What are some things the Confederacy could have done to win the American Civil War?

Question

Did they make the right decision in surrendering?

Answer 1

There is no other war in our history we find so hard to look back at with any objectivity. True objectivity is not even asked of most authors writing on the war; we just want someone to reinforce our own beliefs and conclusions. I can think of no other explanation for so many myths, controversies, and outright lies to continue in print, discourse, and even academics.

There were several times the CSA could have won a peace and independance. I don't believe First Manassas, or Bull Run, was one of them. It was too early, and if the CSA had captured Washington, I believe it would have fired up more support for the war in Northern states. The Union needed to get tired of the war, the same way we're getting tired of Iraq.

The insurgency in Iraq is an excellent parallel, because all they have to do is hold out until we lose more men and resources than we are willing to lose for that cause.

A lot of people believe there was wide-spread support for the war in the Northern States. There generally was early on, but it didn't last long. Early defeats and enormous casualty lists took a lot of the fight out of the North. Many became more than willing to let the former Southern states go.

What are some examples to support this? Volunteer enlistment fell off to the point that bounties were offered which were several times the annual income of most Americans at that time. Not only that, but the desertion rate sky-rocketed. To counter these problems the first conscription act in US history was passed. The result was rioting in several cities. The US Army and Navy fired upon it's own civilians for protesting the war and the draft. In the last half of the war most recruits were recent immigrants and not natural born Americans; instant citizenship was granted with an enlistment.

Another indication is that the former general commanding the Union's largest army ran against the sitting president, critizing his handling of the war effort, and the validity of the war itself. Compare that to our present situation.

The difference between this past presidential election and that one is that Bush did not jail most of his opponents. If you get out of the textbooks and read primary documents and material, you will discover that Lincoln and his party closed down most newspapers who opposed the war. Lincoln jailed members of state houses who opposed him, and even exiled a sitting US Senator to the CSA who opposed the war. Somewhere between 14,000 and 15,000 Americans were indefinitely jailed by the administration for voicing their political opinion.

So the war was not so popular at most people are taught to believe, and against this waning support, the CSA could have secured a peace, and independance.

I believe that Gettysburg was one of those chances. Many historians criticize Lee for fully engaging Meade in that battle, given that Meade held the best ground. I believe Lee saw the psychological importance of defeating Meade against odds, and took a gamble. He could, and did lose the battle, but he could have won the war.

The key to it all was Culp's Hill, which anchored the Union right flank. If Culp's Hill was taken, the whole Union line would have collapsed, and that would have happened if Stonewall Jackson lead the attack rather than Ewell. Ewell couldn't force himself to live with the cost in lives it would have taken, whereas Jackson wouldn't have shied away from it.

If Lee had defeated those men on their own ground, I believe Lincoln would have lost all public support for the war, and the CSA could have won foreign recognition.

Answer 2

The only chance the South EVEr had to win the Civil War came, ironically, during the very first battle, which was Bull Run in July of 1861. The North was badly prepared, thinking the whole thing was going to be a cakewalk; civilian northerners even brought picnics to watch the battle! Anyway, the South surpised them with their ferocity and had the Unior soldiers on the run. But the did not pursue them. This battle took place only about 15 miles from Washington D.C. Had the Rebels pursued and marched into the capitol, it may have been enough to make Lincoln decide the war wasn't worth the cost, and thus he may have let the Southern States remain in Secession until negotions could solve the differences.
Other than that first chance, there was no way the South could have won; they were simply out matched in terms of manpower, money, supplies, and everything you can name. As far as the South surrendering? I think they waited too long. They should have surrendered after Sherman took Atlanta. It was obvious to even them at that point that they could not win. By letting pride drive them, they carried on several months more and cost themselves thousands more needless casulties.

Answer 3

The Confederacy could NOT have won the American Civil War as it was an agrarian society lacking the industralized infrastructure of the North. Plainly speaking, there were virtually no munition factories south of the Mason Dixie Line. You can't win a war without producing "guns and butter." And to quote Rhett Butler, who was citing Napoleon Bonaparte, "God is on the side of the strongest batallion."
There are things the Confederacy could have done to prevent the war (e.g. abolishing slavery), but nothing it could have done to prevent it. States' right vs. federal rights tension had been mounting since the nation's founding. And while the English manufacturers (factory owners) benefited from/relied heavily on the Confederacy's cotton, the English would never have consented to sending over British troops.
Did the South make the righ decision in surrendering?
I dunno. That's a tough one.
I've traveled throughout Alabama and other states down there, and I'm not wholly convinced that the South has surrendered. Southern pride and the Confederacy does indeed live on!

Answer 4

Sadly we could have fought a war against the civilian population, there were many times during the war the Copperheads and general public wanted to sue for peace if we had done them like they did us, may-be just may-be. The same thing could be said about Lee having gone to a defensive posture I truly believe the Yankee would have tired of the war; then lastly the recommendations to Lee at Appomattox to start guerrilla warfare. Again the country as a whole was tired of the war I think the Yankees would have allow us to go. God Bless You and Our Southern People.

Answer 5

the way I see it, the basically way the South ought to've received is that if Stonewall Jackson hadn't died. If Jackson survived, Gettysburg would've been a minor skirmish and the conflict would've ended with accomplice victory very quickly after. The border states of Maryland and Kentucky probably would've joined the CSA, alongside with Kansas and Nebraska. Lincoln would've served out his time period as President, although not with out some consternation. The North would've been pissed, fantastically with all of Lincoln's anti-Southron propaganda. nonetheless, he would've (or extremely might want to'VE) known a treaty with the South, entailing information of nationwide borders and such. so a procedures as his "legacy" is going, he'd be seen because the worst President of the U. S. with the help of more beneficial than basically knowledgeable historians. human beings would understand what he did replaced into in direct violation of the structure and Congress. He will be remembered as a guy who were given too massive for his britches and divided the country.

Answer 6

1) Enlist British support early on.

2) Establish a sound & solid fiscal policy, which was not done the entire war.

I cannot think of enough things that would have made a difference, but there is a start.

Peace,

;-)

Answer 7

This site answers your question pretty well...

http://www.americancivilwar.com/authors/arrturo_rivera.html

This is from a Times site that you need to pay for, but I post the text for your information. It's reviewing the first chapter of the book at the beginning, so if you quote from it...CITE it!


http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:1yq4aW6Ha9IJ:www.nytimes.com/books/first/g/gallagher-confederate.html+Confederacy+win+war&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=8
The Confederate War
By GARY W. GALLAGHER
Harvard University Press

INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
THE CHALLENGE OF THE
CONFEDERATE EXPERIENCE

Scholarship on the Confederacy over the past several decades has yielded a paradoxical result. Historians have exploited a variety of sources and approaches to illuminate many facets of the Confederate experience, but the overall effect of much of this work has been to distort the broader picture. Moving beyond traditional emphases on military events, politics, and prominent leaders, many recent scholars, concentrating on the analytical categories of race, class, and gender, have highlighted social tensions and fissures to create a portrait of Confederate society crumbling from within by the midpoint of the Civil War. All too aware that the Confederacy failed in its bid for independence, many historians have worked backward from Appomattox to explain that failure. They argue that the Confederates lacked sufficient will to win the war, never developed a strong collective national identity, and pursued a flawed military strategy that wasted precious manpower. Often lost is the fact that a majority of white southerners steadfastly supported their nascent republic, and that Confederate arms more than once almost persuaded the North that the price of subduing the rebellious states would be too high.

Although class tension, unhappiness with intrusive government policies, desertion, and war weariness all form part of the Confederate mosaic, they must be set against the larger picture of thousands of soldiers persevering against mounting odds, civilians enduring great human and material hardship in pursuit of independence, and southern white society maintaining remarkable resiliency until the last stage of the war. Part of the problem stems from a failure to place the Confederate poeple's wartime behavior within a larger historical framework. If historians choose to label Confederates as lacking in will and national sentiment, they should do so with an eye toward how white Americans have responded to other major traumas.

Academic historians have led the way in positing an absence of strong national will in the Confederacy, but popular writers have joined in the chorus. In this vein, Robert Penn Warren observed in 1980 that Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and many of their fellow Confederates failed to embrace secession with any enthusiasm. A horrific war soon exposed the absence of both solid ideological underpinning for their republic and widespread common purpose among its people. By the later stages of the conflict, noted Warren, "Merely some notion of Southern identity remained, however hazy or fuddled; it was not until after Appomattox that the conception of Southern identity truly bloomed--a mystical conception, vague but bright, floating high beyond criticism of brutal circumstances."

More often than their academic counterparts, popular writers have veered toward a romantic conclusion that the Confederacy fought gallantly against hopeless odds. In the pictorial history of the Civil War that accompanied Ken Burns's film documentary, for example, Shelby Foote pronounced the Confederate bid for independence doomed from the start. "I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back," observed Foote. If the Confederacy ever had come close to winning on the battlefield, "the North simply would have brought that other arm out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that war." Foote also claimed that white southerners knew their cause was hopeless well before the end of the conflict. Heavy casualties, shortages of goods behind the lines, and loss of faith in European recognition promoted a "realization that defeat was foreordained." As so many historians over the years have done, Foote turned to South Carolina diarist Mary Chesnut for a summary quotation to clinch his points: "It's like a Greek tragedy, where you know what the outcome is bound to be," wrote Chesnut. "We're living a Greek tragedy."

Wartime testimony contradicts both Foote's assessment and the prevalent scholarly image of a Confederate populace only weakly committed to winning independence. Letters, diaries, and newspapers reveal a widespread expectation of Confederate success and tenacious popular will rooted in a sense of national community and closely attuned to military events. In March 1864, a point in the war when many modern scholars describe a Confederacy enveloped in despair and defeatism, Lucy W. Otey penned a letter that evinced common sentiments. Alluding to contributions of clothing for soldiers in Lee's army, Otey observed that "they are raised through the energetic and persevering efforts of Southern Women who can never faint or tire, in animating and sustaining the brave Soldiery of this Confederacy, while struggling for our Independence!" So long as the men remained in the field, stated Otey, "there are loving hearts and busy hands at home--praying and toiling, for their preservation and success!" Eight months later a young woman in Milledgeville, Georgia, lamented the fall of her city to Federal troops but expressed undiminished loyalty to the Confederacy: "The yankee flag waved from the Capitol Our degredation was bitter, but we knew it could not be long, and we never desponded, our trust was still strong. No, we went through the house singing, 'We live and die with Davis.' How can they hope to subjugate the South. The people are firmer than ever before."

A pair of letters from the summer of 1864 illuminate the optimism and willingness to fight on for months or years characteristic of many Confederates. "I used to think I could see some end to the War," wrote a sailor in the Confederate navy from Savannah, Georgia, adding, "I don't see any chance for it to close at all." Still, this man remained optimistic and committed for the long term: "I know the Yankees cannot, nor never will, whip us. I do think it depends entirely on the election of the next President of Yankeedom whether we have peace for the next five years to come." From the trenches near Petersburg, Virginia, Luther Rice Mills of the 26th Virginia Infantry anticipated a resounding Confederate success. "I am expecting Lee to take the offensive," wrote Mills to his father on June 6. "Perhaps he will allow Grant to butt his head a few more times & destroy more of his men and then pitch into him. I think Lee will attempt to capture Grant's whole army. His chance for it seems to be quite good." These letters, together with countless others voicing comparable sentiments, contrasted sharply with the profound disenchantment with the war expressed by many northern soldiers and civilians during the same period. Had the North lost the war, historians doubtless would have used its people's literary record to prove a lack of will that helped explain Confederate success.

Far from being a loosely knit collection of individuals whose primary allegiance lay with their states, a substantial portion of the Confederate people identified strongly with their southern republic. Wartime writings frequently employed language that revealed a sense of national community. A North Carolina soldier touched on often-repeated themes in a letter of March 1864. "I feel that the cause is a just one and am willing to spend the balance of my days in the army rather than give up to a relentless foe that shows no mercy and will give none," stated Rufus A. Barrier. "Let us stand firm by our country's flag and we are bound to succeed." Barrier went on to castigate the "little souled mercenaries who are croaking so loudly and are willing to sell their country for filthy lucre and let their names be handed down to posterity branded with the curse of being traitors to their country." A Georgian in Lee's army, writing to his wife on his twenty-fourth birthday in the spring of 1864, echoed Barrier's feelings of national loyalty. "When we consider the great duty we owe our country in the struggle for independence, I cannot be but content with my fate, although it be, indeed, a cruel one," affirmed Daniel Pope. "I am determined to do anything and everything I can for my country," he continued. "If it should be my misfortune to fall in the glorious struggle, I hope that I shall go believing that I have contributed my mite and that you and my little boy will be entitled to the great boon of freedom."

As the war progressed, Confederate citizens increasingly relied on their armies rather than on their central government to boost morale, and Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia eventually became the most important national institution. This phenomenon has received far too little attention--perhaps because of a tendency in the scholarly literature to slight the vital ways in which military events influenced the home front. Comments by the deputy executive director of the American Historical Association in 1990 typify the inclination among academic historians to play down the military side of the conflict. Addressing a congressional committee on the topic of battlefield preservation, James B. Gardner claimed to speak for the broad historical community in remarking that "historians today have redefined the study of the Civil War, shifting attention from military action to the diverse experiences of individual groups, the impact of emancipation," and the ways in which the war exacerbated old social divisions and created new ones. In calling for a shift away from "narrow, antiquated views" of history represented by undue attention to Civil War battles and generals, Gardner manifested a stunning innocence of the ways in which military events helped shape all the dimensions of American life he considered important. (In fairness, it must be acknowledged that military historians interested primarily in battles and campaigns similarly have slighted the impact of the home front on the armies.)

Whatever subsequent generations of historians thought, people living through the war understood the centrality of military events to national morale and, by extension, to the outcome of the war. In June 1863, a Georgia newspaper printed a letter that clearly tied the spirit behind the lines to the actions of Confederate armies: "In breathless but hopeful anxiety, the public are awaiting the result of Lee's movements at the North and [Joseph E.] Johnston's at the South," commented the author. "Upon their success hang momentous interests--no less to our mind than an early peace or the continuance of the war for an indefinite period." Edward A. O'Neal, Jr., an Alabamian whose father commanded a brigade in Lee's army, wrote in October 1863 that offensive victories would bolster civilian morale buffeted by the battles of the preceding summer. O'Neal believed "our existence as a nation depends on it. Forebearance is no longer a virtue with us. The people are gloomy, and weary of this 'never ending--still beginning' strife, and victory alone will revive their drooping spirits." The war's most famous instance of linking home front and battlefield came from north of the Potomac River when, in March 1865, Abraham Lincoln spoke in his second inaugural address of "The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends." Well might Lincoln remind northerners of this linkage, for he almost certainly would have been defeated for re-election had William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip H. Sheridan not won victories at Atlanta and in the Shenandoah Valley that revitalized the Republican Party.

Lee's military successes in 1862 and 1863 created a belief that independence was possible as long as the Army of Northern Virginia and its celebrated chief remained in the field. E. C. Boudinet, the Cherokee delegate to the Confederate Congress, captured the pervasive attitude toward Lee and his army in June 1864: "Perfect confidence is felt that Lee will whip the enemy as he always does--You wouldnt dream[,] if you should walk through town and see the self satisfied air of everybody[,] that a hostile army of 150000 men were almost in sight of town, on bloody thoughts intent."

Lee's penchant for offensive strategy and tactics has come under heavy attack from historians over the past two decades. The Army of Northern Virginia suffered very heavy casualties in its celebrated triumphs during 1862 and 1863. Various scholars have argued that a more defensive conventional strategy or a guerrilla strategy would have conserved manpower, thereby enabling the Confederacy to prolong the war and perhaps exhaust Union will. Such analysis overlooks the fact that Lee's strategic and tactical aggressiveness suited Confederate expectations (and countered superior Union numbers). Civilians hungered for news of aggressive success on the battlefield, which conveyed a sense of progress toward independence. Their morale required the type of victories Lee supplied from the Seven Days through Chancellorsville, and without which the Confederacy almost certainly would have collapsed sooner.

In July 1864, surgeon Thomas Bailey of the Army of Tennessee reflected a widely held concern about generals who preferred defensive strategy and tactics. Joseph E. Johnston's withdrawal from northern Georgia to Atlanta left Bailey "more depressed" than ever before. "Will Johnston opt for retreat or a rush for victory? Or to let Atlanta fall without a struggle? These are questions asked again and again. But it is all centered on one man's power--General J. E. Johnston," observed a frustrated Bailey. Turning from his pessimistic talk of Johnston, Bailey spoke encouragingly about Lee, who had sent Jubal A. Early on an offensive through the Shenandoah Valley that eventually threatened Washington: "But why despair? Our sky is brighter in other parts of the Confederacy ... If Robert E. Lee's strategy is successful, Sherman may be obliged to fall back."

The Confederate military ultimately proved unable to win enough victories at crucial times to carry their nation to independence. Contrary to what much recent literature proclaims, defeat in the military sphere, rather than dissolution behind the lines, brought the collapse of the Confederacy. Lee's surrender at Appomattox convinced virtually all Confederates that their attempt at nation-making had failed. Having lost half of their white military-age population to death or injury and seen their social and economic systems ripped apart, they learned a bitter lesson in failure spared the vast majority of white Americans throughout more than two centuries of United States history.

The following chapters explore the themes of popular will, national sentiment, and military strategy during the Confederacy's brief existence. They offer a reading of Confederate history substantially at odds with some interpretations that currently hold sway. This is especially the case with Chapters 1 and 2, in which I suggest that scholarly preoccupation with the admittedly substantial evidence of discontent in the Confederacy has cast into the shadows the actions and attitudes of the majority of white southerners who supported the war. In chapter 3 I contend that the Confederacy could have won the war, and that Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee pursued strategies that, although unsuccessful in the end, held great promise and satisfied the temperament of the Confederate people. In all three chapters I call for greater attention to the myriad connections between events on the battlefield and morale behind the lines--and especially to the singular impact of Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia on Confederate resolve and national sentiment. In the final chapter I argue that Confederates believed they had been beaten on the battlefield rather than undone by internal divisions. Unhappy at the death of their slaveholding republic, they sullenly accepted northern triumph but sought to perpetuate memories of the Confederacy and of the men and women who had struggled, at frightening human and material cost, to give it life.

Because my arguments respond to prominent trends in the literature, each chapter includes some attention to historiography. But this is not primarily a historiographical survey. Discussion of earlier works serves as a point of departure to offer alternative views of the Confederate experience and to suggest areas of fruitful scholarly examination in the future.

Any historian who argues that the Confederate people demonstrated robust devotion to their slave-based republic, possessed feelings of national community, and sacrificed more than any other segment of white society in United States history runs the risk of being labeled a neo-Confederate. As a native of Los Angeles who grew up on a farm in southern Colorado, I can claim complete freedom from any pro-Confederate special pleading during my formative years. Moreover, not a single ancestor fought in the war, a fact I lamented as a boy reading books by Bruce Catton and Douglas Southall Freeman and wanting desperately to have some direct connection to the events that fascinated me. In reaching my conclusions, I have gone where the sources led me. My assertions and speculations certainly are open to challenge, but they emerged from an effort to understand the Confederate experience through the actions and words of the people who lived it.

(C) 1997 President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-674-16055-X