Biggest mistake of the war

Biggest mistake of the war was creating so many regiments, each side had too many under strength regiments making command and control more difficult.
What do you think is biggest mistake of the war.
Not even close. The Confedracy should of outlawed slavery and given person's if all colors equal rights including abolishing miscegenation laws in order to prevent the Union from inevitably recruiting freed slaves as the British did in the ARW and War of 1812.
Leftyhunter
 
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How about Lee turning down command of the Union Army by Lincoln and going to the CSA. Didn't end so well for him did it! Wonder how much he thought about that until he breathed his last. And so here we are today with radicals ripping down monuments to him.
That might be true if Lee had been a gambler looking to place a bet on the outcome and not someone who did not want to see secession and who agonized over his decision. IMO, once his decision was made, I doubt he ever had any regrets over it.
 
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Lincoln refusing to discuss anything with the Confederate Peace commissioner’s.
There was nothing to talk about with them. Their input was patently unrealistic and the Federal Union wins the war after Lincoln´s re-election. It´s just a matter of time. The last 6 months of the war are such a tragedy because Confederate leadership was hopelessly out of touch with the reality of the situation.
 
As far as I know the Confedracy surrendered to said Union troops so how was it a mistake?
Leftyhunter

And you know that how? Of course it doesn't matter victory is victory and even if you're assertion was true which it isn't the Confedracy lost quite a few soldiers as well.
Leftyhunter

How was that a mistake. Lincoln was obligated to protect a federal fort. Yes the Confedracy took Ft.Sumter but more importantly

In other words you made a false assertion otherwise you could provide evidence for your assertion that ever single Union soldier who enlisted in 2861 died by 1865.
Leftyhunter

Not even close. The Confedracy should of outlawed slavery and given person's if all colors equal rights including abolishing miscegenation laws in order to prevent the Union from inevitably recruiting freed slaves as the British did in the ARW and War of 1812.
Leftyhunter
No response. Off topic.
 
I often told at some of my talks that the worse thing that happened to the south was the Mexican war. Jefferson Davis success with the Mississippi rifles gave him the false impression that he was a military genius. In reality that the old adages of frontal attacks against the minie ball from entrenched troops this is one of Lee’s particular faults. Lee’s splendid tactics fighting defensively at Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg produced southern victories while we all know what happened at Gettysburg. I had a student who was 14 years old ask me a profound question…he asked, had stonewall Jackson survived to be at Gettysburg would lee have made a frontal attack. I told him that I believed Jackson would have talked lee into getting between Meade and Washington and go on the defense.
 
As far as I know the Confedracy surrendered to said Union troops so how was it a mistake?
Leftyhunter

And you know that how? Of course it doesn't matter victory is victory and even if you're assertion was true which it isn't the Confedracy lost quite a few soldiers as well.
Leftyhunter
Actually, the Confederates took my battlefield casualties than the Union, so they took more than quite a few. I did the sum total for "battlefield" casualties for the entire war and the Confederates took at least a 4% higher battle field casualties. The aggregate battle death toll percentage favored the Union. Between 1.5 million and 2.4 million Union soldiers served during the Civil War, whereas 750,000 to 1 million Confederate soldiers served. Consequently, the Union had an a estimated 40-50% more men than the Confederates, and took only an estimated 16,000 more casualties. Battle death percentages are a good metric: the Union battle casualties were 110,000 and the Confederacy was 94,000, that equates to the Union had roughly 16-17% battle mortality rate and the Confederacy had a 20% battlefield death mortality rate. The problem is that when people read about casualties they don't notice that they are reading the sum total of deaths: battle deaths, disease and prisoners of war and that's why they misconstrue the mortality rate of 15% for the Union and 12% for the Confederacy, but strictly from a battlefield mortality the Confederacy had a 20% mortality rate and the Union around 16-17%. People act like the Union took a 50% battlefield casualty rate and the Confederates took 20%, and what was all lost because the Union had superior numbers. Nonsense. The bottom line: the Confederates had a higher battlefield death rate, by like 4% and that was a huge percentage. Did not the Confederate census pontificate that they had a 10:1 KIA ration advantage prior to the war? Well, at the closing of the war the Union had a 3:1 KIA victory(use search engine for sources). I'm talking about "battlefield" casualties, not total war deaths. I think it is safe to say the Confederates were innumerate and were too proud for their own good. Las Vegas would have made billions of dollars on that one.

I personally believe the biggest mistake of the war was not a strategy or tactical blunder but a "preparation" for the war. They lacked the industrial capacity for a complete war effort. If so, they could have won because they were dug in(fortified) on their own turf in a era where fortifications held the advantage.
 
There were mistakes aplenty, my two choices have been mentioned already. Hard to narrow it down to just one but the Cotton boycott and the firing on Fort Sumter would and did make the list.

How in the world could the cotton boycott be one of the biggest mistakes of the war? The Union implemented it and the Confederates couldn't do anything about it. I fail too see a mistake.
 
How in the world could the cotton boycott be one of the biggest mistakes of the war? The Union implemented it and the Confederates couldn't do anything about it. I fail too see a mistake.
Davis used a cotton embargo in attempt to force diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy by Great Britain.

Edmund Rhett, Jr., the son of Charleston Mercury newspaper owner Robert Barnwell Rhett, told the London Times that “you British must recognize us before the end of October because of cotton requirements.”

As we know, Britain and France just turned to other sources of cotton.

Edited - replaced "boycott" with the better descriptive "embargo."
 
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Davis and others used a cotton boycott in attempt to force diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy by Great Britain.

Edmund Rhett, Jr., the son of Charleston Mercury newspaper owner Robert Barnwell Rhett, told the London Times that “you British must recognize us before the end of October because of cotton requirements.”

As we know, Britain and France just turned to other sources of cotton.
Yep. Another source Lincoln stoled it from the South.
 
Davis and others used a cotton boycott in attempt to force diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy by Great Britain.

Edmund Rhett, Jr., the son of Charleston Mercury newspaper owner Robert Barnwell Rhett, told the London Times that “you British must recognize us before the end of October because of cotton requirements.”

As we know, Britain and France just turned to other sources of cotton.

Are you saying that Confederates ultimatum to the British was a mistake? And are you saying if they didn't put pressure on Britain they would have opened up the blockade? I doubt it.
 
Are you saying that Confederates ultimatum to the British was a mistake? And are you saying if they didn't put pressure on Britain they would have opened up the blockade? I doubt it.
No, I didn't say that. Davis believed that cotton was so vital to Great Britain that the mere threat would force them to recognize the Confederacy. In fact the French ambassador in Washington and French consul in New Orleans encouraged the Confederacy to embargo cotton to both France and Great Britain to force recognition (Ball, Financial Failure and Confederate Defeat, pg. 63). It didn't work. They chose other sources for cotton.
 
Lincoln refusing to discuss anything with the Confederate Peace commissioner’s.
There was absolutely nothing to discuss. The Confedracy was an illegal entity that needed to be crushed and it was.
Leftyhunter
Actually, the Confederates took my battlefield casualties than the Union, so they took more than quite a few. I did the sum total for "battlefield" casualties for the entire war and the Confederates took at least a 4% higher battle field casualties. The aggregate battle death toll percentage favored the Union. Between 1.5 million and 2.4 million Union soldiers served during the Civil War, whereas 750,000 to 1 million Confederate soldiers served. Consequently, the Union had an a estimated 40-50% more men than the Confederates, and took only an estimated 16,000 more casualties. Battle death percentages are a good metric: the Union battle casualties were 110,000 and the Confederacy was 94,000, that equates to the Union had roughly 16-17% battle mortality rate and the Confederacy had a 20% battlefield death mortality rate. The problem is that when people read about casualties they don't notice that they are reading the sum total of deaths: battle deaths, disease and prisoners of war and that's why they misconstrue the mortality rate of 15% for the Union and 12% for the Confederacy, but strictly from a battlefield mortality the Confederacy had a 20% mortality rate and the Union around 16-17%. People act like the Union took a 50% battlefield casualty rate and the Confederates took 20%, and what was all lost because the Union had superior numbers. Nonsense. The bottom line: the Confederates had a higher battlefield death rate, by like 4% and that was a huge percentage. Did not the Confederate census pontificate that they had a 10:1 KIA ration advantage prior to the war? Well, at the closing of the war the Union had a 3:1 KIA victory(use search engine for sources). I'm talking about "battlefield" casualties, not total war deaths. I think it is safe to say the Confederates were innumerate and were too proud for their own good. Las Vegas would have made billions of dollars on that one.

I personally believe the biggest mistake of the war was not a strategy or tactical blunder but a "preparation" for the war. They lacked the industrial capacity for a complete war effort. If so, they could have won because they were dug in(fortified) on their own turf in a era where fortifications held the advantage.
I agree with the statistical analysis which was very well done. The entire basis for the Southern economy was exporting raw commodities to the North and Western Europe. That can't be done in wartime without a large navy which the Confedracy simply couldn't build. Commerce raiding only goes so far.
If course the main obstacle to a Confederate victory is the cause they were fighting for and that is slavery. The Confedrate leadership was simply to stupid to remember that Lord Dunsmore more then proved in 1775 that enslaved people will be more then willing to fight for their Freedom if properly led and their families properly taken care of. The same lesson was ignored when the British sucessfully recruited " Colonial Marines" which Francis Scott Key mentioned in the original Star Spangled Banner.
Defensive Warfare simply didn't work bout for the Confedracy. If there was a fortified position that the Union wanted then the would take it.
Leftyhunter
 
Lincoln refusing to discuss anything with the Confederate Peace commissioner’s.
There was absolutely nothing to discuss. The Confedracy was an illegal entity that needed to be crushed and it was.
Leftyhunter
Actually, the Confederates took my battlefield casualties than the Union, so they took more than quite a few. I did the sum total for "battlefield" casualties for the entire war and the Confederates took at least a 4% higher battle field casualties. The aggregate battle death toll percentage favored the Union. Between 1.5 million and 2.4 million Union soldiers served during the Civil War, whereas 750,000 to 1 million Confederate soldiers served. Consequently, the Union had an a estimated 40-50% more men than the Confederates, and took only an estimated 16,000 more casualties. Battle death percentages are a good metric: the Union battle casualties were 110,000 and the Confederacy was 94,000, that equates to the Union had roughly 16-17% battle mortality rate and the Confederacy had a 20% battlefield death mortality rate. The problem is that when people read about casualties they don't notice that they are reading the sum total of deaths: battle deaths, disease and prisoners of war and that's why they misconstrue the mortality rate of 15% for the Union and 12% for the Confederacy, but strictly from a battlefield mortality the Confederacy had a 20% mortality rate and the Union around 16-17%. People act like the Union took a 50% battlefield casualty rate and the Confederates took 20%, and what was all lost because the Union had superior numbers. Nonsense. The bottom line: the Confederates had a higher battlefield death rate, by like 4% and that was a huge percentage. Did not the Confederate census pontificate that they had a 10:1 KIA ration advantage prior to the war? Well, at the closing of the war the Union had a 3:1 KIA victory(use search engine for sources). I'm talking about "battlefield" casualties, not total war deaths. I think it is safe to say the Confederates were innumerate and were too proud for their own good. Las Vegas would have made billions of dollars on that one.

I personally believe the biggest mistake of the war was not a strategy or tactical blunder but a "preparation" for the war. They lacked the industrial capacity for a complete war effort. If so, they could have won because they were dug in(fortified) on their own turf in a era where fortifications held the advantage.
I agree with the statistical analysis which was very well done. The entire basis for the Southern economy was exporting raw commodities to the North and Western Europe. That can't be done in wartime without a large navy which the Confedracy simply couldn't build. Commerce raiding only goes so far.
If course the main obstacle to a Confederate victory is the cause they were fighting for and that is slavery. The Confedrate leadership was simply to stupid to remember that Lord Dunsmore more then proved in 1775 that enslaved people will be more then willing to fight for their Freedom if properly led and their families properly taken care of. The same lesson was ignored when the British sucessfully recruited " Colonial Marines" which Francis Scott Key mentioned in the original Star Spangled Banner.
Defensive Warfare simply didn't work bout for the Confedracy. If there was a fortified position that the Union wanted then the would s
Confederate Conscription. It made committed Unionists out of people that were at worst neutral in areas like East Tennesee, Eastern Kentucky, Western NC, and Northern Alabama & Georgia.
Slavery was the worse blunder the Confedracy made. Many poor Southern white men weren't going to die so the slave owners who looked down on them could live the good life while they had to die for it.
Leftyhunter
 
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