Why Did The Confederates Lose The American Civil War? 

I’d be interested in hearing if anyone thinks we could ever see a Second American Civil War, please comment with your thoughts!

They lost because they attacked Ft. Sumter. The only hope for the South was to take a purely defensive posture defending their territory without provoking the Union by attacking Federal installations - this would allow time for negotiations and, failing that, would force the Union to make the first aggressive move - a move which would have faced considerable opposition in the North. A great many Northerners were indifferent to southern secession, but after the South's unprovoked attacked on Ft. Sumter, the outrage in the North insured that Lincoln would have the popular support needed to wage a war of conquest against the Confederacy. The South was doomed the moment the first cannons opened fire in Charleston Harbor.

Ultimately the Confederates lost the war because they were outnumbered, and outproduced. This is proven by the fact that 25% of the white males of military age in 1861 in the south died in the war. The number is considered somewhere around 300 to 350 thousands. Union losses were approximately the same sizes and for the same causes. The difference was that while the southern manpower available kept shrinking that of the north kept growing. Ulysses Grant was not the butcher he is sometimes accused of being but he knew what he had and how to utilize it. So though a lot of the Lost Cause mythology may be fantasy the part about southern combat effectiveness is not. Incidentally, the last verifiable Confederate veteran died in 1951. His name was Pleasant Crump and he enlisted in the 10th Alabama in December of 1864 and fought in several battles before being surrendered at Appomattox. The last Union veteran was Albert Woolson who died in 1956...He enlisted in the 1st Minnesota Heavy Artillery in 1864 at the age of 14. That regiment never saw any combat and served only in garrison duty.

Manpower and huge edge in industrial production

The biggest problem which caused the CSA's downfall was an inconsistent approach to a general war strategy. There were two camps of thought. Strike and be aggressive to take out the Union capital of Washington D.C. vs Dig in and hold on to what we have. The 1st camp believed that unflinching aggression towards the Union capital to force a quick and swift peace to prevent a general conflict of prolonged nature. The 2nd camp believed that most Yankees really didn't want to throw away their sons and fathers to a war that didn't really affect them or their livelihoods. It was this continual indecision on the Confederate side that resulted in the war lasting as long as it did as well as Union general officers looking to strike towards Richmond being inconsistent themselves. Had the Confederacy attempted to be aggressive and followed through after 1st Manassas to drive into Washington D.C. then the war could've likely ended there. Lincoln would've been seen as a mini tyrant with his suspension of habeus corpus and the failure to calm down tension by being aggressive towards the Southern unrest and either would've been impeached or forced to resign. Consequently, had the Confederacy decided to dig in and hold their own, it is then just a matter of how Confederate generals respond to Union incursions. In our timeline unwarranted aggression towards Union forces in "opportunity strikes" saw many false victories as what was won tactically was severely lost strategically due to the Confederacy's lack of industry and supply/manpower base to be able to recover losses over the course of the war. There is no certainty about if the Confederacy could've won the war, but there is a likelihood of potential victory had certain strategic decisions been made in certainty rather than the variable nature that is seen throughout the war. As a southerner and someone born from Mississippi, it is easy to see why the Confederacy lost due to how the trend of the national government and actions of many of its general officers did over the course of the war and the subsequent casualty counts for major engagements.

They had no chance Just like the Germans in ww2

It was the North's war to lose.

They were outgunned

The primary reason for secession was undoubtedly the maintenance of slavery, however secession is not war. Do States have a right to leave the Union, this was the question to be settled by war.

Two historical quotes and one fictional: Confederate General Isaac Trimble, after the failure of Pickett's charge, he was wounded and captured. While in a field hospital, Trimble remarked, "If the men I had the honor to command that day could not take that position, all hell couldn't take it." Years after the war, former-General George Pickett was asked, why did his charge at Gettysburg fail? He replied, "I always thought the Yankees had something to do with it." "We won not because we had more money, more guns, more ships, horses, or the like. We won because of one simple fact, our boys were better."~Captain Nedville Stevens.

The South only had to give up slavery. Even a gradual emancipation would have brought british recognition. Also, thousands of slaves could have been used as soldiers and support personal

Because the North had unlimited poor immigrants to throw into the meat grinder