I believe that ya'll are on the right track militarily with a look at the strategic differences between the North and the South. Good generalship is important in war, but the grand strategy coincides with it as well. I personally believe that Lee was a better general than Grant, although Grant was a genius at seige warfare (when he had more men). Lee also was very good at siege warfare (he was an engineer) and seige warfare actually places odds into the hands of the defender.
If one wants to examine some strategy I think that it is appropriate. The North started out with a good plan and stuck to it. Realizing that the capitals were just 100 miles from each other and that the fall of capitals may not have necessarily won the war, the North opted for the Anaconda Plan, in which Southern ports would be blockaded in the first phase. This was never effectively carried out until the latter part of the war, as the South lost port cities, the last to be bottled up was Wilmington, NC. At the same time, a separate plan was put into play to divide the South along the rivers, the Mississippi being the primary. Rivers are a natural source of highways and invasion paths, and the North used their industrial and riverine advantage quite well. The North divided the South along the Mississippi, effectively cutting off Texas and Arkansas from the rest of the Confederacy. The next stroke was to invade the heartland of the South, from which much agricultural and industrial supplies flowed. That's my state, Georgia. After the rebuff and bottling up of Rosecrans in Chattanooga, and then the break out under Grant, Georgia was invaded. Anyway....yada yada yada...it happened, and the North stuck to its grand strategy of destroying and devouring the Confederacy piecemeal.
The South had no real grand strategy, and seemed to fight the war on a tactical level. In this tactical level, they were superior in the first part of the war, indeed, the first 2.5 years. But an army invasion is not enough to cause the capitulation of a people, because this was a single army affecting a single state (Maryland in the first invasion, Pennsylvania in the second). There was no real military pressure on the other northern states to capitulate. The only chance that the South had, and did attempt, was to build military pressure during election times, as the northern people were war weary (check out some of the NYC riots). We can all make "we shoulda and we couldas", but the reality is that militarily the Southern strategy was beaten by northern strategy, and the armies by Grant, Sherman, and other commanders steadily attacking and being resupplied with more manpower, whereas the South did not have the population base to support it.
I guess the conclusion in all this is that there were several reasons why: lack of solid strategic goal by the South; lack of manpower; economics and transportation difficulties; lack of decisiveness and unity in Confederate leadership, both political and military (and I agree with the above poster, do read the Confederate Constitution) and finally, the degree of the Northern strategy of "take the war to the enemy heartland" (strange, we seem to be doing that now)
On a side note, just to throw a wrench into everything, check out "Cracker Culture" by Grady McWhiney. There are arguments out there that this was simply a carryover of an old war between the Scots-Irish and the English culture (South vs North). Comments anyone?
If one wants to examine some strategy I think that it is appropriate. The North started out with a good plan and stuck to it. Realizing that the capitals were just 100 miles from each other and that the fall of capitals may not have necessarily won the war, the North opted for the Anaconda Plan, in which Southern ports would be blockaded in the first phase. This was never effectively carried out until the latter part of the war, as the South lost port cities, the last to be bottled up was Wilmington, NC. At the same time, a separate plan was put into play to divide the South along the rivers, the Mississippi being the primary. Rivers are a natural source of highways and invasion paths, and the North used their industrial and riverine advantage quite well. The North divided the South along the Mississippi, effectively cutting off Texas and Arkansas from the rest of the Confederacy. The next stroke was to invade the heartland of the South, from which much agricultural and industrial supplies flowed. That's my state, Georgia. After the rebuff and bottling up of Rosecrans in Chattanooga, and then the break out under Grant, Georgia was invaded. Anyway....yada yada yada...it happened, and the North stuck to its grand strategy of destroying and devouring the Confederacy piecemeal.
The South had no real grand strategy, and seemed to fight the war on a tactical level. In this tactical level, they were superior in the first part of the war, indeed, the first 2.5 years. But an army invasion is not enough to cause the capitulation of a people, because this was a single army affecting a single state (Maryland in the first invasion, Pennsylvania in the second). There was no real military pressure on the other northern states to capitulate. The only chance that the South had, and did attempt, was to build military pressure during election times, as the northern people were war weary (check out some of the NYC riots). We can all make "we shoulda and we couldas", but the reality is that militarily the Southern strategy was beaten by northern strategy, and the armies by Grant, Sherman, and other commanders steadily attacking and being resupplied with more manpower, whereas the South did not have the population base to support it.
I guess the conclusion in all this is that there were several reasons why: lack of solid strategic goal by the South; lack of manpower; economics and transportation difficulties; lack of decisiveness and unity in Confederate leadership, both political and military (and I agree with the above poster, do read the Confederate Constitution) and finally, the degree of the Northern strategy of "take the war to the enemy heartland" (strange, we seem to be doing that now)
On a side note, just to throw a wrench into everything, check out "Cracker Culture" by Grady McWhiney. There are arguments out there that this was simply a carryover of an old war between the Scots-Irish and the English culture (South vs North). Comments anyone?
