From what I’ve read most historians believe that the South lacked the industrial centers to win the war despite having better leadership and overall the more committed and talented men. If winning the war was a war of attrition that the South couldn’t win outright. Why didn’t the South fight more of a defensive gorilla warfare strategy similar to Afghanistan?
It seems if the South had fought more of a resistance war using men such as General Forrest as hardline resistance to run spec ops in the against the North while also running raids setting fire to towns and fields in the North from Virginia that they could have made life miserable enough on the North to drag it out and break there will at some point. It worked in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and over most of the the British Empire. It seems that it would have worked for the South. The one thing working against the South would have been the rebel leadership being easy targets due to being obvious fixed target plantation owners but the masses it seems could have blended in as average every day folks just trying to survive while running upsurp wars.
Why? Same reason a protracted insurgency probably wouldn't work today. Soccer moms... or whatever their equivalent was back then.
Soccer moms wouldn't like navigating roadside bombs on the way to yoga and Starbucks.
DESPITE what white American women would have us all believe, they've long since held plenty of power in this country.
