Southern Strategies Why the Confederacy Failed 

The South's make them bleed strategy was the only option. And they did well with it. But this is not a Hearts of Iron Game. People seem to forget or the southern authors that rose out of the 1920s thru the 1980s with the Lee is God, If only Jackson, We were so close, War weariness etc etc etc. All forget. that 1. The South is the size of Western Europe aka the Napoleonic Wars. It was going to take time for the North to win if Richmond, Chatanooga, New Orleans and Atlanta do not fall in the 1st 3 months. 2. The industrial power of a 60 mile circle around New York City had greater industrial output than the entire South. 3. Everyone talks of the Draft Riots in late July 63 in the North, yet the "southern" authors and their fellow scholars forget the South already had a draft and suffered bread riots in the spring of 63 in multiple Southern Cities and the one in Richmond was large (3 days and troops were called in). 3. The British had a policy of easy relations with the US. The War of 1812 the US may not have won but the British could not afford to fight a war across the Atlantic with a Continental power of even just the Northern States. The British Army garrison in Canada in 1862 was 18000 men it was less than 6000 pre-1861. Thats a lot of territory to cover with 18000 men. The British were busy elsewhere like India. The British also had no intention of facing a much larger US Navy than in the Wat of 1812 and having to defend all the oceans. Their is also the the techology issue of ironclads armoured ships oceans. A messy time in naval strategy. Besides the Civil war benefited Canada economically (and the British Empire as a whole) and most Canadians were Pro Union or anti slave! 35000-50000 Canadians served in the Union Army 28 earned the Congressional Medal of Honor! Less than 1000 joined the Confederate cause. And then there was the Crimean War hangover effects in both Britain and France. 4. Grant's wins did help overall morale in the North and Vicksburg was a gut punch to the Southern cause. For with Vicksburg falling in 63 the Ohio flows to the Gulf and the economies of OH IN IL MO regained their traditional access to the sea = the port of New Orleans = $$$$. The abolitionists were powerful in PA NY and the and Northeast states. They were not going to break after Antietam. Vicksburg locked in the Midwest for the war. 5. The South's industry, transport and communications were dying. Lack of machinery, industrial level metalworking skilled labor. No horses. Lee culled 25% of his artillery in Dec 63. Why? Because he had no feed for the animals and the men needed to eat something. It also allowed the batteries to get some reinforcements, and those men left over from the disbanded batteries got rolled into the infantry. The rails were worn-down. Can't make new. The rail system was inefficient, not connected, different gauges, and not built for loads, every locomotive lost was well a loss. Can't make Ironclads because you really can't make engines, sorry south. The telegraph was failing also. Turns out a special non-current absorbing non-conductive? clay is used in telegraph pole wire connections and the south could not make replacement clay caps. 6. The quality control on pistols and fuzes was terrible (Gettysburg and the fuze issue everyone?). 7. Lack of educated men. The south was a generation behind in basic education compared to the Northeast by 61. Somethings still have not changed lol. 8. There is concept in war that technology swings in favor of the attacker vs defender throughout history. The rifled musket in partner with entrenchments made the Civil War a bloody affair. Siege warfare takes time. But once you are besieged and have no relief you are done. It took time to corral the south. Anyone who thinks Lee's Army could fight after pulling out of Petersburg needs to do some study. The men were done and fell out on the march everywhere, the animals could not pull the few guns properly = they were done, ammunition was lacking especially for artillery. I am tired rant is over

United Kingdom started the World diversification of the raw cotton production in 1858 before 3 years the Civil War and it was accomplished by 1864! India, Egypt, Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, Breail and other South American countries became raw cotton exporters.

With the benefit of hindsight, something like Winfield Scott's Anaconda plan was probably the best strategy for the Union, but the Confederacy's options were very limited. I cant imagine how they could have won.

Even if the south had been able to gain independence I'm not sure how long peaceful relations could have been maintained among either the southern states themselves or their northern neighbors. A southern victory would not have changed the abolitionist views in the North and slaves escaping across the border would have continued to be a flash point between the two sections.

The South lacked diplomacy, no Ben Franklin

Add to that the French military was also bogged down in a quagmire in Mexico.

RIP to your mother.

To mention the current inflation rate, September 2024, of 2.4% with an editorial comment and a sideways aside that draws any comparison to the South's inflation rate, is such an egregious flaunting of a personal opinion that it calls into question the rest of your talk.

One thing which might've worked was sending agents to pose as Canadian raiders sacking northern towns and vice versa, the raids wouldn't mean much but the potential for causing the already tense relationship between Britain and the Union to possibly erupt into war or at least divert northern attention might have worked

I would have liked to hear some Southern strategies that may have been successful. Maybe they are in the book. The south was outmanned, outgunned and out-supplied from day one and it got progressively worse as the war went on even in spite of many southern victories.

What about January 6?

Imagine the irish regements in the confedeate armies if England joined the frey.

I'm tired of people blaming Bragg. The guy really was a top notch strategist, he was just a vicious and unlikable guy who couldn't get his subordinates to do what he told them to do. Never mind the fact that early in the war Bragg launched one of the most successful and wide ranging offensives the Confederacy ever undertook, and it was because of that campaign he rose to Army command. Not saying there weren't better options (*cough) Forrest (*cough) but Bragg tends to catch a lot of flack for failures that really were the result of incompetence of his subordinates.

I notice that you eventually acknowledge the moral authority of the Emancipation Proclamation as a powerful instrument of the Union for winning the war. But only very late in your presentation.

The Union had the same opsies as the South. This is the same rehash with new title.

I am shocked and disappointed that you totally ignore the moralityt of the objectives of both sides in the war. Onthe Union side, preservation of a Constitution that all of the states, including the secessionist states, had solemnly sworn to uphold, and thet was a solemn compact between all the states, including the Southern ones. Eventually, the freedom of four million enslaved people became a second objectives. The Confederates, by way of contrast, were fighting to preserve an unethical institution and to break their solemn vows to "preserve, protect, and defend" the United States constituion, the compact that they had voluntarily made with the States. In the civil war as in most wars, the side with right and justice on its side won.

Gonzalez William Lewis Michelle Lee William

It's no wonder that the South had no diplomats and that Southern diplomacy failed. Southern culture honored bullies, not diplomats. Duels, not careful words, were how Southerners settled disagreements. The North had better men for the job. Northern men grew up in a free society, while Southern men grew up in a slave society.

It's like asking why Japan lost to the US in WW2.

The State of NY had a larger GDP than the entire south. As long as the political will to fight existed in the north that war was unwinnable on the battlefield.

You kinda glossed over what must have been a SERIOUS awakening for the Confederates who assumed their way of life was “superior” to head to Europe and find out that actually, the South is way behind the times.

Cause it was evil

"Grant had an easier time than his predecessors..."? Come on man!

The south was not fighting for independence only; for openers it tried to conquer the southwest in the New Mexico campaign and tried to overthrow the Union government through a coup d'etat. (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Union and Confederate accounts of the New Mexico campaign; Confederate Operations in Canada and New York by Confederate agent John Headley).

It's odd that the Confederate diplomats did such a poor job. From this account they sound almost like bumpkins, hollering for ketchup at a Michelin restaurant, being annoyed at the waiters for not speaking English. Wasn't the planter class expensively educated, often taking tours abroad? Didn't their wives eagerly follow fashion trends from Europe? Didn't Southern culture - especially elite culture - place a huge premium on patient politeness, courtesy, and tact - and in fact look down on the North as rushed, blunt, and selfish?

I believe that by the 1860s the British and French had found althernative sources of cotton in Egyptand India. Please correct me if I am wrong about this.

Too many ads.

Amen to the dangers and destruction of printing money to cover budget shortfall.

If I had a dollar for every time a country underestimated how long a potential war might last! Not only the Civil War, but also WW1, _Operation Barbarossa,_ up to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine! As Jenny said in the movie “Love Story”, _”the troops will be home by Christmas”._ That’s how much of a cliche it had become.

My consultation of the article on "Cotten" in the Wikipedia confirmed my suspicion that Britain coprd with the Confederacy's semi-embargo on cotton shipments to Englandt by increasing its imports of cotton from India and Egypt. France and other European countries also increased their imports from these two countries.

I must respectfully disagree with the speaker here, in his beginning assertion that the goal of the Confederacy was independence, and everything else was noise. No, Sir, it was not, and you do your subject no favors by the assumption. The goal of the Confederacy was the protection and expansion of the system of American Chattel Slavery (and the associated social order of White Christian Supremacy). The South *sought Independence* to further THAT goal because of the prevailing belief that they would, otherwise, at some point in the future, possibly have to do an honest days work. This is not a subject of honest debate; it is fact. It is spelled out by the Confederates themselves, in their own Articles of Secession, in multiple states, multiple times.

Great talk!! 👏👏. Some commenters are asking for southern strategies that would have worked. The most obvious one, to me, is to abolish slavery in name, allow blacks to fight in exchange for freedom, to thereby allow a European power to join their side (which they were trying to do from day one), to nullify the union blockade and render it ineffective. after all, the South and USA in general, did this after the civil war and it won the West.

It is interesting that you totally ignore in your analysis which side had a "just cause." The Southern leaders immediately repudiated their solemning made oaths to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution, which many of them had taken only a year before secession. They also were avowedly fighting to preserve and protect the institution of slavery, which many people in both Europe and North America had come to perceive as unethical and oppresive by 1861. Concerning the morality on the Union side,it is relevant that the Union side only began to make steady progress after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. This transformed what had been originally only a war to save the Union into a crusade to free four million enslaved people. Thgis was an ideal that greatly strenghen the will to victory on the Union side. To put the matter bluntly, the Union side fought for ethical goals while the Confederacy fought for unethical ones, primarily the preservation of an unethical legal-social institution. While this does not determine the outcome of every war, most wars are one by the side that has moral rectitude on its side.

Russia may have supported the Union during the civil war because it had abolished serfdom, a form of slavery, in 1861. The Emancipation Proclamation, and even before that President Lincoln's publicly expressed opposition to slavery, may well have made the liberal reforming Tsar Alexander II sympathetic to the Union Cause.

I see Winfield Scott Hancock doesn't rate a mention despite the fact he is, in my opinion, the finest general officer the Union possessed during the Civil War. _During the massive Confederate artillery bombardment that preceded the infantry assault, Hancock was prominent on horseback, reviewing and encouraging his troops. When one of his subordinates protested, "General, the corps commander ought not to risk his life that way," Hancock is said to have replied, "There are times when a corps commander's life does not count."_ _Helped from his horse by aides, and with a tourniquet applied to stanch the bleeding, he removed the saddle nail himself and, mistaking its source, remarked wryly, "They must be hard up for ammunition when they throw such shot as that."_

Rodriguez Thomas Robinson Anna Rodriguez Paul

I think he dismisses Russia too easily. Russian navy fleets visited SF and New York in a demonstration of Union military support