GraniteStater wrote:Maybe, maybe, maybe...a very, very long shot.
I think Foote is right - a major victory, wherein a Union army was well nigh destroyed, like 30 June 1862, might have convinced the North to quit - before Emancipation.
After the EP, the UK was not going to aid the South in any substantive, meaningful way. There is no way an Empire, whose Royal Navy had been chasing down vessels flying the US flag for slaving (and in that one case, I'm with the Royal Navy) and who had abolished slavery thirty years before was going to risk an openly hostile stance towards a nation who had declared they were going to end slavery.
The South had a very, very narrow window. As I have said before, I think Lincoln was a bit overly pessimistic in the summer of 1864. The man was melancholic, remember. He won a clear and pronounced victory at the polls that fall.
I believe Shelby Foote is essentially correct. More Southern victories, a lot more, would've engendered the North to exercise all its might.
khbynum wrote:A thoughtful and considered contribution, for which I thank you.
Why do you play the game?
khbynum wrote:I agree with you. I have always thought the Atlanta campaign decided the war, but that's hardly an original idea. With a better strategic approach, it need not have come down to that.
For the record, I think the nation and the world would have far worse off if the South had won, but that's not why we play games like this.
fred zeppelin wrote:
Agreed. A Southern victory would have proved nothing and lasted only as long as it took the new Confederacy to disintegrate according to the very States Rights principles that created it. The absence of the political glue of Union, coupled with the inevitable (and likely very quick) collapse of the slavery-based economy, would have left the South ripe for piecemeal reabsorption into the US. Even apart from the immoral underpinnings of its slavery-based society, the South was essentially caught in an eddy in the flow of history - resisting change at almost every level and clinging to a past that was already beginning to crumble around them even as the war began.
GraniteStater wrote:Maybe, maybe, maybe...a very, very long shot.
I think Foote is right - a major victory, wherein a Union army was well nigh destroyed, like 30 June 1862, might have convinced the North to quit - before Emancipation.
Gray Fox wrote:The Whig party in the 1850's proposed to pay each slave owner a given amount for every slave in the U.S. The money could then be used to mechanize farm production in the South so that the muscle of slavery would be replaced with the might of machines. The former slaves would be transported to Liberia in West Africa, supposedly for the safety of the former slave owners who would not want to live in "mixed" communities. The cost would have been staggering. One estimate puts the value of the slaves in the U.S. as exceeding the value of everything else combined. However, this route did not involve over half a million new graves.
If Jeff Davis had immediately freed all the slaves in 1861 and sent them north, then the Union war machine would have choked on the need to feed, clothe and house several million refugees for many years to come. The Confederate ambassadors to Europe would not have had the onus of representing a slave holder nation. The Abolitionists would have had no reason to fight. [B]The South did free the slaves[/B], but far too late for this to have made any difference. The Confederate Sates had this right, but didn't use it effectively to achieve self-determination.
veji1 wrote:Agreed. For me after Antietam, the war is lost. The only way the South could have won would have been via a schocking military victory stunning the north into acceptance, or rather a series of schocking victories.. Bloody unlikely but technically possible I suppose : Say the seven day battle ends up with 40 000 captured union soldiers + most of their high command and you get Lee turning his troop towards washington and investing the city (not taking it)... Say that at the battle of Shiloh AS Johnston decisevly defeated Grant, virtually disintegrating His army and forcing its remnants + Buell to run back north of the Cumberland river.. You would have had in July 62, more than one year after the beginning of the war, the capital city besieged, the Union decisevely defeated in the 2 biggest battles of the war in a few months, the borders back to their lines of the very start... Maybe, maybe, some would have told Lincoln to just cut his losses, maybe some states would have said they don't want to continue, they want to become neutral etc... an attempt at relieving Washington is defeated, Baltimore declares itself "open city". War is over in early mid september 62.
Not likely at all, but to me the only way.
After Shiloh/Antietam, the war is lost, it could have lasted longer, but it is lost.
veji1 wrote:After Shiloh/Antietam, the war is lost, it could have lasted longer, but it is lost.
fred zeppelin wrote:Unless somehow, someway the South could have switched to a defensive war of attrition sufficient to destroy Northern morale and defeat Lincoln at the polls in 1864. I don't think the South ever had a realistic chance to win a purely military victory so long as Lincoln remained in charge.
veji1 wrote:Agreed. For me after Antietam, the war is lost. The only way the South could have won would have been via a schocking military victory stunning the north into acceptance, or rather a series of schocking victories.. Bloody unlikely but technically possible I suppose : Say the seven day battle ends up with 40 000 captured union soldiers + most of their high command and you get Lee turning his troop towards washington and investing the city (not taking it)... Say that at the battle of Shiloh AS Johnston decisevly defeated Grant, virtually disintegrating His army and forcing its remnants + Buell to run back north of the Cumberland river.. You would have had in July 62, more than one year after the beginning of the war, the capital city besieged, the Union decisevely defeated in the 2 biggest battles of the war in a few months, the borders back to their lines of the very start... Maybe, maybe, some would have told Lincoln to just cut his losses, maybe some states would have said they don't want to continue, they want to become neutral etc... an attempt at relieving Washington is defeated, Baltimore declares itself "open city". War is over in early mid september 62.
Not likely at all, but to me the only way.
After Shiloh/Antietam, the war is lost, it could have lasted longer, but it is lost.
Ol' Choctaw wrote:July 63! Vicksburg and Gettysburg and the Russian fleet spiked it. The French and the British were both insisting on a peace settlement.
It was more about the south not losing until then.
How far they would have gone to do that is only guess work of course but after those losses they fairly tossed in the towel. The still wanted to bring them to the table but implied use of force, or recognition of the CSA was gone. It dragged on another 21 months.
We've all studied the war and know how impossible it was to achieve a Napoleonic-style , decisive victory in an era of huge armies supplied by railroads and field fortifications backed by highly mobile field artillery and infantry armed with rifle muskets.
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