American History Debate: Could the Confederacy Still Have Won after July 1863?

Great Debates
1

On Independence Day 1863 Vicksburg surrendered after a long and devastating siege; the Union, which already occupied New Orleans and Memphis, now controlled the Mississippi River, cutting the South in half. The same week, Lee began his retreat from Gettysburg after suffering at least a 30% casualty rate in three days and abandoning hopes of an offensive into the north or an assault on D.C…

While it would have been very possible for Meade to destroy Lee by a greater pursuit after Gettysburg, and had Lee won at Gettysburg (for example, had he allowed Longstreet to make a stand east of town as he wanted or had he had better intelligence as to Meade’s movements and numbers) foreign alliances and greater morale could have swung the war. However, I’ve debated several times whether or not the Confederacy had any hope after this week or if defeat absolutely inevitable at this point. Some very bloody fighting still remained, but the South would never fight a major battle outside of its borders and the position became increasingly desperate.

Your opinion: could the South have still managed any form of victory after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, or should they have begun suing for lenient peace terms at that time? What could they have done differently that would have won or at least prolonged the war?

2

I seriously doubt it. The Union, after fumbling around for two years (arguably in part due to the desertion of quality officers to the Confederacy), had finally solidified as a cohesive military group, and after Lee’s move on DC, I doubt they would have been interested in much quarter for the Rebs.

As you mention, the Union had the Mississippi, effectively surrounding the Confederate states - blockades on their ports in the east and south, the North itself, and the domination of the west. Kind of a tricky position to get oneself out of - surrounded strategically, cut off from most hope of supply, most able bodied men already volunteered, in retreat, and with a superior force marching down your throat. The Europeans weren’t going to get directly involved, whatever the South may have wished. Keep in mind, there was some (justified) fear that America would soon have a mobilized army of battle-hardened veterans, and Canada was sitting up there innocently trapping beaver and trying to build their government (and fend off the Fenians, heh), and I doubt the Brits would have risked another war on the American continent. The French were making their play for Mexico, which was risky enough. Plus, they were still eyeing each other - if anyone made a move to ally with the Confederates, you bet your sweet bottom that another power would offer their aid to the Union (who, at that point, would finally be viewed as the likely victors).

In any case, I don’t think the Rebs were terribly interested in negotiating their surrender in 1863, hope or no hope.

So, the question is - could the South have successfully retreated, regrouped, resupplied, and mounted another offensive? Only if the Union did another “golly shucks, lets just sit here and let them dictate the war”… not bloody likely. They were already mobilizing to go on the offensive - if not through Virginia, then through the deep south. Either way, the Confederates would be fighting a two front war which they really weren’t prepared for - as I recall, their plan was to capture DC and make it a quick fight while securing their own borders, raids into the midwest notwithstanding.

If the Union hadn’t been striking from the Miss, the South could have likely retreated far enough to regroup - but would probably never have the penetrating power they started with - however, since your question is post-Vicksburg, that scenario is out the window. With the Union pressing there, I don’t see a way for them to turn it about.

Though the rise of the South into a full fledged nation, almost gaining recognition by France and England, is fascinating, I personally think they were doomed from their first failure to take DC. In any prolonged conflict - well, they were an agricultural, aristocratic institution facing a industrial democracy. Their whole chance was taking the capitol out quickly and forcing a truce. Once they failed in that, they were doomed. By the time 1863 rolled around, the Union had rebuilt its military, mobilized its industry, polarized the conflict by making it about slavery (effectively pinning the Brits and French to the wall), repelled the biggest thrust, and opened a second front, the war was decided (as well as the lives of hundreds of thousands of people)

(All of the above is what I remember from high school, I never studied American history in college :wink:

3

Sure the Confederacy could have won after July 1863, as long as the time-traveling Afrikaners brought back enough AK-47’s.

4

Thank you for your scholarly opinion on this discussion of Confederate military power after Vicksburg. Please, tell us more of your thesis.

5

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345384687/102-3244175-2184149?v=glance

Classic book of alternate history. Good read, too.

6

I don’t think that victory was possible for the South after Vicksburg fell, but IMHO a *negotiated settlement * of some kind was not out of the question until the loss of Atlanta.

With the possibility of foreign intervention a dead issue after the Emancipation Proclamation, once Vicksburg was lost the South’s only chance was to make the war’s financial and human costs politically unacceptable to the North in hopes that Lincoln would be voted out of office in the 1864 election and a settlement could be reached with the new occupant of the White House, I’d argue. I wouldn’t call myself a Civil War expert, but my understanding from the reading I have done is that Lincoln’s nomination and re-election were by no means assured until Atlanta’s fall, at which point another term was in the bag.

Perhaps one could argue that the decision to replace Johnston with Hood was one of the more significant changes of command in history, although having said that there is, of course, no way of knowing if Johnston could have held off the Federals until after the election. Once Atlanta fell and the war’s eastern theater was split, the ultimate outcome was obvious, of course.

7

Sorry, I didn’t quite think this through. As the Confederate states had left the Union and set up their own government, the North had to conquer them to re-establish the Union. So a negotiated settlement would have been a Southern victory in that the North did not meet this goal. A Southern victory in the sense of invasion and conquest of the North was clearly impossible after Vicksburg fell, I’d argue.

8

with the loss of the Mississippi came the loss of the war. As vital a waterway as this was made it inevitable that the Confederacy could not perservere.

9

Some conventional wisdom: It was unlikely in July, and was probably impossible in September with the Emancipation Proclamation, and certainly in November with the Gettysburg Address. The South’s only chance of victory all along was that the North would tire of the war first and offer terms, and that was only a real possibility if it could attract recognition or even allies from Europe (Britain did everything short of that, but was still short). As long as the North was willing to fight, sheer weight of numbers and industrial capacity would guarantee an eventual military win, as Vicksburg and Gettysburg showed.

The Emancipation Proclamation, though, made it clear to anyone who still though in economic terms that the war was over slavery, and it was not realistic to think that any European government could re-endorse it even indirectly so soon after their own bans of it. That settled the external-allies possibility for the South.

The Gettysburg Address, targeted more at the domestic market, made it clear to Northerners who might have been willing to tolerate division and slavery just to end the slaughter of the larger moral principles involved. In short, it reinforced the North’s determination to see it through, and even may have discouraged enlistment in the CS Army by young Southern men by giving them the idea that it was all just another case of poor men dying to defend rich men’s property. That settled the tiring-first possibility for the South. Only sheer stubbornness, or denial, caused the remaining deaths of the war.

10

I would argue (in response to Zagadka) that the north didn’t truly become militarily cohesive until the beginning of the Spring campaign in 1864 with the establishment of Grant as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Without that I’m not certain that the CSA would have been utterly routed by 1865.

If Grant had stayed in the west, perhaps occupying Vicksburg and using it as a base of operations, that would have left Meade or Wilcox or Sherman or (God help us) McClellan or someone in charge of the Army of the Potomac. And what Grant brought to the eastern campaign was exactly the sort of thing that would win the war: a brutal war of attrition that the USA could continue longer than the CSA.

With one of the usual gang of idiots in overall command I think it’s likely that there would have been more delays and such and the pattern of Lee continuing to outmanuver his opposition (even if not winning he could keep them confused) might have been enough to draw the campaign out through the election of 1864. And I agree that without the sack of Atlanta Lincoln’s prospects weren’t as good as they were with it.

Of course, me being the contrarian, I always thought that the turning point of the war was Jackson’s death after Chancellorsville. An interesting and amazing man, Jackson was.

11

Well, JC, you’re probably right about Jackson, since had he been at Gettysburg, that battle would probably have gone an entirely different way.
The combination of losing at Vicksburg and Gettysburg at the same time was devastating to the South. No sane European power would back them after a month like they had in July 1863.
I remember from Shelby’s three part history that Gettysburg was in fact a more-or-less desperate ploy on the part of Lee to get the North to come to terms, given the by then inevitable fall of Vicksburg. Lee and the rest of the leadership of the Confederacy knew how important the fall of Vicksburg would be.
So following up on this Jackson thing, had he been at Gettysburg and pulled another one of his amazing maneuvers at that battle, Lee’s ploy just might have worked. No one stepped up to fill the void his absence created, unfortunately for the South, fortunately for the rest of us.

12

In 1863, a strain of cotton was developed that could grow top quality fibre in India.
The man who did it got a knighthood.

After that point, the South was doomed, even if they “won”.

The cash crop for the South would have starting drying up about 1870. After all, the UK was opposed to slavery, & favored buying products produced inside the Empire.

With no “king cotton” to keep the slave-base economy rolling, starvation & widespread slave revolts would have destroyed the Confederacy by 1900, if not earlier.

13

My main puzzlement is why Davis & Stephens didn’t see this as the handwriting on the wall and immediately begin a series of meetings in Canada/England/Cuba or other neutral soil to resolve the war immediately. While the North certainly wouldn’t have allowed the CSA to remain independent, with enough spin (even by 1860s standards) they could definitely have caused enormous pressure on the northern populace to perhaps allow them to rejoin the war with amnesty for veterans, slavery more or less intact (at least for another generation, by which time it would probably have been dead anyway since Irish and European laborers were so much cheaper) and the acknowledgement of some rights to negotiate tariffs with European manufacturers on their own. This would have saved many thousands of lives and many millions of dollars on both side (not the South had that many monetary concerns since there was no hard money left to be concerned about). Was this failure to negotiate pride, stupidity (Davis & Stephens were very different men, but neither ever struck me as stupid) or an insane hope?

Hijacking my own thread, what do you think would have been the outcome if Lee HAD won at Gettysburg? Assume that he still would have received heavy losses, but he would have routed Meade.

14

Such a course of action would have been intolerable to Southern honor, IMHO.

15

I was named for Jackson (not Sampiro, but given names). Like Jackson, my father was a uniquely unpopular but brilliant teacher whose many quirks and odd beliefs proved eccentricities are not necessarily charming or endearing and I’ve often wondered if that was the root of his fascination with the man.
If you ever get a chance to visit Jackson’s house, it’s well worth it. The house itself is just a standard upper-middle-class town house of the period, but the touches of Jackson that survive are the desk where he took his meals standing up (he believed sitting down was extremely unhealthy), the outbuilding where he stipped naked and bathed every morning (in itself an extremely eccentric habit for the time) in ice cold water (still eccentric), and the family portraits of the sister who co-owned the house who visited frequently to see friends and Jackson’s wives* but only spoke to her brother through notes. (She was an abolitionist and they stopped speaking due to political arguments.)

I haven’t seen the movie Gods & Generals- does anybody know if it includes the scene in which Jackson’s daughter is christened? (She was baptized on part of the Fredericksburg battlefield with much uncleared carnage still visible.)

*Consecutive, not simultaneous

16

You’re speaking to a man who once ate nothing except beefsteak and lemons for a week in an attempt to channel Jackson’s ghost. I’ve been to his house and even visited his boyhood home is what is now West Virginia. Interesting man. I find I admire his unshakable faith while realizing that he was a complete whack-job.

At least I didn’t spend the week with my arm held over my head.

If Lee had won at Gettysburg a great deal would depend on what sort of victory it was. If the Army of the Potomac had been utterly routed and scattered (i.e. demoralized) I think that might well have turned the trick. At that point Lee had nothing keeping him from sacking and occupying Philadelphia or Harrisburg. The goal with the Gettysburg campaign was never Washington City but rather to bring the cost of the war home to the north and influence northern politics to the point where a negotiated peace with southern independence as a central point would have been difficult for Lincoln to avoid. Even if he DID avoid it with Lee occupying some major city in the north the democrat would have surely won in November and THEN a peace would have been simple to arrange. Hell, Lincoln might not have even been NOMINATED. McClellan was already waiting in the wings for 1864.

17

Well, not really. With the lose of the Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, etc., came the loss of reliable contact with Texas and Arkansas and West Louisiana. Not the end of the world and not a fatal blow, although a serious blow to morale.

As others have pointed out there were a number of things going on after the campaigning season in 1863 that suggested that the Confederacy’s days were numbered. Not the least of these was the establishment of a unified command under an aggressive general in US Grant and the appointment of subordinate commanders to the principal armies who would carry out a unified strategy, Meade with the Army of the Potomac and Sherman in command of the consolidated Armies of the Tennessee, the Cumberland and the Ohio. Even though Grant accompanied the Army of the Atomic, Meade retained at least titular command. Once the two great armies were induced to exercise a coordinated plan of unrelenting pressure on the Confederacy the game had reached its end stage. In fact the Confederacy’s Western Army did not last until Christmas 1864 and was essentially destroyed as an armed force at Nashville. The principle army in the East ceased to count before Lent 1865 was over. This was well less than a year after the beginning of Grant’s Overland Campaign and Sherman’s advance from Chattanooga to Atlanta.

Would Stonewall Jackson’s survival have made a difference? Maybe, but we will never know. The fact is that Jackson died in May 1863, just as other promising leaders both North and South died.

Would things have turned out differently if Britain and/or France had intervened. Maybe, but we will never know. The fact is that despite being of considerable help to the Confederacy (remember the Alabama and the Shenandoah?) there was no foreign intervention. Despite the hot heads, the ugly specter of chattel slavery and the fact that Great Britain could make considerable money on the war without intervening kept the Brits out and the French would not act unless it was in conjunction with Britain. Until and unless the Confederacy demonstrated that it was probably going to gain its independence without European help it was not going to get any significant European help…

18

Wow. Atomic arms. Boy, the South had NO chance, did they? :stuck_out_tongue: :smiley:

19

That’s why we had the AK-47s sent back. Tit for tat.

20

How certain are you that the occupation of a northern metropolis would bring about cries of uncle from the Union? I would think it would be as likely to bring about cries for vengeance. Occupation of a city would obviously be a morale booster for the Confederacy, but hardly break the Union. For Lee the pleasure would be transitory, the position absurd. The north’s transportation net is too good for him to stay without getting cut off and to fall back will allow the Lincoln administration to claim to have driven the confederate threat back. The South lost many cities before they cried for mercy (okay, pretty much all of them in the southeast). It may seem like just one solid drive would push the Union over the edge, but as long as the western Union armies (err, the Union armies in the west) keep winning, stalemate in the east is just delaying the inevitable.