What's your Strategy?
https://forums.matrixgames.com:443/
ORIGINAL: warspite1
Excellent thanks for sharing. I just can't get into big tomes about the subject at present so this type of article really helps.
In addition, the areas that would have been abandoned had the South pursued a Fabian strategy were precisely the areas the Confederacy needed most if it were to have a realistic chance for independence — Virginia and Tennessee. As Joseph Harsh has observed, “for a nation successfully to pursue a strategy of defense it needed a large, rich heartland into which it could withdraw. Unfortunately for the South, its heart was located on its frontier.” And without Virginia, there was no viable Confederacy.
There were also political and social reasons that the Confederacy could not have pursued a Fabian or guerrilla strategy. First, the citizens of the Confederacy would never have tolerated a strategy based on a policy of ceding large swaths of territory to the hated invader. Second, a Fabian approach would have involved a social revolution, because it would have required the abandonment of the slave-based plantation system, which of course was the cause for which the South was willing to break up the Union and fight a war.
It seems to me that there was no better strategy for the South to follow than the one it did — organizing its forces into field armies to confront the armies of the Union, and giving priority to the best of these armies: Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Had Lee achieved the sort of victory he sought — the destruction of a Union army, especially on northern soil — the South might well have achieved its independence. And the fact is that Lee came extraordinarily close on more than one occasion.
So Georgia North and South Carolina and Virginia would VOLUNTARILY allow themselves to be ruled by Britain? What world do you live in? Georgia for one wouldn't even allow the Confederacy to recruit in Georgia and refused repeatedly to allow it's State's troops to aid any other State.ORIGINAL: AbwehrX
In addition, the areas that would have been abandoned had the South pursued a Fabian strategy were precisely the areas the Confederacy needed most if it were to have a realistic chance for independence — Virginia and Tennessee. As Joseph Harsh has observed, “for a nation successfully to pursue a strategy of defense it needed a large, rich heartland into which it could withdraw. Unfortunately for the South, its heart was located on its frontier.” And without Virginia, there was no viable Confederacy.
There were also political and social reasons that the Confederacy could not have pursued a Fabian or guerrilla strategy. First, the citizens of the Confederacy would never have tolerated a strategy based on a policy of ceding large swaths of territory to the hated invader. Second, a Fabian approach would have involved a social revolution, because it would have required the abandonment of the slave-based plantation system, which of course was the cause for which the South was willing to break up the Union and fight a war.
It seems to me that there was no better strategy for the South to follow than the one it did — organizing its forces into field armies to confront the armies of the Union, and giving priority to the best of these armies: Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Had Lee achieved the sort of victory he sought — the destruction of a Union army, especially on northern soil — the South might well have achieved its independence. And the fact is that Lee came extraordinarily close on more than one occasion.
There was another option that was readily available that nobody considered that involved Imperial Europe and wouldve thrown half the continent into chaos. Returning the Carolinas, Georgia and part of Virginia to England, the Louisiana Purchase including Yankee territory to France, Florida to Spain and California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, the Dakotas and Montana to Mexico. In other words threaten the North most by inviting half the world into North America to force them to negotiate or else. The North wasnt anywhere near capable of fighting all of Europe and the South simultaneously and European fleets were more than a match for the North. I'd like to see that as an option in several CW games.
ORIGINAL: DanSez
After a long span of reading from age 15 to now 57 I have come to the very simple reason the South lost the war.
They did not have the strong Centralized Government needed wage more than regional combat.
This allowed the North to work to their strengths in a strategic way to carve up and destroy the South piecemeal.
They lost because they would not/count not embrace the very thing they were afraid of and vowed to fight against.
Ironic, isn't it...
(spelling edit)
You just offered one of the simplest reason for Confederate defeat. Also, the North was a monster waiting to wake(just like America in WWII). As Shelby Foote said: "I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back. At the same time the war was going on, the Homestead act was being passed, all these marvelous inventions were going on... 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."
ORIGINAL: parusski
An excellent essay by Mackubin Thomas Owens, Associate Dean of Academics for Electives and Directed Research and Professor of Strategy and Force Planning for the Naval War College and contributing editor to National Review.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/387546/why-confederacy-lost-mackubin-thomas-owens
ORIGINAL: parusski
... the North was a monster waiting to wake(just like America in WWII). As Shelby Foote said: "I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back. At the same time the war was going on, the Homestead act was being passed, all these marvelous inventions were going on... 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."
ORIGINAL: DanSez
ORIGINAL: parusski
... the North was a monster waiting to wake(just like America in WWII). As Shelby Foote said: "I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back. At the same time the war was going on, the Homestead act was being passed, all these marvelous inventions were going on... 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."
Great quote.
There is too much evidence that the Confederacy was too divisive to capitalize on what slim chance there was to gain independence. I love war games and historical sims and playing "what if" but the reality of books like "Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War" by Andrew F Smith will drive home the unequal tide of wealth, organization and ultimately National Will.
I agree with the posts about the fantasy of a southern threat...
Great in a board game but in real life threatening the North with European ownership is silly. Remember it was a States type of government where all the day to day governing was at a state level....
The USA of 1861 looked nothing like anything we have seen after the war and especially today.
So, these States, each an individual entity that was loosely coordinated into a nation, would never think of bringing in a European over lord... Not even remotely possible.
ORIGINAL: parusski
ORIGINAL: DanSez
After a long span of reading from age 15 to now 57 I have come to the very simple reason the South lost the war.
They did not have the strong Centralized Government needed wage more than regional combat.
This allowed the North to work to their strengths in a strategic way to carve up and destroy the South piecemeal.
They lost because they would not/count not embrace the very thing they were afraid of and vowed to fight against.
Ironic, isn't it...
(spelling edit)
You just offered one of the simplest reason for Confederate defeat. Also, the North was a monster waiting to wake(just like America in WWII). As Shelby Foote said: "I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back. At the same time the war was going on, the Homestead act was being passed, all these marvelous inventions were going on... 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."