Just wondering

[hotdog433]

I havent left a post here in awhile as last time i did it caused a bit conflict.

Just wondering whether people are now happy with the realism of the game or they still groan about things are not how they are meant to be.

If stonewall jackson had lived would it have changed the outcome of the WAR

[Dreadnaught]

Well, I'm more of a WW2, ancient, and med. history buff, so I can not really answer on the historical accuracy of the game. Having recently bought it, I can say I do love the game and it has made me more interested in civil war history. I like all the historical tidbits added in, as much of it is new info for me.

The only problems I see are w/ the somewhat quirky detailed combat, the quirky army movement paths on the main map, and how complicated the research can be as to the effects on quick, detailed, and instant combat work out. They are not game killers for me though, and this is one of my favorite games of all time without a doubt.

[Moltke71]

ORIGINAL: hotdog433

I havent left a post here in awhile as last time i did it caused a bit conflict.

Just wondering whether people are now happy with the realism of the game or they still groan about things are not how they are meant to be.

If stonewall jackson had lived would it have changed the outcome of the WAR

Ah, the Great Man theory of history raises its hoary head again.

No, even had Stonewall attacked Cemetery Hill on the first day of Gettysburg, the AoP would have survived as a fighting force.

The Union economy would have worn the South down. The Northern will to fight has been much underrated. McCellan himself rejected the 1864 Democratic peace plank and would have continued the war.

The South may have had a slim chance early in the war but, after Shiloh, forget about it.

[jkBluesman]

Why Shiloh? I would say after Antietam and Perryville the South had lost. But basically it is the same with the Confederacy and the Brits during the American Revolution - when you depend on your opponents will to fight and have no own chance to end the war you will very likely lose.

[Moltke71]

I thhink the war was won in the West and Shiloh was the South's best shot there.  Perryville, Stone's River and Chickamauga just proved that the South couldn't exploit a victory.

And it's "lose". not "loose".  "Loose" is for ropes, women and bowels. The 'Net is giving people bad spelling and grammar habits.[:)]

[hotdog433]

I agree the war was won in the west..

But Jackson had already proved himself as a independent commander maybe he could have gone west???

WHat do you think as i certainly think he is better than Bragg or johnston and ap hill

[Moltke71]

Corps commanders don't necessarily make good arny commanders.  Consider Hood.  Would Jackson seem so good without Lee?  Also, I don't think any Union corps in the West was as bad as the 11th and Grant was not Hooker.

I think a better question is what if A.S. Jonston hadn't been killed on the first day of Shiloh.

[meisterchow]

ORIGINAL: Bismarck

Corps commanders don't necessarily make good arny commanders. Consider Hood. Would Jackson seem so good without Lee? Also, I don't think any Union corps in the West was as bad as the 11th and Grant was not Hooker.

I think a better question is what if A.S. Jonston hadn't been killed on the first day of Shiloh.

Well, Jackson did have a fairly independent command in the Shenandoah for a while, and did quite well. But then, he was still operating under a loose command of Lee's. Would his presence at Gettysburg have changed the outcome of Day 3? No. But it might have changed the course of Day 1 or Day 2, as his aggressive nature might have kept Meade off-balance sufficiently for Lee to exploit instead of the giant gamble of Pickett's Charge.

I do think you peg it, though, with Johnston. The South spent the rest of the war trying to find the next Johnston, and never did.

[Aurelian]

I think ole Al Syd is over rated. He managed to put enough troops into Fort Henry to make its surrender a major victory. And instead of acting as an army commander he acted like a regimental one and got himself killed.
 
For jackson. Even if he was in command in place of Ewell, the AoTP still had Pipe Creek line. Lee had to do more than just beat the army, he had to remove it from play. But it would of been at such a cost the ANV would of ended up the same way.
 
As for the other, as Shelby Foote put it: "I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back.… If there had been more Southern victories, and a lot more, the North simply would have brought that other hand out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that War."

[hotdog433]

ORIGINAL: Aurelian

I think ole Al Syd is over rated. He managed to put enough troops into Fort Henry to make its surrender a major victory. And instead of acting as an army commander he acted like a regimental one and got himself killed.

For jackson. Even if he was in command in place of Ewell, the AoTP still had Pipe Creek line. Lee had to do more than just beat the army, he had to remove it from play. But it would of been at such a cost the ANV would of ended up the same way.

As for the other, as Shelby Foote put it: "I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back.… If there had been more Southern victories, and a lot more, the North simply would have brought that other hand out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that War."

i guess we will never know about al syd johnston as he died while still learning his trade i mean the number of troops in the war was unheard of for america so exp was something they didint really have it took time

yes they still had the pipe creek line but to retire from the fielld in front of a hastily mobilising ANV

Jackson was aggresive he could get the most out of his troops His tactics were always sound atleast after seven days anyway.

i think he could really have changed it in the west

I also think what hurt the csa in the west was a lack of a truely inspiring leader except forrest and wheeler
L polk was good to average W j hardee WAs consistent breckinidge was the best political leader of both sides not that it says alot

[Ironclad]

The western CSA forces were deficient in good commanders in most senior positions. It an interesting question how many would have been sacked or moved to the Trans-Mississippi dumping ground if Lee had ever commanded there. Polk would have been top of the list - totally unfitted to command a corps but supremely self confident and able to rely on his old friendship with Davis and (amazingly) the loyalty of many senior colleagues in his repeated exercises of disobedience and undermining of his army commanders (particularly the unfortunate Bragg, talented in some respects but cursed by his own set of inadequacies).

Jackson was a great commander and unlike Longstreet, perfectly capable of independent command but his personal qualities would have probably led to some bitter disputes with the western hierarchy even if experience suggests he would have come out on top. He would certainly have presented a much tougher challenge for the union - just imagine if he had been in charge instead of Johnston outside Vicksburg or had been commanding instead of Bragg against the divided union forces advancing around Chattanooga?

Whether Cleburne would have made the grade as a regular corps commander and so been a candidate for higher things is an open question. Its perhaps instructive to note that when corps vacancies did emerge he didn't seem to expect promotion (perhaps because of his foreign birth and lack of West Point training) and even his admirers like Hardee didn't recommend him.

[sadja]

The South lost the war in the West on the Mississippi and Cumberland rivers by spring of 62. By that time the south lost 2 of thier biggest production and population centers in Nashville and New Orleans. If they could have stopped the union at Donelson and Ft.Jackson then the South may have held out longer. The war would have been over a year sooner had Forest not destroyed the Union supplies in Tenn. Vicksburge would have fallen a year sooner. Bythen the South's only hope was the sucess of Lee's Penn campaign. If he was able to destraoy a big portion of meade's army and taken Harrisburg, the Union Goverment over Lincolin's head would have demanded peace. Penn added a lot of troops to the war effort and with lee's army rampaging in southern Penn there may have been some units wanting to be brought home to defend. The south taking of Washington would never had happened. It was to well defended after bull run.

[morganbj]

Sure, the chances of the South winning a military victory were almost nil.  While I think they had SOME chance, it would have required a perfectly sequenced series of events seasoned by a good deal of luck.
 
But, let me define what I mean by "winning."  The South did not need or want to militarily conquer the Nothern states.  What they wanted was to win military victories until the North decided to allow succession.  In essence, they didn't need to win as long as they didn't lose.  The elections in 1864 almost gave them their goal.  Lincoln was hard pressed to win that election and a few more significant Southern victories just might have caused dissolusionment with the war to grow so strong as to throw the election away from him.  I am not saying that was the specific Southern strategy, but that was how the strategy of "fight 'till they go away" might have worked.
 
The South did have fantasies of European involvement, especially by the British.  Tensions got very high during the Slidell affair (www.britannica.com/eb/article-9068194/John-Slidell), resulting in the British sending additional troops to Canada as a way to show the North how serious they were about "piracy" on the high seas.  Had Lincoln not relented, British military aid of some type might have increased.  It is doubtful that they would have formally joined the cause; they were pretty revolted by the South's insistence of maintaing the institution of slavery.  The British interest was purely economic, but might have been more supportive if they felt their national honor was at stake.  The North ALMOST made that happen.
 
Given the differences in the populations and economies, the South had a limited time to "win" a military victory.  As many have stated, their loss was only a matter of time.  Paradoxically, however, the longer the war went, the better their chances of winning a "political" victory.
 
Even had they been able to secure their independence, they would have been an economic basket case and would have struggled for years to survive.  Would they have eventually made it?  Would they have become "recolonized" by the British (at least economically)?  Would they have split up and began to devour each other?  Who knows.
 
It is the stuff of college classrooms, reinactment encampments, and internet forums.

[meisterchow]

You make some very good points there.  I find it ironic that the Colonies and the Confederacy both had the same wartime goal: don't lose.  Keeping an army in the field and maintaining it as a credible threat was Washington's goal, and that was pretty much the same goal of the South - particularly after 1863.  The South had it a little tougher in that they also had to win battles to try and convince the North that the war wasn't worth fighting, but still...an interesting comparison in failed and successful attempt to implement the "stayling alive" strategy.

[fvianello]

ORIGINAL: Bismarck

Ah, the Great Man theory of history raises its hoary head again.

No, even had Stonewall attacked Cemetery Hill on the first day of Gettysburg, the AoP would have survived as a fighting force.

The Union economy would have worn the South down. The Northern will to fight has been much underrated. McCellan himself rejected the 1864 Democratic peace plank and would have continued the war.

The South may have had a slim chance early in the war but, after Shiloh, forget about it.

I suggest to use what I called "the reverse approach" to demonstrate that war almost follows a predefined course, and even the greatest general cannot change the inevitable conclusion.

For example, let's take at the basic sequence of events of the Waterloo campaign:
1. Napoleon wins against Prussian at Ligny
2. Napoleon loses against British+Prussian at Waterloo
3. Napoleon exiled

Now, let's presume for a second that things went in a different way, that is:
1. Napoleon loses against Prussian at Ligny
2. Napoleon exiled

With this new, hypotetical events sequence, any "Great Man Theorist" would say:
"AH! If only Napoleon had won at Ligny, He would have been the Emperor of the French until his death!!".

Actually, the theorist is only getting back to the REAL sequence of events, that brings to his exile in any case...only with 1 more battle.

[sullafelix]

The one thing that I've never seen anyone mention is the shear scope of what Lincoln was aiming at. Since the Mongols, wars had been over much smaller areas and not much land was lost or won at the signing of the peace treaty. True Canada was lost to the English by the French but it wasn't really conquered, only the areas with the most population actually changed hands during the war. Lincoln's idea of the war was a complete subjugation of millions of people and square miles of territory. I believe most military men around the world would have laughed at the idea. While it is true that in the beginning both sides thought the conflict wouldn't last long at all. Once that bubble burst, Lincoln was more than willing to completely conquer the south no matter what the cost. The amount of men that were finally under arms by both sides dwarfed the Napoleonic wars. In total manpower through twenty years of the Napoleonic wars it was probably equalled but not in any of the separate campaigns.
 
 Remember that not only were there the large armies but also hundreds of thousands of troops to garrison the conquered parts of the south. In Lincoln's idea of war with the unconditional surrender of the south, coupled with the rampant destruction of civilian infrasructure. The war resembles the Secaond World war much more than even the first. I have never seen anyhting written about the WW1 that talks about unconditional surrender and total subjugation.
 
These points show that once six months were up Lincoln was totally single minded in not wanting an arranged peace. His blandishments at the end of the war of just letting the confederate states back into the Union were just sound bites. How could he expect to have a cozy fun Union once he had crushed not only the " rebellion" but also half the nations infrastructure. There is a misunderstanding of the flight of exslaves to the north and west and also many southeners. They had to leave to live. There were no jobs ( they having all been taken by northereners ) above menial labor. Anyone even remotely involved with the  " rebellion " were denied all rights, of making a living. But I digress.
 
 The main point I'm making is that in it's shear scope the Civil war was a much greater war than had been fought in many a century.

[morganbj]

I disagree with some of what you say Sulla.  Let me explain.

I believe that Loncoln still believed that the Southerners were still Americans and that "subjugation" was not his goal, re-unification was.  He wanted to restore the union, nothing more and nothing less.  Freeing the slaves was a pure political move to gain support domestically and abroad.  I don't believe he wanted to reduce the Southern economy to a wasteland at all.  He wanted to destroy the Confederate nation's will to fight, hoping that the occupied states would come to their senses and admit their mistake.  His wartime strategy was simple: choke the South economically, while destroying the military where possible.

I guess we could argue that that means the subjugation of the South, but I would choose a different word, given the meaning it has since WWII.

Also, I agree that the war was far more expansive than MOST others before, but rememebr that even in ancient Greece, Alexander the Great successfully conquered most of the known world.  His army was much smaller, as was that of the Persians (and a few others).  And don't forget the French in Russia in 1812.  That was a miserable flop, but it was successful in that Napoleon won virtually every engagement until he started to withdraw that October.

Wile the civil war covered a much larger land area than most wars in the past, it was, however, still a "local" war.  By that I mean that there was no need to maintain "lines" as we know them today.  There was simply no need to do that because communication (after logistics, the most important aspect of war) was restricted to railroads, a few well established roads, and, of course, the sea.  All of the major campaigns of the Civil War revolved around the communication system to one extent or another.  (Read: The economic centers.)  The South wanted to protect them, the North wanted to take them away.  That is why there was no real major campaign to take major portions of land in the South.  Instead, the strategy was to take the major economic centers, and destroying enemy forces when and where possible.  Given a choice, however, the economic centers took precedence.

So, while the playing field was large, the battes were all local affairs.  Strategic flanking maneuvers were not really conducted to destroy the enemy, like we do today, they were instead largely conducted to place the enemy in an intolerable logistical position to force them away from a major objective.  It was the classic indirect approach described by Fuller (I think it was he who said that).

While the campaigns by Grant, and Sherman to some extent, are known for large, bloody battles, I would argue that their real purpose was economic.  Grant wanted to take Richmond to end the war; Sherman wanted to destroy the South's ability to wage war.  While Grant never avoided battle, he was most focussed on geographic objectives, not the Southern Armies.  During the 1864 campaing in Virginia, he constantly tried to slip by the NVA to move to Richmond, and the major economic infrastructure near Petersburg.  With the resources he had at hand, he could have made a major effort to crush Lee after each engegement, but he didn't.  Instead, he went for Richmond again.  Sure, his troops almost always got the worst of every engagement, but he kept his eye on the prize.  Only after Petersburg, when the NVA was a quarter of his size, did he finally put forth a major effort to eliminate it from play.  And this only after Richmond and Petersburg had fallen.  Sherman didn't chase Hood back up into Tennessee to destroy his army, which he could have easily done, he headed into the deep South to rampage through the economy.

Also remember that the civilian populations involved were much, much smaller than what we know today.  I'm sure some one has a source at had, but as I recall the population of the South was something like 8.5 million.  The North was around 30.  (My memory is real fuzzy, but I think that's right.)  Take away large urban centers, and the population per square mile was very sparse indeed.

While I agree that the Civil War was different than prior wars, it was much more similar to those of Napoleon than those of the Kaiser a half century later.  The major similarity to WWI was the level of casualties in each engagement and overall in the war.  The strategy and tactics were much closer to Nappy and the boys.

All this brings me to the game.  I find that it's entirely too easy for one side or the other to change the overall strategic objective of a force.  Being from the South, I always try my hand at reducing those yellow-bellied shop-keeping invaders to a mass of retreating human debris (boy, that'll start a feud on this thread, won't it).  After I defeat a force in Northern Virginia, another huge force comes in from Ohio, across the mountains.  Beat that one back and another comes down the Mississippi.  So far, so good.  But, beat that one back and it retreats to Ohio, joins the previously defeated force and heads for Lynchburg.  Armies just didn't do that.  The western armies had a goal, say take the Mississippi, and they stuck to it.  They didn't lose a battle and then move over to Kentucky to try something else.  If they took excessive losses, they licked their wounds until they could give it another go.  Yes, reinforcements could be redirected to other theaters, but entire MAJOR campaigns were not just abandonded, as a rule.  Two objectives would never had been abandoned: Richmond and the Mississippi.  I realize that some campaings just failed, like those whose purpose never made any sense anyway (Arkansas), but as a general rule, the key campaigns just continued until the South could no longer resist them.  We could argue that point, I guess, but I can only base my argument on what happened, not what might have happened.

Overall, the game does a pretty good job at recreating the period, at least militarily.  The economic system is much too simplified, and I believe that too many sacrifices were made to make history repeat itself, rather than explore alternate strategies.  Let me give an example.  Let's assume that Lincoln decided to forgoe the Mississippi campaign and make a one front war in Virgina.  In the game, an Army of 450,000 could gather in Washington and move south, crushing all before it.  (Well, maybe after a time.)  The South could respond in the game by allocating a sufficient "covering force" in Virginia, and then begin their own Mississippi campaign to remove the West from the war before defeat happened near Richmond.  I would argue that neither were logistically possible.  There just wasn't sufficient infrastructure to support a Northern army of that size on a major campaign like that, and there's just no way the South could take Chicago, Detroit, etc.  One thing I learned in all my years in the Army was that war isn't won by the grunt (there's another flurry of complaints from readers, huh?), it's won by the logisticians.  (And just to let you know where I come from, I was a Cavalry/Armor officer.  Our beasts of burden, the tanks, had to eat -- a lot!)

I guess I would prefer it if the game had a greater emphasis on objectives, giving "willing to sustain the war" points to the side who gains them.  Take Atlanta, and the North's will to continue goes up.  Take (or ravage) a large Northern city and their will goes down, way, way down.  As eveidence, the North went absolutely crazy when John Hunt Morgan (my Great [several times] grandfather) invaded the mid-west.  This just doesn't seem to have the same effect in the game.  The South just gets no real benefit from oerations like that, at least not enough.  Also, Lee's objective in invading the North was political, as much as military.  yes, he wanted to find terrain to engage the Yanks and destroy them, but he primarily wanted the North to feel the pain of war as well to reduce their will to fight.  The major battle was to seal the deal politically.  (To get the North to quit, or to get European support if that didn't happen.)  He could have destroyed the Northern army in Virginia as easily as he could in Pennsylvania, although I'm not sure either was really possible.  I'm not sure he did either.

I've rambled on too long.  Y'all have a good one.

[meisterchow]

Thanks for posting this. I had written a similar response but the Intarnets ate it before it could get posted and I just didn't have the energy to write it again.

ORIGINAL: bjmorgan
While the campaigns by Grant, and Sherman to some extent, are known for large, bloody battles, I would argue that their real purpose was economic.  Grant wanted to take Richmond to end the war; Sherman wanted to destroy the South's ability to wage war.  While Grant never avoided battle, he was most focussed on geographic objectives, not the Southern Armies. 

This is the only thing you said that I'd quibble with. Grant's objective was always to destroy Lee's army. His focus on Richmond was to force Lee to fight and thereby have his army reduced by combat. Lincoln knew for a long time, and Grant agreed with him when he gained command, that as long as the South could field an army, there would be resistance. Grant was able to keep Lee engaged because Lee couldn't ignore his capital - thereby losing his freedom to maneuver. Grant used that to maneuver Lee out of favorable defensive terrain.

Sherman's march was partly to destroy the South's ability to wage war, but more about destroying the South's will to fight. He made a pretty effective demonstration when he showed that their armies couldn't stop him from marching from the Mississippi to the Atlantic coast. The destruction that ensued just added injury to insult.

[Erik Rutins]

I would also note that Lincoln's decision to emancipate the slaves was not purely political, though the ultimate timing was. Slavery and the slave economy was ultimately the prime cause for the strife and division that lead to the Civil War. Men on both sides had it very much on their minds and although slavery (and the southern economy, which was to a signifcant degree slave-based) was not the only reason they fought, it was without a doubt in the top 3.

Lincoln himself considered restoring the Union his primary goal and he was certainly well aware of the political advantages and disadvantages of emancipating the slaves. Hence, he kept that card in his hand when he needed to make sure earlier in the war that the border states would remain in the Union (see how he dealt with Fremont and his declaration), but was quite willing to use it later when the North was more secure. Waiting for the right moment to make this move so as not to sabotage the war makes sense for a good commander in chief, but it doesn't mean he had no motives other than the political. I believe he quite clearly felt sympathy for the plight of the slaves and understood well the moral dilemma that slavery in a free nation created and the corrosive effect it had on the USA since its founding.

As with his predecessors, I'm also certain that Lincoln would have not issued the Emancipation Declaration or otherwise antagonized the South if he thought that it would preserve the Union and avoid a Civil War, but that was only because his duty to his country was greater than that to his own personal convictions. Once the war was begun, I think it was only a matter of time before such a declaration was issued and I think it evolved from some original half-measures because he sought every avenue first to heal the Union with freeing the slaves as a secondary but personal concern.

Of course, I could be wrong, but that's what I've read.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: bjmorgan
While the campaigns by Grant, and Sherman to some extent, are known for large, bloody battles, I would argue that their real purpose was economic.  Grant wanted to take Richmond to end the war; Sherman wanted to destroy the South's ability to wage war.  While Grant never avoided battle, he was most focussed on geographic objectives, not the Southern Armies.  During the 1864 campaing in Virginia, he constantly tried to slip by the NVA to move to Richmond, and the major economic infrastructure near Petersburg.  With the resources he had at hand, he could have made a major effort to crush Lee after each engegement, but he didn't.

Well, Lee kept beating Grant's army up - but Grant knew he had the edge in men. His campaign makes perfect sense as an attempt to destroy Lee's army if you consider that he went for objectives that Lee was forced to defend. As another poster pointed out, this took away Lee's freedom to maneuver and made him more predictable. While it was a very costly strategy for the Union in manpower, it worked with Lee ending up under siege and static, with his men worn out and starving.

After I defeat a force in Northern Virginia, another huge force comes in from Ohio, across the mountains.  Beat that one back and another comes down the Mississippi.  So far, so good.  But, beat that one back and it retreats to Ohio, joins the previously defeated force and heads for Lynchburg.  Armies just didn't do that.  The western armies had a goal, say take the Mississippi, and they stuck to it.  They didn't lose a battle and then move over to Kentucky to try something else.  If they took excessive losses, they licked their wounds until they could give it another go.  Yes, reinforcements could be redirected to other theaters, but entire MAJOR campaigns were not just abandonded, as a rule.  Two objectives would never had been abandoned: Richmond and the Mississippi.  I realize that some campaings just failed, like those whose purpose never made any sense anyway (Arkansas), but as a general rule, the key campaigns just continued until the South could no longer resist them.  We could argue that point, I guess, but I can only base my argument on what happened, not what might have happened.

Well, you have to consider what might have happened though. If any of the Union campaigns (other than that around Washington/Richmond) had been defeated very badly as you no doubt handled the AI's armies, they may well have decided to unify forces in one theater for a bigger push. This was certainly done after Vicksburg, with many forces from the West going to other theaters to reinforce the efforts there - that was due to success, but it could also have happened due to a total lack of progress. Note when Longstreet was sent to help out at Chickamauga as well, not a minor detachment at all. Keep in mind that in addition to the garrison forces which the AI generally keeps in place and which add up to quite a few for most theaters, you also have some of the auto-generated local militias that show up here and there in battles, so it's not as if a theater is totally abandoned.

Overall, the game does a pretty good job at recreating the period, at least militarily.  The economic system is much too simplified, and I believe that too many sacrifices were made to make history repeat itself, rather than explore alternate strategies.  Let me give an example.  Let's assume that Lincoln decided to forgoe the Mississippi campaign and make a one front war in Virgina.  In the game, an Army of 450,000 could gather in Washington and move south, crushing all before it.  (Well, maybe after a time.)  The South could respond in the game by allocating a sufficient "covering force" in Virginia, and then begin their own Mississippi campaign to remove the West from the war before defeat happened near Richmond.  I would argue that neither were logistically possible.  There just wasn't sufficient infrastructure to support a Northern army of that size on a major campaign like that, and there's just no way the South could take Chicago, Detroit, etc.  One thing I learned in all my years in the Army was that war isn't won by the grunt (there's another flurry of complaints from readers, huh?), it's won by the logisticians.  (And just to let you know where I come from, I was a Cavalry/Armor officer.  Our beasts of burden, the tanks, had to eat -- a lot!)

I'm not entirely clear here - you comment that the game does not explore alternate strategies, but then seem to be unhappy that it allows too many alternate strategies? What alternate strategies would you like to see that you would also feel are realistic? I think the North could have managed such a concentration of forces, but it never would have abandoned entire states just to concentrate in Virginia.

As for the South being unable to conquer parts of the North... with enough forces and few enough defenders, I think they could have done it, just as the North did to the South. I don't think they had the logistics to pull it off the way the war happened, but if you envision a South (as can happen in FOF)

I guess I would prefer it if the game had a greater emphasis on objectives, giving "willing to sustain the war" points to the side who gains them.  Take Atlanta, and the North's will to continue goes up.  Take (or ravage) a large Northern city and their will goes down, way, way down. 

Hm, this really already happens - at least in v1.10.10.

Regards,

- Erik