John C. Carter
Tactics
Thu Jul 12 11:11:28 2001


Roger...

I would admit that it sounds incredulous that one major victory on Union soil could have broken the will of the Northern people to continue the war. Early in the war, however, that was a definite possibility when you take into account the string of Confederate victories in Virginia and the wavering of public opinion in the North. It is a question that will always be a "what if." The more significant question should be: could the Army of Northern Virginia actually annihilate an entire Northern army to give the South such a victory? Emory M. Thomas, "Robert E. Lee: A Biography," believes that Lee "...became convinced that the Confederacy would have to win decisive, climatic battles, annihilate at least one enemy army if the southern nation were to have any chance to win. And this annihilation had better occur sooner than later..." That was Lee's dilemma- he had to win a battle (or battles) like Thomas mentions, but it was becoming clear to him that it was very difficult to achieve that kind of victory.

I normally don't like to play "what if," but I would ask you to consider the possibilities where the Army of Northern Virginia arrives at Gettysburg in the fall of 1862 and faces George B. McClellan. This time, however, with Stonewall Jackson and with an army the size of the one Lee brought to Pennsylvania in 1863, and not the small army that arrived at Sharpsburg in 1862. Would there have been a better opportunity for a great Southern victory? Without going into a entensive scenario, let's just say the South won big. Would that have ended the war? If so, or even possibly so, Lee's strategy would make sense. If not, did the South ever really have a chance to win the war on the battlefield?

The option of using guerrilla warfare instead of conventional warfare would have been a greater "what if." Aside from the military and civilian leaders not favoring it, the Southern people would have never supported it, especially the planters. George M. Frederickson addressed that issue in "Why the Confederacy Did Not Fight a Guerrilla War After the Fall of Richmond." His conclusions were that "bushwhacking" would have put the planter elite at risk and would have led them down a path that promised to undermine their status and power. In a similar vein, James L. Roark, "Confederate Economy and Society," believes that,"planters probably understood that a guerrilla campaign could not achieve what four years of conventional warfare had not- that is, the preservation of slavery. Guerrilla war promised instead racial conflagration and total social collpase." I think if you look at the reasons why the South seceeded and why the soldiers fought, these ideas were present at the beginning of the war as well.

Would four years of guerrilla warfare have worn down the North's resolve to fight or to restore the Union? I would ask what it would have done to the will of the Southern people to have waged the war in such a way. During four years of the conventional war, it was the morale of the Southern people on the homefront that crashed before the morale of the soldiers on the battlefield. Historians like Kenneth M. Stampp, E. Merton Coulter, and the authors of "Why the South Lost the Civil War" (Richard E,Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still, Jr.) argue in favor of the collapse of morale on the homefront as a major factor in why the South lost. James M. McPherson would temper the "loss of will" philosophy with the idea that Confederate defeat late in the war led to a loss of will which, in turn, led to more defeat. Which goes back to the first argument for an early, decisive victory needed by Robert E. Lee: defeat and morale on the homefront go hand-in-hand.

John