John C. Carter
Tactics
Fri Jul 13 01:03:08 2001


Roger...

I can understand your point. I think partisan and guerrilla warfare in large doses would have changed the equation drastically. However, I don't think it would have been to anyone's best interest or advantage. If you haven't already, read Noel C. Fisher's "War at Every Door, Partisan Politics & Guerrilla Violence in East Tennessee 1860-1869." The violence in East Tennessee was as much murder and lawlessness as it was warfare, for both Union and Confederate partisans. It was not a pretty picture of what the "war" could have been like, and I don't think many of us would be participating in a discussion group honoring that kind of war.

Fortunately for the Southern people they were not under the hard hand of rule that the Vietnamese people were and they didn't have to suffer that kind of blood bath generation after generation. It would have taken that kind of rule to force the Southern civilians to give up their freedoms and rights, the major issues they were fighting for, to have endured years of guerrilla warfare. The idea looks good on paper, but it would have destroyed the entire fabric of Southern life.

I think that the Confederate Government decided that despite the possible success of such an operation, it was not worth the price they would have to pay.

John