why did the south lose the civil war quora

Johnston, despite his many failures during the war, may have redeemed himself by bringing about an end to hostilities by essentially disobeying the orders of the Confederate president and surrendering his force in order to “save the people [and] spare the blood of the army.”, Had Johnston not done so, the pursuing Union armies would have devastated the land, as Lee, Johnston, and others feared. In contrast, the Union could provide massive logistical support to Federal field armies, which meant that large armies could be projected into the heart of the Confederacy, minimizing the danger of going beyond what Carl von, calls the “culminating point of victory.”, Joe Biden, the Luckiest Politician in American History, Democratic Legal Activist Marc Elias Has Spent a Career Preparing for the 2020 Election Fight, Media Criticize Amy Coney Barrett’s ‘No Notes’ Moment, In Texas Election-Law Case, Skeptical Judge Allows Drive-Through Voting but Follows Justice Alito’s Lead in Segregating Ballots, Poll: Republican Perdue Has a Slight Lead in Georgia, Pelosi Calls Amy Coney Barrett an ‘Illegitimate Supreme Court Justice’. And the fact is that Lee came extraordinarily close on more than one occasion. Was the cause of Confederate defeat. I am one of those who believe that the “guerrilla option” was never a realistic possibility. Alternate history: what if… the gunpowder plot had succeeded? Others were concerned that the Confederates might turn to guerrilla warfare. As to the first, it is unlikely that Lincoln would have agreed to a negotiated settlement even if Jefferson Davis had not short-circuited every attempt to achieve one. This is true, but it demands an answer to the question, Why did they turn against it? As Joseph Harsh has observed, “for a nation successfully to pursue a strategy of defense it needed a large, rich heartland into which it could withdraw. One division was between different classes of farmers. Please enter your number below. The Confederacy went into the conflict knowing that would be the case. The different characters of those leading the two nations were significant in the war. Thus the final months of the Confederacy offer an excellent case study in war termination. The fact that the Civil War was not preordained to end as it did leads to a broader question: Was there a strategy the South could have pursued that would have resulted in a better outcome for the Confederacy? Already have an account with us? How important each one was is a matter of opinion and ever-shifting debate. Four years of bitter civil war came to an end in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on 
9 April 1865. For instance, Drew Gilpin Faust, currently the president of Harvard University and a fine social historian, has argued that the Confederacy lost because southern women turned against the war. Editor’s Note: If you would like to read more pros and cons on voting for President Trump, further essays on the subject, each from a different perspective, can be found here, here, here, here, here and here. “George,” he said, “you were there. Hey, What Ever Happened to Jaime Harrison in South Carolina? An extensive amount of effort has gone into studying the American Civil War. Union naval power and the flow of the rivers in the West permitted Union forces to penetrate deep into the Confederacy by early 1862. The Confederacy was at a disadvantage from the start. One set of possible internal explanations focuses on political divisions. Wheatcroft Collection’s S130 – The Last Survivor Has New Home, The USS Arizona – 5 Facts You May Not Know and 30 Photos. Those who emphasize internal causes attribute the failure to breakdowns in Confederate leadership, both political and military, and Rebel errors on the battlefield. The North managed these systems better and ran a more balanced economy to support them. Rebuilding America after the Civil War: did reconstruction sow more division? The topic was Gettysburg — what mistakes, large or small, did the Confederates make that led to the Southern defeat? is a fine study of Jackson’s operational art, observes that, in terms of its impact on combat effectiveness, a hard march could take as great a toll on an army as combat. ? — Mackubin Thomas Owens is a professor of national-security affairs at the Naval War College. For one thing, the areas necessary for the successful exercise of this option — the mountainous areas of western North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, and the like — were largely Unionist. This particular case of war termination shaped Reconstruction and laid the groundwork for future reconciliation. In fact, only in the final months of conflict did a failure of morale tangibly affect the ability of Confederate armies to resist. Enslaved people fled to join the Union army, depriving the South of labour and strengthening the North by more than 100,000 soldiers. If Lee was right, historians need not look south of the Mason-Dixon line to explain the war’s outcome: the answer is simply the old story of the biggest battalions winning. There have always been those who emphasized internal factors in explaining why the Confederacy lost. A native New Yorker whom. And so, from the outset, the driving purpose of the military strategy of the South was to undermine northern morale – not just in its armies, but on the home front. The most convincing ‘internal’ factor behind southern defeat was the very institution that prompted secession: slavery. The debate was heated and furious. In 1960, David Donald offered a corollary to state rights, attributing the South’s loss of the war to an “excess of democracy” — too much individualism, dissent, and criticism of the government. Could modern medicine have saved Abraham Lincoln? As George Pickett said when asked why he thought the Confederates had lost at Gettysburg, “I’ve always thought the Yankees had something to do with it. The other vast social division was slavery itself. He had the flexibility to change tactics and to accept losing arguments if it meant winning the war. Thanks! It is important to note that, like the Patriots during the American Revolution who invested their hopes for independence in Washington’s Continental Line, white Southerners looked to Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. The North could very well have lost, but only if it had lost the will to win – and, despite occasional wavering, it never did. US Venture Recovers 230,000 gallons of Oil From Wreck of WW2 German Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen, Hanks and Spielberg ‘Masters of the Air’ to Start Filming, Britannic: A Century After Being Lost to the Waves, Opened to Divers, USS Nevada Found Off Coast Of Pearl Harbour, German Flagship SMS Scharnhorst Found off Falkland Islands, Live Like a Bond Villain, 3 Remote Napoleonic-Era Forts For Sale, Fantastic News! In the end, slavery was destroyed because the North won, rather than the other way around. No. It was the moment at which the Confederacy came closest to victory. That was one reason for Lee’s ‘invasions’ of northern soil in 1862 and 1863. Like their Revolution-era forebears, the Confederates could have won against superior forces because they had compensating advantages: a resilient population, talented military leaders, the advantage of fighting a defensive war in country they knew and, above all, a cause for which most white southerners were prepared to make great sacrifices.

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