Dr. Mackubin Thomas Owens of the Naval War College took on the South's Civil War strategy in an essay published in National Review.
There is an old story, probably apocryphal, about a meeting of the Southern Historical Society in the years after the Civil War. The topic was Gettysburg — what mistakes, large or small, did the Confederates make that led to the Southern defeat? The debate was heated and furious. Tempers were at the boiling point. Finally, one of the participants turned to George Pickett of “Pickett’s Charge” fame. “George,” he said, “you were there. Why did we lose the battle?” to which Pickett replied, “I always thought the Yankees had something to do with it.”
This anecdote reflects a historiographical debate about the Civil War in general. Was the cause of Confederate defeat external, or internal? Those who emphasize internal causes attribute the failure to breakdowns in Confederate leadership, both political and military, and Rebel errors on the battlefield. Those who stress external causes attribute this defeat to the military might of the Union, Lincoln’s wartime leadership, and Union generalship.....
It is important to realize that, while southern morale had suffered as a result of battlefield setbacks in 1864, many in the South saw the situation in the winter of 1864–65 as just another period of peril — no different from that of spring 1862 or even the darkest days of the American Revolution — that could be reversed. Northerners, on the other hand, though increasingly confident of victory, were concerned that a prolongation of the war could lead to war-weariness and a negotiated settlement. Others were concerned that the Confederates might turn to guerrilla warfare. Thus the final months of the Confederacy offer an excellent case study in war termination.
What alternative outcomes were possible? At a minimum they included a negotiated settlement, a successful attempt by the Confederates to prevent the junction of the forces of Meade and Sherman, and the resort to guerrilla warfare.
As to the first, it is unlikely that Lincoln would have agreed to a negotiated settlement even if Jefferson Davis had not short-circuited every attempt to achieve one. Regarding a possible link-up between Lee and Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina, all came to naught when Lee was cut off and surrounded at Appomattox. Johnston, despite his many failures during the war, may have redeemed himself by bringing about an end to hostilities by essentially disobeying the orders of the Confederate president and surrendering his force in order to “save the people [and] spare the blood of the army.”
Had Johnston not done so, the pursuing Union armies would have devastated the land, as Lee, Johnston, and others feared. But this possibility, as Grimsley has observed, “will forever remain moot because [Johnston], facing a clear-cut military decision, stepped beyond the traditional, almost sacred boundaries of American civil-military relations and refused to fight a lost war any longer.”
On the other hand, the Union high command needed not only to defeat the Confederate armies, but also to do so in such a way as to foreclose the possibility that the defeated South would turn to guerrilla warfare. A successful Union war-termination strategy had to create what Grimsley and Simpson call “the best possible conditions for a true reunion” between the warring sections. I am one of those who believe that the “guerrilla option” was never a realistic possibility. For one thing, the areas necessary for the successful exercise of this option — the mountainous areas of western North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, and the like — were largely Unionist.....
The fact that the Civil War was not preordained to end as it did leads to a broader question: Was there a strategy the South could have pursued that would have resulted in a better outcome for the Confederacy?..... Rest of essay.
42 comments:
We lost?
Because we got our ass whipped.
Because England decided they didn't need the south's cotton as much as they thought
Because the industry of the north was able to produce weapons. It's kind of hard to kill people with Okra.
Because they outnumbered us 4 to 1
because the south was fighting a lost cause
Okra is not a lethal weapon? I guess that explains why the Fighting Okra of Delta State have never been a football powerhouse.
I dunno. Deep fried like it is at Fanin mart or Two Sisters, it can be pretty lethal.
The Fighting Okra football team of Delta State has won two Division II national titles. Fear the Okra.
I was shocked to learn just last year that with President Lincoln "Emancipation Proclamation", that he only freed the slaves in the (mostly southern) states that had rebelled against the United States. I was taught in school that he freed ALL the slaves. His slaves (in the northern states) continued to be his slaves. Amazing what we are taught in school as the gospel turns out to be BS.
That the article veered from the usual debate of military strategy and equipment to the larger picture was refreshing, but still the government of the Confederacy seems to continue to get overlooked.
The Confederate States couldn't unite off the battlefield while the Union states could and did cooperate with a functioning centralized government to support and equip an Army under a clear chain of command.
The Confederacy lost because there was never a united, cooperative, functioning Confederate government.
Peanuts can be just as lethal as fried okra. A couple stuck in each nostril and a double handful in the mouth
I linked an article a few weeks back that argued the South lost the war but won the insurgency, à la Iraq. Too lazy this morning to find the link, but it's an interesting thought.
If you don't think OKRA is a bad a$$ weapon try going to the Okra Strut in Irmo, SC.
Here's an idea. Slavery was evil and immoral! The south's cause was unjust and Providence would let this system stand.
Trying to fight against the idea of a central government by forming another central government. Sounds like stupidity, but what can I say? Sounds kinda similar to "states rights conservatives" of today . Neocons fighting a lost cause, again.
Perhaps our victory was stolen because of "Irregularities" in the process.
Betcha 90+% of JJ readers have never been to Gettysburg. Don't bother lying. Won't believe you.
I went, on the way to Vermont for spring break. Could not believe what Pickett's & Pettigrew's men were asked to do: you look at that field and think, there's no way. And there wasn't.
Lincoln's unnecessary war was not fought over slavery. Slavery was a peripheral issue but was made, by the media, to be the boogar-bear. Politics at its best.
Lincoln freed NOBODY by his silly proclamation. The errant and meaningless document was simply a war measure. That according to members of his own cabinet. The Confederacy, by then, was a separate nation. Lincoln had no power to affect any person living in the Confederacy.
What the hell has visiting Gettysburg got to do with anything. You won't find any Confederate boys there. Just as you will find none at the Vicksburg 'Military Park'.
Ignorance and yank-written history go hand in hand. Shove it all in the face of a third grader and you have a true believer for life. Shove it in the face of a black adult and you have an angry, misinformed militant.
Never met a white Mississippi male who understood the reasons for the war. Just read the official article of Secession. Reconstruction continues, Mississippi gets paid more per dollar of taxes paid in than any other 'welfare' state for being in the Union. Makes Mississippi the most Federal of all states IMHO. Total victory or defeat depends on view.
Yes, I have been to Gettysburg my Great Grandfathers name is on a monument.
Soon Ole Miss will have a SNAP card mascot?
6:18, meet 7:03.
There are quite a few Southern monuments at Gettysburg. Even those who, like me, are glad the United States won the war, can sympathize with the brave kids (and most of them were kids) who followed their leaders, obeyed orders, and paid the price.
As for unnecessary war ... I had thought that South Carolina opened fire on a United States fort?
Good Read, one must wipe out a committed enemy enough to end it. The rapid expansion west in my view aided in assuring war did not continue. Applying this lesson, how can we wipe out IS to the point they stop. More risk of creating another armed group as we get in bed with the Syrians Islamic fighters.
I posted 7:03 sorry for the distraction.
7:58 am My mind went to how are we going to defeat ISIS as well especially if there are no lessons learned from the past?
We seem to, over and over, not understand our enemies very well and in demonizing them and/or focusing on our superiority and righteousness, underestimate them at our peril.
We fail too often to look coldly at our weaknesses and our contributions to exacerbating conflict before marching ahead.
And, we think too little about what risks still exist when the final shots are fired.
Do you not think ISIS understands our economic frailty this moment in time? Do they not understand we are a divided Nation and our President and Congress don't enjoy our united support in anything? Does ISIS military strategy not look familiar to any of you?
History is ripe with armies that have won most of the battles, enjoyed military superiority and still lost the war.
And, yet, men still seem to focus on how the key battles were lost rather than the reasons that became inevitable.
The day the shots were fired at Ft. Sumter, the South was engaged in a lost cause.
Nowhere in that article does it discuss the women that were raped and murdered. The children that were murdered. All of the innocent civilians that were slaughtered. The south lost the war, because we were fighting a gentleman's war. While the North was fighting a barbarians war.
9:13. How about all the enslaved peoples, women and children raped and murdered. Men who were beat to the point of death? Seems you only have sympathy for those southeners who were white. You do realize that this went on for hundreds of years in the south before the war?
9:13 AM
A gentleman's war. You A$$HOLE. What gentleman fights to enslave another? I bet you continue to donate money to Chris McDaniel.
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union
In the momentous step, which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
9:00am right on! it is so easy to get in a war and so hard to exit on. WW2 started when Germans invaded Poland, ended with Poland under Stalin. We in the USA call it a great victory, not sure the Poles would agree.
I'll summarize September 15, 2014 at 9:00 AM in 10 words.
"Blah, blah, blah. I am the expert, you are not."
@ 7:56 am Can't wait to watch Mississippi College to beat them in football this year. Go Choctaws!
Read THE REAL LINCOLN. The war was unnecessary, slavery could have been gotten rid of in other ways as it already had in other civilized counties. Prior to Lincoln, the federal government was barely centralized. He was not the Great Emancipator, he was the Great Centralizer.
P.S. No I'm not a McDaniel supporter. :)
Several McDaniel supports have told me "The Civil War was not about Slavery! The Civil War was about STATES RIGHTS!"
It is a semi-robotic response.
I suppose the States right to keep people in Slavery was not the only factor. But then I gave them (individually) a one minute test:
In one minute, can you name 3 "States Rights" that motivated you to start the War (other than the right to keep people in slavery)?
So far all I hear from any of them is some incoherent mumbling about the right to bear arms (which was not really an issue back then), and confused silence.
10:01: He meant the tactics used in battle and to fight the war itself.
In other words, the North used a variation of total war and didn't play nice. They realized they needed to break the will of the South. Forget Clausewitz, thats Sun-Tzu. It worked.
As for State's rights, keep in mind back then people thought differently about the states. People saw themselves as citizens first of Virginia or Ohio more strongly than they did of the USA. Tariffs and population growth of the North had much to do with the Civil War but frankly, you can't get around slavery. The resolution passed by Mississippi says plenty about slavery in no uncertain terms.
KF - agreed. Lee kept fighting out of the Napoleonic playbook, chasing the decisive battle that would win the war. Closer attention to Napoleon's career would've suggested the result: a war of attrition, bleeding the South dry. But with railroads and rifles, it took 4 years not 15.
Why did they lose the war? Exactly the same reasons they are losing the 21st century.
1. Proud and willful ignorance on many fronts.
2. Physical, mental, and technical inferiority.
3. Lack of morality and common human decency, particularly in the treatment of the black population, but not limited to that. Other nations were repulsed by their character, particularly in regard to the Slavery issue, so they could never make alliances, not England, not France, not even Mexico.
Genius rarely beats logistics. How did Hannibal do? or for a closer war, pick the Prussian war with Austria-Hungary. Unified command, telegraphs, railroads, logistics. Max Boot has an excellent chapter on that war in his book. The needle guns helped as well.
Also didn't help the South that their generals kept getting killed while the better Union ones slowly rose to the top.
That happens quite a bit. There have been quite a few times we got our asses kicked at first in a war. WWII, Civil War, Revolutionary War.
People forget how often the Romans had it rough early in a war. The Punic Wars. One of their biggest losses was against the Cimbri at Aurusio. Marius wound up annihilating the Cimbri. Romans often lost battle and won wars. One commander was told by a Spanish Town that they could hold out for ten years and laughed at him. He said fine, he would be back in the eleventh year. It surrendered as they knew he meant it. ;-)
A couple of responses to 9:00AM
>>Do you not think ISIS understands our economic frailty this moment in time?
What makes you think ISIS understands much of anything about the modern world? "Economic Frailty" compared to who? Syria? Are you saying you would swap United States Treasury Bonds for ISIS promissory notes? Are you one of the chumps who bought Iraq paper currency with US dollars a few years back?
>>"Do they not understand we are a divided nation.. ?"
Wow. Divided like Iraq or Syria? Or divided like the Islamic factions? Are we really so divided that half the country might split off any day and join the ISIS? Maybe Mississippi should go first. It would save the rest of us from paying that reconstruction money that the Red States have been consuming for the last 150 years.
Life too short to get killed in a war. Even if you survive in a war you will get killed by the Dept. of Veterans Affair.I rest my case consular.
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You still haven't looked up what "consular" means, have you?
[Hint: "An official appointed by a government to reside in a foreign country and represent his or her government's commercial interests and assist its citizens there. See Usage Note at council.
2. Either of the two chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, elected for a term of one year.
3. Any of the three chief magistrates of the French Republic from 1799 to 1804."]
Oh dear god.
We're going back to protect key American interests.
The little gangsters over there, although terrorists, are hampering those interests. Bet your but that if we didn't have assets over there, that we wouldn't have a dog in this fight.
Not so different from the mind boggling senate race.
It's all about ' the goods' one way or another.
Middle eastern countries ( some not all ) are now our new allies. Get used to it. They're tried of the extremist thugs too. Need help in resolving the matter.
( does anyone think logistics anymore, or are they all just brainwashed by the media, religion, and politics?)
Russia's pissed because they've been funding the little thugs and we're cutting the money wire.
That's why they're trying to scare us with empty nuclear war games.
Welcome to world war 3 ( china has a role as well!)
* see russia- china pipeline. Connect dots. Be enlightened.
Because of the inherent risks involved in all of this, we CANNOT have a knee jerk reaction. The best minds in the world are tackling this with logistical strategy.
---- Thank you!
I disagree.
It was not mental and physical inferiority "as such". It seems this way because of substandard Education and poor Healthcare.
The Southerners were so poorly educated they thought they could win a war against the richer, more educated, and healthier North. They were completely ignorant of what they were facing. And they were infested with hookworms which sapped their physical ability to fight.
So really, nothing has changed. Mississippi is still at the bottom in terms of Education and Healthcare.
2:34
do us a favor and leave then.
Stonewall Jaksun haint need no book larnin!
4:24 Are you a descendant of that fabled Mississippi "redneck legislator" whom KF quoted a few years back as saying "We don't need no Harvards down here"?
Google finds several sites where the quote is cited but not any details about the original legislator or the circumstances surrounding his speech.
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