Posted on 10/15/2005 8:38:50 AM PDT by teldon30
SOON AFTER THE end of the Civil War, as the Confederates streamed home after four bitter years of fighting, a Virginia soldier was heard to say, "They never whipped us, Sir, unless they were four to one. If we had anything like a fair chance, or less disparity of numbers, we should have won our Cause and established our independence."
That defiance, along with the question of why they "whipped us," have continued to this day. Two points stand out: The first is that the war lasted as long as it did, and the second is that the South lost.
That long-ago Virginia veteran expressed the feelings of the entire South: With as many assets as the Confederacy possessed, how could the South possibly have lost?
Its advantages were enormous, starting with a gigantic and contiguous land mass that stretched east to west from the Atlantic to the far reaches of Texas; and south to north from the Gulf of Mexico up to the Ohio River. It was all Confederate, the whole 750,000 square miles of it, a land brimming with natural resources.
The South controlled mile after mile of seacoast, perfect as a source of food; as well as dozens of harbors and coves and inlets and bays and riverbanks, ideal for smuggling and evading the Union blockade they knew was coming. The South also had a dedicated and devoted population that believed passionately in the righteousness of their Cause.
They knew they were facing huge odds--but they looked to their own ancestors, their own fathers and grandfathers, who had fought the British, the mightiest power in the world at the time, and had won their freedom. Why not a second time against a similar oppressor? They even thought they could fight the same war--they could fight defensively, as had the Colonists, knowing that the Union, as the British, would have to invade and occupy, and then destroy their will to resist in order to claim victory.
It didn't work out that way--and over the next several columns, we are going to talk about the reasons the South lost the Civil War. Of course, there is a corollary: If we try to find out why the South lost, we can also learn why the North won.
Truth be told, experts seldom agree on a single reason; they generally list about six overall concepts.
1. The fundamental economic superiority of the North.
2. A basic lack of strategy in the way the South fought the war.
3. The inept Southern performance in foreign affairs.
4. The South did not have a dominating civilian leader.
5. The Confederate Constitution put too much emphasis on individual and states rights and did not stress the responsibilities of the individual or the state to the federal government.
6. Abraham Lincoln.
I'll discuss each of these reasons in upcoming columns, but I am interested in what you think. If you have thoughts about why the South did not win its independence, please mail or e-mail your own reasons about why the South lost--or the North won. I'll print as many opinions as I can.
Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gen. Robert E. Lee should have known how to fight a winning war of independence. Both were West Point graduates, and had studied how Gen. George Washington had won the Revolutionary War simply by not losing it. It was the best example of the strategy a weaker enemy is forced to use when he fights a larger, better-armed enemy with incomparably better resources, better finances and an ability to prolong a war indefinitely.
Gen. Washington's Rule No. 1: Husband your resources and avoid losing the war.
No. 2: Avoid head-to-head battles that use up your manpower, your most precious asset.
No. 3. Prolong the war.
No. 4. Hope that the enemy would grow heartily sick of the casualties in a war that never seems to end.
There were some other Gen. Washington rules:
No. 5. The Revolution would continue as long as he had the Continental Army, which was the only real power he had.
No. 6. Thus, do not risk the army except in the most dire emergency or when the odds are heavily in your favor.
No. 7. Do not risk the army to defend territory because it is the army that the British have to subdue, not geography.
No. 8. Remember that most of the fighting will be in your territory in geography you know best. Frustrate the British by raids, continual skirmishing, and capturing their supplies, always staying just beyond their ability to defeat you.
These were the rules for victory, and yet neither Davis nor Gen. Lee adopted this "fight-the-war-not-to-win-it-but-to-avoid-losing-it" strategy, even though they knew it was a tried and true road to independence.
Why? Their own ancestors had shown that it worked. In modern times, we have seen it work, too: In World War II, the Russians traded space for time until they could build up their own war-making capability and then go on the offensive.
In the Vietnam War, Ho Chi Minh used it all too well. That war lasted from 1954 to 1975. Ho understood that in order to win a war against more powerful enemies (France, the United States), you have to follow certain rules to lead more powerful enemies into giving up the struggle.
The Vietnam War was a conflict that for us seemed to have no end. Ho's delaying tactics eventually worked: America got sick of a never-ending war that appeared to produce nothing but casualties, and so we made peace with an enemy that had but a fraction of our power. We were the more powerful combatant, yet we gave up the struggle.
The Confederacy never even tried to follow Washington's precepts. Part of the reason is the nature of Southern men. It went counter to the Southern psyche, which was the "attack" strategy for winning any battle. The Confederacy's high command followed their West Point training of "charge" to defeat their enemy. They were convinced that "aggressive attack" was the best and really the only way to win a war.
Could the Washington precepts have worked in the Civil War? We will never know how it would have worked out, but it could not have turned out any worse for the Southern Cause.
An interesting observation. I live in the Hill Country of Texas and the number of people moving into this area seem to be predominantly from the North, in general, and from the North East specifically. Now, don;t ask where I got that from, my thought springs from what I see every Sunday at my church. I know, it's not scientific but it is what I see.
"Westerners" had the most to lose. The low cost or even free lands of the West would have gone to larger slave-holding concerns instead of to individuals. The protectionism favored by Republicans protected Westerners much more than the mostly free-trade Southerners as well.
The main reason the South lost was that the Union unintentionally followed Winfield Scott's "anaconda strategy" of slowly choking off their resources and using the Northern industrial might to overwhelm them. Scott (forced to retire due to old age)was strategically superior to anyone else. That includes Robert E. Lee whom I have great admiration for.
BTW, didn't another old guy named Ronald Reagan pursue a similar strategy that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Just do it - Dixiecrats forever. Who should be our candidate?
Interesting.
Darnit,if it wasnt for Hamiltons extra-constitutional program of assumption why we wouldnt be in this mess today, Hamilton and his deficit spending..oh wait this is a civil war discussion .
Powell was a Virginian.
mark for later
Bookmarking for later! Great article!
Perhaps that is because a higher percentage of "Eastern Generals" were political appointees? I'm thinking of Ben Butler, and a whole slew of Union BG's & MG's that represented certain key minority groups (Germans, Irish, Poles, etc.) These officers came from the higher population centers on the (north) eastern seaboard. A lot of them got volunteer appointments from their respective state governors. Very few were worth a d@mn.
I am a damned yankee by birth, a redneck good ole boy by osmosis. NC in winter, PA in summer.
IMHO: The South was correct on all points, except one. If the South would have freed the slaves before or during the war, they would have had plugged the leak that eventually sunk the cause.
I believe God caused the South to lose because slavery is even worse than the loss of States's rights and the loss of other individual freedoms that the North's win meant for America.
Yes, Big Government is a form of slavery, but the slavery that was practiced in the South was far worse than today's reduced individual freedoms is, even if the South's salvery affected only a portion of the population, while Big Government affects all or us.
Lee was doing pretty well until Stonewall Jackson died, and then he lost the battle of Gettysburg.
salvery = slavery
You'd be suprised what you can accomplish when you give a group of pissed off millers and lumberjacks rifles.
The proper treatment of slaves is in the bible....you may want to rethink that.
That is progress for the North. In the first two years of the war, if Lee can get the Union army to start running, the conscript soldier usually kept running. Gettysburg (1863) was the first battle in the Eastern Theater that the Union soldiers ran, but stopped and rallied.
With as many assets as the Confederacy possessed, how could the South possibly have lost?
Impossible for them to accomplish. If Davis had tried (or even if Lee had declared himself dictator and tried) the whole Confederacy would have collapsed into infighting and desertion.
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