Mathematical certainty of the outcome.

It looks like there are contingencies involved, because of all the posturing and dramatic roles played by the political actors.
However, Britain and the United States had fundamental interests at stake. For Britain it was Canada and Ireland and a host of Atlantic possessions, which it could certainly defend, but at a cost.
The United States, despite all its shouting, was not going to be trapped in a three front war. The history of the American Revolution and the War of 1812 was immediately in mind.
 
What people like Thomas Aagard and Sap. might comment about is whether the thinking of Carl Von Clausewitz was already seeping into the US military thinking, through McClellan's tour in Europe, through the German and Russian immigrants such as Lieber, and through Lincoln's own extensive reading of whatever was available in the Library of Congress.
The thing about Napoleon and Jomini is that the lost. Wellington won and Von Clausewitz was on the winning side.
Royal war, financed by monarchs was dying. National war, financed by national economies was emerging.
Things had already changed by the Crimean War.
West Point and Halleck had fallen behind.
McClellan was playing catch up. Even Grant got a copy of McCellan's report on the Crimean War.
 
The question is whether battles even matter in a national war. Over the course of a campaign, the mistakes even out, and the side with the best logistics, and the best navies wins.
 
The actual conflict took on three stages.
1. The high tide of secession receded as it rolled northward, and Missouri, Kentucky, western Virginia, Maryland and Delaware never seceded.
2. The combined arms phase started approximately with the fall of Henry and Donelson and ended with the United States capturing Vicksburg.
3. The railroad war begins with the Battle of Chickamauga and ends with the Confederate economy in ruins.

There was no contingency involved in which the Confederates could win the war. Shelby Foote was right. It is up to each individual to decide, did the secessionists know from the start.
The late Mr. Foote is not recorded as saying the causes for which the Confederates fought were noble and worthy.
 
The center of gravity of the United States was the democratic public. The strength of the United States was the railroad system and its managers and engineers.
The center of gravity of the Confederacy was the volunteers that initially enlisted, who formed the Confederate infantry, cavalry, artillery and irregulars.
The weakness of the Confederacy was their economy, especially their lack of transportation infra structure.
One of the primary reasons the war last four years is that the United States had to build and maintain a supporting infrastructure in order to invade the Confederacy.
 
The question is whether battles even matter in a national war. Over the course of a campaign, the mistakes even out, and the side with the best logistics, and the best navies wins.
I would argue indeed battles do matter. The problem for the Confederacy is they can only win some battles on the defense and sometimes with heavy loss at that for example Chancellorsville.
Unless someone can show differently wars are won on the offense. The Confederates simply list every major offensive battle. Not seizing and holding or reclaiming territory doomed the Confederacy.
The only examples of the Confederacy reclaiming lost territory was Gavaleston, Texas offset by the loss of Vicksburg. Retaking the minor port of Plymouth, North Carolina offset by the Union blockade. General Breckenridge drove Union troops in East Tennessee back to Knoxville but due to poor logistics Breckenridge had to then withdraw.
Leftyhunter
 
I think that based on the relative size of the military age population, and probable enlistment rates, McClellan at the start of the war, and Grant at the end of the war, knew with certainty, that if the United States fully mobilized, the United States would win, no matter what.
But what does "fully mobilized" mean? That's the rub...

It so happens that due to the non-white population of the CSA (who were still available labour) then the CSA could mobilize a higher fraction of their military males for the same effort, and the CSA also had some wonderful defensive terrain. It's quite possible they could have spun things out long enough to result in a peace of exhaustion.

For example, if they'd gained control of Fort Monroe at the opening of the war, before it was properly garrisoned. This could result in attacks on Richmond being logistically nearly impossible (even Grant's attack relied heavily on logistics via the York and James rivers) and mean the CSA could have a good chance even with their numerical disadvantage.
 
Unless someone can show differently wars are won on the offense. The Confederates simply list every major offensive battle. Not seizing and holding or reclaiming territory doomed the Confederacy.
The way wars often worked in this period was that it was lost once the capital was taken or placed in an unrecoverable situation (or, at least, that would generally speaking win the war even if things weren't so rosy elsewhere). It's not impossible for the CSA to take Washington, especially after a badly botched Peninsular Campaign - lose the Army of the Potomac in early July to a surrender at Malvern, and then the CSA has a larger (and higher quality) force in the East than the Union does. Cross into Maryland, take Harpers Ferry, then either (1) attack Washington directly through the gap between Fort Reno and Fort DeRoussy or (2) march on Baltimore and cut the rail line between Baltimore and Washington and you've got the ingredients for a collapse.



Likely, maybe not, but possible? I think yes - the Washington defences had that hole in them until at least September, which is when construction started on Fort Kearny.
 
The way wars often worked in this period was that it was lost once the capital was taken or placed in an unrecoverable situation (or, at least, that would generally speaking win the war even if things weren't so rosy elsewhere). It's not impossible for the CSA to take Washington, especially after a badly botched Peninsular Campaign - lose the Army of the Potomac in early July to a surrender at Malvern, and then the CSA has a larger (and higher quality) force in the East than the Union does. Cross into Maryland, take Harpers Ferry, then either (1) attack Washington directly through the gap between Fort Reno and Fort DeRoussy or (2) march on Baltimore and cut the rail line between Baltimore and Washington and you've got the ingredients for a collapse.



Likely, maybe not, but possible? I think yes - the Washington defences had that hole in them until at least September, which is when construction started on Fort Kearny.
To many "ifs". In theory any war can be won by either side but that's not how wars work. War is the ultimate test of a nations resolve or lack there of.
Yes the Confederacy could of won if Union morale collapsed to a certain point.
It was always the Union's war to loose and despite some rough patchs the Union never permanently lost territory. No war is won on the defense but I welcome any major examples in the last 150 years to prove me wrong.
Leftyhunter
 
It was always the Union's war to loose and despite some rough patchs the Union never permanently lost territory. No war is won on the defense but I welcome any major examples in the last 150 years to prove me wrong.
It's generally not considered valid to argue from "this happened, therefore nothing else could happen". If you have a look at my post, you'll see I outlined several options. One of them is a two-step process.

Step one: the Union loses the Army of the Potomac totally in the Seven Days.
Step two: A Confederate offensive into Maryland in July.

Once a large CS army is in Maryland, the Union has a choice of going out to face it or defending Washington - they don't have enough troops left in the East (once the AotP is gone) to defend Washington and still send out a large enough force to stop Lee's army. Lee can then, depending on what the Union does (defend Washington, fight him, defend Baltimore and Washington...) react to their movements. Washington is certainly not invulnerable in this period, there's several avenues of attack and defending them all with the right amount of force is a matter of luck.
Historically it took McClellan and a large chunk of the transferred Army of the Potomac to stop Lee. With both McClellan and that large chunk of the Army of the Potomac lost then the Union is in serious trouble - if the Union had an army large enough to beat Lee without including any of McClellan's Army of the Potomac, it begs the question about things like Bull Run (or for that matter why McClellan didn't get his darn reinforcements).

This is, of course, an offensive.


As for your argument about wars being won or lost on the defensive, I'll bring up the Winter War as a microcosm. That's a war where the USSR was convinced by a vigourous Finnish defence to leave most of Finland alone - the Civil War analogy would be a successful defence in Virginia to the point that the Union went for peace in 1863-4.


The other way for the CSA to become independent is a European intervention. If it's Britain, especially if it's Trent, then it's very hard indeed to see the CSA not becoming independent!
 
But there were always a possibility that the Confederacy morale would collapse, also.
This, on the other hand, is absolutely true. I think this could be seen as the objective of the original form of the Peninsular Campaign (Urbanna) which sought to basically cut off Johnston's army and cripple it, then take Richmond, in the first full campaign season. That would be a massive morale blow, quite apart from the material advantage the Union would have attained.
 
But what does "fully mobilized" mean? That's the rub...

It so happens that due to the non-white population of the CSA (who were still available labour) then the CSA could mobilize a higher fraction of their military males for the same effort, and the CSA also had some wonderful defensive terrain. It's quite possible they could have spun things out long enough to result in a peace of exhaustion.

For example, if they'd gained control of Fort Monroe at the opening of the war, before it was properly garrisoned. This could result in attacks on Richmond being logistically nearly impossible (even Grant's attack relied heavily on logistics via the York and James rivers) and mean the CSA could have a good chance even with their numerical disadvantage.
By the same token it has been argued by at least one respected author on the Civil War " Strangling the ConfederacyCoastal Operations in the American Civil War "Kevin Dougherty p.91 That had not Lincoln ordered General Burnside to cancel his planned attack on the railroad center of Goldsboro, North Carolina from Burnside's secure base at New Bern, North Carolina to assist McCellan during the Peninsula Campaign , the Union could have cut off rail supplies from North Carolina.
The problem with hypothetical scenarios is that they are a slippery slope. Yes they are possible but so are other scenarios.
In this case even if the Union was denied the use of Fortress Monroe they could always use New Bern as a spring board in to North Carolina.
Leftyhunter
 
War is, at its core, a social interaction. Those are very difficult (and frequently misleading) to quantify.

Given the national will to fight through to a conclusion, the odds were clearly in the Union's favor. But that national will was not a given.

Yes, very much agreed. As long as the North had the collective will to continue the war, they were going to win. But if South could hang on long enough to convince them that victory would come at too high a cost, the war very well could have ended with Confederate independence. That was a realistic possibility. It wasn't a given that the North would win.

Perry
 
This, on the other hand, is absolutely true. I think this could be seen as the objective of the original form of the Peninsular Campaign (Urbanna) which sought to basically cut off Johnston's army and cripple it, then take Richmond, in the first full campaign season. That would be a massive morale blow, quite apart from the material advantage the Union would have attained.

Quite agree. Actually, the idea behind the Peninsular Campaign was nearly excellent; in one strike took out one of the most important Rebel armies, their capital, their literally single most important industrial node in Confederacy. Even in Confederacy government managed to escape, the moral impact would be crushing.
 
In this case even if the Union was denied the use of Fortress Monroe they could always use New Bern as a spring board in to North Carolina.
New Bern is further from Richmond than Washington is. I'm not really seeing how that helps - to take Richmond you need to either cut all the rail lines quite close to the city, or actually supply troops yourself up close enough to the city to batter into it.


As for cutting off supplies from North Carolina, you need to reach all the way to Rayleigh to do that. I suppose it helps to have Burnside doing something (he never did reach McClellan), but by June 30 1862 there were more Confederate troops in North Carolina than Union ones and more CS reinforcements were apparently sent after that.


With no prospect of Union forces coming up the York and James rivers, you have more CS troops in NC to begin with - and, worse, more ship construction in the CSA. Norfolk was one of the major US naval bases, and if it's in CS hands for too long they might well be able to contest the Chesapeake itself...
 
Quite agree. Actually, the idea behind the Peninsular Campaign was nearly excellent; in one strike took out one of the most important Rebel armies, their capital, their literally single most important industrial node in Confederacy. Even in Confederacy government managed to escape, the moral impact would be crushing.
The idea was excellent, the execution's what was lacking. It's often forgotten just how much McClellan got dicked around by the Washington administration, but just one example is that they asked for a vote on the Urbanna plan from his division commanders, promoted the ones who objected, then asked for a vote from the corps commanders!
 
New Bern is further from Richmond than Washington is. I'm not really seeing how that helps - to take Richmond you need to either cut all the rail lines quite close to the city, or actually supply troops yourself up close enough to the city to batter into it.


As for cutting off supplies from North Carolina, you need to reach all the way to Rayleigh to do that. I suppose it helps to have Burnside doing something (he never did reach McClellan), but by June 30 1862 there were more Confederate troops in North Carolina than Union ones and more CS reinforcements were apparently sent after that.


With no prospect of Union forces coming up the York and James rivers, you have more CS troops in NC to begin with - and, worse, more ship construction in the CSA. Norfolk was one of the major US naval bases, and if it's in CS hands for too long they might well be able to contest the Chesapeake itself...
Valid points but it's an example of different hypothetical outcomes. Point is there was more then one way to take out Richmond.
Leftyhunter
 
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