I agree it would have ended the war quickly - with a Confederate defeat.
Jackson would have been an idiot if he thought it was a good idea to provoke a stronger American war effort.
Hamlin was not a very dynamic figure. He was chosen for the Vice Presidency to balance the ticket; Lincoln was a westerner and former Whig, Hamlin was an easterner and former Democrat.
Most likely, he would have been dominated by Seward and the cabinet if Lincoln had died in his first term and he had become President.
One battle wouldn’t do it. Maybe an election. McClellan beating Lincoln would have brought the war to a halt. And eventually a negotiated settlement which would have been as good of a victory as they could expect.
Such an assassination would have pissed off the north so much so not only would they have still won, but they would have lynched every confederate general and politician they could find. Remember Lincoln wanted to reunite the country and gave specific orders that there would be NO reprisals.
So frankly look for a long brutal occupation of the south possibly with a long drawn out guerrilla war.
What I would have liked to have seen was President Zachary Taylor, the one before Lincoln, not stand around doing nothing while confederates in the defense department took every army post and fort in the south and then some. Anyone attempting to pull down the stars and stripes should have been shot. This way the war could have been slowed and maybe stopped altogether.
Luckily the secretary of the navy ordered all US Navy ships to leave port or many of those would have been seized also.
cough Buchanan cough
If he had destroyed northern industry a stronger war effort would have been difficult.
Northern industry was rather spread out. There is no way the South could have destroyed enough of the North’s production capability that they would stand a chance of winning.
With what? Atomic bombs?
American industry wasn’t located on a single street in Brooklyn. It wasn’t something that an army could burn down in a day.
I’d really prefer this sort of shot doesn’t appear in non-political threads in Great Debates. It only leads to hijackings and acrimony.
No warning, but please be thoughtful about such things going forward.
Which battle? I nominate Fort Sumpter. Before then months had passed while first the Buchanan administration dithered and then Lincoln, having neither the direct power nor the political backing to initiate hostilities, simply waited in what Lincoln termed “masterful inactivity”. Without an overt attack against federal forces, a consensus that the Federal government had a duty and authority to move against the seceding states might never have emerged. The slave states such as Virginia that didn’t secede until after Sumpter might have remained in the Union long enough to politically paralyze any Union first move.
It indeed would have made sense for the confederacy to play the long game. They could have starved out Fort Sumter and gradually taken control of other military facilities in their territory, without bloodshed. Not starting the war in the first place was the best strategy for not losing it. Or at least holding off until they could formulate a viable martial plan.
Problem is, education in Antebellum Dixie suffered greatly as their economy was in decline. There were just too many hicks and nowhere near enough smart strategists. They could not have played the long game because they overall lacked the intelligence for it. They lost the Civil War decades before the first shot was fired.
Perhaps a moral battle in which they picked the other side and concluded it better to join something approximating civilization than to embark on a repugnant and hopeless cause.
I dunno about intelligence, but the thing that strikes me about the antebellum South was their astonishingly arrogant self-righteousness. They evidently expected that God would send angels with flaming swords down out of Heaven to defend (as they saw it) the most rational, moral, honorable, prosperous and Christian society that had ever existed. :rolleyes: Sumpter was an enormous mistake, but ‘Let the Yankees hold OUR harbor!? NEVER!’ After all, they had their pride to uphold. :smack:
I sometimes wonder if there was a way to get rich by torturing babies to death with hot irons, people would eventually find a way to rationalize why torturing and killing babies with hot irons was ok, perhaps even laudible.
They might have done better if they would have allowed more slaves into the army, giving them not only them and their families freedom, but free land and money. Also passing legislation that would have changed slavery by allowing more slaves to gain their freedom and leading to general emancipation after say 20 years.
But then what was the point of the war?
I think you know the answer! The South seceded to protect the institution of slavery. Forget “States Rights” & “Tariffs”–slavery was the number one reason. So your strategy would not have occurred to the South.
The North entered the war to preserve the Union. We got that & ended slavery, too.
True enough Bridget, but even some Southerners (Brigadier Pat Cleburne for one) saw that the South could not win without somehow bringing the slaves into it on their side…and right at the very end (I mean, literally days before Richmond surrendered, the Confederates did pass a law allowing for recruitment of slaves (with their freedom) as soldiers for the Confederacy. Obviously too late.
In effect, the South needed to choose if they wanted slavery or a independent South. They insisted on having both and got neither.
To build on this, I’ve always thought that the Confederacy was pretty unlucky regarding its generals. A. S. Johnston and Jackson were both killed relatively early in the war, leaving Lee as the only top-flight general in the CSA. Lee had some pretty good subordinate generals, but none that were good enough to replace the dead talent. Jubal Early was about the only one who might have done it, but he didn’t rise to prominence until much too late.
To address the question in the OP, I’m going to go in a different direction. In my opinion, the only thing that could have reliably saved the Confederacy was the political “battle” of the Missouri Compromise. If the South had decided to secede in 1820, they almost certainly would have won. In the 1820-1860 period, the North steadily became more industrialized and more mechanized. McCormick starting selling his reaper in the 1840’s, a development that freed up untold thousands of farm workers for the Union armies. By the time the break finally came, the North had too many advantages over the South.
Charleston was South Carolina’s major port and largest city. So long as the US held Fort Sumter, they could have cut off almost all imports and exports and paralyzed the South Carolina economy. The wisdom of secession aside, there was no real way South Carolina could have seceded and left the Charleston forts in US hands. It wasn’t about pride, but political and economic necessity.
Could have, but would they have? Lincoln, as I recall, was extremely reluctant to have the North fire the first shots.