicans barely took through the election of 1860. The anti federalists/states rights advocates, antiwar groups, Democratic party loyalists, ect... together were a significant group but unorganized and not effectively drawing support from the general electorate. Had the South won a few more decisive victorys in 1861-63 support for the Uniionist/Federalist agenda would have weakend and the various other factions in the North gained enough strength to undermine the Republicans in Congress & the Lincoln/Seward government. With Congress shifting towards the anti war factions and several states ceasing support for the war the money and volunteers would be insuffcient to hold a large Federal army together. The election of 1862 would be key. Were the war to go worse for the North a significant number of the Radical Republicans, and pro Unionist Democrats would be likely to lose their seats. In that case the new Congress might force some sort of reconciliation with the Confederate government and a eventual peace.

Were Jackson or Lee in the spring or summer of 1862 able to close to Washington DC and threaten to invest it the political consequenses would be imense. Even the possiblity of the Federal governement leaving the capitol would be a severe embarassment, and a relocation lasting just a few weeks could be catastophic to the Republican government.

Great defeats or victorys are seldom a product of just the battlefield. While the military battles may be indecisive in themselves their effect on the general population can result in a feeling of defeat & consequent shift in leadership & policy.

The converse of this is true for the South as well. Jefferson Davis was president of a weak confederated government. Had McDowell or McClellan defeated Johnston and marched onto Richmond it is possible the Southern coalition would have fallen apart, leaving the indivdual states to fight on in a uncoordinated manner and some even reconcilling with the US government.

Quote Reply

Photon 12/17/2007 12:53:15 AM

The South resorting to a massive guerilla war against the North? Sounds like a good idea at first, but the South will have to pay a hefty price. Since a war with guerillas can easily be interpreted by the conventional side as a war with rebels and terrorists, if I were the North, I would treat the South as a terrorist sympathizers and their civil population do not deserve to be treated fairly. The South will face much more humiliation and destruction if they go guerilla ...

Quote Reply

CJH 12/22/2007 1:11:15 PM

Your answer is the logical one. However, it is quite possible that Reconstruction Era Southerners would have said that this is how they had been actually treated anyway.

But I was not describing an asymmetrical war. I was describing a conventional war in which Southern armies would enter the North to lay waste to its economy by scorched earth tactics and to spur the migration of masses of refugees within the North. That is, to do what Sherman did in his march to the sea.

Quote Reply

Carl S 12/24/2007 6:56:00 AM

"I was describing a conventional war in which Southern armies would enter the North to lay waste to its economy by scorched earth tactics and to spur the migration of masses of refugees within the North. That is, to do what Sherman did in his march to the sea."

Difficult, and unecessary. Its only necessary for the Confederates gain a couple of large victorys, and/or cause the Federal government to flee Washington to weaken the support forthe Republican government. A broad swath of destruction across the countryside or burning a city like Philidelphia would rally as many people to the Federalist cause as it would drive others to a anti war stance.

Quote Reply

1 2 3 NEXT