Deciding factor

atlantis

Sergeant Major
Joined
Nov 12, 2016
The deciding factor in the war was the fact the CSA shared a land border with the USA. Unlike the American war for independence where Britain had to deploy forces across the Atlantic-no steamships or telegraph. The US having a land border with the confederacy was able to make full use of steam transport and the telegraph.
What are your thoughts on this.
 
By its very nature, the Civil War was not a foreign or colonial conflict involving belligerents widely spaced, but was prompted by the secession of neighboring states. For sure, logistical considerations would be very different in those cases where an enemy was not contiguous but was separated by an ocean or two. That being said, Union strategy in the critical western area was predicated on using riverine pathways to advance southwards into the Confederate heartland. Had Kentucky joined the Confederacy, the Ohio River would have offered a more defensible position in contrast to the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers which provided a ready entryway to the south. But still, the North had the more formidable task in its need to conduct offensive operations to destroy Confederate armies and occupy and derange southern infrastructure and war making capacity. While the southland had only to defend its existing territory, the means and methods of doing so were not quite simple, and ranged from a cordon approach of holding the borders, a Fabian approach of giving up territory for strategic advantage, or an offensive-defense of striking first. The Confederacy experimented with all these methods but never successfully settled on a unified strategy. That, and the Union's clearer vision of conquest, was the real deciding factor in the war's outcome.
 
While the southland had only to defend its existing territory, the means and methods of doing so were not quite simple, and ranged from a cordon approach of holding the borders, a Fabian approach of giving up territory for strategic advantage, or an offensive-defense of striking first. The Confederacy experimented with all these methods but never successfully settled on a unified strategy.
I don't believe there was a strategy for solving this problem.
Lubliner.
 
Of course the counter-argument is that the sheer size of the United States' physical territory made the war tremendously difficult for both sides... It is analogous to the conquest of a whole continent in some ways, particularly with the relative paucity of roads and railroads in the southern states. Hence riverine operations and coastal operations being so important, perhaps? The land war settled into grinding attrition in which the relative industrialization and lopsided population could only favor the northern pro-Federal states against the southern pro-Confederate states.... And of course, not everyone in the south was necessarily in favor of the secession movement.
 
I don't believe there was a strategy for solving this problem.
Lubliner.
Absolutely!
It’s always said that “all the Confederacy had to do was stay alive” as if that wasn’t in fact the more difficult proposition - as in ‘all I have to do is stay in the ring with Mike Tyson until he gets tired’... yeah right.
On the other hand, then whose idea was this and why the **** did I step in the ring are the next questions...
 
It’s always said that “all the Confederacy had to do was stay alive” as if that wasn’t in fact the more difficult proposition - as in ‘all I have to do is stay in the ring with Mike Tyson until he gets tired’... yeah right.
On the other hand, then whose idea was this and why the **** did I step in the ring are the next questions...
To my knowledge, I have not come across information to indicate that the secessionists thought about the implications and consequences of their decision. At best, they believed that they would be allowed to leave the Union peaceably, and in the improbable event that secession would be met by armed force, northern fighting prowess would be no match for southern arms. How wrong they were!
 
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