re: Another Civlil War Question

Colonists beats British
ineptitude- the navy and army werent funded enough by the War office. also lack of communication

the British fought with gloves on approach- They crushed rebellions brutally in India, Carribean, africa. The fact that they were white let them off easy

Inept Generals who would would booze and whore an not get their pants dirty in the field

Dutch had money and that’s it... and not nearly as much as in their heyday. Mexico was never going to fight to preserve slavery (a big reason Texas seceded BTW) unless maybe if they got Texas (or at NM-California) back, which the Confederacy was in no position to ensure.

Why the frick would an Asian country send boatloads of its soldiers in wooden ships across the Pacific to fight for the South?


Bottom line is Britain and France were the only two powers that even sort of GAF if the South could keep providing cheap cotton but frankly they didn’t care all that much. I’m sure they’d have rushed to “help” if the South were poised to win but that’s about it.

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Did southern leaders think they could defeat the union in a major war or was the goal to force the union into to a quick ceasefire, preserving states rights in the south for a little longer?

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There were several moving parts going on.

1. The Confederacy was barely more than a loose union of independent states. The central government had very little ability to coordinate the states and organize troops or supplies. Thus, each state sorta had its own agenda.

2. Planters believed the British would have to come to their aid because Great Britain's Industrial Revolution was mostly fueled by the textile industry which relied on Southern cotton. Unfortunately for the South, right before the war started, the British started being able to harvest large supplies of cotton from Egypt and India. So, it might have hurt some to lose southern cotton, but it wasn't crippling enough to force the British into war. Things would have been completely different had the war started in 1850. The British would have had no choice but to aid the Secessionists.

3. Planters believed that the war was deeply unpopular in the north. While the draft of Union soldiers caused riots, it wasn't the political tar baby the South thought it was. The South thought that if they just played defense, that they could bleed the north to the negotiation table. However, it was the South that was bleeding itself dry due to the Northern blockade and Grant absolutely pushing their shite in on the Western front. As a result, Congress had the political will to wage total war and Lincoln won re-election in 1864, utterly repudiating the peace movement.

4. The Battle of Bull Run convinced southerners that the war could be won quickly with a march on Washington to demand their independence. However, every time they got close, shite went tits up. While McClellan wasn't particularly great at destroying the Confederate Army, he was excellent at organizing Washington's defenses and training soldiers. In addition, the Union blockade often forced southern Generals to make tough decisions between defending the approach to Richmond, threatening Washington, or hitting locations where they might be able to forage for needed supplies. For example, the reason why Lee brought his army to Gettysburg was to raid a storehouse for shoes for his soldiers. A well-supplied army would never have made that decision.

The goal was to either break the Union defenses around Washington and take the Capital to demand independence or bleed the Union offensive to convince them to negotiate independence. Antietam (September 1862) shut the door on British intervention, ensuring that the Union Blockade would never be broken. Vicksburg (July 1863) insured that playing defense was not a viable option because the entire Western front was essentially broken wide open. Finally, Gettysburg (July 1863) destroyed any possibilities of being able to meaningfully threaten Washington. From that point on, the South just tried to delay the inevitable capture of Richmond in the hopes that piling union losses might turn the electorate against Lincoln and swing it towards the peace movement candidate McClellan. Lincoln's re-election in 1864 was the final nail in the coffin. Lee surrendered the Army of Virginia the following Spring, and the war ended completely not long after.

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Kingbob

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Great post.

Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but the South had two decent options of winning. Either go all in and strike the North ASAP when they had an early advantage (and the population of the North would have have capitulated quickly and just let them go), or buckled in for a nasty, long defensive war that the North could never win.

Instead they opted for the absolute worst option: trying to go toe to toe militarily with a superior enemy. They were never going to win that. They chose the wrong battlefield. Terrible leadership all around.

Jefferson Davis was an ineffectual dumbass. Never understood why so much shite is dedicated to him down here; it’s the North that should be building statues of him.

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kingbob

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Nice post. Using your points to answer the OP's question on whether the South was grossly overconfident, I think it's more fair to say they mostly overestimated the sentiments of Northerners, the British, and collective agenda of each Confederate state.

Bull Run likely fed some overconfidence, but the South was probably still expecting eventual assistance from Europe, and Northern lethargy for the war effort to push them over the top. The ramshackle collection of Confederate troops weren't going to win a prolonged war alone.

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Jefferson Davis was an ineffectual dumbass. Never understood why so much shite is dedicated to him down here;

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Truth. Not a great leader.
If the south were to win an armistice they should have had a schlieffen plan to penetrate deep into enemy lines and knock out their base of operations. They didn’t have a two front war really.

Sourhern “honor” may have doomed them. The lesson learned should have been that honor has no place in modern warfare. I can admire Sherman for that. He gave no quarter and waged total war.

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ooking at it through today’s lense, a path to military victory for the south seems impossible.

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Depends on how you define “victory”. Victory in the sense of overwhelming the northern armies and causing the Union to collapse was impossible

Victory in the sense of causing the North to decide it was no longer worth it to keep fighting the war was not only possible but came somewhat close to happening if 2 or 3 battles had gone the other way

Very similar to America’s “victory” over England. England could’ve kept fighting us but decided it was no longer worth it

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He understood economics, banking, and human behavior like few others and realized we didn’t have to beat the British on the field; we just needed all the Dutch creditors to King George start to get nervous and lose confidence and really start to put a pinch on the Crown Treasury.

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One way or another, the Iron Bank always gets its gold back.

The South didn’t have to win, just not lose. Inflict enough pain that the Union quits.
—-same plan used by Ho Chi Minh.