Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Why did the confederates lose

Yankees couldn’t shoot for schitt.

I’m not the historian that some are but I’ve read and seems accurate that Lee was a great defensive mind more so than offensive mind. Maybe he didn’t get big picture guerrilla tactics? If that were the case it would make sense. I read somewhere that he later regretted not turning lose Generals such as Forrester earlier in the war.

From my understanding of Grant he was a mediocre General in the field but realized that the North had the numbers and industrialization so was good with loosing more men in order to grind the South down over time.

Guerilla wars require the support of the local populace so they can only work within the home territory of the guerilla force. There would have been no point to burning towns and fields of Southerners.

Raiding north of the Mason Dixon would just have amounted to small incursions through a hostile populace by quickly moving forces with little to no logistical support. Local townsfolk would have easily spotted the raiding parties and reported them to the Federal army who could have tracked their movement by telegraph and chased them down with equally mobile cavalry in superior numbers. It would have been a nuisance but with a tactical range only extending into Maryland, lower Pennsylvania and lower Ohio most Northerners wouldn't have been bothered in the least.

Guerilla wars are what you do when you don't have the strength to defeat the enemy in open battle. The Confederate States of America believed, rightly, that they did have the strength to defeat Northern forces in set battles. They just didn't have the production to maintain a protracted war, the latter is of course a real Capt. Obvious observation.

By the time Southern leadership would have concluded that a guerilla style war was the only means of resistance left to them the South was weary of warfare and depleted of treasury. Where would they get their powder and ball without a friendly Russia, China or Pakistan to supply them and provide safe havens? And as has already been stated, the womenfolk would not have been the only folks who wouldn't tolerate a guerilla force in their midst when threatened with the sort of harsh reprisals every invading army has used (sooner or later in one way or another) against a populace where the enemy looks like everyone else.

with news on horse back?

hell,

nowdays i can tell everbody i had mac 'n cheese with bacon bits

I get a lot of what your saying but the South and the outlaws after the war such as the James gang and others along with decades of deep seated hate for the North after to me it seems would have supported 3G warfare aka guerrilla warfare. That both sides of the war looked the same other than accent seems like it would have further lent itself to guerrilla warfare. Would have a KKK type war against the North from the very start while the South was at full strength rather than after the South had been defeated been more effective?

jesse james was from MO?

If they only had a 6.5 Creedmoor

LOL

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Yankees got better and better as time went on. That's why Napoleon advised not to fight the same enemy to often, he will learn you. Notice the plains Indians were getting better at fighting the U.S. Army until Grant and Sheridan decided to wipe them out before eastern politicians became ''woke''. That was beginning to happen. After the costly victory at Little Bighorn and the successful Indian escape the U.S. knew they had to wind up the Indian issue pretty damn quick. Bleeding hearts back east were making noise about ''the poor Indian".

Supposedly

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How many women did you know who complained about our presence in Iraq or Afghanistan? It's different when it's happening in your backyard.

James was on the border. Families and communities were divided. The James’s fought for the South Jesse was to young to go to war but fought with the raiders against the North and ultimately lead to him raiding northern banks. After the war a whole lot of southerns wound up in the West and more than a few gunslingers and outlaws.

Lincloln took over the railroads and could use telegraph to get supplies to his troops in a week or so. The south thought taking over railroads was a violation of property. The south had to run for supplies like food ammunition and clothes . It took a lot of time just to send a message on horseback and then bring it back . I heard this one time and found it reasonable why the north won.

Because they had to import most of their arms,ammo,food.The North was an industrial giant.The North ran an effective blockade.Hard to win against those circumstances.

I get it. The other side to that would have been making hell on the North when they tried to occupy the South similar to the Afghanistan strategy while also raiding the North.

I'm half being a smart azz... and half not. I don't think a protracted insurgency could work in this country then or now. Our women are not, and have never been, totally subjected like they are in Afghanistan and Iraq. They'd eventually get tired of living the life of an insurgent's wife and start ratting us out, denying sanctuary needed for an insurgency to succeed.

As to the south and the strategy they chose... I’m sure they thought they could lick the north in conventional warfare. They wouldn't have tried if they didn't.

Makes sense. The other thing working against the South would have been in place homesteads and farms to be targeted Vs. a Vietnam or Afghanistan which was mostly modern day nomads or pheasants that were harder to target.

That’s what Pickett thought, but of course you knew that.

I think the South did fight gorilla warfare along the Mississippi. It nearly drove Sherman mad. There was plenty of mistakes to go around. Had Lee listened to Longstreet at Gettysburg it might have turned out different. If Pickett had disobeyed Lee's orders and marched into Gettysburg things might've turned out different. There's no use playing the guessing game because it happened the way it did. Chamberlain broke Longstreet's charge by ordering his men to fix bayonets because his men were out of ammo. Pretty gutsy. There was talent on both sides but the North won. Sherman's march to the sea was the last straw. His troupes committed atrocities beyond imagination along the way. The North did have better equipment and the industrial complex the South did not possess.

Truth is generations of good men from both sides died. It was a tragedy of epic proportions.

I don’t think anyone supports slavery but within the context of the times it was a thing over most of the globe. It was wrong but acknowledging slavery is wrong and that the Civil War also started the US down the path of Federal Government overreach are not mutually exclusive. As stated above lots of good people on both sides wound up dead and families torn apart.