that last chance came in APR 65, when he failed to break the ANV & the other major CSA forces into guerrilla bands & fight on, until the north decided to QUIT.
fwiw, Lee did NOT have to WIN;he simply had to avoid final DEFEAT.
trust me, in about DEC 1975 or perhaps MUCH SOONER, the civilians in the north would have done ANYTHING to end the war against the north-anything, especially if the guerrillas had started burning NORTHERN cities (say one a month???).
free dixie,sw
You are a complete idiot, aren't you?
"Lee saw such manifest danger in this proposal to become guerillas that he began to question Alexander: "If I should take your advice, how many men do you suppose would get away?"
"Two-thirds of us. We would be like rabbits and partridges in the bushes and they could not scatter to follow us."
"I have not over 15,000 muskets left," Lee explained. "Two-thirds of them divided among the states, even if all could be collected, would be too small a force to accomplish anything. All could not be collected. Their homes have been overrun, and many would go to look after their families.
"Then, General," he reasoned further, "you and I as Christian men have no right to consider only how this would affect us. We must consider its effect on the country as a whole. Already it is demoralized by the four years of war. If I took your advice, the men would be without rations and under no control of officers. They would be compelled to rob and steal in order to live. They would become mere bands of marauders, and the enemy's cavalry would pursue them and overrun many sections they may never have occasion to visit. We would bring on a state of affairs it would take the country years to recover from. And, as for myself, you young fellows might go bushwhacking, but the only dignified course for me would be to go to General Grant and surrender myself and take the consequences of my acts."
Lee paused, and then he added, outwardly hopeful, on the strength of Grant's letter of the previous night, whatever his inward misgivings, "But I can tell you one thing for your comfort. Grant will not demand an unconditional surrender. He will give us as good terms as this army has the right to demand, and I am going to meet him in the rear at 10 A.M. and surrender the army on the condition of not fighting again until exchanged."
Alexander went away a humbler man. "I had not a single word to say in reply," he wrote years afterwards. "He had answered my suggestion from a plane so far above it, that I was ashamed of having made it." - "R. E. Lee" by Douglas Southall Freeman
Lee saw the folly of guerilla warfare and the horrendous impact it would have had on the Southern population, even if someone like you can not.
110 years, huh? What a putz.
He never assembled much more than 60,000 men from that point on, and he was limited by his own superiors and his own preference to operating in a narrow albeit important theater.
His only choice after Gettysburg was to hold on in the hopes of foreign intervention, which had no chance of coming anymore.
that last chance came in APR 65, when he failed to break the ANV & the other major CSA forces into guerrilla bands & fight on, until the north decided to QUIT.
The quitters among the Union had already been purged from both military and political life. Vallandigham had lost all credibility with one of the most ill-timed speeches in political history and McClellan was powerless. Grant was not a quitter, nor was Sherman, nor was Sheridan.
Lincoln was not a quitter either, nor was Seward, nor was Stanton, nor was Welles. Every milquetoast that tied the Union's hands behind its back was scoured out of the administration and out of the command - they were deadenders all in 1865.
Sherman was already operating on a total war footing by April 1865 - his men had become past masters at hunting down and destroying Rebel guerrilla units. Grant could have quickly learned that art as well.
The very first guerrilla raid against a Northern city would have been the last one.
fwiw, Lee did NOT have to WIN;he simply had to avoid final DEFEAT.
The entire point of the Confederacy was to hold and govern land, not to operate as a secret Mafia. Terrorism was not only beneath Lee's dignity, it did not serve his purposes at all.
Lee needed to win on the battlefield to avoid defeat. And by Appomattox he had done about 99% of the winning his resources enabled him to do.
trust me, in about DEC 1975 or perhaps MUCH SOONER, the civilians in the north would have done ANYTHING to end the war against the north-anything, especially if the guerrillas had started burning NORTHERN cities (say one a month???).
The record of the Civil War shows that such provocations only made the North more determined to punish the Confederates, not less. Antietam and Gettysburg proved that in spades. A more accurate picture is that between July '61 and September '62 there were plenty of Northerners who questioned whether the war was worthwhile. That was the window of opportunity for the cowards and the defeatists of the Union, helped along by the incompetence of the general staff and the disloyalty of one faction of Northern Democrats.
After Antietam and the successful November '62 elections for the GOP, the Peace Democrats were routed as a viable political faction.
After the Overland Campaign and the election of '64 the entire Democrat party, defeatist and Unionist, held less than 20% of the seats in Congress.
80% of the North was backing Grant and Sherman unconditionally and a guerrilla raid on any Northern city would have provoked red rage, not fear.