The Never-Ending Question

jgoodguy

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The Never-Ending Question

......
But I propose that we are asking the wrong question.
.....

So let’s ask, reading history forward: why did the Confederacy lose (or rather, why did the Union win) the war? It’s a much more engaging question, which allows us to dispense with the what ifs.
.....

* CSA advantages in 1861: vast territory that the United States had to conquer with a small army, thousands of miles of coastline and rivers that that the Union Navy had to blockade/control with few serviceable ships, the Confederates would be fighting with a home-field advantage – they knew the territory and maneuvered among a friendly populace, they had 3 million or so slaves to do much of the work allowing nearly all military-age men to potentially serve in a military capacity, the Confederates didn’t need to do anything – no action by the US meant victory by default, the Confederate government was not hindered by annoying party politicking, and their executive – Jefferson Davis – had plenty of practical experience both as a soldier and a statesman. But of course, things have a way of changing….quite quickly. Let’s talk about those things.
http://keithharrishistory.com/the-never-ending-question/
 
I think they lost- because of well a lot of reasons. Manpower shortages is the big one, the Union pretty much crushed them with their resources. Political leadership- Lincoln vs. Davis. Perhaps military leadership as well- the Confederacy did not have many army commanders who could handle an army as opposed to a corps or smaller unit- and eventually the Union got military leadership who could make use of those massive resource advantage. It's also possible that many in the Confederacy after the deprivations and Sherman's March which basically exposed the Confederacy for the hollow shell it was- simply gave up the will to keep going. The Confederacy may have just burned out after 4 years of war. It's also possible that a whole government based on states rights was a problem too- hard to marshall up an army and make a country, if your direct doctrine contradicts a unifying force. As someone said, it was basically the Confederacy's war to lose. Which may be why we focus more on what the Confederacy did wrong than what the Union did right. But I do think the Union did a lot right!

However, I do think answering this question is a hard one- simply because all of our answers are going to be right and wrong at the same time. It's not something I think that can be covered in one post on a forum or something we're necessarily all going to agree on. We're all going to capture little parts of it. But it's a good question nonetheless.
 
I think they lost- because of well a lot of reasons. Manpower shortages is the big one, the Union pretty much crushed them with their resources. Political leadership- Lincoln vs. Davis. Perhaps military leadership as well- the Confederacy did not have many army commanders who could handle an army as opposed to a corps or smaller unit- and eventually the Union got military leadership who could make use of those massive resource advantage. It's also possible that many in the Confederacy after the deprivations and Sherman's March which basically exposed the Confederacy for the hollow shell it was- simply gave up the will to keep going. The Confederacy may have just burned out after 4 years of war. It's also possible that a whole government based on states rights was a problem too- hard to marshall up an army and make a country, if your direct doctrine contradicts a unifying force. As someone said, it was basically the Confederacy's war to lose. Which may be why we focus more on what the Confederacy did wrong than what the Union did right. But I do think the Union did a lot right!

However, I do think answering this question is a hard one- simply because all of our answers are going to be right and wrong at the same time. It's not something I think that can be covered in one post on a forum or something we're necessarily all going to agree on. We're all going to capture little parts of it. But it's a good question nonetheless.


I see it as simple as the CSA could not make errors or squander resources, but did. The Union could make errors and recover. No such recovery existed for the South because it had the lesser resources.
 
This is a huge question! And I agree with Hanna; all we can do here is attack it one part at a time. It is a good thread, but where do we start? Biases will come into play, interpretations will differ, arguments will start--I see here a civil war within a Civil War..."The South's infrastructure was demolished over the 4 years...etc. etc.")
 
The South lost due to several reasons...........

The North's resources.........Manpower, industrial might, Naval superiority, Strategy............

The South.........Bickering in the government, bickering between states, bickering between officials and military leaders, bad strategy at times, lack of Manpower, lack of industrial might..........


Respectfully,

William
 
Good questions with complex answers should be never-ending. :wink:
I found much food for thought in this article:
"North & South", May 2006, Vol. 9, #2: from the panel discussion Could the Confederacy Have Won the Civil War?

- Richard McMurry, p. 16: "I think the question is better phrased 'Was Confederate defeat inevitable?' If the matter is restated that way, I believe the answer to be 'No, but the Rebels' margin for error was very small.'"
- Allen Guelzo, p. 20: "I'm not convinced that the Confederacy lacked the wherewithal for victory. It simply lacked the victories, and those losses allowed the wherewithal to be destroyed."
- Bruce Levine, p. 20: "The war was the product of basic trends and long-growing conflicts within U.S. society. But, in Carl von Clauswewitz's famous dictum, while war continues previous conflicts, it does so by employing other means. That change of means commonly accelerates the pace of history sharply, and it confronts leaders of the opposing camps with choices pregnant with enormous consequences. A handful of battles can determine a war's outcome, and the outcome of such pivotal battles can turn on a handful of decisions."
- James McPherson, p. 22: "McMurry, Sears, and I... believe the outcome hinged on the result of one or more battles or policy decisions that might well have gone the other way: Antietam, Gettysburg, Atlanta, Glendale, Snake Creek Gap, or the failure of Confederates to concentrate more resources and effort on the western theatre. There was nothing inevitable about these results...."
- William Freehling, p. 23: "I believe that the big Civil War book that most needs to be written, on why the Union's and Lincoln's willpower was so ferocious, will someday show that the enormous will to win among white Confederates, skillfully shown by Gary Gallagher, faced equivalent ferocity north of the Mason-Dixon line..."
- Stephen Sears, p. 25: "...listen to the one man in the Confederacy who represented the South's best chance to win its independence - Robert E. Lee.... 'We must make up our minds to fight our battles ourselves. Expect to receive aid from no one.... The cry is too much for help.'...
"The whole nation, he said, 'should for the time be converted into an army, the producers to feed and the soldiers to fight.' He sponsored conscription in 1862, and in 1865 supported making slaves into soldiers. Robert E. Lee was a nationalist in a sea of states' righters."

And this one:
http://www.americancivilwar.asn.au/conf/2003/2003_conf_could_sth_win.pdf
 
One major reason the South lost is it was far from united with 10% of its white males in the Union Army and by 1864 thousands more has Unionist guerrillas who did wrest control of territory from CSA control. The other reason was slave running away and over 187 k black men in the Union Army or Navy.
Leftyhunter
 
The Union won because of proto-multiculturalism. The factor in Union victory that is least acknowledged is immigration. Among white native-born men, more than a third fought for the Confederacy. Among immigrants, more than nine-out-of-ten fought for the Union. Without those 500,000 fighting immigrants, Union victory is inconceivable. The black contribution in men is only a third of that of immigrants, but since blacks were even more lopsided in Union v. Confederate enlistments than immigrants, the impact was great as well.

This Multiculti advantage for the Union was at least 600,000 men. That is the equivalent in numbers of every man who served in the Confederate armies in the Eastern Theater during the entire war.

It gets ignored, I know, and folks love to focus on the impact of a single battle or charge, but the so-called "Union resilience" had its roots in this factor.
 
The Union won because of proto-multiculturalism. The factor in Union victory that is least acknowledged is immigration. Among white native-born men, more than a third fought for the Confederacy. Among immigrants, more than nine-out-of-ten fought for the Union. Without those 500,000 fighting immigrants, Union victory is inconceivable. The black contribution in men is only a third of that of immigrants, but since blacks were even more lopsided in Union v. Confederate enlistments than immigrants, the impact was great as well.

This Multiculti advantage for the Union was at least 600,000 men. That is the equivalent in numbers of every man who served in the Confederate armies in the Eastern Theater during the entire war.

It gets ignored, I know, and folks love to focus on the impact of a single battle or charge, but the so-called "Union resilience" had its roots in this factor.
Well-said, Pat!
 
If the South was going to win it needed to strike a devastating blow quickly, blockade, men, and resources would not allow a long drawn out war.
Their military leaders were superior but that could not even outweigh the vast numbers of soldiers the north could put in uniform. By the time Grant took over it was just a matter of time, he knew he could take far more losses than Lee could so he just kept hammering away, I believe he took more losses under his command than all the commanders before him that went against Lee.
 
Bickering in the government, bickering between states,
This here is a large part of the reason I keep saying that as a country, the Confederacy was doomed no matter what. Even if they had won the war, several of the various states would likely have been at war with each other in short order.
Their military leaders were superior but that could not even outweigh the vast numbers of soldiers the north could put in uniform.
There is little evidence that Confederate military leaders were superior in talent overall, particularly outside of the eastern theater. They merely did a better job of allocating the talent they had at the beginning of the war, whereas their Union counterparts had to rise on combat merit over time and in competition with both talented and untalented amateurs.
 
This here is a large part of the reason I keep saying that as a country, the Confederacy was doomed no matter what. Even if they had won the war, several of the various states would likely have been at war with each other in short order.

There is little evidence that Confederate military leaders were superior in talent overall, particularly outside of the eastern theater. They merely did a better job of allocating the talent they had at the beginning of the war, whereas their Union counterparts had to rise on combat merit over time and in competition with both talented and untalented amateurs.

First Manassas, Second Manassas, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Wilderness, Sharpsburg, Spotsylvania, they fought all of these battles against a union army that was vastly larger and better equipped.
 
Political leadership- Lincoln vs. Davis.

There was at least one Unionist who was impressed with Davis's leadership ability. In Down in Tennessee, and Back by Way of Richmond, James Roberts Gilmore, writing under the pseudonym Edmund Kirke, says:

Some of [Jefferson Davis's] sentences, as I read them over, appear stilted and high-flown, but they did not sound so when uttered. As listened to, they seemed the simple, natural language of his thought. He spoke deliberately, apparently weighing every word, and well knowing that all he said would be given to the public.

He is a man of great ability. Our interview explained to me why with no money and no commerce, with nearly every one of their important cities in our hands, and with an army greatly inferior in numbers and equipment to ours, the Rebels have held out so long. It is because of the energy, sagacity, and indomitable will of Jefferson Davis. Without him the Rebellion would crumble to pieces in a day; with him it may continue to be, even in disaster, a power that will tax the whole energy and resources of the nation.​

I'm not sure I agree with this evaluation of Davis, but it seemed worth posting here since Gilmore had met the man and I have not.

Note: The version published in the September 1864 issue of the Atlantic Monthly calls Davis a man of “peculiar ability” rather than “great ability.”
 
First Manassas, Second Manassas, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Wilderness, Sharpsburg, Spotsylvania, they fought all of these battles against a union army that was vastly larger and better equipped.
You're not very big on actually reading what others write, are you? Try again:

There is little evidence that Confederate military leaders were superior in talent overall, particularly outside of the eastern theater.

You'll notice that not only did you not list a single battle not fought in the eastern theater, you actually listed one (Sharpsburg) that was a Confederate tactical defeat, and a second (Spotsylvania) that may have been a tactical victory, but was a strategic zero-sum gain. The war was much larger than Virginia, and outside of Virginia Confederate military leadership was decidedly lacking.

Now for the next part you ignored:

They merely did a better job of allocating the talent they had at the beginning of the war.

This was a beneficial side-effect of Davis' otherwise problematic micromanagement of army organization and administration. Talented, trained, and experienced Union officers frequently started the war lower down the chain-of-command and had to work their way up against political appointees of mixed still. Confederate officers were often better placed from the beginning, but only in the east. Lee in particular had a bad habit of convincing Davis to shunt less-talented officers west, overburdened western Confederate armies with ineptitude.

Do you perhaps want to try responding to what I actually wrote this time, rather than spouting a remarkably simplistic - and entirely unrelated - sound-bite that reads like it comes from a picture book published by the League of the South?
 
If the South was going to win it needed to strike a devastating blow quickly, blockade, men, and resources would not allow a long drawn out war.
Their military leaders were superior but that could not even outweigh the vast numbers of soldiers the north could put in uniform. By the time Grant took over it was just a matter of time, he knew he could take far more losses than Lee could so he just kept hammering away, I believe he took more losses under his command than all the commanders before him that went against Lee.

This theory is well-developed in Lost Victories - The Military Genius of Stonewall Jackson by Bevin Alexander:

stonewall-books-002-jpg.jpg
 
You're not very big on actually reading what others write, are you? Try again:

There is little evidence that Confederate military leaders were superior in talent overall, particularly outside of the eastern theater.

You'll notice that not only did you not list a single battle not fought in the eastern theater, you actually listed one (Sharpsburg) that was a Confederate tactical defeat, and a second (Spotsylvania) that may have been a tactical victory, but was a strategic zero-sum gain. The war was much larger than Virginia, and outside of Virginia Confederate military leadership was decidedly lacking.

Now for the next part you ignored:

They merely did a better job of allocating the talent they had at the beginning of the war.

This was a beneficial side-effect of Davis' otherwise problematic micromanagement of army organization and administration. Talented, trained, and experienced Union officers frequently started the war lower down the chain-of-command and had to work their way up against political appointees of mixed still. Confederate officers were often better placed from the beginning, but only in the east. Lee in particular had a bad habit of convincing Davis to shunt less-talented officers west, overburdened western Confederate armies with ineptitude.

Do you perhaps want to try responding to what I actually wrote this time, rather than spouting a remarkably simplistic - and entirely unrelated - sound-bite that reads like it comes from a picture book published by the League of the South?

Again, what they accomplished with what they were up against, yes, they had better military commanders and soldiers that fought harder.
 
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