The only myth is the one you are spouting, Walt. It took your side four long bloody years to achieve what is today but a 2.5 hour drive by car. They lost some 350,000 men doing it. They suffered embarrassing defeats over and over and over again at First Manassas, Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville among others.
It's true that the rebels had no significant success at all west of the mountains throughout the whole war.
Mansfield, Chickamauga, and Sabine Pass say otherwise.
It's true that Lee had as little success outside Virginia as Pope, Hooker and Burnside had within it.
And it is also true that almost every engagement Lee participated in was inside of Virginia.
But it wasn't as bad as you suggest.
Oh, I think it was. I distinctly recall the yankees setting term after term for readmission and, both until those terms were met and after they were met, installing illegitimate militarist regimes in the state governments of the south. It was called reconstruction, Walt. It lasted until 1877.
GOP cap: Mansfield, Chickamauga, and Sabine Pass say otherwise.
Also, though it was actually after the war ended (and so Walt will say it was not significant), the Battle of Palmetto Ranch near Brownsville, Texas, was won by the Confederate Cavalry of the West under old Texas Ranger John Salmon "RIP" Ford on May 13, 1865. This was called by some the last battle of the war.
The Confederates also won the 1863 Battle of Galveston by covering the decks of two ships with bales of cotton and using these "cottonclads" to recapture Galveston and capture or drive off a six-ship Union fleet, a battle feat even Walt's marines would have been proud of. In the process, the Confederates captured the Harriet Lane of Charleston and Fort Sumter fame. See: Cottonclads
Mansfield, Chickamauga, and Sabine Pass say otherwise.
I usually mention Chickamauga. Thanks for the correction.
As I indicated (except for Chickamauga) the rebels had no major success west of the mountainsthroughout the whole war.
Let me append this:
"The North had a potential manpower superiority of more than three to one (counting only white men) and Union armed forces had an actual superiority of two to one during most of the war. In economic resources and logistical capacity the northern advantage was even greater. Thus, in this explanation, the Confederacy fought against overwhelming odds; its defeat was inevitable. But this explanation has not satisfied a good many analysts. History is replete with examples of peoples who have won or defended their independence against greater odds: the Netherlands against the Spain of Philip II; Switzerland against the Hapsburg empire; the American rebels of 1776 against mighty Britain; North Vietnam against the United States of 1970. Given the advantages of fighting on the defensive in its own territory with interior lines in which stalemate would be victory against a foe who must invade, conquer, occupy, and destroy the capacity to resist, the odds faced by the South were not formidable.
Rather, as another category of interpretations has it, internal divisions fatally weakened the Confederacy: the state-rights conflict between certain govern on and the Richmond government; the disaffection of non-slaveholders from a rich man's war and poor man's fight; libertarian opposition to necessary measures such as conscription and the suspension of habeas corpus; the lukewarm commitment to the Confederacy by quondam Whigs and unionists; the disloyalty of slaves who defected to the enemy whenever they had a chance; growing doubts among slaveowners themselves about the justice of their peculiar institution and their cause. "So the Confederacy succumbed to internal rather than external causes," according to numerous historians. The South suffered from a "weakness in morale," a "loss of the will to fight." The Confederacy did not lack "the means to continue the struggle," but "the will to do so." --BCF, P. 855
His sources:
Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still jr., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens, Ga., 1986), 439, 5S; Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War (New York, 1980),255 Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (Collier Books ed., New York, 1961), 250
My emphasis
Walt