Did the South have a chance to win the Civil War?

[TeethWhitener]

I understand that there is so much more to war then numbers, but really, when you hold all the advantages - industry, manpower, trade and economics - and your navy simply dwarfs your opponents, you have way more killing capacity than your enemy and are in a way better position for a prolonged conflict. That is hard to overcome no matter how good your soldiers are.

Vietnam managed to pull it off. (Yes I know, counterinsurgency warfare is very different from conventional warfare.)

 

[Vanadium 50]

We stopped the Germans in '45
and crushed the Viet Cong
Almost

 

[Mondayman]

Vietnam was a different beast and not comparable to the civil war, at least in terms of America's involvement. They were fighting an ocean away in terrain not natural to the US and doing it with their hand tied behind their back. North Vietnam also had the assistance of the USSR, for whom they relied on for SAMs, radar, artillery, aircraft, small arms, medical supplies, etc. Plus there were thousands of Soviet advisors who served during the war, many of them air defense officers. Despite this, Vietnam has said that the bombing campaign had the North weeks or even days from making peace talks before the Tet Offensive occurred and American support completely faltered.

 

[Klystron]

Axis surrendered 1944. Japanese Empire 1945. No?

According to a book by Air Marshal Ky, the Viet Cong were defeated by 1974 but the military gains were frittered away allowing the NVA time to rebuild, recover and occupy South Vietnam. The restricted fractured war against the North prevented victory against the NVA always allowing re-armament, rarely attacking power centers.

 

[Mondayman]

Axis surrendered 1944

Today is VE day. In the West we celebrate the 8th as the end of the war in Europe, in Eastern countries they recognize the 9th as Victory Day.

 

[TeethWhitener]

John Nagl’s book, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, has a good comparative analysis of the US loss in Vietnam vs Britain’s victory in Malaya. The general lesson is that counterinsurgency is best approached as a police action (this is echoed by several other prominent military theorists), which means that Westmoreland’s approach in Vietnam (much more Clausewitzian in nature) was fundamentally the incorrect strategy.

 

[PeroK]

To return to the original question, there are a few salient points that ought to be made. First, the war objectives of the two sides were entirely different. The Confederacy, at least in the early part of the war, only really wanted to secede from the Union. Victory for the South would have been an early armistice. That was entirely possible. No one knew what sort of president Lincoln would turn out to be and he could have failed to unite the North in pursuing a long-term conflict.

The Union objective on the other hand was - by force if necessary - to restore the Confederate states to the Union. This ultimately required the war to be won and the South to be occupied and reconstructed. There was no guarantee that Lincoln would succeed in this - or retain the presidency in 1864.

Perhaps an outright Confederate victory was a near impossibility, but ultimately they were defeated by Lincoln's conviction to fight for as long as it took to restore the Union; and his ability to keep the Union united in pursuit of this objective.

 

[russ_watters]

I never knew that p means "the chance that the South had to win the war". My apologize.

Now that you recognize that "P" stands for "probability" -- in this case, the probability of the south winning the war, perhaps you could re-visit the point and put some thought into it, in order to understand what's wrong with how you framed the question.

The way you phrased the question, you are attacking the position that the South had zero chance (probability) of winning the war. It's trivial to show as a matter of math/logic (as V50 did) that it couldn't be exactly zero. So, could the South have won the war? Of course they could have. Was it likely (say, P>75%)? Or realistically possible (say, P>25%)? Or a toss-up (P=50%)? That's a harder, but more useful criteria/framing.

 

[russ_watters]

Vietnam managed to pull it off. (Yes I know, counterinsurgency warfare is very different from conventional warfare.)

Let's at least try to keep it tied to the Civil War...

I think it is noteworthy that at least in my view the Revolutionary War contained more modern insurgent/guerrilla warfare tactics than the Civil War did. I actually can't think of any war before Vietnam where that was the preferred approach of one side, though, so I don't think it is realistic to speculate that it could have been done in the Civil War.

 

[TeethWhitener]

Let's at least try to keep it tied to the Civil War...

I think it is noteworthy that at least in my view the Revolutionary War contained more modern insurgent/guerrilla warfare tactics than the Civil War did. I actually can't think of any war before Vietnam where that was the preferred approach of one side, though, so I don't think it is realistic to speculate that it could have been done in the Civil War.

The Peninsular war (1807 or so) is where the word guerrilla originated. Wellington leaned on it extensively to great effect when he was trying to kick the French out of Iberia.

 

[gmax137]

I grew up in Virginia in the 1960s (a far different place than it is today). John Mosby was kind of a local civil war hero. He took a kind of a guerrilla approach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._Mosby

The point remains, however, that the confederacy did not wage the war in that way.

 

[Vanadium 50]

The point remains, however, that the confederacy did not wage the war in that way.

That is true. It's also true that such a strategy would be unlikely to achieve Southern goals, at least long-term.

I think the best argument that the South was doomed from the start is to consider what a lasting peace would need to look like. If small border skirmishes (between VA-WV and KS-MO) plus a trade embargo (at least de facto) continued indefinitely, eventually the Confederacy would fail as a country.

The South hoped Britain would come to their aid, or at least recognize them. This didn't happen, and probably wouldn't. Britain was repulsed by slavery, and needed Northern grain more than Southern cotton. The South's only hope was to become a satellite of some other European power. Problem is, Europe was distracted, and the War of The Triple Alliance showed the high cost of even winning a proxy war. Furthermore, no nation could project sea power like Britain.

The big problem for the South wasn't winning the war. It was that they had no likely plan for peace.

 

[Klystron]

I grew up in Virginia in the 1960s (a far different place than it is today). John Mosby was kind of a local civil war hero. He took a kind of a guerrilla approach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._Mosby

The point remains, however, that the confederacy did not wage the war in that way.

Other Confederate battle commanders in addition to Mosby such as Nathan Forrest, Cullen Baker, William Anderson and William Quantrill advocated highly mobile cavalry tactics; lightning fast raids often against weakly defended civilian and military targets where speed, surprise and mobile firepower defeated numerically superior but stationary forces.

Though successful tactics, these raids tended to strengthen Union resolve to defeat the Confederacy while generating bad press in the nation's newspapers that far outweighed tactical advantage. As stated above, top military commanders such as Robert E. Lee failed to embrace or countenance guerilla methods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_massacre

Without the veneer of war, these tactics were considered despicable criminal banditry. For example Quantrill's raiders who continued these tactics after Appomattox such as the James brothers and their cousins the Youngers were hunted as vicious criminals.

 

[Drakkith]

The big problem for the South wasn't winning the war. It was that they had no likely plan for peace.

Indeed. I suppose they thought that once they whipped the USA 1861 (and thus achieved independence) that everything would be hunky-dory between the USA and CSA. Or, more likely, no one gave much thought to this topic in the first place.

The South lost the Civil War in the West. There was a substantial peace movement in the North at certain times in the war even with all these huge CSA mistakes. Imagine how strong the peace movement would have been with northern casualties doubled for far less strategic gains. Imagine how strong the peace movement would have been in the North if the South managed to keep Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Vicksburg. I think that the North would not have been willing to take that other hand out from behind their back if they took much heavier casualties for little or no strategic gains.

I can counter all of this with one sentence: "Imagine how short the war would have been if McClellan hadn't consistently overestimated the number of Confederate soldiers in Johnston's and Lee's armies." The Peninsula campaign to capture Richmond probably would have succeeded, and if Antietam still happened that uncommitted third of the Union army would probably have crushed Lee towards the end of the day or the next.

My point is that there are many, many things you can look back on and say, "If only they had done THIS instead". Of course they wouldn't would've done much better if you look back with the benefit of hindsight and correct all their 'mistakes'!

In my opinion the fact that the Confederacy held on for 4 years is absolutely astonishing and owes most of that to two things:
1.) The stunning victories in the East by Lee that kept Richmond from being taken and prevented the destruction of one of the CSA's principle armies.
2.) The absurd difficulty of having to march and sustain armies numbering upwards of 100,000 men through hostile territory that's the size of western Europe.

The logistical problems of this second part were immense, and I don't think it's a stretch to say that the invention of the railroad won the war in terms of logistics. None of the Union armies would have ever been able to move as quickly as they did, with as many men as they had, over so large distances as they marched without a railroad forming the backbone of their supply line.

 

[Klystron]

Along with railroads, telegraphs, heliographs, improved optical devices and other technology, we should examine mass production and assembly lines becoming common in 1860's Northern factories and a few Southern textile mills. Union factories simply overwhelmed the Confederacy's ability to supply modern weapons and munitions.

Most, if not all, of the Confederate raiders mentioned in earlier posts relied on captured or purchased weapons manufactured by Colt, Smith&Wesson, Henry and other Union suppliers. Even without a naval blockade the Confederacy was out gunned.

The late Chris Kyle wrote a short book on the history of military firearms "American Gun" from a sniper's veiwpoint though many thousands books describe Civil War equipment.

[Edit 20200512: the expression Confederacy out gunned consists of metaphorical shorthand for war time logistics complexity in the interest of brevity, not particular battles being decided by numerical imbalance in hand-held weapons.]

 

[Drakkith]

Union factories simply overwhelmed the Confederacy's ability to supply modern weapons and munitions.

Most, if not all, of the Confederate raiders mentioned in earlier posts relied on captured or purchased weapons manufactured by Colt, Smith&Wesson, Henry and other Union suppliers. Even without a naval blockade the Confederacy was out gunned.

What's interesting is that at no point did the Confederacy lose a major battle due to lack of arms or ammunition. Most of the disparity was, as far as I know, really in the sense of lack of powder and ammunition for gunnery training, lack of artillery for all but the most essential cities/forts, and heavy rationing of existing stocks of ammunition and powder even for the frontline armies. Basically, the CSA just barely had enough to equip their armies with very little left over for the non-essential (but often important) tasks.

Contrast this with the Union, where men supposedly had a quota for the number of rounds they were required to fire per day during sieges, and had so much ammunition, powder, and other supplies stockpiled that even the loss of entire supply depots to enemy action had virtually no effect beyond the short-term.

As for railroads, I think the best example is Lee's Army of Northern Virginia nearly having itself starved into destruction because of the limited capacity of the ill-kept railroad system leading to Richmond. There was an immense amount of food sitting out in the southern states that simply could not be gathered and transported because of the relatively poor rail network.

That's my understanding at least.

 

[atehundel]

The whole argument of the OP seems to lie somewhere between "if Germany got the bomb first we'd all be speaking German" and "if the south's war were managed by people other than those who managed the war their actions would have been potentially better." In other words, no substantive argument at all.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I think many people are delusional about things associated with "The War Between the States".

You mean "The War of Yankee Aggression"?

"if the south's war were managed by people other than those who managed the war their actions would have been potentially better." In other words, no substantive argument at all.

To be fair, I don't think his position is at all clearly stated. He also has points like "the failure to adopt and implement a plan to keep New Orleans from being captured" which is structurally the same as "the failure to adopt and implement a plan to win the war". Yes, it's true but not very helpful.

I think his very first point is telling. "the decision to fire on Fort Sumter instead of using that time productively diplomatically, economically, and militarily. " In short - the best outcome would have been not to start.

Time was not on the side of the South. It would have been better for them to have seceeded in 1850. Or 1820. Possibly even 1812, although that may not have worked out all that well.

The Confederacy, at least in the early part of the war, only really wanted to secede from the Union.

I don't think they had thought that through. One of their complaints was the, um, lack of enthusiasm Northern states showed in enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. How well would that have worked if the North were a whole separate country?

 

[jtbell]

One of their complaints was the, um, lack of enthusiasm Northern states showed in enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. How well would that have worked if the North were a whole separate country?

Maybe they would have built a wall along the Potomac and Ohio Rivers.

 

[Mondayman]

there's a series of alternate history books out there called Southern Victory or Timeline-191 by Harry Turtledove. In it the Special Order 191 detailing Lee's invasion of Maryland is never recovered by Union soldiers, and the C.S. are able to surprise the Union forces and destroy them at the Battle of Camp Hill in 1862. This leads to a Confederate Victory. The series goes well into the 1940's. Could be an interesting series

 

[HallsofIvy]

And, in case no one else realized it, the reference to the Republican party nominating a "real estate developer" was a reference to Donald Trump, not George McClellan!

 

[timmeister37]

The whole argument of the OP seems to lie somewhere between "if Germany got the bomb first we'd all be speaking German" and "if the south's war were managed by people other than those who managed the war their actions would have been potentially better." In other words, no substantive argument at all.

Baloney. I listed thirteen mistakes that the Confederates made, and most of them were very specific mistakes.

If the South's war was managed by the exact same people but those people did not make the thirteen mistakes that I listed, then the South probably would have won the war.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Baloney. I listed thirteen mistakes that the Confederates made, and most of them were very specific mistakes.

Baloney. Your thirteen mistakes were vague and not necessarily possibile. "The failure to adopt and implement a plan to keep New Orleans from being captured" is structurally the same as "the failure to adopt and implement a plan to win the war". Yes, it's true but not very helpful.

 

[timmeister37]

To be fair, I don't think his position is at all clearly stated. He also has points like "the failure to adopt and implement a plan to keep New Orleans from being captured" which is structurally the same as "the failure to adopt and implement a plan to win the war". Yes, it's true but not very helpful.

Good job cherry-picking my weakest and most vague of all the thirteen points I listed.

Yes, I admit that just saying that "the failure to adopt and implement a plan to keep New Orleans from being captured" is not real meaningful. What I would need to do is list all the troops available in other theaters and say which Confederate troops should be moved to bolster New Orleans. What I will say in my defense is that Davis left virtually no troops to defend New Orleans. New Orleans was the biggest city in the Confederacy and probably the Confederacy's most important port. New Orleans was all the end of the Mississippi River. It's hard to imagine any legitimate reason not to leave any troops to defend it.

I think his very first point is telling. "the decision to fire on Fort Sumter instead of using that time productively diplomatically, economically, and militarily. " In short - the best outcome would have been not to start.

Time was not on the side of the South. It would have been better for them to have seceeded in 1850. Or 1820. Possibly even 1812, although that may not have worked out all that well.

The worst decision that the Confederacy could have made in April 1861 was to fire on Fort Sumter (or any Federal fort). Sometimes people argue against me on this and say that the Civil War was inevitable after the South seceded and that Lincoln would have found some pretext to invade the Confederacy and start a Civil War anyway. I admit that Lincoln probably would have found some pretext to start the Civil War if the South never fired on Fort Sumter. However, it was still a huge mistake for the South to fire on Fort Sumter. As I said in the OP, northern ships were still picking up freight at southern ports after the South seceded until the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter. If the Confederacy had not fired on Fort Sumter, the Civil War might not have started until the summer or fall of 1861. If war was delayed until July or August 1861, the South could have traded that cotton the cotton of the harvest of 1861 for an enormous amount of war supplies.

The South's firing on Fort Sumter united the North against the Confederacy. Even most people in the border states thought that the South's firing on Fort Sumter was unethical. Fort Sumter greatly helped Lincoln mobilize public support for the Civil War. In Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, President Lincoln told the South that "the government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors." If the South never fired on Fort Sumter, and Lincoln started the Civil War anyway, Lincoln would be reneging on this word and this would likely alienate the majority of people in the border states such as MO, KY, and MD.

I don't think they had thought that through. One of their complaints was the, um, lack of enthusiasm Northern states showed in enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. How well would that have worked if the North were a whole separate country?

Let's put this in perspective. About a thousand slaves escaped from the South to the North in 1860 out of a population of approximately four million slaves. That's 1 in 4,000.

Southerners were correct that the North was a threat to their vile institution of slavery.

 

[timmeister37]

To be fair, I don't think his position is at all clearly stated. He also has points like "the failure to adopt and implement a plan to keep New Orleans from being captured" which is structurally the same as "the failure to adopt and implement a plan to win the war". Yes, it's true but not very helpful.

Good job cherry-picking my weakest and most vague of all the thirteen points I listed.

Yes, I admit that just saying that "the failure to adopt and implement a plan to keep New Orleans from being captured" is not real meaningful. What I would need to do is list all the troops available in other theaters and say which Confederate troops should be moved to bolster New Orleans. What I will say in my defense is that Davis left virtually no troops to defend New Orleans. New Orleans was the biggest city in the Confederacy and probably the Confederacy's most important port. New Orleans was all the end of the Mississippi River. It's hard to imagine any legitimate reason not to leave any troops to defend it.

I think his very first point is telling. "the decision to fire on Fort Sumter instead of using that time productively diplomatically, economically, and militarily. " In short - the best outcome would have been not to start.

Time was not on the side of the South. It would have been better for them to have seceeded in 1850. Or 1820. Possibly even 1812, although that may not have worked out all that well.

The worst decision that the Confederacy could have made in April 1861 was to fire on Fort Sumter (or any Federal fort). Sometimes people argue against me on this and say that the Civil War was inevitable after the South seceded and that Lincoln would have found some pretext to invade the Confederacy and start a Civil War anyway. I admit that Lincoln probably would have found some pretext to start the Civil War if the South never fired on Fort Sumter. However, it was still a huge mistake for the South to fire on Fort Sumter. As I said in the OP, northern ships were still picking up freight at southern ports after the South seceded until the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter. If the Confederacy had not fired on Fort Sumter, the Civil War might not have started until the summer or fall of 1861. If war was delayed until July or August 1861, the South could have traded that cotton the cotton of the harvest of 1861 for an enormous amount of war supplies.

The South's firing on Fort Sumter united the North against the Confederacy. Even most people in the border states thought that the South's firing on Fort Sumter was unethical. Fort Sumter greatly helped Lincoln mobilize public support for the Civil War. In Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, President Lincoln told the South that "the government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors." If the South never fired on Fort Sumter, and Lincoln started the Civil War anyway, Lincoln would be reneging on this word and this would likely alienate the majority of people in the border states such as MO, KY, and MD.

I don't think they had thought that through. One of their complaints was the, um, lack of enthusiasm Northern states showed in enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. How well would that have worked if the North were a whole separate country?

Let's put this in perspective. About a thousand slaves escaped from the South to the North in 1860 out of a population of approximately four million slaves. That's 1 in 4,000.

Southerners were correct that the North was a threat to their vile institution of slavery.

 

[timmeister37]

Baloney. Your thirteen mistakes were vague and not necessarily possibile. "The failure to adopt and implement a plan to keep New Orleans from being captured" is structurally the same as "the failure to adopt and implement a plan to win the war". Yes, it's true but not very helpful.

Why don't you tell me how I am wrong in my assertion that the South made a mistake in not having established a unified command structure at Fort Donelson?

Why don't you tell me how I am wrong in my assertion that the South should have designed Fort Donelson to defend against both attacks by land and by water (instead of just by water)?

Why don't you tell me how I am wrong in my assertion that the South could have done a land survey of the site in which Fort Henry was built and decided to build Fort Henry somewhere that was not in a flood plain?

Why don't you tell me how my assertion that the South should not have embargoed England and the rest of Europe is wrong?

 

[timmeister37]

Everyone is criticizing my list of Confederate mistakes. It's very easy to sit on your high horse and criticize someone else's list. I defy you to make a better list.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Good job cherry-picking my weakest and most vague of all the thirteen points I listed

Don't like having points pointed out as weak and vague? There's a solution to that.

 

[timmeister37]

Don't like having points pointed out as weak and vague? There's a solution to that.

Davis had virtually no troops at all to defend New Orleans, the South biggest city and perhaps most important sea port. How can that not be a mistake?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Why don't you tell me how my assertion that the South should not have embargoed England and the rest of Europe is wrong?

It's your job to point out why your assertion is right. I see relatively little of that. Repeating the same points louder doesn't help. (Are you sure you're not a yankee?)