My goal isn’t to capture a fort. My goal is to build an independent country. So I work on building up my new country and put the fort on the back burner. It can wait a couple of years.
So the soldiers in Fort Sumter (and their commanders in Washington) have a difficult choice. Do they do nothing? If so then they’ve made themselves irrelevant. Ships can sail in and out of Charleston under their guns. Or do they attempt to stop trade? Okay, the first time they fire a shot, I can now claim I’m acting in justified self-defense against somebody who shot at me first. They started the war and I’m just defending myself. Public opinion through out the world (and even in the United States) supports my peaceful little country in its war.
Lincoln might not have joined the party created to fight slavery, others would have had a larger role in it, Seward would have been nominated and elected, and things would have happened pretty much as they did.
It wasn’t even really the cannons that led to their surrender in reality. They were out of supplies and in dire need of a resupply that wasn’t coming.
Edit: Well, it kind of came. Lincoln wanted to resupply the fort but not reinforce it in any way to avoid provoking a fight. This didn’t work, partly because Seward meddled and partly because it was a difficult situation. In any case, some Confederates convinced Jefferson Davis to launch the bombardment anyway so it was largely a doomed effort by the time the fleet arrie
Before Sumter? They certainly did not. To the contrary, the Confederate government sent representatives to Washington, arriving one day after Lincoln’s inauguration, seeking a treaty, and offering compensation for federal properties in the seceded states.
Besides, when I say “war,” I mean the actual shooting-people thing, not the rhetoric of either side.
He did much more. To start with, Lincoln rebuffed those Confederate envoys, and announced (to the Governor of South Carolina!) an armed resupply mission to Sumter. That “first shot” having been duly fired, Lincoln then called for the raising of an army–precipitating the secession of four more states. Then that army actually moved south and started shooting people, first on Pratt Street in Baltimore (pushing Maryland to a brink from which only martial law and the arrest of its legislators held it), and eventually meeting the Confederates in the fields of Virginia.
The union had 2x as many soldiers, and 4x as many ‘free’ people (2 million northern soldiers vs 1 million southern, 22 million northern citizens vs 5 million southern citizens). The south also had 4 million slaves (as well as 5 million free citizens) and those 4 million slaves probably would’ve fought for the union had push come to shove. Plus the north had much better economic centers than the south.
Basically, unless the south brought out the gattling gun and the north refused to do the same, there was no way for the south to win.
You apparently don’t understand what a war is. When somebody asks you for something and you say no, that’s not a war. When your army starts shooting at another army, that’s a war.
The topic of the thread is related to the strategic/military question of whether one or more particulr battles could have resulted in the Confederates winning the war. It’s not about whether Abraham Lincoln was evil. So unless you can tie those together, let’s make an effort to stay on topic.
While I agree that probably nothing could have actually saved the Confederacy, how about just prolonging it? A strategic victory by the Confederacy at Glorieta Pass (as opposed to the tactical victory, with a Union strategic victory) could have given them eventual access to the mines in Colorado and California, as well as the California ports and really opened a new theater. More money available and further stretching of the Union Navy. Would that give the Confederates the ability to import enough material to overcome their lack of manufacturing?
And that could have happened (albeit later in the war that Boyo Jim may be thinking).
In July 1864 (well before the election that year), Jubal Early brought a Confederate force to the outskirts of Washington, DC. It was not strong enough to overwhelm the defenses (Grant had sent two corps from the Petersburg area under Major General Wright), but they did do some fighting, and Lincoln actually came out to the defenses and spent some time viewing the battle, his long frame well above the parapets.
So it was not impossible that he could have been shot at that time, McClellan win the election, and some type of ‘arrangement’ was worked out by the Northern Democrats with the South.
It’s true that the Confederacy was extremely unlikely to win the kind of war it wanted to win – a heads-up fight pitting Southern valor against the hordes of spiritless factory workers Southerners imagined made up Northern armies.
But the Confederacy certainly could have won a long-drawn out defensive struggle by keeping intact armies in the field. The much-talked-about strength disparity wasn’t as severe as those overcome by the 13 colonies against Great Britain, nor North Vietnam against the United States. They would have had to be canny, patient, hard-hearted, and probably also lucky, but it’s not mathematically impossible.
Pssst…nitpick: Lee’s back was to Antietam Creek, not the Potomac. For those who may not recognize why this increased Lee’s risk, the Confederates controlled only one workable crossing. Militarily, they risked bottlenecking if they had to retreat, getting pinned, and being annihilated.
Otherwise I have no quibbles with your assessment.
Excellent point about the effects of repeating rifles.
But as to your second point…as you may be aware, at the war’s end, Lee recognized he could initiate a long-running guerilla war, and deliberately chose not to.
Such a resistance might have accomplished much, but one thing it could never have accomplished was the re-establishment of (superficially) genteel plantation society, which as he saw it was the point of the war. It’s impossible to own large expanses of property when hiding in the woods; it’s impossible to maintain the polite fictions that constituted so much of Southern society when desperate men are burning and hanging each other; and after you’ve won, if you win, it’s impossible to persuade a rag-tag band of outcasts and freed slaves to re-submit to the rich old men whose hands did not get dirty in guerilla war. The old assumptions about privilege and habits of subservience would be burned away.
Lee saw that he could not win for his people what they wanted, he could only enlarge and extend their suffering.
The idea, often put forth in these sorts of discussions, that the bigger side would inevitably have won is a strange one when one considers the rather vast array of examples of smaller sides prevailing in wars. It’s especially curious when one considers that America itself is a product of exactly that.
The South’s approach of standing and fighting in an effort to protect its entire territorial integrity was doomed to fail, but they did not, technically, have to take that particular approach. Politically, of course, is a different matter, and I am not sure it was politically possible for the South to approach the war any other way than what they did. But had Davis been a more persuasive or visionary leader, maybe. Even then, though, the South as it existed in 1859 would no longer have been.
Remember that everywhere the Union Army marched, slaves runaway from rebel masters were considered “contraband”, subject to forfeit like any other rebel property. If the South couldn’t keep the Grand Army of the Republic out, it’s doubtful even 10% of the slave population wouldn’t have taken the opportunity to run away. If the secession was about slaves and territory, guerrillas could hold neither.
I’ve heard comparisons made to the American Revolution or the Vietnam War. But these comparisons miss some important factors.
It’s true that the British outnumbered the Colonials and the Americans (and French) outnumbered the North Vietnamese. But in both cases, the numerically smaller side was receiving ample support from major powers. The Colonials were supported by France and Spain and North Vietnam was supported by China and the Soviet Union.
And in both cases the larger power considered the war to be only one part of its national interests. Britain had its own country along with the rest of its empire to think about; France had domestic issues and troubles in parts of its empire, like Algeria, that were closer to home; the United States saw Southeast Asia as a minor theater in the global struggle against communism. All of these nations held back on committing the resources they had available in theory.
The situation was different in the American Civil War. It was a war between two countries that both saw defeat as a threat to their national existence. So both sides were fully committed to the war. And neither side received significant outside assistance.
Nope. The CSA didn’t have the manpower to effectively exploit the situation. As wiki notes:
In the end, the dreams of a Confederate stronghold in the Southwest were impractical; New Mexico did not provide enough food or sustenance for any prolonged Confederate occupation.[35] Furthermore, the approach of the Federal “California Column” eastward through the New Mexico Territory during the summer of 1862 would have seriously jeopardized Confederate control of the region.
Even if they did manage to get access to the Colorado mines, their access would have been cut with the fall of Vicksburg before they could really matter.
I don’t find this compelling, the colonies did not have outside help until they’d declared independence, stood their ground and then won a few battles. The Confederacy came close to duplicating that. Additionally there was plenty of dissent in the North, so much so that Lincoln thought his defeat by the peace Democrats, setting aside the question of what McClellan would have actually done, was a real possibility.
Sure, the Confederates had some early successes. But it’s not like the United States was going to give up after only a few months of fighting. The only way the smaller power wins is if it’s able to wear down the larger power with years of sustained combat. And the ability to sustain combat for all those years is where a smaller power needs the support of an outside ally. Without that support, long wars favor the larger power as its superiority in resources wears down the smaller power.