Did Interior Lines Really Benefit the Confederacy?

jackt62

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There is a common perception that one of the military advantages that the Confederacy started off with was its ability to use "interior lines" to quickly move and shift armies and resources to threatened regions. Early confederate war strategy focused on using its shorter lines of communication to defend its borders by being able to maneuver and deploy against potential Union attacks. But in reality, did interior lines really benefit the Confederacy to any extent that made a difference? The one good example that comes to mind is the concentration of southern armies at Corinth in April 1862. A.S. Johnston was able to efficiently collect armies from Polk, Ruggles, and Bragg that ranged in a wide arc, and were brought to bear against Grant's AotT at Shiloh. Similarly, Longstreet was able to bring most of his Corps from the Virginia front by rail to bolster Bragg's forces at Chickamauga. But outside of these examples, I'm wondering whether the use of interior lines had much effect on the Confederate war effort. The Confederacy and Joe Johnston was unable to properly utilize its advantage to save Vicksburg and Pemberton's army by moving troops from Bragg's army in Tennessee and Holmes' forces in Arkansas. The disrepair of the southern rail system, the Union breakthrough of the western riverine systems, and the stranglehold that the US Navy was eventually able to place against key southern ports probably negated any advantage that the Confederacy might have had. And once the Union was able to slice the Confederacy into multiple segments by 1863, the use of interior lines by the southland to maneuver and supply its forces seemed to be a lost cause.
 
Correspondence dated February 15, 1862 from Major General Braxton Bragg commanding Department of Alabama and West Florida to Secretary of War Judah Benjamin: (Official Records Series I, Vol. 6:826)

"1. Our means and resources are too much scattered. The protection of persons and property, as such, should be abandoned, and all our means applied to the Government and the cause. Important strategic points only should be held. All means not necessary to secure these should be concentrated for a heavy blow upon the enemy where we can best assail him. Kentucky is now that point. On the Gulf we should only hold New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola; all other points, the whole of Texas and Florida, should be abandoned, and our means there made available for other service. A small loss of property would result from their occupation by the enemy; but our military strength would not be lessened thereby, whilst the enemy would be weakened by dispersion. We could then beat him in detail, instead of the reverse. The same remark applies to our Atlantic seaboard. In Missouri the same rule can be applied to a great extent. Deploring the misfortunes of that gallant people, I can but think their relief must reach them through Kentucky."
I agree with the SOW --- mostly. There was no reason to occupy Pensacola and, unmentioned, was the need to secure resource areas -- Alabama coal and iron, Georgia food, and populations. He was not planning on the possibility of a long war. I have no idea how he thought he could move enough men to land a heavy blow in KY. The 1862 attempt almost starved the CS armies for lack of food and munitions and that was a small effort, not a heavy blow.
 
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I agree with the SOW --- mostly. There was no reason to occupy Pensacola and, unmentioned, was the need to secure resource areas -- Alabama coal and iron, Georgia food, and populations. He was not planning on the possibility of a long war. I have no idea how he thought he could move enough men to land a heavy blow in KY. The 1862 attempt almost starved the CS armies for lack of food and munitions and that was a small effort, not a heavy blow.
In the what was then the west, the rivers were essential. Operations against Fts. Henry and Donelson were based on river transport. Pittsburgh Landing was a convenient landing on the Tennessee River. When Grant's army crossed from the west bank to the east bank, the goal in Mississippi was always to capture the bluffs above the Yazoo River. Without the rivers, they could not have succeeded in that part of the Confederacy. And it continued that way as river traffic to Nashville was re-established. A road from the Tennessee River to Nashville was built. As noted above, the US built steamboats on the middle Tennessee.
In the second half of the 19th century, historians forgot that dependence on railroads was a recent development. In most of the what was then the west, and the far west, there were few or no railroads and the war was not a railroad war.
 
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In the what was then the west, the rivers were essential. Operations against Fts. Henry and Donelson were based on river transport. Pittsburgh Landing was a convenient landing on the Tennessee River. When Grant's army crossed from the west bank to the east bank, the goal in Mississippi was always to capture the bluffs above the Yazoo River. Without the rivers, they could not have succeeded in that part of the Confederacy. And it continued that way as river traffic to Nashville was re-established. A road from the Tennessee River to Nashville was built. As noted above, the US built steamboats on the middle Tennessee.
In the second half of the 19th century, historians forgot that dependence on railroads was a recent development. In most of the what was then the west, and the far west, there were few or no railroads and the war was not a railroad war.
Tennessee would be a battleground, but not part of the land required to win the war. The same is true for the Mississippi River; the CS could never hold it, so back up and attack any troops landed from the river -- the US river power would always prove too tough for the South, so spend your time trying to defend Vicksburg in the field, where there was no naval power to tip the scales to the union.
 
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The Confederacy did have a wonderful advantage of interior lines, but that advantage often failed to result in a victorious battle. This advantage was markedly strong in the early stages of the war but quickly declined as the war continued.
 
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To the Confederates the war might have seemed like it was about South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia. The newspapers agreed with that view. But the war plan actually utilized by the US concentrated on Missouri and Kentucky, the Mississippi River and the far west. The west, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada had the land that was available for expansion. What was called New Mexico at the time, including the Arid Zone, Arizona, was also available. The Confederacy had no internal lines in those areas, the US supporters from Colorado and California quickly too them for the US. Conor almost made contact with the LDS people in Utah, which was Desere at that time.
Tennessee might not have seemed very important to the old south in 1861, but the administration was consistently working towards a situation in which the greater bulk of the nation, and any future nations, would be the US.
Based on the census results, I don't think the Confederacy could sustain a conventional war, with livestock logistics, without Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee. Texas might have helped, but shipping anything from Texas to the eastern Confederacy was going to very difficult without Confederate control of New Orleans.
 
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My thinking is the Confederacy knows it can not win the Insurrection without Tennessee and Virginia (one may add Kentucky). Therefore we have many violent battles of control of those states and their resources. This involved the heavy use of what few railroads were available until the War eroded all way steadily.
 
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Fort Pillow and Memphis were bigger loses. That opened the river below Memphis and made possible an operation to take complete control of the Mississippi.
And Farragut and Butler's capture of New Orleans in April 1862, and the seizure of Baton Rouge in May locked up the southern end of the river, while the fall of Island No. 10, Ft. Pillow, and Memphis by that June did the same in the other direction. But total control of the river was not possible until Vicksburg and Port Hudson were taken more than a year later, in July 1863. Farragut's abortive expedition upriver in July 1862, and Grant's futile efforts to reach the city between December 1862 and early summer of 1863 may have seriously prolonged the war; the reasons for the failed attempts and their consequences don't get as much attention as they should.
 
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And Farragut and Butler's capture of New Orleans in April 1862, and the seizure of Baton Rouge in May locked up the southern end of the river, while the fall of Island No. 10, Ft. Pillow, and Memphis by that June did the same in the other direction. But total control of the river was not possible until Vicksburg and Port Hudson were taken more than a year later, in July 1863. Farragut's abortive expedition upriver in July 1862, and Grant's futile efforts to reach the city between December 1862 and early summer of 1863 may have seriously prolonged the war; the reasons for the failed attempts and their consequences don't get as much attention as they should.
I think Van Dorn and Forrest had something to do with it, to paraphrase George Pickett.
 
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Did you look at my list linked in post #4? There are numerous examples of railroad uses in the west and most would qualify as interior lines use.
To few in what was then the southwest, it wasn't a network. When a junction town was lost, the work arounds were long and circuitous. No railroads in the far west. Neither side had railroads. Control of the Gulf, the Missouri, the Pacific Coast was an incomparable advantage in the small, but decisive actions that occurred in far west.
Did the Confederates make good use of what they had while they had them? Yes. But the overall size of the Confederate railroads limited in the many ways you have already advocated. They did not have domestic vendors nor the labor force to keep the vendors going even if they had them.
 
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See page clxxxix. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/manufactures/1860c-05.pdf
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Without cities that could build new engines, and with just a few places in the Confederacy that could rebuild an old engine, the entire lines gradually became less useful to the Confederacy until finally infantry brigades could march faster than the railroads could haul them.
As the US systematically every place in the US and Confederacy that could build a steamboat, the US control of the rivers nullified the Confederate advantage of interior lines.
 
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Steamships, steamboats, and steam locomotives nullified the advantage of interior lines. The US learned a good deal from the Confederates about the effective use of rail transportation, while the Confederates had functioning railroads.
 
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