Well duh! How would a war start waiting for the South to attack the North?
"Confederate gunners fired on Ft. Sumter in Charleston, SC on April 12, 1861. Ft. Sumter fell 34 hours later. It was a bloodless opening to the bloodiest war in American history."
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"Whose bright idea was it to put every idiot in the world in touch with every other idiot? It's working!" -- P. J. O'Rourke
Brazil had many more African slaves than America. Some 40 percent of all slaves imported to the New World went to Brazil. Lots of sugar cane to chop in Brazil. In 1888, Brazil outlawed slavery. It was an unworkable system. Brazil did not have a civil war.
The same thing would have happened in America had we not had a civil war. What a disaster for my country was the Civil War. It took us decades to recover, and in some ways, we never have recovered from this war.
My 8th grade history teacher, who was a Mass. Yankee by the way, taught us that the irony of the civil war was that in the very near future technology would have made slavery obsolete. and that the cost of buying and maintaining slaves would be more than hiring people to do the the work.
Figures don't lie, But Liars figure Assumption is the mother of mistakes
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 guerrilla warfare strategy similar to Afghanistan?
No expert here, but it seems there might be a couple of reasons. One, the South's generals were trained just like the North's, so the massed-force type of warfare was how they all thought and fought. And secondly, they didn't have the hindsight afforded by the Viet Nam and Afghanistan experiences we've now seen. Just my $.02; interesting and thought-provoking thread especially as to how it might apply in the future.
The biggest problem our country has is not systemic racism, it's systemic stupidity.
I saw a very interesting lecture- at the Naval War College about the similarities between the War of Northern Aggression and WWII comparing the South and Japan v the USA. Both the South and the japs scored initial and very successful victories but both nations realized they at best, needed a decisive BIG victory to change public opinion and hope for at least a draw, for there was no way they could win a protracted war in the end (and they didn't).
Enter Gettysburg and Midway. Had the South and the japs won, maybe this would have happened but in both instances, both Lee and Nagumo screwed the pooch with wrong decisions, indecision on Nagumo's part to go after our carriers once he found out and Lee of course stalling on the attack and that incredibly poor planned strike at the Union Center with Pickett. Both the South and Japan lost the second the first Volley was fired at Sumter and the first bombs came of the rails over Pearl Harbor,
A good principle to guide me through life: “This is all I have come to expect, standard lackluster performance. Trust nothing, believe no one and realize it will only get worse…”
Even if the south had been victorious, they would have had to enslave themselves to Europe for financial ad, and, Mexico would have probably made a move to regain Texas and California.
U.S. government was established to represent citizens, NOT TO RULE OVER THEM.
Even if the south had been victorious, they would have had to enslave themselves to Europe for financial ad, and, Mexico would have probably made a move to regain Texas and California.
Really good point about Mexico. I hadn’t considered that.
Obey lawful commands. Video interactions. Hold bad cops accountable. Problem solved.
The South had no manufacturing base. No real industry. All they had was warm water ports the North likely coveted. They had no way of breaking the North's blockade. General Jackson's death was a big blow for the Southern forces. Lee made some critical mistakes that cost him dearly. Military tactics at the time were brutal and both sides suffered terrible losses. All this for protecting the status quo of a dying practice of Slavery the South could ill afford to keep. Their inability to compromise on the issue of Slavery in the new territories brought about the most cataclysmic debacle in the history of the Republic.