What was the MAIN reason for the end of Civil War?

4 long years of brutal battles on both sides attributed to the changing effects that ultimately ended the "cause" that Lee and his troops sworn to uphold. The war was supposed to last a few months, but the long years created such devastating events for both sides that by April of 1865, exhaustion and lack of spirit enabled the surrender to take place. Lee knew his men, he knew his resources, he knew his own capabilities and he knew the outcome of continuing to fight would only prolong the inevitable. For me, I believe it attributed to all of the above. After Gettysburg, Lee had great difficulty in obtaining supplies, boosting morale and maneuvering with stamina. But, the following day of Vicksburg, July 4th, 1863, marked the actual end of the war for the Confederates. Desertion was rapid and uncontrollable and so many suffered greatly. The links that once were connected to initiate the war became broken, communications broken, lack of weapons, supply lines were not getting through, sickness increases which resulted in morale issues over all. The memories of 10 years before the war must have seemed like a lifetime ago. By April of 1865, all of the above attributed to the surrender with, Loss and Grief as well.
 
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4 long years of brutal battles on both sides attributed to the changing effects that ultimately ended the "cause" that Lee and his troops sworn to uphold. The war was supposed to last a few months, but the long years created such devastating events for both sides that by April of 1865, exhaustion and lack of spirit enabled the surrender to take place. Lee knew his men, he knew his resources, he knew his own capabilities and he knew the outcome of continuing to fight would only prolong the inevitable. For me, I believe it attributed to all of the above. After Gettysburg, Lee had great difficulty in obtaining supplies, boosting morale and maneuvering with stamina. But, the following day of Vicksburg, July 4th, 1863, marked the actual end of the war for the Confederates. Desertion was rapid and uncontrollable and so many suffered greatly. The links that once were connected to initiate the war became broken, communications broken, lack of weapons, supply lines were not getting through, sickness increases which resulted in morale issues over all. The memories of 10 years before the war must have seemed like a lifetime ago. By April of 1865, all of the above attributed to the surrender with, Loss and Grief as well.

Even with the situation after the disaster at Sailor's Creek, Lee was looking for options to continue. What kept it from happening was Sheridan intercepting all of his ration & supply trains. If he had been able to obtain those? I dare say that he may have tried to continue in some fashion. Fruitless as it would have been. Just more needless death.
 
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I haven't said nor do I don't believe anybody has said that there weren't shirkers or deserters in the Confederate Army; I don't think anybody would say that that there weren't shirkers or deserters in any army no matter how heroic or tenacious, George Washington certainly had his share of shirkers and deserters. I agree with historian James G. Randall: "Desertion in the South though less extensive than in the North was a factor of large significance."

George Washington? Say it isn't so. I would guess that the Civil war had more desertion than any war that we've been involved in by thousands. Even removing the Confederate numbers late in the war. But I am in no place to judge them, be cause I don't know what they were going through; only try to imagine it, and it's not a pretty thought.
 
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By 1864, 193,000 immigrants came to the US, officially. How many came through Canada and never reported their status is unknown. The immigrants were disproportionately young men looking for work or farmland. I believe the number reached 214,000 in 1865. The US economy was booming. There was immigration from Europe. Thousands more white people left the south to escape the war. And hundreds of thousands of escaped slaves joined the US economy and the armed services. Although the military events of 1864 were tragic, the economy was booming in the West and Midwest, and the US navy was intact and growing. Some of the blockade squadrons were actually making money on their captures.
People in the Confederacy were starving and the US was exporting food.
 
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By 1864, 193,000 immigrants came to the US, officially. How many came through Canada and never reported their status is unknown. The immigrants were disproportionately young men looking for work or farmland. I believe the number reached 214,000 in 1865. The US economy was booming. There was immigration from Europe. Thousands more white people left the south to escape the war. And hundreds of thousands of escaped slaves joined the US economy and the armed services. Although the military events of 1864 were tragic, the economy was booming in the West and Midwest, and the US navy was intact and growing. Some of the blockade squadrons were actually making money on their captures.
People in the Confederacy were starving and the US was exporting food.

I believe this influx provided, for all intents and purposes, an endless supply of soldiers for the North. Once the blockade was in place, the Confederate army depended on their population, and it wasn't increasing. Which is one reason many believe the Confederacy needed a fairly short war to be left alone. Otherwise, even inflicting twice the casualties wasn't going to be enough.
 
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George Washington? Say it isn't so. I would guess that the Civil war had more desertion than any war that we've been involved in by thousands. Even removing the Confederate numbers late in the war. But I am in no place to judge them, be cause I don't know what they were going through; only try to imagine it, and it's not a pretty thought.

Union Desertion
In view of the conditions which prevailed in the war department and in the Union army, it is not surprising that desertion
was a common fault. Even so, the actual extent of it, shown in official reports, comes as a distinct shock. Though the determination of the full number is a bit complicated, the total would have been over 200,000. From New York there were 44,913 deserters according to the records; from Pennsylvania, 24,050; from Ohio, 18,354. The daily hardships of war, deficiency in arms, forced marches sometimes made straggling a necessary for less vigorous men), thirst, suffocating heat, disease, delay in pay, solicitude for family, impatience at the monotony and futility of inactive service, and (though this was not the leading cause) panic on the eve of battle—these were some of the conditioning factors that produced desertion. Many men absented themselves merely through unfamiliarity with military discipline or through the feeling that they should be "restrained by no other legal requirement than those of civil law governing a free people"; and such was a general attitude that desertion was often regarded "more as a refusal… to ratify a contract than as the commission of a grave crime."

The sense of war-weariness, the lack of confidence in commanders, and the discouragement of defeat tended to lower morale of the Union army and to increase desertions. General Hooker estimated in 1863 that 85,000 officers and men had deserted from the Army of the Potomac, while it was stated in December of 1862 that no less than 180,000 of the soldiers listed on the Union muster roll were absent, with or without leave. Abuse of leave or furlough privilege was one of the chief means of desertion. Other methods were: slipping to the rear during a battle, inviting capture by the enemy (a method by which honorable service could be claimed), straggling, taking French leave when on picket duty, pretending to be engaged in repairing a telegraph line, et cetera. Some deserters went over to enemy not as captives but as soldiers; others lived in a wild state on the frontier; some turned outlaw or went to Canada; some boldly appeared at home; in some cases deserter gangs, as in western Pennsylvania, formed bandit groups.


To suppress desertion the extreme penalty of death was at times applied, especially after 1863; but this meant no more than the selection of a few men as public examples out of many thousands equally guilty. The commoner method was to make public appeals to deserters, promising pardon in case of voluntary return with dire threats to those who failed to return. That desertion did not prevent a man posing after the war as an honorable soldier is evident by a study of pension records. The laws required honorable discharge as a requisite for a pension, but in the case of those charged with desertion, Congress passed numerous private and special acts "correcting" the military record.
Source: J.G. Randall, David Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction pp. 329-331.

“On September 11, 1865, the provost marshall general estimated the total number of desertions from the army to be 195,255, not including drafted men who failed to report. Office. Rec., 3 ser., V,109. On December 31, 1865, it was stated that 278,644 desertions had been reported, but many of those reported had been sick on the march, injured, without official knowledge, or otherwise justifiably absent. According to the same report, the monthly desertions in 1863 averaged 4647; in 1864 they averaged 7333. Ibid.,757-758. See Shannon, II, 179 n., and, for a general treatment of the whole subject, Ella Lonn, Desertions during the Civil War.”

James Randall and David Donald, Civil War and Reconstruction, footnote 28, pp. 329-330.



Confederate Desertion

Desertion in the South though less extensive than in the North was a factor of large significance; and a study of the causes that produced it goes far toward revealing the conditions which made the war intolerable to thousands among people and soldiers. As explained by Miss Ella Lonn, backwoodsmen and crackers were drawn into the army who had no sympathy with slavery and no interest in the issues of a struggle which they did not understand. The conscript net gathered in even Northerners and Mexicans, whose tendency to desert was natural enough. Many of the deserters were mere boys. Poor food and clothing lack of shoes and overcoats, and insufficient pay inevitably produced dissatisfaction. Sometimes the pay was fourteen months behind; Often a soldier on leave could not pay the transportation to return to his command. Unsanitary camp conditions had their debilitating effect. Soldiers kept in unwholesome inaction were more than commonly subject to homesickness and depression. Often the alternative was abandonment and neglect of wife and children or departure from the army – in other words, a choice between two kinds of desertion, a dilemma in facing conflicting loyalties. Not a few Southern soldiers found themselves in the situation of an Alabaman who deserted the army when his wife wrote him: "We haven’t got nothing in the house to eat but a little bit of meal… I don’t want you to stop fighting them Yankees… but try and get off and come home and fix us up some and then you can go back." Some Arkansas soldiers deserted when informed that Indians were on a scalping tour near their homes. Indignant at extortioners and profiteers, soldiers would become disgruntled at the "rich man’s war and the poor man’s fight." For such men desertion bore no stigma; and, in sum, it appears that this factor (which after all, was but a reflection of many other factors) ‘contributed definitely to the Confederate defeats after 1862 and to the catastrophe of 1865."

J.G. Randall, David Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction pp. 516-517
 
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I believe this influx provided, for all intents and purposes, an endless supply of soldiers for the North. Once the blockade was in place, the Confederate army depended on their population, and it wasn't increasing. Which is one reason many believe the Confederacy needed a fairly short war to be left alone. Otherwise, even inflicting twice the casualties wasn't going to be enough.
Some of the immigrants became soldiers. But most became workers, longshoreman, and farmers. Many served in the US Navy. The US economy was tapped into a virtually limitless supply of working age men.
 
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Small things like the fact that the US Blockade fleets were regularly capturing smugglers and counting the cargos as to military equipment and food, must have given navy intelligence and the War Department a real data base on what shortages were doing to the Confederate armies. There are compelling reasons why Farragut was assigned to close Mobile Bay, why Cushing was considered a great hero for torpedoing the Albermerle and why the largest naval fleet of the war was assembled off Fort Fisher in January 1865.
The US army of Virginia broke up the Weldon RR further south to isolate Wilmington and General Butler was ordered to get on land above the fort and stay there regardless of anything. He declined to follow orders and Lincoln let Grant fire him.
Three weeks later Porter and Terry captured Fort Fisher in a combined arms operation that was professionally conducted and savagely opposed.
Almost no Confederate armies stood and fought after that.
So complete was the US victory at that point, that Sec'y Wells could start selling ships and mustering out crews. Confederate prisoner of war commanders began to abandon their prisoners, who were escorted by civilians to Wilmington and Knoxville.
As the port cities on the Atlantic coast were captured or cut off, the war ended.
 
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While it is impossible to get a completely accurate count of desertion on either side, I believe that I read somewhere that Ella Lonn in her book "Desertion During the Civil War" concluded that 1 in 7 Northerners deserted while 1 in 9 Confederates deserted.

I quote this from Gary Gallagher's very informative book 'The Confederate War" -"Desertion by Confederate soldiers has been a main beam supporting the lack-of-will edifice, but its strength may be more apparent than real. The presence of Union armies on southern soil generated a type of Confederate desertion unknown among Union soldiers--and one that did not necessarily indicate weak will or unhappiness with the Confederacy... Thousands of other Confederates left the ranks when they marched close to home but later returned to their units. In her pioneering work on desertion, Ella Lonn estimated that 8,500 of 12,000 deserters from Virginia and nearly 9,000 of 24,000 from North Carolina rejoined the army. How should these men be categorized."

Gallagher also states that "Because northern soldiers contended with fewer worries about the safety and material well-being of their families and stood a much better chance of avoiding death or wounds in battle, scholars should be careful about attributing to them superior morale."
 
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While it is impossible to get a completely accurate count of desertion on either side, I believe that I read somewhere that Ella Lonn in her book "Desertion During the Civil War" concluded that 1 in 7 Northerners deserted while 1 in 9 Confederates deserted.

I quote this from Gary Gallagher's very informative book 'The Confederate War" -"Desertion by Confederate soldiers has been a main beam supporting the lack-of-will edifice, but its strength may be more apparent than real. The presence of Union armies on southern soil generated a type of Confederate desertion unknown among Union soldiers--and one that did not necessarily indicate weak will or unhappiness with the Confederacy... Thousands of other Confederates left the ranks when they marched close to home but later returned to their units. In her pioneering work on desertion, Ella Lonn estimated that 8,500 of 12,000 deserters from Virginia and nearly 9,000 of 24,000 from North Carolina rejoined the army. How should these men be categorized."

Gallagher also states that "Because northern soldiers contended with fewer worries about the safety and material well-being of their families and stood a much better chance of avoiding death or wounds in battle, scholars should be careful about attributing to them superior morale."
The biggest problems with respect to Confederate desertion, I suspect, were people who recrossed the Mississippi river and never were available to the main armies after, and men who fled north, to the Midwest to avoid Confederate conscription.
 
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The Confederate economy was never constructed to support large concentrations of people who weren't living on farms or small towns.
Once Baltimore, Louisville, St. Louis and New Orleans were taken away by the US, the Confederate economy had a hard time moving food and forage. The US economy, on the other hand, was set up to support cities, including large numbers of working horses. In the US that went on even during several months of winter weather.
 
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While it is impossible to get a completely accurate count of desertion on either side, I believe that I read somewhere that Ella Lonn in her book "Desertion During the Civil War" concluded that 1 in 7 Northerners deserted while 1 in 9 Confederates deserted.

I quote this from Gary Gallagher's very informative book 'The Confederate War" -"Desertion by Confederate soldiers has been a main beam supporting the lack-of-will edifice, but its strength may be more apparent than real. The presence of Union armies on southern soil generated a type of Confederate desertion unknown among Union soldiers--and one that did not necessarily indicate weak will or unhappiness with the Confederacy... Thousands of other Confederates left the ranks when they marched close to home but later returned to their units. In her pioneering work on desertion, Ella Lonn estimated that 8,500 of 12,000 deserters from Virginia and nearly 9,000 of 24,000 from North Carolina rejoined the army. How should these men be categorized."

Gallagher also states that "Because northern soldiers contended with fewer worries about the safety and material well-being of their families and stood a much better chance of avoiding death or wounds in battle, scholars should be careful about attributing to them superior morale."

Your last lines are interesting. Why would Union soldiers be concerned for their homes and families? It's not as if the Confederate army was marching through Philly and points North. But a contention by some is that the Union soldiers were driven by a strong belief in keeping the Union together; and freeing the .... I don't know if many cared one way or another about those particular issues. Some of course did, I have no doubt.
 
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While it is impossible to get a completely accurate count of desertion on either side, I believe that I read somewhere that Ella Lonn in her book "Desertion During the Civil War" concluded that 1 in 7 Northerners deserted while 1 in 9 Confederates deserted.

I quote this from Gary Gallagher's very informative book 'The Confederate War" -"Desertion by Confederate soldiers has been a main beam supporting the lack-of-will edifice, but its strength may be more apparent than real. The presence of Union armies on southern soil generated a type of Confederate desertion unknown among Union soldiers--and one that did not necessarily indicate weak will or unhappiness with the Confederacy... Thousands of other Confederates left the ranks when they marched close to home but later returned to their units. In her pioneering work on desertion, Ella Lonn estimated that 8,500 of 12,000 deserters from Virginia and nearly 9,000 of 24,000 from North Carolina rejoined the army. How should these men be categorized."

Gallagher also states that "Because northern soldiers contended with fewer worries about the safety and material well-being of their families and stood a much better chance of avoiding death or wounds in battle, scholars should be careful about attributing to them superior morale."

You cannot distinguish between a "good" deserter and a "bad" deserter, because neither how you or anyone else spins it's unauthorized leave. Just like the author you posted claims that scholars should be careful about attributing superior morale to Union soldiers, he or she should be careful how they allude to justifying desertion for the Confederate. There were plenty of northern farming families who suffered greatly during the CW, so there were no disposable populations. The author you cited is contemporary, so to answer their question regarding how those men should be categorized should be exactly how contemporary militaries would categorize them, as deserters without confirmation bias.
 
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