As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
I am looking a history, by historical experts, on why the South Lost the Civil War.. The reasons are many, but the reality is the South faced the same problems the Fisrt American Confederacy faced in 1776, as the Articles of Confederation in Colonial America, did not have a manufacturing base, so little taxes, not a sound currency, no centralized authority to direct a war effort, states unwilling to give up power, and the lack of ability to keep an army and support it.
There is one other major factor, and it was that the South did not have the means to move it's army swiftly by means of rail or river, nor supply it. General Thomas Stonewall Jackson had walking cavalry, which could maneuver and strike, but this was all due to the Southerners was more motivated than the Northerners. It was not that the South was superior in Soldiers, it was their Soldiers were motivated, and their military leadership was more enthisiastic in defending their homes.
The Union Army at the start of the war, was more allied with State's Rights, and it was not in their interest under General McClellan, who was a Jeffersonian Democrat in not desiring a strong federalized dictating power which is what emerged with Lincoln and after.
If you notice, the South in three invasions of the North, two by Robert E. Lee and one by Jubal Early, was mauled and thrashed. The Union commanders did not follow up, because they were for the most part democrats who did not have an interest in wiping out the South which they had political interests in, not from slavery, but from the power of the People in the States, to not be dictated to by the Northeast financial interests. This was the United States in the 1860's, in 3 Americas. The South, the West as an emerging power ,and the Northeast.
Everything from Ohio to Minnesota, to Missouri to California was the West. These were a people unto their own, and were sympathetic to the South, because the South had politically nurtured the West in development to attempt to offset Northeast finance, which is still a scourge to America today.
I believe the South could have won the war, if they had before declaring independence, engaged in three measures.
The South should have conscripted the Negro as a national work force in a two year rotational socialized employmentd. The purpose would have been like Nazi Germany or the United States has engaged in using Chinese labor for railroads or currently is using Mexican slave sweat and Indian curry computer wonks for profits, in construcing railroads. The Southern leadership should have not focused on a Transcontinental Railroad, but two north south lines, one on the Mississippi and the other to the Great Lakes.
Slaves would have built this and it would have been difficult for rabid abolitionists to rail against Northeast finance creating fortunes.
The second measure ties into the rail lines, in the South should have engaged in corridor supply trade to Canada, meaning London through the Mississippi and the Ohio, in storing up supplies for a war effort from gun powder to shoes.
The third measure ties in the first two, in Robert E. Lee should have been placed in charge of the Army of Northern Virginia, with General Jeb Stuart in cavalry, along with Beauregard and Johnson.
A second force though should have been placed under the command of General Thomas Jackson, with the two fine Generals in James Longsteet in military and Nathan Bedford Forrest in Cavalry.
While the attention was on Fort Sumpter, Lee should have arrayed himself to hold Union forces at Virginia for Bull Run, but in the same instance, Stonewall Jackson by rail should have slices through the Ohio to the Great Lakes and declared a Confederate West, as a second front by rail would slice up the Mississippi to the Canadian border to convice the West that they were liberated from Washington City.
At that point after Bull Run, Jackson would have swung east into Pennsylvania, while Lee drove North to Washington City in a pincer movement. The United States at this point would have been the city state of New York City and Abraham Lincoln probably would have been lynched by drunk Irish democrats for Thanksgiving.
Lincoln would have never tamepred with Emancipation as his life would have ended in riots in New York City.
By these terms, Richmond Virginia as a Confederacy would have in a generation been overwhelmed by the Western Expansion, and it is most likely that the financial power centers would have been Chicago in the West, with St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver and the state of California.
It is evident why the South lost. They simply could not win, as the Shelby Foote noted, the North had not brought out it's other hand to the fight. If the South would have prepared beyond romance and patriotism, but drafted a battle plan with the unglamourous foundation of the Quartermaster, I believe that the war in proper would have ended by Christmas 1861, and the North with an appointed leader as General McClellan would have sued for peace, and America would have evolved into three Confederate forms who would join ina federalized system around Theodore Roosevelt's era.
This once again is another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter. You win wars by God's Grace, but you win wars by preparing, while the rhetoric is created. War is a 4th dimensional form, and it being a living creature, it must be fed or it will devour the humans fighting it.
Nuff Said
agtG
