"CSA Best Strategic Option?" Topic

I've always been of the opinion that the Confederacy was doomed from the start because, politically, they could not abandon any areas to the Federals. They had to defend pretty much the entire border, an impossible task under the circumstances.

But suppose a stronger President were elected, and convinced the Confederates that their best chance to win was NOT to defend every inch, but win and negotiate borders later.

How would you defend the Confederacy if you were not required to defend every inch?

Use Beauregard's strategy of concentrate and attack the most threatening Union forces. Clone RE Lee so you could have one in the east and one in the west. Tie Bragg in a sack and drown him.

The Confederacy NEVER had a chance of military victory. their only chance was to stay in and negotiate secession. But the South Carolina hot-heads wouldn't even hear of that. And it probably wouldn't have worked anyway..

By a relentless offensive on Washington in the hope of outside recognition and alliance. Not sure it would have worked though timing would have been everything.

As long as the Confederacy insisted on retaining slavery, the only powers they could realistically hope for an alliance with were Russia, Turkey, Brazil, and China. The first, was more interested in wooing the Union, the last wasn't interested in foreign alliances, and the other two would have been of no material assistance.

As Jeff Davis, you have to hold some major sea-port and you have to hold some point on the Mississippi River, in order to trade with the wide world. But, in the face of overwhelming Federal manpower and material superiority, you can't hold any sea-port or point on the Mississippi River. The Feds have an actual Navy, that can go anywhere there's water, and they have the industry to build another two or three navies whenever they want. What are you going to do about that? So you and Bobby Lee are screwed.

I'm not sure if slavery, repugnant as it is, would have been the deal breaker. I suspect a form of words could have been conjured and held for long enough for peace to be instituted. We are talking about Powers that inflicted horrendous suffering on their own free poor.

The obstacle was perhaps the contemporary reckoning that the South could not win. Taking Washington might have offset that or maybe not.

As long as the Confederacy insisted on retaining slavery, the only powers they could realistically hope for an alliance with were Russia,

Russia, which was freeing the serfs and sent two naval squadrons to the United States on good will visits really wasn't an option.

The "strategic option" best suited for the Confederacy was probably the one that Joseph Harsh identifies Lee developed in his book "Confederate Tide Rising". That was to prolong the war until war weariness took over the North. Now whether or not that could have actually happened, well, we know that it didn't. The South didn't have enough (take your pick) men, money, allies, manufacturing, good army commanders, ships, sailors, railroads, transportation, means of getting resources to where they were needed, etc.. After 1863b turned out so poorly for the Confederacy, and once 1864 rolled around and, as Sherman put it, "the professionals took over" the handwriting was pretty much on the wall. The last real chance the Confederacy had was lost when Lincoln won his re-election. But even then who knows, after all as most people forget, McClellan was planning on continuing the war.

Lee's decision for a fast surrender and quick dispersal of the former ANV back to their homes was probably the wisest decision any commander has ever made.

I concur with "" that the South's only chance was capture of Washington in 1862. The problem with the "endure and wait for Northern exhaustion" strategy is that, contrary to Southern expectations but in conformance with human nature, the lengthening casualty lists inspired quite as much hatred and spirit of revenge in the North as they did weariness. By 1863 lots of Northerners hated the South fully as much as that hatred was reciprocated. The difference was that the North had the resources to pursue a war of attrition for as long as it took. And with potentially limitless numbers of freed slaves eager to enlist, the North never came close to running short of men.

Not shooting first was probably the only hope they had. Even that might not have been enough.

No navy to speak of and a long coast and river system is not a recipe for victory.

In my opinion the South had an excellent chance of winning their independence. There is a long list of missed opportunities and chances not taken that probably would have ended in victory. The first was following first Bull Run when they could have captured Washington DC with little effort. Imagine how profoundly that would have changed the course of the war. Remember that both governments and the populaces of both nations put great stock in capturing the others capital. That would have been an embarrassment that Lincoln may not have recovered from.

They could have won by holding out long enough for the northern populace to give up on the war. This in fact almost happened in 1864 due to the ever mounting casualties. Had Lincoln not been re-elected the south would have won independence.

Another better option would have been to encircle Washington DC, cutting rail communication. I do not mean attacking the forts that ringed the city, that would have been suicidal. Just cutting off the city long enough for the Lincoln government to panic and vacate to New York. I have no doubt at all that the government would have gone into full panic mode along with the city's populous and would be fighting to board any boat that could get them out. That would have dealt the northern cause a serious, perhaps fatal political blow. This option entailed the least risk for the greatest reward and should have been attempted.

General Thomas Jackson tried to convince the confederate government to attack northern cities, Cincinnati or Philadelphia, in order to take the war to the north. I have no doubt that he could have succeeded in burning either or both to the ground and that it would have had a profound effect on the course of the war.

Finally, the Army of the Potomac could have been destroyed in battle. Lee was certainly not the man to accomplish this as his vision never strayed from engaging in frontal confrontations.

General Thomas Jackson tried to convince the confederate government to attack northern cities, Cincinnati or Philadelphia, in order to take the war to the north. I have no doubt that he could have succeeded in burning either or both to the ground and that it would have had a profound effect on the course of the war.

*NJH: Philly maybe, but not Cincinnati. Cincinnati is sheltered by three rivers and a serious lack of fords on any of them. The rivers go far enough North as to allow the Union to cut lines of supply and communication. The banks of the rivers were often more a bluff than a beach. During the flooding season the rivers could run as wide as a mile or more. Amphib operations would have been difficult at normal levels. Also, Cincinnati was a Union depot with training camps and fortifications around the city. The very hilly nature of Cincinnati would also mitigate against the offensive. Gen Bragg couldn't get close during his Kentucky campaign. A cavalry raid across the river was a disaster. Best to leave Cincinnati alone.

Turning to the logistics angle:
1. Instead of bogarting the cotton at home and trying to force a higher price out of the European mills (which shrugged and shifted over to Egyptian cotton anyway), the South ships every boll of cotton available over to warehouses in England and France, to be stored and sold for essential commodities.
2. Using the profits and steady income from the sale of their cotton, the CSA could invest in running not only guns and ammo back through the cob-webby early blockade, but also machine tools, essential raw materials, marine engines, locomotives (or components of locomotives at least), rolling stock, and rails, and hiring skilled technicians to come to the CSA to set up and operate multiple factories and train others in vital manufacturing skills.
3. Revise the rail net and make the gauge uniform by fiat of the Confederate government. In fact, have the entire Southern railnet commandeered by the CSA gov't.
4. Make the standard longarm of the infantry a well-manufactured copy of the Sharps Rifle (see technicians and machine tools above), replacing the Enfield, etc, as they become available. This would triple the firing rate of a standard muzzleloading musket and produce massive firepower.
5. Assign Braxton Bragg, John Floyd, and Leonidas Polk to "essential diplomatic liaison duties" in Tierra del Fuego for the duration of the war.

If secession has already happened

Give up the border states and focus on defending a system of heavily fortified depot cities (Vicksburg, Atlanta,Richmond etc) Develop a full riverine fleet. Keep two field armies, develop interior lines, and use them to outflank the Federals attacking the fortress cities. Change the constitution making it possible for the Confederacy, after let us say 40 years, to abolish slavery via compensated emancipation. None of this perpetual stupidity. Wait and hope.

Frankly once you leave the arena in which you have a good hand (politics) and go to the arena where you have a bad hand (War) you are already losing. The southern states had more power of the US as part of the US then they ever had as opponents of the US.

Lots of well thought out ideas guys nice points of views. Great for alternate ways of campaigning the ACW.

They could have won by holding out long enough for the northern populace to give up on the war. This in fact almost happened in 1864 due to the ever mounting casualties. Had Lincoln not been re-elected the south would have won independence.

Well yes and no. It's important to note that while the Democrat party platform called for a negotiated settlement, McClellan himself never really endorsed this. By late 1864 it was pretty clear that the CSA was on the ropes, and I suspect McClellan if elected could and would have seen the war out to a conclusion.

General Thomas Jackson tried to convince the confederate government to attack northern cities, Cincinnati or Philadelphia, in order to take the war to the north. I have no doubt that he could have succeeded in burning either or both to the ground and that it would have had a profound effect on the course of the war.

Yes, the profound effect of seriously ticking off the Northern populace. When the war was 'down south' making a case that this was was pointless and the South should be let go was much easier than if the Secessionists were coming north and burning northern cities…. I suspect this strategy would have backfired.

-Will

But generally I agree with a lot of the above advice; if you don't have to defend the border, fall back, concentrate, and fortify. Holding the coast was much more important to long-term survival than holding Tennessee and the interior of the Deep South would ever be.

-Will

Frankly once you leave the arena in which you have a good hand (politics) and go to the arena where you have a bad hand (War) you are already losing. The southern states had more power of the US as part of the US then they ever had as opponents of the US.

Yes, absolutely true. Post-war the commonly accepted story is that the southern states were being suppressed, but the southern states actually held the political upper hand much of the time in the antebellum political system. They could have probably gotten most of what they wanted if they had stayed in and politicked their way through.

-Will

also hang all the fire-eaters and establish a military dictatorship. Be the Stalin to their Trotsky-Lenin. This is partly tongue in cheek :p

I concur with "Bleeped text" that the South's only chance was capture of Washington in 1862.

Or in 1861, before it was well defended.

@wminsing

The amount of damage done to northern territory during the war is so slight it's inconsequential and yet northern armies ravaged southern territory, bombarded southern cities, even destroyed regions (Shenandoah). I don't think you could have made the north any more cross than it was. On the other hand, had southern armies really invaded northern territory and caused real damage it may have caused northern public opinion to see the war as too costly and dangerous.

And really that's what we're talking about here, public opinion. This was two republics at war. At what point does the northern populous decide it isn't worth fighting on and demand their government reach a settlement. However they did it, the south had to attain that one goal because they could never win by conquest of the north. I suspect that Jefferson Davis and the southern command never really grasped this. They held onto the illusion of foreign (really British) intervention for much of the war when it is clear in hindsight that the British government had no intention of helping them. It's fascinating to learn that the Lincoln administration (in the form of Secretary of State Seward) gave the British many excuses to intervene against the U.S. The fact that they never did is very telling. Read "A World on Fire" by Amanda Foreman.

As for McClellan continuing the war if elected I think that would have been politically impossible given the anti war nature of the Democrat party. And that assumed he indeed did want to continue the war, which I doubt.

The low point of northern spirits was the summer of 1864. By any measure the north was grinding the south into the dust, yet war weariness had set in and Grant's continuous war was generating huge numbers of casualties. Things were so bad that the Republican party seriously considered dumping Lincoln off the ticket in the November election. Had Sherman not captured Atlanta before the election who knows how things would have gone.

I think it's all too easy to see history as it happened as inevitable when it really wasn't at all.

3. Revise the rail net and make the gauge uniform by fiat of the Confederate government. In fact, have the entire Southern railnet commandeered by the CSA gov't.

Not politically feasible until it was too late. The entire basis of the Confederacy was avoiding strong central government.

Does "Don't make so many mistakes" count as a strategy?

I'm reading "The Coming Fury" right now.

Bruce Catton made a great point, that moving the Capitol to Richmond forced the Confederacy to invest in the Eastern Theater when the West was really where the strategic trajectory of the war was set.

His other point was that the Confederacy was playing by the old political rules early on. Had they been as utterly ruthless as Lincoln was in Maryland and Missouri, things would have been quite different.

The only hope for the South was lost when they seceded. They should never have seceded. What they should have done is simply stay in the Union and ignore the North. ignore any law made by the congress and Senate, any judgement of the supreme court, any measure, regulation or law made by the government in Washington they didn't like. Seceding, trying to start a new nation, and build an army only made the North do Likewise. Simply ignoring anything the Lincoln and later governments said that they didn't like would have cut the ground from under any Union cause for war. In fact, simple non-cooperation would have meant that the North to enforce its decrees would have had to invade the South and build up an army which the people of the north in the early war were entirely against. Once however they seceded and began setting up an army they "opened a box" to a game they could never win.

Otto, they (or at least South Carolina) had already tried just ignoring Federal laws they didn't like and failed. Read up on the Nullification Crisis.

The South's best strategic option was to not insist on putting the fugitive slave provision into the Democratic party's platform. They didn't need to, they had already had the terrible Dread Scott decision, they had already won that. When they were setting the party platform in the convention, the northern Democrats said, "if you put that in the platform, there won't BE any northern Democrats in office after the election, that is very unpopular in the north." When it became the party platform anyway, the northern Democratic candidates formed their own party. Lincoln would not have won if the Democratic vote had not been split.

When it became the party platform anyway, the northern Democratic candidates formed their own party. Lincoln would not have won if the Democratic vote had not been split.

IIRC, it was the Southern wing of the Democratic Party that withdrew from their convention to nominate their own candidate (Breckinridge), not the Northern. Also, Lincoln had enough electoral votes to win outright, even if the Democrats had not split up.

I should have checked. You are correct.

"The South's best strategic option was to not insist on putting the fugitive slave provision into the Democratic party's platform."

Give the man a cookie! I have always said that the most stupid political move the South ever did was impose the Fugitive Slave Provision on the North. Until then slavery was something far away. With it slavers possess could legally range in Massachusetts and Maine. Slavery came to the states that had abolished it for several decades. By far one of the greatest political blunders in history. Yes absent it slavery was dead in the long run. Yes helping fugitive slaves was essentially theft as a our pro-Confed fellow posters will tell us.Unimportant, nothing turned the North agaisnt the South as that shameful and stupid law. It was bloody aggression, that is what it was. Bringing their damn whips and bloodhounds into Maine and New England, bloody fools.

dear Maker

Not the same thing at all. The Nullification crisis was over a tarrif and 20 years before. It was not something that was going to strike down into every home and community in the south as the "northern threat to the southern way of life was. What I am simply talking about is simple non obedience. That is not even talking about it in the senate or the house. It would amount to the same thing as secession in all but name. What I mean is taking it out of the realm of the congress and distributing it to every community and town in the south. That is just ignore the federal government.

essentially he means peaceful civil disobedience. Would not work Otto, as it would deny the southern elites the main goal of secession, their ability to decide the issue of slavery.

Surely as far as the firebrands were concerned stay in and fight politically was seen not to be working. Regardless of what we may see from the here and now, as far as they were concerned, the previous two decades were a failing rearguard action to maintain the expansion of slavery.

Leaving the Union may well have been dumb idea #1 but Proverbs 16:18 applies.

Most likely the best chance the South had was in 1861 when some Politian's proposed a Constitutional amendment to protect Slavery. If Southern leaders had said they would stay with the Union if that proposal was approved; Northern leaders to prevent a Civil War might have agreed.

What if the South had agreed to "abolish" slavery by instituting share-cropping in its place?

B

Could a very early (say 1861) assassination of Lincoln have destabilised things politically for the Union? I believe there were attempts on his life, but were they just random ad hoc events as opposed to highly organised and sponsored? How important was he in holding it all together?

Best options

(1) agree to end slavery and amend the constitution accordingly.
(2) don't succeed.
(3) don't fire on Fort Sumter.

Their best option was to shoot the guys who wanted to secede.

"What if the South had agreed to "abolish" slavery by instituting share-cropping in its place?"

There are three parts of the slavery problem. First you have the problem of maintaining the very profitable "businesses" when you take away their slave labor. Second you have the problem of compensation to slave owners for taking away very valuable property rights. Third you have social problems that would (and did) arise when you suddenly had the black population freed. Share-cropping only addresses one of these.

If the CSA had taken Washington they probably could have got a negotiated peace, hence Lee's invasions of the north in 1862 and 1863

I'm pretty sure that by 63, if not by 62, Lee knew he had no chance of taking the highly fortified city of Washington -- at least not unless he could substantially destroy (not just defeat, destroy) the Army of the Potomac without substantially damaging his own army in the process. For one thing, he had no siege train.

I'm not thoroughly posted on his motives for invading the North in 62, but in 63 they were:
1. Relieve war-torn northern Virginia from the presence of two hungry armies.
2. Subsist his own army on the resources of the enemy for as long as possible (thus easing the Confederacy's supply problems).
3. Possibly divert Union units that otherwise would have been sent to reinforce Grant outside Vicksburg or otherwise be up to no good in the South.
4. Encourage the peace movement in the North.
5. Possibly catch the Army of the Potomac strung out in pursuit of him or widely spread in search of him, and knock off pieces of it piece-meal.

Use AK47s ….

I believe CSA Vice President Stephens summed it up "Without slavery there is no reason for this government to exist."

If there wasn't slavery then there would not have been a war. Any other problem could been worked out through conventional means.

As to the OP, the citizens of the South would insist that the entire country be protected. It was politically impossible to follow the strategy stated.

If a nation cannot defend their own borders then how does it intend to have sovereignty and gain foreign recognition?

How can you give up half the population and all those resources. Sorry Texas, but you are on your own. Heck they may even declare independence.

Sorry Texas, but you are on your own. Heck they may even declare independence.

It probably would have, if secession has succeeded -- the first time it seriously disagreed with a Confederate policy. Once allow secession to succeed, it will be tried again and again whenever convenient. The result would have been the Balkanization of North America.

1820 may have been the year the South could have succeeded successfully. If the Southern states had refused the Compromise of 1820 and succeeded, I don't believe the Northern states at that time could have stopped the Southern states from leaving. May not have even tried. Probably not as many would have succeeded as in 1861.

The issue at the beginning was not slavery in the south but the expansion of slavery into the new western states. Lincoln and most Northerners would have let the South continue with slavery but not allow it to expand into the new states. Both sides knew that this would eventually end slavery because the North would eventually have more votes in the Congress.

Actually, the North already had more votes in both houses of Congress, but not all of them were that anti-slavery. Lincoln, and I think most of the Republican Party, conceded that they could not Constitutionally outlaw slavery within a state. Their hope/intention was to prevent it from being introduced into the territories, which would probably mean no new slave states.

Lincoln also knew that his Emancipation Proclamation (which did NOT, as you often hear said END slavery -- at least, not everywhere), being a military measure, might not be upheld in the courts during peace-time, which is why he was so urgent to get the 13th Amendment passed and ratified before the re-admitted Southern states could stop it.

The south was able to use most of its best resources to hold the northern Virginia line but was ultimately strangled by the blockade and by unsuccessfully trying to defend the entire western theater against multiple lines of attack by more and better northern troops and a better economy. This was inevitably going to happen. In the west, more resources (hogs, cattle, leather, clothing, shoes, guns) and transportation in the form of railroads and steam powered warships and transports meant that the Confederates were going to be overwhelmed and cut up.

Lee never planned or attempted any battle of annihilation- he was willing to wound the Union army but never had the guts to risk the war-ending battle. It is odd to me, that very few historians ever criticize him for this- although there were numerous Napoleonic examples for him to observe and try to emulate. He fought for nice little historical military brownie points, but never really ran a complete campaign with that objective. You can say a lot bad about the Union generals, but one thing they DID do was to ever risk the country by risking everything and always keeping a viable army between the ANV and Washington and the northern cities.(By the way, notice that they won the war).

So Lee's stratgy was to exhaust the north morally- a goofy "Gone with the Wind" thought process. He didn't rally try the the best and only "plan B" chance left, which was to concentrate in the east and take several sizable northern cities. Lee should have invaded and evaded with the objective of taking Harrisburg and Philadephia (or Baltimore). Without that- it was just a matter of time.