The Confederacy needed Hadrian Wall...

[5fish]

One can argue the many mistakes the Confederacy made during the civil war. I argue the three-big strategic mistakes were their King Cotton foreign policy, Davis insistence on trying to keep border integrity, and Lee's insistence desire to crush the Union army with his much smaller force... I will say King Cotton foreign policy may have worked if they had promise nations cheap cotton for recognition and support, instead of a cotton embargo...

The point of this What if is to address Davis and Lee failed visions. The Confederacy strategy should have been to drag the war out and allow war weariness in the North to win the war. The Confederacy should have looked back to history and follow the Chinse and Romans strategy of walls and fortification along the borders. I say the Confederacy should have used trenches and fortification in strategic places to stimy Northern efforts to invade instead on open warfare. Here are Rome's Limes! See not everywhere just in strategic places and excess points...

Only if the Confederate Leadership could have been so farsighted and creative, they could have used the rivers and mountains and trenches to make it almost impossible to invade in the east and in the west they could have a network of trenches fortification to protect vital infrastructure, croplands and stop the invader. A trench and fortification strategy would have drag out the war for years causing war weariness in the North and leading to victory. With this strategy, Atlanta may not have followed before 1864 election and giving the election to McClellan. Grant may have been stimy in the west and never rose in the ranks to lead all the Union armies. Think about it no Gettysburg or Sharpsburg...

It takes fewer men to defend a fortified position than it takes to overrun it. The old rule of thumb is a three to one ratio to attacker versus defenders. Yes, I am talking about World War One like trenches across Virginia parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama protecting the core of the Confederacy. I never understood why the Confederacy never spiked the rivers in the west stopping all traffic... If the union tries to land troops along the coast again pick strategic places to put your tranches and fortifications to stimy any advance inland... The Overland campaign showed how quickly made fortifications are hard to overrun if not impossible.

I know you going to bring up the siege of Petersburg but that was not planned in advance and done at the end of the war after the Confederacy had little to no resources left. If they follow the strategy of conservation during the war they would have won... Davis strategy was wasteful of men and Lee's strategy of open warfare was unsustainable in men and supplies.

The Confederacy needed its own Hadrian Wall or Maginot Line or a few Roman Limes...

 

[WJC]

It might be better to select a more successful project, perhaps China's Great Wall.
Hadrian's wall was more effective as public relations than as a defense and the Maginot Line was a complete failure.
The biggest argument, though, is the cost and time that would have been necessary.

 

[mofederal]

The resources to build it would have been enormous, maybe too costly for a fledgling country to even consider. The trenches in WWI only worked for a time. The cost in lives was huge. I don't think the South could have successfully manned it either.

 

[Taylin]

The race to the sea (WWI) was a month long flanking and entrenchment race mostly between the French and Germans, who both had millions of men in the field with far superior equipment and means of travel. The race itself only comprised maybe half of the entire front or less, so 200~ miles. Just taking the length of a trench network needed to protect the (civil war) eastern front would have to at least be that long, if not longer. There just simply wasn't enough manpower in 1861 to accomplish this in a reasonable amount of time. Lee's army at Petersburg was what, 50,000 men? Stretched very, very thin over 36~ miles. The amount of men needed to cover a trench network of the eastern front would be impractical. The highest concentration of Confederates was 90,000~ At Richmond in 1862. Not to mention the fact that, as in the first world war, it would have to be multiple lines. Once you're flanked with just one line of defense you can be rolled up without a problem, you need multiple lines to be able to stitch together another front. Logistically I think it was an impossibility. This isn't even to mention that disease would cause attrition among the ranks so clustered together in what couldn't have ever been a clean environment.

They would have been better off entrenching around vital cities early on in the war. With that they could have had planned a better system, more complex and easily defended not to mention further away from the city in question, to allow for some mobility and time for whatever could happen. That's neither here nor there though, and both armies were on the move. Mostly I think the Confederates couldn't afford the time it would take, with limited resources and manpower, to do any of the above before Union Armies were on the move.

 

[5fish]

In the east, the rivers were natural barriers with a combination of fortification a reasonable barrier should have been able to be built to stop the invading North. I admit the west was vast and the rivers ran from North to South so building barriers to prevent the invasion from the North would have been problematic. I never understood why the Confederacy never put multiple barriers across Mississippi, Tennessee, Red and any other rivers to stop the Union use of the rivers. The Romans knew how to drive tree trunks into river beds so I think the rebs could do the same.

 

[jgoodguy]

Anyone know how long such a wall would be?

IMHO
Issues against.

Cost too much. CSA does not have that much cash in hand and the slave owners are tax averse.
take too much time-years to complete with Yankee armies just going around it.
Take too much manpower even if slaves factored in.
If complete too much manpower to man the wall, Union Army just attacks a un/underprotected part.
Artillery makes short work of it.

 

[5fish]

Anyone know how long such a wall would be?

Good question? Another would be where to locate? I admit if the idea was practical. It would probably have been done somewhere across Virginia ...

Cost too much. CSA does not have that much cash in hand and the slave owners are tax averse.
take too much time-years to complete with Yankee armies just going around it.
Take too much manpower even if slaves factored in.
If complete too much manpower to man the wall, Union Army just attacks a un/unprotected part.
Artillery makes short work of it.

I am not talking concrete but more earthworks with earth and timbers and ditches... as time goes by upgrade with better materials...
I do not think manpower would have been an issue if only done like in Virginia...

The Confederacy did not have the manpower sustain the loss of men and materials going toe to toe against the Union army in the east in open warfare, even with victories.

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/all-lee-needed-was-a-tie-for-victory.119492/

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/your-surviving-the-war-was-better-under-grant-then-lee.119394/

 

[steve59p]

Agree that its just not practical. At least not for the entire front. Think they did build defences in places throughout the war not just in the final stages but simply didn't have the manpower or other resources.

I know at times Lee has been accused of being too offensively minded but he might have had to, to try and maintain the imitative and trying to sit in defensive positions would have allowed the north to decide where and when combat occurs, which they increasingly did as the war reached its end and the south was increasingly exhausted. The 3-1 ratio so often mentioned is referring to the strength at the point of contact and if you have your men spread thin in defensive lines then its easier to gain that superiority, or much more, at points of your choosing.

 

[WilliamH]

The South attempted to do just this very thing in the West with their line of forts and it was a complete failure. If you spread your forces out, then the enemy can concentrate their forces on your weak points and destroy your forces piece meal. Just like what Gen Grant did to Fort Donelson and Fort Henry.

Gen. Jackson had the right idea, "by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail"

"He Who Defends Everything Defends Nothing" –Frederick The Great of Prussia.

"Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man" Gen. George S. Patton.

 

[wausaubob]

And the US eventually adopted General Jackson's tactics and made even into an operational principle. Using combined arms operations, and the mobility of well equipped cavalry, the US multiplied its force and concentrated in space and picked apart the Confederacy.
It was the responsibility of the power that had the advantage in steamships, locomotives, horses, mules, oats and wheat, to mercilessly apply those advantages and end the war.

 

[jgoodguy]

Good question? Another would be where to locate? I admit if the idea was practical. It would probably have been done somewhere across Virginia ...



I am not talking concrete but more earthworks with earth and timbers and ditches... as time goes by upgrade with better materials...
I do not think manpower would have been an issue if only done like in Virginia...

The Confederacy did not have the manpower sustain the loss of men and materials going toe to toe against the Union army in the east in open warfare, even with victories.

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/all-lee-needed-was-a-tie-for-victory.119492/

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/your-surviving-the-war-was-better-under-grant-then-lee.119394/

Hadrian's Wall 80 miles long composed of mixed stone, timber, ditch, turf took 6 years to build using about 15,000 legionnaires. Hadrian's Wall.

 

[jgoodguy]

The South attempted to do just this very thing in the West with their line of forts and it was a complete failure. If you spread your forces out, then the enemy can concentrate their forces on your weak points and destroy your forces piece meal. Just like what Gen Grant did to Fort Donelson and Fort Henry.

Gen. Jackson had the right idea, "by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail"

"He Who Defends Everything Defends Nothing" –Frederick The Great of Prussia.

"Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man" Gen. George S. Patton.

Good points.

 

[wausaubob]

But if they thought they could wall off the world and still sell cotton to the capitalist economy, maybe they should have done that. Less cannons and more bricks and it would become obvious sooner, perhaps, that rebelling against change does not work.

 

[5fish]

Hadrian's Wall 80 miles long composed of mixed stone, timber, ditch, turf took 6 years to build using about 15,000 legionnaires. Hadrian's Wall.

The ANV had more men plus slave labor to build trenches and fortification. They could have called it "Lee's Wall" ...

 

[jgoodguy]

Lee was known as the king of spades before he beat McClellan. All we have to do now is figure how many 80 mile sections in the wall and how many Southern gentleman soldiers are going to use a spade instead of a rifle.

 

[Jimklag]

I do not think manpower would have been an issue if only done like in Virginia...

You're kidding right? Just Virginia? In the western theater, the Union armies could operate the same as they actually did and the eastern army could have just done what McClellan did - go around by sea. Now, with a whole bunch of troops manning the wall, McClellan can just march up the Peninsula virtually unopposed. A wall would not have stopped the Union from doing a single thing that they actually did in the war.

 

[5fish]

You're kidding right? Just Virginia? In the western theater, the Union armies could operate the same as they actually did and the eastern army could have just done what McClellan did - go around by sea. Now, with a whole bunch of troops manning the wall, McClellan can just march up the Peninsula virtually unopposed. A wall would not have stopped the Union from doing a single thing that they actually did in the war.

Think of Bermuda hundreds... The Army of the James was bottled up...

 

[Jimklag]

Think of Bermuda hundreds... The Army of the James was bottled up...

Think of the commander of the Army of the James. He bottled himself up. Think of Grant, Buell and Rosecrans out west. McClellan certainly knew how to go around a wall.

 

[unionblue]

I still think time-traveling ****s arming Lee and the ANV with hundreds of thousands of easy to use and maintain AK-47s, would have been a far better option.

Check out Harry Turtledove's, Guns of the South, for how well that theory works.

 

[Jimklag]

The problem with the whole concept of a wall or a line of fixed fortifications is that the USA had a navy. However long you build your fortifications, they just sail around it and attack in your rear.