[Bull Snipe]

The how was the Confederacy able to hold on for four years.
The North had that 4 to 1 advantage from the day Sumter was fire on. By your theory, all the Yankees had to do was line up, lock arms and march South. The whole affair should be over in a short while.

[DiogenesLamp]

The North had that 4 to 1 advantage from the day Sumter was fire on. By your theory, all the Yankees had to do was line up, lock arms and march South. The whole affair should be over in a short while.

Well you have to get your supply lines set up, but yeah. :)

Actually, the politics wouldn't have worked. Nobody would have believed it was necessary to mobilize that kind of force to defeat the South, so they kept trying to do it on the cheap. Ended up costing even more blood and treasure.

Grant had the right idea. Just keep sending men into the meat grinder until you broke through.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Lee and others gave them some advantages, defending their own territory also gave them some advantages, but these advantages cannot equal a 4 to 1 manpower over match."

Not quite four to one.
The usual numbers are roughly one million Confederate soldiers vs. 2.5 million Union troops.
These from populations of roughly 9 million Confederates vs. 22.5 million Union citizens.
Both of those numbers are 2.5 to one, not 4 to one.

Yes, of course, the tricky part is, how do we count slaves?
Union slave-states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware) included about half a million slaves, total.
Confederate populations included 3.5 million slaves.
If, for sake of argument, we subtract those out, then we are left with 5.5 million white Confederates vs. 22 million white Union, and there it is, indeed, four to one.

But why subtract out slaves?
In fact about 100,000 Confederate ex-slaves plus another 100,000 Union freedmen served as Union colored troops.
And my guess is the total of slaves serving Confederate armies is likely at least that number, if not more -- consider, it's said Lee had 30,000 slaves with his army at Gettysburg alone.

Even without serving directly in combat, Confederate army slaves performed innumerable vital tasks that often Union soldiers to did for the North.
Think of building fortifications, repairing roads, driving supply wagons, etc.
Plus, away from the front lines, Confederate slaves quickly switched over from growing cash crops like cotton to growing food for Confederate armies.

Today pro-Confederates tell us that many Confederate slaves also served in combat, to which the response is: only those who could pass as white.
But regardless of how many bullets slaves fired at Union troops, the fact is they were integral to both Confederate armies and the wartime Confederate economy.

So, bottom line: when we count slaves in, then the ratio of Union to Confederate populations and armies is 2.5 to one, not 4 to 1.

Now consider: traditional military strategy & tactics teach that given the natural advantages of defense, attacking armies should have at least a three to one advantage in numbers over defenders.
The overall Union advantage was barely 2.5 to one, meaning barely adequate for the job.
Further, there were very few major battles (I can't think of one) where Union troops outnumbered Confederates even two to one.

So four to one is a myth.