# What if the Confederates had done guerilla warfare? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 22, 2017, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366 "2017-08-22T14:28:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/1 "2017-08-22T14:28:43Z")
The South considered themselves too manly to do anything but challenge the North conventionally, but what if they’d ditched their pride, disbanded their armies, and had them melt into the countryside, while letting the Lincoln adminstration begin a long, bloody occupation? Peace sentiment in the North was pretty high as the war dragged on, so I figure there would have been a ton of opposition to maintaining an occupation, maybe too much for weaker Presidents after Lincoln to resist. In some sense, the South actually did “win” against the occupation after the war by taking advantage of weak Presidents and intimidating their black(and liberal white) population. But the South was still a part of the union rather than independent. If the South had done guerilla warfare, refused to ever submit to northern occupation, and bled Union troops consistently for 10-20 years, would the South have been granted its independence by Lincoln’s successors? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/2 "2017-08-22T15:16:06Z")
What would they have been fighting for? The war was fought to defend slavery and that was lost. You couldn’t maintain slavery as an illegal underground institution. Even if they won a guerilla war, they couldn’t have rebuilt slavery. Slaves, once freed, weren’t going to go back to slavery. And the rest of the world wasn’t going to let the Confederates start over by re-opening the African slave trade. And despite the protests of revisionists, slavery was the only cause people were fighting for. Nobody was that worked up over states rights or tariffs or lighthouses. The southerners didn’t have any real problem with the United States government. As soon as they seceded, they enacted a government that was virtually identical. People aren’t going to fight a ten year long war so they can overthrow a government and then replace it with the same government under a different name. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/3 "2017-08-22T15:22:13Z")
No, the federal government was in no mood for a confederate revival and would have gone down and wiped out anyone suspected of aiding and abetting the geurillas. This happened in Missouri with [Order 11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._11_(1863)) giving Union troops the right to steal anyones property they wanted if they thought they were not pro union enough. Interestingly Order 11 when I was in school in Missouri and studying the civil War, was never mentioned so I think its not something the people in charge want remembered. General Sherman also did something similar in Georgia with his “March to the Sea” where they basically burned everything they could find. Even former slaves starved to death. So yes, the Confederates could have tried but no, they had no chance of winning and the results to the civilian population would have been worse. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/4 "2017-08-22T15:45:41Z")
There was a fair bit of guerrilla warfare, actually. Here’s an account of some of the confederate activity in Missouri: > [@McPherson](#): > > Inflamed by a passion for revenge, the raiders combined in one large band of 450 men under Quantrill (including the Younger brothers and Frank James) and headed for Lawrence, Kansas, the hated center of free soilism since Bleeding Kansas days. After crossing the Kansas line they kidnapped ten farmers to guide them toward Lawrence and murdered each one after his usefulness was over. Approaching the town at dawn on August 21, Quantrill ordered his followers: “Kill every male and burn every house.” They almost did. The first to die was a United Brethren clergyman, shot through the head while he sat milking his cow. During the next three hours Quantrill’s band murdered another 182 men and boys and burned 185 buildings in Lawrence. They rode out of town ahead of pursuing Union cavalry and after a harrowing chase made it back to their Missouri sanctuary, where they scattered to the woods. > > This shocking act roused the whole country. A manhunt for Quantrill’s outlaws netted a few of them, who were promptly hanged or shot. An enraged General Ewing issued his famous Order No. 11 for the forcible removal of civilians from large parts of four Missouri counties bordering Kansas. Union soldiers ruthlessly enforced this banishment of ten thousand people, leaving these counties a wasteland for years. None of this stopped the guerrillas, however. Such guerrilla warfare was not limited to Missouri by any means. Cavalry units that raided Northern supply lines often functioned effectively as guerrillas, attacking civilians, receiving local support instead of having their own supply lines, and hiding in the local population when counter-attacked. That happened pretty much across the main theaters. Once Union forces advanced into the Deep South, Sherman and Grant started operating without supply lines for important campaigns so there was less exposure to small raids. But even there, Confederate forces would do things like pick off pickets and scouts without engaging the main force. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/5 "2017-08-22T19:15:35Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > If the South had done guerilla warfare, refused to ever submit to northern occupation, and bled Union troops consistently for 10-20 years, would the South have been granted its independence by Lincoln’s successors? Looking at the [Paraguayan War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War), which occurred in this time frame (1864-70) is a bit instructive: > [@](#): > > The Paraguayan War,[A] also known as the War of the Triple Alliance\*\* and the Great War[4][C] in Paraguay, was a South American war fought from 1864 to 1870 between Paraguay and the Triple Alliance of Argentina, the Empire of Brazil, and Uruguay. With an estimated 400,000 deaths, the war was the deadliest and bloodiest in Latin America’s history.[7] **It particularly devastated Paraguay, which suffered catastrophic losses in population – almost 70% of its adult male population died, according to some counts – and was forced to cede territory to Argentina and Brazil. According to some estimates, Paraguay’s pre-war population of 525,000 was reduced to 221,000, of which only 28,000 were men.** [8] > > The war began in late 1864, as a result of a conflict between Paraguay and Brazil caused by the Uruguayan War. Argentina and Uruguay entered the war against Paraguay in 1865, and it then became known as the “War of the Triple Alliance”. > > The war ended with the total defeat of Paraguay. **After it lost in conventional warfare, Paraguay conducted a drawn-out guerrilla resistance, a disastrous strategy that resulted in the further destruction of the Paraguayan military and much of the civilian population through battle casualties, hunger and diseases.** The guerrilla war lasted 14 months until President Francisco Solano López was killed in action by Brazilian forces in the Battle of Cerro Corá on March 1, 1870. Argentine and Brazilian troops occupied Paraguay until 1876. Estimates of total Paraguayan losses range from 21,000 to 200,000 people. It took decades for Paraguay to recover from the chaos and demographic losses. > [@adaher](#): > > Peace sentiment in the North was pretty high as the war dragged on, so I figure there would have been a ton of opposition to maintaining an occupation, maybe too much for weaker Presidents after Lincoln to resist. Lincoln’s desires for Reconstruction were **much** less harsh than those of Congress. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/6 "2017-08-22T19:34:27Z")
> [@](#): > > Paraguay’s pre-war population of 525,000 was reduced to 221,000, of which only 28,000 were men. Dr. Strangelove would have loved that war. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/7 "2017-08-22T19:39:15Z")
If the guerrilla war had any effectiveness, it would have reduced the southern states to the status of permanent colonies. The occupying Union armies would have held the local elites responsible for the actions of the guerrillas, under the theory that the irregulars would have to be supplied and led. Where do the supplies come from? Who leads them? It’s you and you and you and you. Round them up and hang them and confiscate their property. The only reason the Southern States were allowed to return to the union on more or less equal terms is that they accepted that they were beaten. And after years of devastating war and economic ruination, they surely were beaten. So the options were, to rejoin the Union after some probationary period, or to keep fighting. Keeping fighting with what? And for what reason? Independence? What was independence FOR? It was to preserve the South’s peculiar institution. Lincoln wasn’t going to end slavery the day after inauguration. But he was going to fight to prevent the expansion of slavery, which meant that soon the free states would outnumber and outvote the slave states, which mean that slavery would be under constant attack. So to preserve their property, the southern planter class which owned the slaves and controlled the state governments decided on secession. Well, by 1865 with the south in ruins and the slaves freed, what was there left to fight for? Independence? Freedom? The issue over which the war had been fought–slavery–was now decided. The slaves could not be put back to work by guerrilla warfare. The Civil War was not a popular rebellion against central authority, it was decided by the Southern leadership to protect their position in society. By 1865 that position was over. So what was left? And let’s not forget that every state in the Confederacy had a very large population of people who could be counted on to be unalterably opposed to the success of any putative insurgency. As per Mao, “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.” In a nationalist war of independence the guerrillas are supported by the people who supply them and provide them intelligence. How do the occupying authorities know which locals to trust? In a southern insurgency, the occupying troops would find it easy to tell which locals were absolutely reliable, you could tell just by looking at them. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/8 "2017-08-22T20:34:37Z")
Good post, **Lemur866**. But consider whether it isn’t best to read early Reconstruction as one prolonged guerrilla war effort. The South formally surrendered. But then it launched a campaign of violence and terror against freedmen and their Union allies in order to preserve as much of the peculiar institution as possible. > [@White](#): > > When Eliza saw a white man writing down Henry’s name at the meeting, she turned to the Tidwells to prevent what she saw coming. They did nothing. The white man doing the writing was one of a group of regulators, young men moving “in the best circles of society” who acted as enforcers for the Democrats. The regulators, who brought along two “colored” men, were careful to attack the Pinkstons at home. The whole idea of a black home was as much their target as the Pinkstons. They castrated Henry and broke his ribs. They raped Eliza, broke her skull, slashed her, and cut her Achilles tendon. They killed the Pinkstons’ baby, and they killed Henry. The message could not have been clearer. Freedpeople could not have independent homes, black men could not protect them, black women could not live within them, and black parents could not reproduce the children that would sustain them. Submission—social, political, economic, and sexual—was to be the only protection from such attacks. In some real sense, the confederates succeeded in that guerrilla effort. Yes, they lost chattel slavery. But what Lincoln wanted to replace slavery with was a system of free labor. And there is plenty of evidence he wanted social, and maybe even political equality for black men. With the death of Lincoln and the launch of a campaign of racial terror, the South succeeded at supplanting chattel slavery with a sharecropper system that was much closer to chattel slavery than to Lincoln’s vision of free labor. They succeeded at suppressing black social and political equality for another full century, in no small part because of their terror tactics. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/9 "2017-08-22T21:49:08Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Dr. Strangelove would have loved that war. And if you were a man, and survived in good health, you would have had your pick of women afterward. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2017, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/10 "2017-08-22T23:10:06Z")
I can also imagine their were many foreign powers who would have loved to see a divided United States and might have taken advantage of it. Really it took the Spanish American war and later WW1 to reunite the nation. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2017, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/11 "2017-08-23T02:55:41Z")
I understand why the South opted for conventional warfare. First, from what I mentioned, they had a rather romantic view of war and they thought they could whip the effete northerners. But as Nemo mentioned too, one of the first things the North would do is free the slaves. So what would the South be fighting for other than independence, and then maybe a renewal of the slave trade once that was achieved? Doesn’t sound too promising. But what I’m really intrigued about given the Paraguay example, is why did most insurgencies end disastrously until the modern age? Do modern weapons make it easier for insurgencies, or are most decent countries just unwilling to inflict the destruction and misery necessary to break an insurgency? ---
**Author:** ![YamatoTwinkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/cc9497/32.png) [@YamatoTwinkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YamatoTwinkie)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2017, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/12 "2017-08-23T17:37:09Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > But what I’m really intrigued about given the Paraguay example, is why did most insurgencies end disastrously until the modern age? Do modern weapons make it easier for insurgencies, or are most decent countries just unwilling to inflict the destruction and misery necessary to break an insurgency? On the weapons side of the argument, I think guerilla tactics (essentially consisting of scattered light infantry) were particularly vulnerable to cavalry at the time, due to firearm accuracy & rate of fire, and thus couldn’t effectively engage large formations, who were then free to burn farmland, break up supply lines, and raze cities without significant resistance. In urban combat, tough to take potshots at enemy troops from a rooftop and then quickly fade away when you didn’t have access to smokeless powder or firearms that were accurate much beyond 50 yards. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2017, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/13 "2017-08-23T20:47:07Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > I understand why the South opted for conventional warfare. First, from what I mentioned, they had a rather romantic view of war and they thought they could whip the effete northerners. But as Nemo mentioned too, one of the first things the North would do is free the slaves. So what would the South be fighting for other than independence, and then maybe a renewal of the slave trade once that was achieved? Doesn’t sound too promising. > > But what I’m really intrigued about given the Paraguay example, is why did most insurgencies end disastrously until the modern age? Do modern weapons make it easier for insurgencies, or are most decent countries just unwilling to inflict the destruction and misery necessary to break an insurgency? Insurgents who win usually do so if they act in conjunction with regular armies. The insurgents destabilize the enemy, wear down their morale, and force the enemy to disperse to counter the insurgents; that makes the enemy vulnerable to attacks by the regular armed forces they are allied with. The original “guerillas” were the Spanish insurgents during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, and they were successful exactly because the French occupiers faced not only them, but the regular Allied army under Wellington. Other insurgent success stories tend to be similar - such as the Vietnam War (Viet Cong allied to regular North Vietnamese Army) or the various resistance forces in WW2 (most notably, the Communists in places like Yugoslavia). It is pretty rare that insurgents can actually defeat a determined regular army on their own; mostly, what they can do, is convince the enemy that the game isn’t worth the candle. Always, the fight is going to be brutally ruinous to the civilian population in which it occurs. In the modern era, that is partly what the insurgents are counting on - that the regular army enemies will simply be shamed and sickened by the carnage inflicted on civilians, and go away. In a ‘fight to the finish’, that won’t work. In short, an insurgency unsupported by regular army allies in a real fight to the finish is usually a very, very bad idea - the course of utter desperation. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2017, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/14 "2017-08-23T22:23:18Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I can also imagine their were many foreign powers who would have loved to see a divided United States and might have taken advantage of it. Really it took the Spanish American war and later WW1 to reunite the nation. They already were, in a situation which coincidentally demonstrates how guerilla warfare can be successful. Mexico defaulted on foreign loans in 1861, which resulted in Britain, France, and Spain sending forces to collect their debt. France used this as an opportunity to take control of Mexico, something the British and Spanish wanted no part of. The British and Spanish left the country, but Napoleon III used it as an opportunity to expand the French Empire while the United States was preoccupied with the Civil War, installing Maximillian to the throne of the Mexican Empire. A guerilla war ensued, and once the US Civil War [ended](http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/usmexicanwar/articles/frenchinmexico.aspx) > [@](#): > > Immediately the fall of the Confederacy changed the strategic situation in Mexico. If the Rebels had been benevolent neutrals, the Union was decidedly unfriendly to the Mexican Empire. As the last rebels surrendered, Grant rushed three Union corps, some fifty thousand men, under a tough cavalry commander, Gen. Philip Sheridan, to Texas. This Army of Observation was more than enough to trounce any French army Bazaine was likely to bring within striking distance of the Rio Grande. Sheridan was also quick to ‘condemn’ US arms and supplies, and left them out in the desert for the Juaristas to ‘find’. Juárez soon had 40,000 American rifles to re-equip his army. Perhaps as many as 3,000 discharged Union army veterans, including many African Americans, found their way into Juárez’s growing host. However, Juárez was careful to resist a number of schemes that involved bringing an American led force into Mexico. Mexicans, whatever their political stripe, were always wary of American intentions in this period. In 1867 the French left, having lost the war against Juárez. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2017, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/15 "2017-08-23T23:16:13Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > Insurgents who win usually do so if they act in conjunction with regular armies. The insurgents destabilize the enemy, wear down their morale, and force the enemy to disperse to counter the insurgents; that makes the enemy vulnerable to attacks by the regular armed forces they are allied with. > > The original “guerillas” were the Spanish insurgents during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, and they were successful exactly because the French occupiers faced not only them, but the regular Allied army under Wellington. > > Other insurgent success stories tend to be similar - such as the Vietnam War (Viet Cong allied to regular North Vietnamese Army) or the various resistance forces in WW2 (most notably, the Communists in places like Yugoslavia). > > It is pretty rare that insurgents can actually defeat a determined regular army on their own; mostly, what they can do, is convince the enemy that the game isn’t worth the candle. Always, the fight is going to be brutally ruinous to the civilian population in which it occurs. In the modern era, that is partly what the insurgents are counting on - that the regular army enemies will simply be shamed and sickened by the carnage inflicted on civilians, and go away. In a ‘fight to the finish’, that won’t work. > > In short, an insurgency unsupported by regular army allies in a real fight to the finish is usually a very, very bad idea - the course of utter desperation. Well yes, if you want a real victory at some point you have to win conventional battles. But some nations are vulnerable to losing political support at home and then bailing out, which is something you can accomplish with just guerilla tactics. That’s why I was intrigued when reading just how much anti-war sentiment there was in the North as the war ground on. Conventional wars can win back political support by winning victories, but unconventional wars are a lot harder to sell to a disgruntled public because it’s hard to prove you’re winning. So whereas burning down Atlanta told Northern voters that the war was soon coming to a close so might as well fight to ultimate victory, if the Confederate armies had decided to just disperse after Vicksburg and Gettysburg, when conventional victory had become impossible but their armies were still quite formidable they could have bled those Union draftees occupying the south for a good long time. And I can’t see support for such an occupation lasting long. ---
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2017, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/16 "2017-08-24T01:50:05Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Well yes, if you want a real victory at some point you have to win conventional battles. Not necessarily. It’s hard to replace the government without it but that is not necessarily a goal of a given insurgency. If you really want to dig in Chap 4 of FM 3-24 Counter-insurgency ([5.8 Mb pdf](http://www.apd.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/fm3_24.pdf)copy of the US Army’s manual) is a pretty quick read. It might offer a broader perspective about current doctrinal thinking to apply to the hypothetical. One relevant teaser > [@](#): > > An insurgency’s strategy is determined by its own ends, ways, and means. There are a range of ends an insurgency might seek, to include replacing the state, separating from the state, changing the policy of the state, nullifying state control in an area of a state, and securing a place in a state’s political system. These basic ends will influence the ways an insurgency uses. One example is what other literature, although not US Army doctrine, refers to as a criminal insurgency. The cartels operating in Northern Mexico have no real interest in replacing the Mexican government. They do have an interest in nullifying the ability of the state to effectively interfere with their highly profitable smuggling operations. That affects what they do. Large scale conventional battles and overthrowing the government don’t really help them accomplish their ends. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2017, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/17 "2017-08-24T01:56:28Z")
The problem is, for the goals you listed besides replacing the state and seperating from the state, violence is probably counterproductive. Nullifying state control seems like one of the easiest things to do, arguably it’s been done successfully in the US before, back when crime was so high and gangs to well armed that police wouldn’t patrol certain neighborhoods. But in regards to the Confederate cause, they not only wanted but NEEDED state control, so that wasn’t really much of an option. Their insurgency’s goal would have to have been seperation from the United States, which was achievable, but there wouldn’t have been much of a country left for them. And they would have had to rebuild it themselves, and one of the less talked about aspects of antebellum southern culture was their disdain for physical unskilled labor. ---
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2017, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/18 "2017-08-25T00:39:31Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > The problem is, for the goals you listed besides replacing the state and seperating from the state, violence is probably counterproductive. It’s not really. Just as an example, the Mexican cartels operate at phase 1 or phase 2 (guerilla) of Mao’s three stages of insurgency. They have no need, and it would probably be counterproductive, to proceed to phase 3 (mobile operations.) There’s plenty of violence involved in that. It can be small unit ambushes of security forces, both Mexican Army and police. It also involves things like terror attacks. Threats to governmental officials, along with occasional assassinations assist in subverting the government’s institutions. If all the Confederacy had wanted was to eventually separate they would not necessarily have had to go past Ph2. They didn’t need to overthrow the entire US government. They just had to make it too costly for that government to want to continue the campaign. Mobile operations could still have been useful in the right situations. (Mao didn’t really break the phases out as anything as linear but thinking on the issue mixed with history points to the phases being more fluid.) Mobile operations, if the conditions were right, could have sped things along. It might have protected their infrastructure better although going straight to conventional conflict in a civil war didn’t work well for their infrastructure. The problem is, as was pointed out above, that didn’t protect the current system of chatel slavery. Their ends weren’t supported by an insurgency. Post war provides another good example of when violence can be an important part of achieving those other ends without ever proceeding to mobile operations. The KKK was able to actively terrorize the parts of the population that didn’t agree with it. That allowed them use the political process to change state (aka federal government) policy with respect to Reconstruction. In addition they were able to limit, if not completely nullify, the impact of post-war Constitutional changes to institute highly segregationist policies that let them substitute the sharecropper system for chattel slavery. Violence was an important part of the the campaign’s success.\ It really is worth reading through that one Chapter I suggested since you showed enough interest to start a thread related to the subject. Insurgency and counter-insurgency sometimes got referred to as “the graduate level of warfare” post 9-11. The typical understanding in our culture, including most of the media that report on it, tends to be what I call the high school level in comparison. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2017, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/19 "2017-08-25T00:53:25Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > The South considered themselves too manly to do anything but challenge the North conventionally, No. When Union forces occupied Northern Alabama, Confederates mounted a savage guerilla campaign. This was where the Union realized that total war was the only answer to this aggression. This is where Sherman’s march was staged from, with that lesson in mind. So, history supplies the answer to your question. The Confederates did guerilla warfare first, and the Union in turn invented total war. Or re-invented it. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2017, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366/20 "2017-08-27T21:57:42Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I can also imagine their were many foreign powers who would have loved to see a divided United States and might have taken advantage of it. Really it took the Spanish American war and later WW1 to reunite the nation. Which is kind of an argument against the nation-state. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-confederates-had-done-guerilla-warfare/794366.md?page=2)