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

[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]

Theres 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?)

 

[timmeister37]

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?)

If the Confederacy did not embargo Europe, the Confederacy could have traded cotton and other resources for war materials. Furthermore, the embargo ended up working against Confederate efforts to persuade Britain to intervene on behalf of the Confederacy. The embargo alienated the British.

 

[Mondayman]

OP did you even read any of our points? It's not as simple as "they just had to defend New Orleans". They were simply outnumbered and outgunned the entire war. And you really cannot ignore the fact that the extensive railway system of the North enabled them to move more troops and supplies to the battlefields much more efficiently, and the Union navy could easily cut off all trade supply. Logistics is 90% of the battle in modern warfare. None of this was on the Confederacies side.

Like someone else said, your points are really just Monday morning quarterbacking.

 

[timmeister37]

OP did you even read any of our points? It's not as simple as "they just had to defend New Orleans". They were simply outnumbered and outgunned the entire war. And you really cannot ignore the fact that the extensive railway system of the North enabled them to move more troops and supplies to the battlefields much more efficiently, and the Union navy could easily cut off all trade supply. Logistics is 90% of the battle in modern warfare. None of this was on the Confederacies side.

Like someone else said, your points are really just Monday morning quarterbacking.

Yes, my points are just Monday morning quarterbacking. My points are still correct, and my thesis is still correct.

 

[Mondayman]

How are they correct? How do you know that? If you are so certain, why did you even bother asking us?

 

[atehundel]

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.

You propose several alternate outcomes to many events contributing to the end result of things. You rationalize many of these decisions based primarily on hindsight, essentially perfect, or as nearly so as can be had, information, and do so from a perspective removed from the heat of the moment so to speak of one in a position of decision making at the time.

You make no allowance for the possibility that successes in place of failure could have affected a different outcome of some subsequent event, not necessarily for the better. Who is to say that a rousing victory at Fort Henry for example would not have led to, let's just say, a later overextension of southern forces leading to a major defeat elsewhere? You can't point to a single or even several events and compare different results in a vacuum in this circumstance, it is not controlled experimentation where changing some definite set of variables changes the outcome in possibly complex but certainly predictable ways. It is not something one can simply predict with any actual probability.

 

[Vanadium 50]

my thesis is still correct.

What thesis? That p > 0? We all agreed to this some messages back, but pointed out it is trivially true. Other than that, you seem to be saying "if things had gone better for the South, things would have gone better for the South." No argument here.

If you are saying "these 13 things would have been enough to win the war for the South", well, maybe.

 

[Stephen Tashi]

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.

I recall seeing ads for a war game called "Dixie" that postulates a continuation of the Civil War in the 1920's. This was an old fashioned board game played with carboard pieces and dice. It's interesting to imagine the military equipment of the 1920's being used. We only see it discussed in the context of pre-WW2 technology.

 

[Drakkith]

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.

But they almost certainly wouldn't have traded for enormous amounts of war supplies even if the start of the war was delayed. Just look at the thinking of both sides leading up to First Bull Run. None of the major leaders on either side seriously expected the war would reach the scale it did. How could they? I mean, the battle of Shiloh itself saw more casualties than ALL american military battles up to that point combined! The pre-war experiences by both sides simply didn't match the 'modern' style of war that would follow, and this was exacerbated by the idea that the other side would simply fold up and give in once a single major battle was won.

Besides, all this cotton was privately owned. Many of the leaders of the CSA were HEAVILY against the government digging its fingers into such things (conscription is another example) and only capitulated under the pressures of an active war. I see no reason that the government would have confiscated huge amounts of cotton to trade for war supplies.

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.

You're assuming that Lincoln would have started the war in such a way as to alienate the border states. There's no telling how the shooting war would have started had Sumter not been fired on.

Why don't you tell me how I am wrong in my assertion...

It's not really that you're wrong, it's that you've missed the point that all of these things happened for reasons, and it's very naive to simply say that "They should've done X instead". You're looking backwards with the benefit of hindsight and you're discounting the fact that constrictions in resources and time, failure to understand modern warfare, and, often, sheer incompetence played major roles in how the war turned out.

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?

New Orleans was only vulnerable by naval attack, not by land forces. But the CSA accounted for this by manning Forts Jackson and St. Phillip and having a small naval force in the river to oppose the Union fleet. Losses in Kentucky and Tennessee forced them to strip troops and equipment from the area to send to more critical areas. No one could have foreseen that the Union fleet would run the batteries, survive the run, and then take the city and forts afterwards.

Much of this is the result of new technologies, like the steam engine, that rendered previous naval theories and tactics obsolete and were critical in allowing the Union forces to run the batteries. This is yet another example of how the change in technology outran the change in ideas, tactics, and strategy. Prior to this time land fortifications were far more effective vs fleets, as sailing ships were not as fast or as maneuverable as steam vessels were, especially when sailing up-river.

The decision to strip New Orleans of most of its defenses was, in my opinion, an entirely reasonable action given contemporary military thinking and the needs of the war. In fact, one could argue that this wasn't a mistake at all, just a natural result of the intrinsic imbalance of men and materials between the North and the South. If the CSA had 100,000 or more extra troops they never would have needed to strip New Orleans in the first place. But they didn't have them, and their decisions reflect this fact.

If you're going to criticize any decision, then the first and most important decision to criticize is the one that led to succession in the first place by a 'nation' that was outnumbered, outgunned, and outproduced several times over. Every other decision of the war, good or bad, follows directly from this one and the implications it contains therein.

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.

The problem is that there is no list you can make that will guarantee a southern victory. Every single thing you change has far-reaching repercussions that can't be known because they didn't happen. The CSA doesn't fire on Fort Sumter. Okay. How does the shooting war start then? Where does it start? What are the political and military contexts surrounding the event? How does the public on both sides react?
What would Grant have done had Forts Donelson and Henry been designed better? What actions would he have taken? How would his opponents have reacted? You can't even begin to speculate on victory or defeat in this instance until all of these questions (and more) are answered.

This is the problem with alternate history. Every action has an uncountable number of consequences and it is simply impossible to say with any real certainty what would have happened if X had happened instead of Y.

 

[Stephen Tashi]

If you like "The South could have won the war at Gettysburg" as a what-if, don't miss the amusing tale about Confederate Calvary assignments in that battle, as reported in Skip to minute 24 in that video.

 

[HallsofIvy]

Yes, both the South and the Nortn made strategic errors in the civil war. But the most crucial matter was the will of the union citizens. It was a pretty close matter though probably not as close as many in both union and confederate governments thought. The Democratic party made ending the war, even at the cost of allowing the South to continue as a separate nation, part of its platform for the 1864 election. Abraham Lincoln was somewhat surprised when he won! If McClellan had won the election, the North would certainly have negotiated an end to the war that left the Confederacy as a separate nation.