Was the cause of Confederate defeat external, or internal? Robert Tanner, whose. “George,” he said, “you were there. The Confederacy was at a disadvantage from the start. Those who stress external causes attribute this defeat to the military might of the Union, Lincoln’s wartime leadership, and Union generalship. The way in which the war ended was not preordained, but that it did end the way that it did was critically important for the future of the United States. CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR The reasons for the Union victory are usually described as advantages in three areas: resources, strategy, and performance on the battlefield. In contrast, the Union could provide massive logistical support to Federal field armies, which meant that large armies could be projected into the heart of the Confederacy, minimizing the danger of going beyond what Carl von Clausewitz calls the “culminating point of victory.”. Union Generals Grant and Sherman showed a strategic brilliance that some have argued out-shone Lee. . Rebuilding America after the Civil War: did reconstruction sow more division? Why was a Fabian operational strategy not a realistic option for the Confederacy if it worked for the Americans during the Revolution? and Simpson call “the best possible conditions for a true reunion” between the warring sections. One of the founding principles of the Confederacy was the self-determination of individual States. Others were concerned that the Confederates might turn to guerrilla warfare. The official website for BBC History Magazine, BBC History Revealed and BBC World Histories Magazine, In the end, the Confederate army was simply overwhelmed by larger forces, claimed General Lee. George W Randolph, a Confederate general, expressed a common view in the south when he predicted in 1861 that: “They [the Federates] may overrun our frontier states and plunder our coast, but, as for conquering us, the thing is an impossibility… History offers no instance of a people as numerous as we are, inhabiting a country so extensive as ours, being subjected if true to ourselves.”. A native New Yorker whom. They argue that because of his penchant for the offensive, Lee was a leader the South could not afford. No. If the 2020 election ends up a battle in the courts — as many expect — Marc Elias will be the Democratic general directing an army of left-wing lawyers in their bid to win back the Senate and take down President Donald Trump. Abolition had advanced elsewhere in the world making it awkward for European politicians to back the Confederacy. The focus on the east creates an illusion that Confederate armies were better led. The major reasons the whites lost the Russian civil war was because of Division, No Morale, Failure to find non Russian allies and Brutality and corruption. The fact that the Civil War was not preordained to end as it did leads to a broader question: Was there a strategy the South could have pursued that would have resulted in a better outcome for the Confederacy? Some historians have focused on these factors to such an extent that they forget the military dimension altogether. Was the cause of Confederate defeat. Governor Joseph E. Brown of Georgia and Governor Zebulon Vance of North Carolina appeared to be more concerned with their own power than the Confederacy. As Mark, and Brooks Simpson argue in their introduction to, , “an air of inevitability has clung too long to the Confederacy’s final months.”, It is important to realize that, while southern morale had suffered as a result of battlefield setbacks in 1864, many in the South saw the situation in the winter of 1864. In 1960, David Donald offered a corollary to state rights, attributing the South’s loss of the war to an “excess of democracy” — too much individualism, dissent, and criticism of the government. Preference for the Fabian strategy dovetails nicely with the view of such critics of Lee as J. F. C. Fuller, Thomas Connelly, and Alan Nolan. Lee offered a succinct explanation for why the South had lost: “The Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.”. Perhaps, then, the underlying failure of the Confederacy can be found in fault lines in southern society. 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But this possibility, as Grimsley has observed, “will forever remain moot because [Johnston], facing a clear-cut military decision, stepped beyond the traditional, almost sacred boundaries of American civil-military relations and refused to fight a lost war any longer.”. An extensive amount of effort has gone into studying the American Civil War. The remainder of Confederate territory was too long and too thin, nowhere more than 450 miles deep. Editor’s Note: If you would like to read more pros and cons on voting for President Trump, further essays on the subject, each from a different perspective, can be found here, here, here, here, here and here. The Confederacy went into the conflict knowing that would be the case. Get our conservative analysis delivered right to you. Those who favor a Fabian strategy for the Confederacy do so in the abstract. The Confederacy did not lose the Civil War, the Union beat them, and it was not until the very last few months of the war that it was at all clear that they would. The American Civil War was one of the first industrially-driven wars. It seems to me that there was no better strategy for the South to follow than the one it did — organizing its forces into field armies to confront the armies of the Union, and giving priority to the best of these armies: Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. This is true, but it demands an answer to the question, Why did they turn against it? Yet what is striking about the Confederacy is how much power the government in Richmond had, taking control of munitions manufacturing, and impounding property. Immediately after the war, many influential Confederates blamed southern defeat on the manifold failures of President Jefferson Davis. But that’s not the whole story, as Adam IP Smith argues, With his Confederate army outnumbered and exhausted, General Robert E Lee finally surrendered to General Grant. This episode illustrates the importance of discussing the social dimension of the war in the context of the military dimension. I am one of those who believe that the “guerrilla option” was never a realistic possibility. In addition, the areas that would have been abandoned had the South pursued a Fabian strategy were precisely the areas the Confederacy needed most if it were to have a realistic chance for independence — Virginia and Tennessee. Ulysses S. “Unconditional Surrender” Grant's shockingly bloody 1864 campaign prevented the result of the American Civil War from ending as an armistice or, much worse, asymmetrical (guerrilla warfare). The North managed these systems better and ran a more balanced economy to support them. That was one reason for Lee’s ‘invasions’ of northern soil in 1862 and 1863. Politicians opposed such necessities as conscription, war taxes, and martial law. But the North had to be prepared to pay the high price of victory. Anti-capitalist rhetoric has always relied on artificial oppositions: labor vs. capital, consumers vs. producers, renters vs. ... Republican senator David Perdue has a slight lead against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, according to a new poll from WSB-TV/Landmark Communications. They could never venture far away from those areas accessible to the Royal Navy. In Connelly’s words, “the need to conserve manpower and logistical strength, and the need to maintain a defensive status that used well the great area of Southern territory somehow never fitted with [Lee’s] strategic views.” These writers apparently favor a nonexistent commander who combined the approaches of Joseph Johnston and “Stonewall” Jackson. Its economy was left in shambles. The topic was Gettysburg — what mistakes, large or small, did the Confederates make that led to the Southern defeat? First, the inclusion of the trans-Mississippi region and Florida in assessments of the expanse of southern territory is misleading. Please enter your number below. After British intervention Biafra finally fell after a very genocidal and brutal war. He had the flexibility to change tactics and to accept losing arguments if it meant winning the war. Alternate history: what if… the gunpowder plot had succeeded? First, the citizens of the Confederacy would never have tolerated a strategy based on a policy of ceding large swaths of territory to the hated invader. Like their Revolution-era forebears, the Confederates could have won against superior forces because they had compensating advantages: a resilient population, talented military leaders, the advantage of fighting a defensive war in country they knew and, above all, a cause for which most white southerners were prepared to make great sacrifices. Sign in to manage your newsletter preferences, Sign up to our newsletter and get the latest in historical news & podcasts direct to your inbox. By offering freedom, Lincoln raised the first official black unit in the US Army; the 54th Massachusetts. Had Lee achieved the sort of victory he sought — the destruction of a Union army, especially on northern soil — the South might well have achieved its independence. But Lee’s explanation is too simple. But this possibility, as, has observed, “will forever remain moot because [Johnston], facing a clear-cut military decision, stepped beyond the traditional, almost sacred boundaries of American civil-military relations and refused to fight a lost war any longer.”, On the other hand, the Union high command needed not only to defeat the Confederate armies, but also to do so in such a way as to foreclose the possibility that the defeated South would turn to guerrilla warfare. Such behavior led historian Frank Owsley to declare that the Confederacy’s tombstone should read “DIED OF STATE RIGHTS.”. The different characters of those leading the two nations were significant in the war. All of these men wanted glory for themselves. Those who emphasize internal causes attribute the failure to breakdowns in Confederate leadership, both political and military, and Rebel errors on the battlefield. Unfortunately for the South, its heart was located on its frontier.” And without Virginia, there was no viable Confederacy. It was the moment at which the Confederacy came closest to victory. There were also political and social reasons that the Confederacy could not have pursued a Fabian or guerrilla strategy. It was a society that many others were involved in, through jobs associated with the plantations and their produce. But the Fabian approach founders on other military shoals as well.
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