runsforcelery wrote:
I won't say the odds weren't heavily stacked in the North's favor, because they were. I strongly suspect, however, that the inevitability of the North's victory because of its industrial and manpower advantages has been substantially overstated and that to a very large extent this is, indeed, the product of historical hindsight.
Just a few examples (in no particular order) of things that could have produced or helped produce a very different outcome:
(1) The South's decision to essentially embargo its own cotton in the first year of the war, hoping to ratchet up pressure on Great Britain (and other European textile producers) for recognition of and aid to the Confederacy. The South would have done far better to dump all of the current cotton crop on the market in Europe and bank the resulting cash to use to buy weapons and additional commerce raiders in Europe . . . in hindsight.
(2) The South's adoption of a crustal defense. This one, I think, should need no additional explanation except to observe that he who attempts to defend all against a numerically superior foe eventually holds nothing.
(3) The South's decision to locate its capital in Richmond, although almost inevitable [see? there's that word again] because of the political stature and importance of Virginia, played an enormous role in locking the war in the East into a relatively tiny geographic theatre. Admittedly, it did the same thing for the Army of the Potomac, but over all, it benefited the North substantially more than the South, in my opinion, if only be forcing Lee to stand and fight where and when he did.
(4) The South's failure to exempt mechanics and skilled craftsmen from conscription. Again, to some extent forced upon it by the manpower imbalance, but not one which could not have been addressed far more effectively than it was, especially in light of the disastrous effect on what Southern industry there was.
(5) The South's decision to fight what amounted to a purely defensive war. This was partly a result of their own internalized war aims and also a deliberate foreign policy decision as part of their effort to portray themselves to Europeans (truthfully, in their view) as the victims of aggression rather than the aggressors. Lee took the offensive after Chancellorsville in 1863 because he sensed weakness and an opening but also because he had concluded by that point that the North could grow only stronger and that the South could grow only weaker. He basically rolled the dice in what he recognized was a political offensive, an effort to demonstrate to the North that the South could take the war to Northern soil. Had the South recognized (or at least admitted) the trend lines sooner than that, and especially if that recognition had been accompanied by a relocation of the capital to the Deep South to provide it with a defense in depth, an earlier "On to Washington!" strategy could have materially changed the balance and outcome of the war in the East.
(6) Had Lee not suffered the most cataclysmic "off day" of his entire life at a place called Gettysburg [and had Stuart not been off doing Stuart things instead of providing the screen and scouts the main army needed], the complexion of the war between July 1863 and April 1865 would have been very different, and possibly decisively so. Lee should have cut his losses after the second day and reverted to the defensive, which at the very least would have let him get out of Pennsylvania with his army essentially intact, but he'd envisioned the entire campaign from the beginning as a "peace offensive" [Ludendorff in 1918, anyone?], he had enormous faith in his army, and he asked his men to do more than any mortal men could have done when he sent Pickett up the slopes.
(7) Had Joe Johnston been left in command of the Army of Tennessee instead of being replaced by Hood in the Atlanta Campaign the ultimate result would most probably have been the same, at least where Atlanta was concerned, except that it would have taken one hell of a lot longer and Johnston would not have thrown away his army in a series of frontal assaults which did exactly what Sherman wanted. An intact Army of Tennessee in Georgia, with 50-60,000 men instead of less than 30,000 and prepared to contest Sherman's advance to Savannah rather than launching fruitless attacks on Sherman's supply lines between Atlanta and Chattanooga, would have done an enormous amount to inhibit Sherman's advance through Georgia and the Carolinas. Johnston might not have stopped Sherman if he hadn't been replaced by Hood, but he would have fought a lot smarter, and if he'd simply succeeded in delaying the fall of Atlanta for another 2 or 3 months --- until after the 1864 presidential elections --- the political consequences might well have been enormous.
(8) Had someone --- anyone! --- other than John Pemberton been in Confederate command during the Vicksburg Campaign, the outcome might have been very different. At the very least, the South might have avoided the double-whammy of losing Vicksburg and Gettysburg in the same month and having both of this disasters effectively fall on July 4, which was Independence Day for the South just as much as for the North. Not only did the double defeat hammer Southern morale, it strongly reinforced Union morale and political will.
(9) Had Jefferson Davis been willing to accept Patrick Cleburne's proposal to raise regiments of slaves who would win manumission by their service when it was made in January 1864 rather than fighting it tooth and nail until finally accepting a watered-down version if it without provision for manumission far too late in February 1865, it is entirely possible that substantial numbers of slaves might have ended up in Confederate uniform. It is traditional today to pooh-pooh that possibility and point to the 200,000 backs who served in the Union Army, but Cleburne was far from the only Confederate office in 1864 who believed it would have provided a significant source of reliable manpower, and there have certainly been other historical examples of slaves fighting for their owners. The reward of manumission would have had a powerful appeal in 1864, when there was still a lot of doubt that the North was going to win in the end, and while I'm far from certain it would have worked as well as Cleburne and the others hoped, it's clearly one of the great "what if?" points of the ACW.
There are many other points in this war (as in most wars) where a different decision or a different outcome of the decisions which were actually made could have led to a result very unlike the one which actually obtained. My argument here is not that they would have changed the final result of the war but simply that they very well might have and that the aura of "inevitability" of the North's victory is far, far, far more apparent in the rearview mirror than it was at the time. And, for that matter, probably far more apparent than real. Yes, the North won, and we can go back and trace the factors which led to that victory. If the South had won, we'd be able to go back and trace the same sorts of factors for it, and there would probably be people who would argue that:
"The feckless Lincoln's inability to support effective military commanders in 1861 and 1862; the crushing defeat of the Army of the Tennessee at Shiloh, following Beauregard's brilliant night assault on Pittsburg Landing, in April 1862; and the disastrous failure of Farragut's assault on New Orleans later that same month, set the stage for Lee's successful Washington Campaign in April 1863. The formal recognition of the Confederacy by both Great Britain and France following the 1862 victories, coupled with the loss of the capital and the National government's ignominious flight to Philadelphia, led to the Republicans' overwhelming political defeat in November 1864. From that point, Southern independence was inevitable, and the Treaty of Richmond which recognized it in July 1865, was simply the formal aknowledgment of that fact."
I'm not saying the above was likely. I'm simply pointing out that it was entirely possible and that the "inevitability" of Northern victory is, indeed, a chimera.
Additions from this loud mouth:
Hindsight is myopic, we only know what did happen.
In 1940 and 1941 the entire allied cause was being carried by a divided and war weary China and a thoroughly outmatched and delusional Britain. Any rationale mind looking at the overall sit rep in May, 1941 would have said the British were going down for good.
Fortunately for the Allied cause, British leadership was out of touch with reality and were able to convince others of their rationality. Len Deighton's Blood, Folly and Tears does a nice job of illustrating just how bad the situation was and just how off British estimations were. They underestimated German industrial capacity by only 90% and overestimated Imperial production by similar. They were almost as badly off as the SLN BF average with the Manties.
If the Nazis had not been as grossly incompetent in industrial management and conquest governance as they were, the British misestimations of production capacity and weapon R&D would have mattered.
While lack of manufacturing capacity in the South during the ACW the efficiency of use was even worse. None got more than 60% production compared to the North even in the factories remotely comparable in equipage. Relying on Slave Labor and poor free born resentful of the institution of slavery does not create a motivated and skilled workforce.