Never had a chance.

[wausaubob]

https://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-1CA
There was a revolution occurring at the same time as the US Civil War. And it had only a little to do with rifles, artillery, and fighting on horseback.

 

[Piedone]

I already gave the board my reasoning behind the Confederate underperformance, so accept it or don't accept it. I'm not a military strategist and neither are you, and neither is any other blogger. I simply use eco data to come with my assessments, and you and other people seem to come up with your assessments on how you feel and emotions.

Before I go any further let's get some straight in our thinking: we are critiquing 19th century military strategy and capability, so we should take everything we say with a grain of salt. We are armchair quarterbacking on the internet, so people should not take it too serious because hindsight is always 20/20.

I think the Union strategy is worth discussing more than the Confederate strategy. This is a copy and paste from some of my post(s).

McClellan had the best strategy fighting Lee, hold and fight when he felt was necessary, and wait for someone like Sherman to come to Lee's rear. McClellan actually did a competent job at executing the role assigned him in Gen. Scott's Anacondas plan: "sit tight, hold Washington, and let the Navy squeeze the Confederacy." Problem was, Scott died before he could remind Lincoln and the Eastern press of this plan, so McClellan and his successor were spurred, repeatedly, into spasmodic efforts to take Richmond and points South.

Interestingly this suggests that McClellan's notoriously defensive instincts may well have been sound for the theater… and that Lee had the luck of a cushy but highly visible assignment, as well as the luck of facing undistinguished Union Generals plagued by the ongoing surveillance of an armchair audience.

Sherman understood the very constitution of the southern elite, and he understood the very fundamental reason to why they wanted war. He knew the southern aristocracy was a patrician society with excess pride and their fundamentally reason for fighting was to protect their patrimony: slaves, land and mansions. Conversely, the average Confederate soldier's well being was never considered.

Sherman is misunderstood by just about everyone, that's because he didn't follow the Marquess of Queensbury rules of boxing, he threw off the gloves. He demolished the heartland of the Southern aristocrats: their land and slaves—and left them impotent and discredited before their helpless women and children. Facing little opposition once they left Atlanta, Sherman's men destroyed the very infrastructure that supported slavery and upheld the slaveholding elites—plantations, communications, factories, and government facilities. Southern military officers put great capital in the idea of the sanctity of the Southern homeland. They deemed themselves great raiders and marauders, who harassed fixed garrisons and terrorized timid populations. Sherman, however, gave the Confederacy the raid of its life. The central objective could be summed up quite simply: Freeing the unfree and humiliating the arrogant.

Sherman goes down in history similar to a Greek tragic hero, like Ajax. He was the only general of the entire CW who could have done the job to end the war. But that's never discussed, the manner he did it in is constantly discussed because sanctimonious people who think they're sober and judicious shout out their fraudulent accusations from their fictional ivory tower. Ajax deserved Achilles armor and Sherman deserves Lee's armor.

I think if the Union would kept McLellan in charge of the east and cut Sherman Loose a little earlier the war could been over sooner, both generals, IMO, had the right strategy to end the Confederates reign of terror. I do believe that the Confederates would have been doomed no matter what that strategy.

I can very well understand your position and regarding the faulty picture some people paint of Sherman you are right.
Of course his campaign into the Deep South was decisive for the outcome of the war - and he got the job done.
And - quite to the contrary to a lot of people - I am also regarding McClellan as everything but incompetent.

But the whole affair was maybe not so easy to handle as you suggest.
If you keep McClellan in the east and cling to a more defensive stance there the Confederates could (and would) have taken advantage of that and could have taken the initiative elsewhere - or reenforced Johnston´s AoT.
With the tactical capabilities of Sherman I am not very familiar but if I recall correctly they were not above all criticism - hence I'd say that under such conditions the whole operation wouldn't have run that smoothly.

Hence aggressivity on both theatres, east and west, did the trick.

And I cannot refrain from remarking that you are indicative of quite a bit of feel and emotion here (as everybody else) - and why shouldn't you, as long as it does not cloud our perception of matters I deem it everything but a negative trait.

 

[Piedone]

What Mr. Foote was talking about was a nice of way of summarizing Mark Twain's observations. The Confederacy was not going to end the tidal wave of immigration sweeping into the Midwest. They weren't going to change the mechanization of basic tasks such as threshing wheat, and sewing clothes. Steel, petroleum products, voice transmission, and electric lights were right around the corner. War itself was becoming increasing industrialized, and the nations with a military industrial complex were going dominate the next century.
Foote is also noting the basic asymmetry of the experience. The Civil War that the Confederacy experienced was a traumatizing disaster. But in the US, the loss of working age men was barely noticeable, and there was not physical destruction. Much of life went on perfectly normal.

You are absolutely right with that assertion - and that would be the reason why the perception and the interpretation of the war is so utterly different between North and South.
I'd say that the traits of the common people of both regions were probably rather similar before the war (with the exception of the planters class, which were something of 2% of the southern population) - but after the war they had drifted apart.
Maybe it took until the world wars to bridge that gulf...

 

[atlantis]

Better monetary policy would have improved their chance of success.

 

[Piedone]

Better monetary policy would have improved their chance of success.

Absolutely. Nothing personal...but Mr. Memminger seems to have been outstanding in his bumbling....

 

[Piedone]

I already gave the board my reasoning behind the Confederate underperformance, so accept it or don't accept it. I'm not a military strategist and neither are you, and neither is any other blogger. I simply use eco data to come with my assessments, and you and other people seem to come up with your assessments on how you feel and emotions.

Before I go any further let's get some straight in our thinking: we are critiquing 19th century military strategy and capability, so we should take everything we say with a grain of salt. We are armchair quarterbacking on the internet, so people should not take it too serious because hindsight is always 20/20.

I think the Union strategy is worth discussing more than the Confederate strategy. This is a copy and paste from some of my post(s).

McClellan had the best strategy fighting Lee, hold and fight when he felt was necessary, and wait for someone like Sherman to come to Lee's rear. McClellan actually did a competent job at executing the role assigned him in Gen. Scott's Anacondas plan: "sit tight, hold Washington, and let the Navy squeeze the Confederacy." Problem was, Scott died before he could remind Lincoln and the Eastern press of this plan, so McClellan and his successor were spurred, repeatedly, into spasmodic efforts to take Richmond and points South.

Interestingly this suggests that McClellan's notoriously defensive instincts may well have been sound for the theater… and that Lee had the luck of a cushy but highly visible assignment, as well as the luck of facing undistinguished Union Generals plagued by the ongoing surveillance of an armchair audience.

Sherman understood the very constitution of the southern elite, and he understood the very fundamental reason to why they wanted war. He knew the southern aristocracy was a patrician society with excess pride and their fundamentally reason for fighting was to protect their patrimony: slaves, land and mansions. Conversely, the average Confederate soldier's well being was never considered.

Sherman is misunderstood by just about everyone, that's because he didn't follow the Marquess of Queensbury rules of boxing, he threw off the gloves. He demolished the heartland of the Southern aristocrats: their land and slaves—and left them impotent and discredited before their helpless women and children. Facing little opposition once they left Atlanta, Sherman's men destroyed the very infrastructure that supported slavery and upheld the slaveholding elites—plantations, communications, factories, and government facilities. Southern military officers put great capital in the idea of the sanctity of the Southern homeland. They deemed themselves great raiders and marauders, who harassed fixed garrisons and terrorized timid populations. Sherman, however, gave the Confederacy the raid of its life. The central objective could be summed up quite simply: Freeing the unfree and humiliating the arrogant.

Sherman goes down in history similar to a Greek tragic hero, like Ajax. He was the only general of the entire CW who could have done the job to end the war. But that's never discussed, the manner he did it in is constantly discussed because sanctimonious people who think they're sober and judicious shout out their fraudulent accusations from their fictional ivory tower. Ajax deserved Achilles armor and Sherman deserves Lee's armor.

I think if the Union would kept McLellan in charge of the east and cut Sherman Loose a little earlier the war could been over sooner, both generals, IMO, had the right strategy to end the Confederates reign of terror. I do believe that the Confederates would have been doomed no matter what that strategy.

My personal opinion: Sherman would have achieved his direct goals without most of that "I make them howl"-posturing and it would have had definitely a positive effect on reconstruction and produced a more positive approach towards it in those regions...
It just didn't work out anywhere in history (as intended), neither with Lee in PA nor with us Germans in our Zeppelins over London....

 

[lurid]

My personal opinion: Sherman would have achieved his direct goals without most of that "I make them howl"-posturing and it would have had definitely a positive effect on reconstruction and produced a more positive approach towards it in those regions...
It just didn't work out anywhere in history (as intended), neither with Lee in PA nor with us Germans in our Zeppelins over London....

How was that, when I said his objective was to wage war against the slave owner? That was what Sherman did, and that was his goal all along.

 

[Dead Parrott]

I think for not getting into great detail, and just a few words, Foote paints a good picture of how doomed the south was from the beginning. The south never had a chance. It was either foreign recognition or break the Union will to fight. Because there was no way of overcoming the northern industrial machine or population.

Completely agree. One has to understand this in order to put Lee's risks moving North in a proper light.

 

[Piedone]

How was that, when I said his objective was to wage war against the slave owner? That was what Sherman did, and that was his goal all along.

As a matter of fact some of Sherman´s best friends were slave owners and he himself felt very comfortable with the southern way. Hence his real objective would have been to win the war by undermining the support of the Confederacy and through cutting Lee off his supply bases in the Deep South. To achieve this it just sufficed to march an army unhindered right into Charleston town - and then work his way towards North Carolina.