American Civil War devolves into guerrilla warfare

TFSmith121

Banned
True that...

yup. if that's what it means to be a Southern gentlemen then i'll be a damyankee brute any day of the week.

True that...

Sherman seems a resonable authority:

... the South began war by seizing forts, arsenals, mints, custom-houses, etc., etc., long before Mr. Lincoln was installed, and before the South had one jot or tittle of provocation. I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds and thousands of women and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry and with bleeding feet. In Memphis, Vicksburg, and Mississippi, we fed thousands upon thousands of the families of rebel soldiers left on our hands, and whom we could not see starve. Now that war comes home to you; you feel very different. You deprecate its horrors, but did not feel them when you sent car-loads of soldiers and ammunition, and moulded shells and shot, to carry war into Kentucky and Tennessee, to desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace at their old homes, and under the Government of their inheritance. But these comparisons are idle. I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect and early success.

from

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Letter_to_James_M._Calhoun,_et_al.,_September_12,_1864

Best,
 
yup. if that's what it means to be a Southern gentlemen then i'll be a damyankee brute any day of the week.

But you don't understand! Southern gentility was a state of mind, independent of any actual... well, actions. You have it just by having it, and when you have it, nothing you actually do can make you lose it. (Except of course, voluntarily setting yourself AGAINST Southern gentility. That's the one unforgivable sin, there, by the code of Southern gentility.)

And that's what makes all the horror, bloodshed, and slavery worth it! All that pretty, pretty gentility!
 
Lee &co. were imbeciles who hated the very idea of irregular units.

For those who try to say that Confederate irregular operations were a failure I have three words: John Singleton Mosby.

It is my opinion that, especially along the Mississippi, if the confederacy had gone systematically "grey ghost" it would have been a incalculable drain of unionist resources.

Or another endorsement of Confederate irregular warfare: The Compromise of 1877. Seriously, if you want a campaign of irregular violence achieving political aims, its stupendous.

This is not going to happen, the South saw themselves as gentlemen, they wanted to be seen as fighting like gentlemen. I'm pretty sure there's two or three threads already discussing how the South would not use guerrilla tactics.

And the Union's resources far outweigh the Confederates, guerrilla or not the outcome will ultimately be the same. Any victory through guerrilla warfare will need outside help, and which European power wants to help the South, hmm?

May I suggest a biography of Nathan Bedford Forrest? Covering career before, during - and after?
 
Very interesting thread.

Offhand, the only example in AH literature I can think of that even touches on this idea is this one, written by Lois Tilton, which story I read when it came out in Asimov's back in 1991.

Interesting idea, but as has been pointed out upthread by others, probably not very likely.
 
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