When did the Confederate Leadership,

[ole]

Am ambivalent on that question, Banker. I believe it to have been rational to have tossed in the towel much earlier than it was. On the other hand, quitting before dying was not a card in the deck. (At least for the fire-eating leadership.)

And, if we might be granted a third hand, how much control or influence did Davis actually have? Would he have had the power to capitulate? Did he want to but couldn't?

He wasn't an instigator, but he did accept the responsibility. Given that, he is governed as much as he governs. Once started, war restricts options. The presidency is an administrative position. He can point and move, but he cannot unilaterally do something as radical as quit.

We delight in blaming Lincoln and Davis for everything that happened during those four fateful years, but they acted as the broomsmen in a curling match: directing and influencing but having little to do with the launch of whatever they call the thing that is launched.

The poor sod got hisself suckered into an impossible situation. That he was not competent is almost beside the point. Even skilled would not have overcome the disadvantage existing.

End of musing.

ole

[J_Man0507]

Originally Posted by whitworth

Another war; the same logistical situation.

"Throughout the struggle, it was in his logistic inability to maintain his armies in the field that the enemy's fatal weakness lay. Courage his forces had in full measure, but courage was not enough. Reinforcements failed to arrive, weapons, ammunition and food alike ran short, and the dearth of fuel caused their powers of tactical mobility to dwindle to the vanishing point. In the last stages of the campaign they could do little more than wait for the Allied advance to sweep over them." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics”

As long as most of the historians concentrated on the strategy and tactics, the Confederacy had a chance, and historians passed that view to their readers. If some concentration had been placed on logistics, more students of the Civil War might have understood that holding some Confederate territory was impossible, even early in the Civil War. That the words Eisenhower said of the German army applied to the Confederate army equally well.
"Throughout the struggle, it was in his logistic inability to maintain his armies in the field that the enemy's fatal weakness lay. Courage his forces had in full measure, but courage was not enough."

The Confederacy could not "maintain his armies in the field" in Missouri and Kentucky; it was not a lack of valor, that led to their defeat there.

Whitworth, you make a most excellent point here. If you were to equal out the logistics, and give both sides even numbers of railroads, steamboats, foundries, etc. you give the Confederacy a fighting chance. But war isn't fair, and the South picked a fight it could only win if they did so in the first year of the fighting, which was not going to happen.

I have been in many a discussion with friends who come from the Southern POV, and who still think that even after Gettysburg, the South had a fighting chance. But they fail to look at the logistics, like you said. They have read all the books that laud southern valor, and feel like that alone could have won the war. But they don't realize that the South was fighting a force that had a thousand times the logistical capability that they did. One can look at strategy and tactics, and valor, all they want, but if there is a severe lack of logistical capability, a force is doomed to fail. Without France, I can't even say that the Continental Army could have won the War for Independence. But that is for another forum altogether.

[Borderruffian]

As far as Missouri goes. Any real hope of her pulling out of the Union effectivley ended in March 62 when Sam Curtis defeated Van Dorn at Pea Ridge. And the movement of the Army of the West by Van Dorn across the River in 62 to Iuka-Corinth pretty much cut the hopes of any real invasion of Missouri.

Even the raids by Price and Shelby were wilo'wisps of what a few die hard secesh thought could happen with no real hope of capturing Missouri.

So I'd say the hand writing was on the wall in 62.