Could the South Have Won the War?

NY Times Disunion ^ | March 16, 2015 | Terry L. Jones

[iowamark]

By March 1865, it was obvious to all but the most die-hard Confederates that the South was going to lose the war. Whether that loss was inevitable is an unanswerable question, but considering various “what if” scenarios has long been a popular exercise among historians, novelists and Civil War buffs...

Perhaps the most common scenario centers on the actions of Gen. Robert E. Lee...

What many fail to recognize is that Northerners were just as committed to winning as the Southerners. Some saw it as a war to free the slaves, while others fought to ensure that their republican form of government survived. Northerners believed that America was the world’s last great hope for democracy, and if the South destroyed the Union by force, that light of liberty might be extinguished forever. Lincoln once said the North must prove “that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose. If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.”

The South may have been fighting to preserve a way of life and to protect its perceived constitutional rights, but so was the North. If the Southern people kept fighting even after the devastating defeats at Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Chattanooga, why should we not believe the North would have kept on fighting even if the Confederates had won Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Chattanooga? The fact is that both sides were equally brave and equally dedicated to their cause. Commitment and morale being the same, the stronger side prevailed.

[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]

I am of the belief that the Axis forces could actually defeated the USSR (even though invading a country that huge with such a brutal climate is always a logistical nightmare) if the following three great mistakes were not made by Hitler:

1) Failure to capture Moscow early in the summer months when it was doable instead of diverting troops to the South in order to encircle Kiev, which could have waited IMHO.

2) Failure to provide winter equipment and clothing for the troops. Elementary in a country such as the USSR known for its harsh climate. If Hitler had studied Napoleon as carefully as he studied Frederick the Great, he would not have repeated Napoleon’s greatest mistake.

3) Failure to treat the indigenous populations well. After decades of oppression under Soviet Communist rule, the native peoples in the USSR generally treated the Axis Forces as liberators. By treating them as badly as Stalin did, this ridiculously misguided policy only succeeded in creating legions of partisan armies operating behind German lines, sabotaging the German war effort, and cutting off German supply routes.

[baltimorepoet]

MY argument would be that the increased Federal power after the Civil War made the further abuses of power much easier. Sort of how HIV doesn’t actually kill the host, but renders the host vulnerable to a future infection.

[DoodleDawg]

Where do you get 25,000?

Here. About half way through they talk about the Washington defenses in 1863 as having 60 forts, 93 batteries, 837 guns, and 23,000 men. That would have been about the time of Gettysburg.

[kiryandil]

I know that’s upsetting to German military fanboys, but its a hard fact.

LOL! Rhino, I'm not a German military fanboy. I've just studied the war in Europe to a great extent.

You wrote: Hitler and the Nazis “brilliance” was the equivalent of the “knockout game” being played. Sucker punching an unprepared victim.

Yes, there was a lot of that. It only works on a hide-bound military hierarchy, which has been accused of "always fighting the last war". But you still have to take the gamble.

I was reading up on Eben-Emael [NOT Hillary's personal email server] this week, and of course, revisited the question of Remagen. Two excellent examples of outside-the-box thinking.

That boob Monty would have nixed the Rhine bridgehead, if he could have.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Mr. Stamp also gives us the economic costs in dollars and shows us that that it would have been financially less expensive

Given that the average price of a slave in 1860 was $800 and that there were 4 million of them, that's $3.2 billion. The entire federal budget in those days ran about $80 million a year.

[Wallace T.]

Did the German state of Saxe-Coburg recognized the Confederacy? This was the birthplace of Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. Given the dynastic ties, Saxe-Coburg could have served as a stalking horse for Britain’s interests in the South. Had Southern battlefield successes in 1861 and 1862 been more decisive, Britain may have recognized the Confederacy. Napoleon III would only have recognized the country if Britain did so. Had British and French recognition been achieved, the blockade would have been broken and the South had free access to European weaponry. Washington would then have sued for peace, and possibly conceded the border states.

[kiryandil]

To be frank, I'm more of a fan of what the US Army did in the Ardennes in December 1944. Dang.

BTW - If you ever want to read a good military book, read The Ten Thousand, by Harold Coyle. One of my favorites.

http://www.amazon.com/TEN-THOUSAND-Harold-Coyle/dp/0671885650

[IronJack]

That was the Confederacy's diplomatic goal all along: if they could be recognized as sovereign by any of the major European powers, the legality of secession would have been rendered moot and some sort of treaty worked out that would have allowed slavery -- if for only a limited time -- in the selected states.

In the long run, maybe that would have been a better solution, since it would have established the primacy of the states instead of the overwhelming power of centralized government that the Founders feared, and whose ramifications are very much with us today.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

That boob Monty would have nixed the Rhine bridgehead, if he could have.

I read the Rick Atkinson Liberation Trilogy a few months back and, man, Monty was a colossal jackass. It gave me a huge appreciation for Eisenhower's skills in just holding the alliance together.

[Lil Flower]

>>Be careful what you wish for, because many times behaving as a ‘monster’ only creates a bigger ‘monster’ and if the South didn’t suffer enough as it was after losing just imagine what would have happened if they lost after using such tactics.<<

Why don’t you enlighten us on Sherman’s “bummers.” Or the outright theft that took place during reconstruction. There’s your “monster’s”, sir.

[BillyBoy]

The argument *I* was responding to made the following statement:

"The original US Constitutional republic died the day the civil war ended"

Not "sustained injury". Not "infected". Died.

If the poster's argument is correct, then passage of the 17th amendment was irrelevant in 1913. It couldn't have destroyed or harmed anything in our Republic, since the Republic had already been dead and buried for decades.

[Lil Flower]

So George Washington, Thomas Jefferson were Communists? You’re hatred for the South has turned you into a blathering idiot!

[dangus]

Of course, they couldn’t. The decision to attack union forces which had withdrawn from 5 bases to Ft. Sumter was suicidally stupid. The big problem facing the South wasn’t invasion from the North, but what to do with millions of slaves as slavery became an increasingly obsolete economic strategy.

Lincoln’s plan to let slavery “wither on the vine” was much better for Dixie than the Confederacy’s plan to make the Southwest slave-dependent: The Great West wasn’t endless, and the region from the Ogallal Aquifer West could never have displaced southern cotton, or for that matter, rice, hogs or sugar. The plantation owners would have been much more wealthy controlling land as the US immigration population bulged and they gradually reduced their dependence on slavery.

But the problem was that the South feared retribution as slaves gained their freedom; they couldn’t imagine their slaves being their countrymen.

[rockrr]

Ask jeff davis.

[DoodleDawg]

I read the Rick Atkinson Liberation Trilogy a few months back and, man, Monty was a colossal jackass. It gave me a huge appreciation for Eisenhower's skills in just holding the alliance together.

Atkison wasn't very complementary on Bradley, Simpson, Patch or most of the other U.S. commanders. We seem to have won the war almost in spite of them and not because of them.

[KC Burke]

Atkison in some other writings had shown himself to me as big leftist Bush basher and lionizer of Petreaous. Despite reading the first book and finding it okay, I could not bring myself to spend the money on the other two.

[stremba]

LeoMcNeil,

I think that DoodleDawg’s post also leads to another facet in all this. The military strategists of the 19th century invariably focused upon enemy cities as targets. This was a mistaken notion. The real target should have been the enemy army, not the enemy’s cities. I think Lincoln recognized this fact fairly early on in the war. If an attack on DC were imminent, the government would simply have evacuated the capital and moved elsewhere.

Political opposition would have grown, but Lincoln was not up for reelection until Nov 1864, a full 16 months after Gettysburg. Assuming a loss at Gettysburg, the Army of the Potomac had prepared defensive lines to which they were ready to retreat. These lines were intentionally placed to guard DC (and Baltimore). How long would it have taken Lee to break through those lines and continue to threaten DC, especially given his supply situation? Lee was never truly a threat to DC, even with a Confederate win at Gettysburg.

[dangus]

Well, Ironically, Southern Democrat President James Buchanan *did* invade Mexico, and installed a puppet, anti-clerical regime in 1860. The French then invaded, but after Lincoln was killed, Southern Democrat Andrew Johnson invaded and set up another even more anti-clerical state in 1865. Sentiments on both sides of the Civil War were so high in favor of the anti-clerical Mexican state that the Hampton Roads peace conference actually discussed a Confederate-Union alliance to invade Mexico.

U.S. interests also supported the Trotskyite Mexican Revolution (1910-1918), until their puppet Pancho Villa outraged Wm Hearst by attacking New Mexico.

[Polynikes]

Yes the South could have won the war at least in the short term IF they had won at Gettysburg. The presence of British General Freemantle of the Coldstream Guards as an observer on the confederate side show that. Though he is officially labeled a tourist I highly doubt he would not have reported back to the British government the viability of a Southern win.

At that point it would have been a relatively simple matter for the British navy to lift the blockade and allow southern cotton to flow to the Birmingham textile mills. The surplus from before the war was exhausted and the South supplied 75% of the textile mills supply. The British were already building commerce raiders for the Confederacy.

If United States survived, which it did, it would become a financial and economic thereat to the European financial domination, which it did.

The British Pound Sterling was the worlds reserve currency. Lincoln had tried to secure loans from the BOE to pay for the war but was rebuffed by interest rates of 24 to 36% so he was issuing own money,Greenbacks. That was a direct threat to the BOE.

The Russians even placed a naval presence in American waters from 63 to 64.
Historians deny this was at least moral support for the US but Russia had no central bank and neither did the US and Tsar Nicolas knew if the US fell he was next. It sent a message to Britain.

Follow the money and Cui Bono ( who benefits)

[stremba]

I think you’re onto something here. The only way I can see for the Confederacy to have won the war is to do something like the guerilla war that the North Vietnamese used against the French and later US forces in Indochina. That type of fighting was certainly considered to be dishonorable by all parties concerned during that time, though, so it’s unlikely that the Confederacy would have resorted to all-out guerilla warfare.