Greatest Successes of the CW

[ole]

Can't argue with any of your choices, Opn. While one might quibble a bit about which and what might outrank your points, they are certainly pointed very well.

ole

[samgrant]

Originally Posted by OpnDownfall

For the south:
1) The slave oligarchy's (leadership) success in convincing most southerners that their interests in secession were the same.

2) Splitting the Democratic Party in the 1860 Elections.

3) Starting a war to bring Va. into the confederacy.

Those are sucesses?

If so each created an even larger failure and/or catastrophe.

1. Resulting in immense amounts of death and destuction for the South (and the end of their precious peculiar institution).

2. Resulting in a near certainty that a Democrat would not be elected.

3. Turning that state into the one vast battlefield of the Eastern Theater.

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[OpnDownfall]

IMO without those early successes, there would have been no CSA. They guaranteed the attempt at secession, Not it's success.



P.S. and without secession there would have been no CW.

[matthew mckeon]

By that standard, any Confederate success is actually a defeat since it prolonges the war. If Beauregard and Johnston had lost the 1st Battle of Bull Run, and Richmond had fallen the next day, and the CSA surrendered in a month, then that's a Confederate success, because less loss in lives and property and less disruption to slavery.

However, if we define success for the South as progress in their goal of independence, then the points cited by Opn, work, even if the South ultimately failed.

[OpnDownfall]

That was indeed, what I was Trying to say. Thank you Matthew.