How the South Could Have Won

In 1861 the attitude of the Southern States, historically, was certainly defensive. They asked for nothing more than to be let alone; to be allowed to go their own way unhindered. In the light of the four years of war which followed it is doubtful whether under any circumstances they would have gained independence; but they threw away their best chances of success, singularly enough, by first beginning the war and then by allowing the North to organize and perfect her armed forces at leisure. By seizing on military posts and dock-yards and, finally by firing on Fort Sumter the South exasperated and roused the North, alienated the strong public opinion in her favor which existed in that section and put herself in the wrong.

There was a chance, and not a bad chance, that the slave states would not be intcrferred with in establishing a new nation, in any event there could be no harm in inaction for it would give them additional time to prepare for war. The war fairly begun and afterwards at intervals during its progress a vigorous offensive was strongly urged on the Confederate government by some of its best men. To many of them this course seemed obvious at first only: a few continued in the belief, at any time throughout the war. that the South could win only by persistent attack.

The first really important battle of the Civil War was that known as the Battle of Bull Run, which took place at the railroad junction of Manassas, a strategic point between Washington and Richmond, the respective capitals of the Union and the Confederacy. General P. G. T. Beauregard, who had won fame throughout the South by his conduct at the siege of Fort Sumter, was stationed at Manassas. The Northern men who had fought so well all day on July 21st, 1841, went temporarily mad with fright. Their retreat became a panic. The road back toward Washington was a choked and tangled mass of baggage-wagons, artillery, soldiers, and civilians, through which cavalry horses plunged and reared with deadly effect. Nothing could turn or check that desperate welter of fear. The humiliation in the North at the outcome of the battle was equaled only by the rejoicing of the South. The Confederate army was quite disorganized by its success ; for many Southerners regarded the war as over, and left the front to take up their usual occupations.

Immediately after the first Federal defeat at Bull Run they contended that the victory should result in the dispersion of all the enemy's forces south of Baltimore, the capture of Washington, and the occupation of Maryland, with the accession of that state to the .Southern cause: and they pointed out with much force that from these achievements others would continue to flow, as in war one success makes another easier. Moreover, they said, it would be folly to allow McClellan to organize and discipline at leisure the powerful army that in the end wore out the South. All this was to be done after freely giving up all other points, concentrating in Virginia, and thus obtaining the full benefit of interior lines.

The failure of the Confederate forces to follow up their remarkable victory after the defeat of the Union troops in the battle of Manassas was soon regarded as a serious military blunder; and Davis, who had been present on the battlefield and taken an active voice in a conference of the Southern generals the night following McDowell's disaster, was directly charged, both by a certain element in Richmond, naturally given to criticism, and by members of Congress, with responsibility for the mistake. The official reports of Beauregard and Johnston tended to confirm this impression, and this first great success in arms achieved by the South was to originate questions tending to excite distrust in the executive, and subsequently distrust of his treatment of those who were under his authority.

The failure of the Army of the Potomac to achieve either of the grand immediate objects which it moved from before Washington to effect the dispersion, namely, of the main confederate army under General Johnston and the occupation of Richmond, has been variously attributed to the constitutional unfitness of General McClellan for the conduct of operations requiring boldness in the conception and decision in the execution, and to the presumed bias of that commander's political opinions. Those who adopt this theory of the origin of Federal reverses, charge upon General McClellan that he had always sought to avoid driving the insurgent States to the wall, in the belief that the soothing influence of time and the blockade would eventually bring them to accept terms of reconciliation and reunion.

General Beauregard states the case forcibly as follows "Apart from an active material ally, a country in fatal war must depend upon the vigor of its warfare; the more inferior the country, the bolder and more enterprising the use of the resources, especially if its frontiers are convenient to the enemy. I was convinced that our success lay in a short, quick war of decisive blows, before the Federals, with their vast resources, could build up a great military power; to which end a concerted use of our forces, immediate and sustained, was necessary, so that, weaker though we were at all separate points, we might nevertheless strike with superior strength at some chosen decisive point, and after victory there reach for victory now made easier elsewhere, and thus sum up success. Instead of this, which in war we call concentration, our actual policy was diffusion, an inferior Confederate force at each separate point defensively confronting a superior Federal force; our power daily shrinking, that of the enemy increasing."

Stonewall Jackson was the only great Southern leader who in the very beginning enthusiastically believed that the South could win in the fight. The idea that it was possible that the South could win is now regarded by some patriotic Americans as a sort of treason, or a thought which was the offspring of a depraved wish. But after Chancellorsville it was the thought of a good many whose wishes were sound enough. It may easily be believed that the Federal bullet which cut the thread of Sidney Johnston's life, or the Confederate bullet which laid Stonewall Jackson low, prevented an overwhelming Southern victory that might have led to peace with separation.

So, too, it is conceivable that through panic, or through the loss of some great commander, the Union army should have failed to resist Lee's attack on July 3, 1864, and left the road open to Washington and to enforced peace. There were many times, perhaps hundreds of times, in that war, when it seemed to human eyes that the mightiest events turned upon the mental condition of a man. Jackson was shot down by his own men at the very moment when his life was of most importance to the cause for which he fought; and the fact that Longstreet was shot one year later, in the same forest, by his own men, and at the precise instant when his leadership was equal to a great victory, multiplies many times the force of argument that the American Union owes its preservation to the Divinity that shapes our ends.

The decisive battle was Gettysburg. Suppose, on that day of fate, Lee had not sent his infantry to destruction; suppose, instead of attacking Meade in his position at all, he had manoeuvred, brought Meade to action on a fair field, and won: what would have been the effect on the fortunes of the war ? Would not the expectation of support in the North, and of the triumph of a party opposed to the war, in which Lee invaded Pennsylvania, have been fulfilled ? Meade, whose modesty was equal to his accomplishments as a soldier, used frankly to admit his obligation to the strategical error of his opponent. The death of Jackson at Chancellorsville was another momentous accident. That man was the soul of the Southern army, and had he been at Gettysburg he might have controlled the rashness of Lee. After the battle of Gettysburg there never was a time when success was possible for the Southern cause.

It would serve no useful purpose to draw comparisons between the rival military merits of Jackson on the one hand and Grant or Sherman on the other. Both these latter were good soldiers, but they had never been confronted with Jackson in the field. Hooker was as good a soldier as either of them, but Hooker had the misfortune to fall foul of Jackson. Grant and Sherman brought the war to a conclusion, it is true. Still, it must be remembered that they had command of .great resources and overwhelming numbers, and yet it took them a whole year to compel the ragged Confederates to capitulate. One thing is clear, neither Grant nor Sherman were put to so severe a test as Jackson in his Valley campaign with 12,500 men against 60,000. Had Gettysburg been a Southern victory, and had Jackson been there, it is not extravagant to suppose that after it he would have rushed to Bragg's assistance at Chattanooga, destroying Burnside on his way at Knoxville. Grant and Sherman would then have been well matched, and the course of the war might have been far different.

If, instead of exhausting every means available to the Confederate Government during 1861 and 1862 to secure its recognition by European governments, Mr. Davis and the Confederate Congress had established a credit with those governments based on cotton, by the sale of Confederate bonds, payable in cotton at a fixed price, as they could have done, and as they did do to a limited extent in March, 1863, they could have maintained the war on a gold basis and have made King Cotton win the independence of the Confederacy. If the emancipation proclamation of Mr. Lincoln had been met by Mr. Davis and the Confederate Congress, supported by Generals Lee and Johnston, in 1863, by putting a large force of negro men in the army under white officers, with freedom guaranteed and a gradual system of emancipation, the Confederacy would have been recognized by European governments and would have secured its independence. Had there been some great natural division between the Confederacy and the States which adhered to the Union, such as the English Channel, the Rocky Mountains, or had the Mississippi River flowed from east to west instead of from north to south, the Confederacy would most probably have won its independence. Had the civil government of the Confederacy been equal to the military it would have been a success, and the independence of the Confederacy firmly established.