Quantification of Strategic Objectives

[tony_gunter]

Has anyone ever attempted to put together a ranked list of strategic targets in the war? There's a lot of talk of which strategy worked / failed but it seems like having a valuated list of targets would allow for a better framework for this type of discussion.

I'm thinking: human capital (free and not), foodstuffs, leather, clothing, horses, raw materials, industrial production, transportation, import / export capability (am I missing any?)

 

[DaveBrt]

Has anyone ever attempted to put together a ranked list of strategic targets in the war? There's a lot of talk of which strategy worked / failed but it seems like having a valuated list of targets would allow for a better framework for this type of discussion.

I'm thinking: human capital (free and not), foodstuffs, leather, clothing, horses, raw materials, industrial production, transportation, import / export capability (am I missing any?)

First you create your strategy: (1) isolate the south from the rest of the industrial world, (2) split the south into segments, (3) defend Washington/take Richmond.

Then you decide methods of accomplishing the elements of strategy: (1) impose a blockade, capture points to assist in making the blockade work, create pressure on foreign nations to not ship goods through the blockade (2) capture the essential points on the Mississippi River, create a mobile force to keep the spaces between the essential points free of enemy interference, gain control of the Tennessee River and the Cumberland River (points and mobile forces) (3) find ways to do both at the same time, find ways to cut Richmond off from the rest of the south

Then you look for specific targets: (1) Norfolk, Charleston, Wilmington, etc, (2) capture Memphis, Vicksburg, New Orleans, etc, (3) capture NC sounds and cut the eastern railroad supplying Virginia, capture Knoxville to cut the western railroad supplying Virginia, attack Petersburg from the James River and Norfolk

We are down three levels and have not arrived at the level you are listing. I don't see anyone at the national level ordering operations to harm southern "industrial production" or "raw Materials." Would you really send an army into northwestern Alabama to cut off iron and coal? an army into southwestern Georgia to destroy corn fields? an army to arrest and HOLD all the military age men throughout the south? Your "Targets" are too nebulous to use to direct military operations.

 

[tony_gunter]

First you create your strategy: (1) isolate the south from the rest of the industrial world, (2) split the south into segments, (3) defend Washington/take Richmond.

Then you decide methods of accomplishing the elements of strategy: (1) impose a blockade, capture points to assist in making the blockade work, create pressure on foreign nations to not ship goods through the blockade (2) capture the essential points on the Mississippi River, create a mobile force to keep the spaces between the essential points free of enemy interference, gain control of the Tennessee River and the Cumberland River (points and mobile forces) (3) find ways to do both at the same time, find ways to cut Richmond off from the rest of the south

Then you look for specific targets: (1) Norfolk, Charleston, Wilmington, etc, (2) capture Memphis, Vicksburg, New Orleans, etc, (3) capture NC sounds and cut the eastern railroad supplying Virginia, capture Knoxville to cut the western railroad supplying Virginia, attack Petersburg from the James River and Norfolk

We are down three levels and have not arrived at the level you are listing. I don't see anyone at the national level ordering operations to harm southern "industrial production" or "raw Materials." Would you really send an army into northwestern Alabama to cut off iron and coal? an army into southwestern Georgia to destroy corn fields? an army to arrest and HOLD all the military age men throughout the south? Your "Targets" are too nebulous to use to direct military operations.

Something like what I'm talking about influenced the targets in the west if only informally.

Henry/Donelson protected a major transportation hub that exposed a major industrial center (Nashville) and two additional transportation hubs (Corinth and Memphis).

What if the US had formalized the value of these targets in some way?

Perhaps the federals would have placed a higher priority on the Shenandoah Valley (iron, lead, sulfur, food) than Richmond?

 

[tony_gunter]

First you create your strategy: (1) isolate the south from the rest of the industrial world, (2) split the south into segments, (3) defend Washington/take Richmond.

Then you decide methods of accomplishing the elements of strategy: (1) impose a blockade, capture points to assist in making the blockade work, create pressure on foreign nations to not ship goods through the blockade (2) capture the essential points on the Mississippi River, create a mobile force to keep the spaces between the essential points free of enemy interference, gain control of the Tennessee River and the Cumberland River (points and mobile forces) (3) find ways to do both at the same time, find ways to cut Richmond off from the rest of the south

Then you look for specific targets: (1) Norfolk, Charleston, Wilmington, etc, (2) capture Memphis, Vicksburg, New Orleans, etc, (3) capture NC sounds and cut the eastern railroad supplying Virginia, capture Knoxville to cut the western railroad supplying Virginia, attack Petersburg from the James River and Norfolk

We are down three levels and have not arrived at the level you are listing. I don't see anyone at the national level ordering operations to harm southern "industrial production" or "raw Materials." Would you really send an army into northwestern Alabama to cut off iron and coal? an army into southwestern Georgia to destroy corn fields? an army to arrest and HOLD all the military age men throughout the south? Your "Targets" are too nebulous to use to direct military operations.

And let's not forget the value of population centers: taking New Orleans prior to the first conscription probably took tens of thousands of Confederate troops off the table.

Taking Vicksburg and Port Hudson after the EP added tens of thousands of USCT to the federal war effort.

 

[Pat Answer]

In agreement with @DaveBrt the general economic resources listed in the OP were certainly important but strategic priorities must be governed by identifying actual locations whose occupation/"neutralization" would do the most damage to the war effort of the opponent. And then an army has to get there and to be sustained there while it carries out its operations. So lines of communication would come before "targets."

And then... "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy." I'm not seeing where a list, formal or not, matters much in the face of a fluid situation.

What the Union high command as a whole didn't do until late in the game was coordinate the attempts to go after strategic priorities...

 

[wausaubob]

First you create your strategy: (1) isolate the south from the rest of the industrial world, (2) split the south into segments, (3) defend Washington/take Richmond.

Then you decide methods of accomplishing the elements of strategy: (1) impose a blockade, capture points to assist in making the blockade work, create pressure on foreign nations to not ship goods through the blockade (2) capture the essential points on the Mississippi River, create a mobile force to keep the spaces between the essential points free of enemy interference, gain control of the Tennessee River and the Cumberland River (points and mobile forces) (3) find ways to do both at the same time, find ways to cut Richmond off from the rest of the south

Then you look for specific targets: (1) Norfolk, Charleston, Wilmington, etc, (2) capture Memphis, Vicksburg, New Orleans, etc, (3) capture NC sounds and cut the eastern railroad supplying Virginia, capture Knoxville to cut the western railroad supplying Virginia, attack Petersburg from the James River and Norfolk

We are down three levels and have not arrived at the level you are listing. I don't see anyone at the national level ordering operations to harm southern "industrial production" or "raw Materials." Would you really send an army into northwestern Alabama to cut off iron and coal? an army into southwestern Georgia to destroy corn fields? an army to arrest and HOLD all the military age men throughout the south? Your "Targets" are too nebulous to use to direct military operations.

The US was trying to prove it was winning the war and was going to be able to finish it. Every objective has to further that goal. The US policy is also to weaken slavery as much as possible, by friction, and then by physical disruption.
The Confederacy is trying to prove that it will never be conquered and that the cost of an armistice is far preferable to the US compared to continuing the war.
For the US, the capture of New Orleans furthers both goals, as people knew it was an important port and the principal place under lying the efficiency of the slave system.
For the US, regaining control of the Mississippi demonstrates the US is winning, to observers from Pittsburgh to Golden in the Colorado mining country.
For the Confederacy, inducing the US to attack field fortifications, or prepared positions any place in Virginia, is the best way to demonstrate the futility of the US effort to conquer the south. Every time the US attacks a prepared position, the Confederates are achieving strategic progress.
When the US uses mobility, either combined arms, mobile and independent cavalry units, or mounted infantry, to go around the Confederates, they are thwarting the Confederate strategic goal.
How does the war proceed in August of 1864? The US conducts a combined arms operation in Mobile Bay. The US' most obsessive/compulsive expert in movement rotates his army through Georgia, instead of attacking the entrenched positions in Atlanta, and then Sheridan and the VI corp achieve repeated successes by fighting independently and avoiding General Lee's trenches near Petersburg.
And the final Appomattox campaign is led on the US side by cavalry fighting independently, supported by the best marching the US Army of the Potomac conducted in the entire war.

 

[jackt62]

In 1861, there was probably nobody in the government and army of the United States who had the experience, tools, mindset, and managerial knowledge to think in terms of strategic objectives and targets (well, perhaps Winfield Scott and Henry Halleck to an extent). The onrushing war was slated to become on a vast scale in terms of mobilizing manpower, logistics, and infrastructure, an enterprise of which the United States had never encountered in its 80 year history. To its credit, the United States accelerated its learning curve in a few short years, so that by 1864 the semblance of a grand strategic policy was fashioned, mostly by the likes of Grant, Lincoln, Sherman, and Stanton. (But much of the army command whose frames of reference did not extend beyond what Mahan had taught them at West Point regarding concentrating force and securing supply lines never really grasped the totality of what would be necessary to defeat the Confederacy.) Nevertheless, Grant and the other forward looking leaders understood that conducting a limited war that was based on a few set piece battles that targeted the "rebels" while considering the southern civilian population as simply wayward brothers and sisters would not cut it. In conjunction with more advanced war aims that called for eroding the southern way of economic life, was developed a continuous method of warfare concurrently in time and space, that targeted civilian infrastructure as well as southern armies.​

 

[wausaubob]

I think Winfield Scott knew quite a bit about strategy. He knew, they all knew, how much British control of the seas had frustrated Napoleon and sent him crashing into Russia.
Scott also knew how important the Mississippi River was to the concept of nation in the US, and control of bulk freight and large troop movements. Scott's strategic ideas were a close approximation of how the war was won.
New Orleans was the key. People in Europe knew where it was. People in New York knew it was a competitive export/import port.
People in the Midwest knew that bulk shipping through New Orleans offered some competitive check on the railroads.
In Civil War history the importance of New Orleans is hidden, to protect the three years of decision making in the Confederacy that continued the war as slavery and the Confederate economy crumbled.
New Orleans was blockaded early. A coaling station was established on Ship Island, MS. Then Farragut got over the passes, and New Orleans could be blockaded in the main river channel. Then the fleet got past the forts. The mercenary garrisons surrendered, and the largest slave auction center located in the Confederacy was transferred to US control. The impact on US prospects to win the war and collapse the value of coerced labor, particularly the expectations of future value, were impacted.

 

[wausaubob]

Scott and Lincoln knew that the US would win on the coasts, control the far west, and then capture river cities on the Mississippi from both ends of the river. On to Richmond was a sop thrown to the east coast press.

 

[Lubliner]

The strategy for holding Kentucky to the Union was a major effort at the beginning, with troops poised at Cairo and Cape Girardeau. These two points also provided the Union with an avenue for attacking Henry/Donelson and the northern border of Tennessee, as well as supporting Missouri and defending against Arkansas.
Lubliner.

 

[wausaubob]

Getting closer to @tony_gunter 's question, the quantification would follow population and banking centers.
Peeling off the 5 border areas keeps the Confederacy under 9M people in total. That was an enormous diminution in what could have been a 15 state Confederacy. Keeping those cities, Wilmington, DE, Baltimore, Wheeling, Covington, Louisville and St. Louis in the US meant that whatever happened the US was going to be the stronger power with the richer economy.

 

[wausaubob]

Table 34 of the Preliminary Report of the 1860 census lists the banking centers as follows:

The principal cities in those states become strategic targets.

 

[wausaubob]

Further quantification is provided by Table 36.

Without Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee, the Confederacy is going to have trouble deploying artillery and a big problem freighting supplies away from any railroad connection. Once those states are under US control, a war of attrition on the Confederacy's operational capacity is inevitable. Both tables were published in May 1862, by the way.

 

[wausaubob]

This table was published in 1865 since the war delayed some of the census reports. But it compiles the top towns and cities in the US as of 1860:

The Confederates defended Richmond to the bitter end, because it was unique in the Confederacy as it contained both iron mills and flour mills.
The US targeted New Orleans as one of the primary places that ocean going ships could be repaired and outfitted in the US.

 

[wausaubob]

By any quantitative measure, the Confederacy had to retain Virginia.

 

[Rhea Cole]

"Strategy is a system of expedients."
Von Molke
​

On an 8 1/2 X 11" map of the Western Theater of the Civil War, the entire operations of the Armies of Northern Virginia & of the Potomac is literally the size of a postage stamp. As events showed, the rest of the Confederacy could exist quite nicely without Virginia. The opposite was obviously not true. When isolated from supplies from the Western states, Lee's army dwindled & starved.

The topic of the thread is strategic sites. I don't propose to rate them, by definition a strategic asset is important.

Saltville, Smyth County Virginia produced 2/3rds of the salt consumed by the Confederate States. On the Gulf Coast, most of the blockade runners captured had cargos of salt. Not only is salt necessary for life, but during the 1860's, copious supplies of salt were needed to conserve meat. The saltworks at Saltville were a strategic asset that was attacked repeatedly. It speaks volumes that even as late as October 1864 the defenders far outnumbered attackers & successfully repulsed all assaults. Stoneman's Raid December 1865 defeated the defenders & completely destroyed the single greatest source of salt in the Confederacy. Real suffering followed.

The only source of copper in the Confederacy was Copper Hill near Chattanooga. The only copper mill was at nearby Cleveland, Tennessee. One of Grant's frist orders after taking command at Chattanooga was to order the destruction of the copper mill at Cleveland. From that point on, the Confederacy was entirely dependent on imports for its supply of caps. Copper Hill / Cleveland copper mill were strategic assets that Grant wasted no time in controlling.

There were nine black powder mills in the Confederacy. When A. S. Johnston abandoned both Nashville & the powder mill at the site of present day Old Stone Fort State Park near Manchester TN, a substantial part of the powder production was lost. The mill at the Armory in Augusta, Georgia produced powder of excellent quality. By 1864, it was the major source for ammunition for what was left of the Confederacy. For reasons not well understood, the strategic importance of Augusta was never recognized. Had it been, there is no doubt that no stone would have stood upon another when Sherman marched to the sea.

The agricultural production of North Georgia was a strategic asset of inestimable value. Before Sherman initiated his March to the Sea a ground breaking map was produced. It married data from the 1860 Census with a map of the State of Georgia.

Detail of Sherman's map of Georgia with county by county census data. LOC

Using this map, Sherman was able to direct his route to where it could do the most harm to the Confederate war economy.

The legend makes clear the detailed intelligence that was included in the map.

These counties have all strategic assets & agricultural production clearly depicted.

Sheman's personal map of North Georgia. LOC

The fold lines on this map are actually mark separate pieces of card that were pasted on linen.
Sherman carried this map in the map pocket in the tail of his coat.
​

A strategic goal of the March to the Sea was intended to break the morale of the Confederate public. A second strategic goal was to destroy the agricultural & manufacturing production of Northern Georgia that was an absolutely vital source of supplies for Lee in Virginia & other Confederate armies still in the field. Because he had these ground breaking maps, Sherman was able to target individual strategic assets such as mills & manufacturing facilities. He was able to both destroy agricultural production & feed his army using the census agricultural output data. Sherman stated that he would never have attempted the March to the Sea without these maps.

The strategic target that was the slave market of New Orleans was the largest in the U.S. Commodity production using slave labor had stopped being a paying proposition in Virginia & border states as early as the late 1850's had ceased to be a paying proposition. It was the sale of "extras", the market term for surplus labor sold away from Virginia & the border states. In the 1840's Franklin & Armfield had created the template for making fortunes transporting extras to the Forks in the Road slave market in Natchez, Mississippi. The Virginia aristocracy were dependent on raising human beings for sale for their economic survival. The majority of that trade passed through New Orleans. The banks & other financial functions that the Deep South depended on were, inevitably, in New Orleans as well. By taking New Orleans, the Union halted the flow of "extras" that were the source of slaves to replace the steady attrition of prime labor as the seven year useful lifespan of slaves ended, real labor shortages began to restrict production in the Deep South strangled production. Cut off from a large percentage of their cashflow, Virginia planters suffered accordingly.

When Grant secured Knoxville & Chattanooga, the strategic direct tail route between Virginia & Georgia was denied the Confederacy. By way of example, after the withdrawal from Knoxville, Longstreet's supplies during the winter were forced to take a convoluted round about route from Dalton, Georgia that often failed completely. The additional wear & tear of the 1,000 mile round trip was something the creaky Southern rail system could not sustain.

These are examples of the numerous strategic assets in the West that the Confederacy could not exist without. There are many others, but this variety of strategic points gives a clear indication of just where the strategic crown jewels lay.

 

[wausaubob]

Two things about Augusta are possible. Sherman may not have wanted to go there as a battle and destruction of the mill would lead to a large loss of life on both sides, including workers there, who may not have been free to flee. Also, Sherman might have chosen to stay out of that area, if that was Alexander Stephens area. Stephens had a long career as a Whig, before becoming a Democrat and a secessionist.

 

[wausaubob]

After Long's cavalry raid got loose, east of Sherman while the battle of Missionary Ridge occurred, and the Cleveland copper source disappeared from the Confederacy, was the Confederacy dependent on percussion caps coming through the blockade? Did Generals Lee and Johnston have to monitor their percussion cap stockpiles and avoid some unnecessary fights?

 

[wausaubob]

With all the other needs of the Confederacy that could be met only by the smugglers, adding a need for percussion caps probably displaced other freight the war and consumers needed and wanted.

 

[Rhea Cole]

After Long's cavalry raid got loose, east of Sherman while the battle of Missionary Ridge occurred, and the Cleveland copper source disappeared from the Confederacy, was the Confederacy dependent on percussion caps coming through the blockade? Did Generals Lee and Johnston have to monitor their percussion cap stockpiles and avoid some unnecessary fights?

As I understand it, the sheet copper from Cleveland was the only source in the South. Without it there was no way to stamp out caps. I assume that supplies running the blockade were all that were available. There was no mill for pulling copper wire in the CSA. A chronic shortage of wire crippled operations throughout the war.

There was no shortage of copper in the North. A deposit of metallic copper existed on the coast of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Only 8' below the surface, the deposit was active until after WWII.