FALL 1861: Confederate Strategy Thread

[GuildedAgeNostalgia]

1) SCENARIO/SUMMARY: It is November 1861. You are Confederate president Jefferson Davis. The 1861 campaign season is coming to a close. It is your responsibility to plan/lead the war effort for the oncoming year. You need to appoint/transfer commanders to new departments, plan offensives and defenses, manage the war economy, supply your armies, and improve foreign relations. In the area below, put a in depth plan as to what you would do.

2) RULES FOR THE THREAD: Please keep the following in mind:
- If you want to constructively criticize someone's plan, that is fine, just don't be rude.
- ABSOLUTELY NO "I'd surrender to the North because I have no hope of winning" plans. There's no point to that kind of talk in this thread. The goal is to come up with personal plans for how the confederacy can achieve a military victory. If its not possible, that's fine, but were still going to try to make it possible.
- Anyone can write their own plan. I would prefer something in depth though, not a one liner.
- Anyone with the rank of Brigadier general or lower in November 1861 can be made a army commander for 1862.
- You are limited by the resources/technological/and internal political issues that the South had in otl. No asb plans.

so here we go.....

My Personal Plan

A) ATL Commander Changes:
- Albert Sidney Johnston will be put in charge of the Trans-Mississippi Department (said department will be created earlier).
- Pierre Beauregard will be put in command of the Gulf Coast Department, and more specifically, the defense of New Orleans and creation of the Gulf Fleet.
- Stonewall Jackson will retain his command of the Army of the Shenandoah. Joseph Johnston will retain his command of the Army of Northern Virginia.
- Robert E. Lee will command the Atlantic Department (From Petersburg to Savannah).
- William Hardee will command the Army of Tennessee and be overall commander of the Department of the West (Mississippi to Appalachians).

B) Campaign Strategies for 1862:
- Albert Sidney Johnston will combine most of his forces in Arkansas/Kansas/Indian Territory/and Eastern Texas and invade Missouri and attempt to destroy the Union army and retake Jefferson City. From there he will recruit pro Southern Missourians to his cause and form defensive positions west of St. Louis. Meanwhile most of his cavalry will launch raids into Iowa to further divert Union troops and prevent Iowa from mobilizing more men. There will be no New Mexico campaign and the south will stay on the defensive at El Paso. Some troops from there will be sent to raid in Kansas. Johnston will also be in charge of establishing relations with Mexico and improving overland smuggling operations.

- Beauregard will improve the defenses of New Orleans, Mobile, and other gulf ports still in Confederate hands. He will also hurry the production of the Confederate Ironclads in New Orleans, that will be used to break the blockade of the city. He will also be responsible for setting up smuggling operations along the gulf and western Florida, while establishing contacts in Cuba and the Bahamas to acquire foreign aid. Merchant vessels will be turned into blockade runners and privateers.

- Johnston and Jackson will invade Western/Central Maryland. If they cannot recruit Maryland to their cause, they are to raid the countryside for supplies, keep McClellan occupied, and try to defeat the Union Army on grounds of their own choosing. A small yet substantial force under Magrudrer will stay to guard Richmond.

- Hardee is to have Polk order McCown to fortify Island number ten. The rest of Polk's force to abandon Columbus and march east with his men and assume command of the forces already at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. After both forts are reinforced with Polk's men, he is to improve the defenses and have Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry act as a flying column meant to assist either fort if they come under assault. Hardee with his main force is to march on Lexington and Frankfort, recruit as many southern sympathizers he can, and then fall back to defensive positions at Bowling Green in Southern Kentucky. Afterwards, he is to send a raiding force in West Virginia to prevent Union forces there from attacking the Shedandoah Valley during Jackson's invasion of Western Maryland.

- Lee will improve the fortifications along the Atlantic Coast (especially North Carolina) and create two small field armies at Suffolk and Charleston that are supposed to March where they are needed. He is in charge of defending Norfolk, building ironclads, and defending the James River.

C) War Economy/Logistics
- Idk enough about this to come up with anything reasonable. Maybe force plantations to grow more food and less cotton in the short term? Also keep selling some cotton to European powers. No embargo.

 

[EWHM]

Hold New Orleans. Almost nothing else you do in early 1862 is more important than that. Getting those 2 ironclads built and shaken down will be a huge part of that.
Get stuff from Europe ordered asap, especially lots and loads of powder and Enfields.
Along with those Enfields, get some training manuals (Cleburne managed to get ahold of one in 1863 and trained the trainer to get his whole division trained to a low grade were it a UK division but still was vastly better than everyone else in the Civil War in the US) and if you can swing it, recently retired noncoms from the British army to train the trainers. Having Jeff Davis personally take a strong hand in this effort would be exceptionally good, because its something he's likely to be GOOD at (per his experience in the Mexican-American war) and because it will likely draw focus away from things he could do that he's bad at (like trying to manage generals). UK tactics and doctrine make much more sense for the South than the French approach.

 

[marktaha]

Dig in for a defensive war on all fronts. Especially fortify New Orleans. Get as much cotton over to Europe as possible.-then encourage planters to grow more food.
Make it plain in public statements-"We have no wish to invade your country-just to keep your army out of ours."

 

[jmc247]

There are two possible strategies at that point in the war for the leadership in Richmond and each as I see it dependent on what an individual political leader at that moment wanted to achieve.

For a leader that is mainly focused on retaining as much as possible of his political and economic power post war win or lose the likely military strategy they would eye would be to (outside of some strategic points in the Gulf) send everything into the Eastern Front of the war for '62 and try to get terms and if not sue for peace.

For a leader willing to accept revolutionary change to their region which a long war win or lose will do then a greater mobilization of the region for a war attrition. That means freeing slaves to get them into the fight earlier. That means getting women much more involved in the support side of the war back home. That means a lot of other things that prioritize the war over everything else. Its hard for a Republic to fully mobilize though as its subject to the will of the elected leaders with different vested interests. Some kind of limited Cincinnatus option may be needed to make the second option viable.

The longer the war the more southern society fundamentally changes at the end no matter the outcome.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Building more blockade runners would also be a good idea.

Along with those Enfields, get some training manuals (Cleburne managed to get ahold of one in 1863 and trained the trainer to get his whole division trained to a low grade were it a UK division but still was vastly better than everyone else in the Civil War in the US) and if you can swing it, recently retired noncoms from the British army to train the trainers. Having Jeff Davis personally take a strong hand in this effort would be exceptionally good, because its something he's likely to be GOOD at (per his experience in the Mexican-American war) and because it will likely draw focus away from things he could do that he's bad at (like trying to manage generals). UK tactics and doctrine make much more sense for the South than the French approach.

IIRC, among the Stonewall Brigade there was a company or so of Irish inmingrants. Perhaps among them there are some former veterans of the British Army that could be more useful trainning than in the frontlines, aren't them?

And also, they should try to get more "Germans" like von Borcke,..

 

[Belisarius II]

The Confederate strategy was base on a short war theory, they should plan for a war of at least 3 years. Sell as much cotton as you can, to build up the CSA gold, and silver reserves. Try to convert as much cotton land to staple crops. Expand the textile industry. Get as much Texas cattle east of the Mississippi as fast as you can. Form a war production board to better coordinate the sharing of resources between the States. The board should be made up of representatives from the States, and work with the War Department, and Congress. Some of these ideas were tried, with some success, but what the CSA needed above all else was more cooperation between the States. "Died of a Theory".

Do not enter Kentucky until the Union does. Use the time your buying to better prepare for a counter attack. Hold back a division to hold New Orleans. In retrospect they'd still lose the city, but would make a more credible fight of it. Send about 2,000 men to reinforce the Florida State troops, and try to retake Pensacola, and it's shipyard, and threaten Fort Pickens. Other then that all they can do is keep their powder dry, and prepare for the Union offensive of 1862.

 

[The Tai-Pan]

Isn't this ASB, considering we are giving the CSA essentially perfect 20/20 hindsight ?

 

[Belisarius II]

Isn't this ASB, considering we are giving the CSA essentially perfect 20/20 hindsight ?

Well no, it isn't what would they do to win, just do better. I don't think you need 20/20 hindsight to plan for a war of several years. By late 1861 both sides should have understood the war would take about 3 years. The Union's long game was better then the CSA, but to be fair they had more to work with. The Southerners were forced do a lot of short term improvising, but they could've done better in mobilizing their economy, and better distributing supplies. The army supply system could barely keep the men feed, and couldn't keep them shoed. Most of those problems were organizational, and administrative.

 

[Lothar]

1) SCENARIO/SUMMARY: It is November 1861. You are Confederate president Jefferson Davis. The 1861 campaign season is coming to a close. It is your responsibility to plan/lead the war effort for the oncoming year. You need to appoint/transfer commanders to new departments, plan offensives and defenses, manage the war economy, supply your armies, and improve foreign relations. In the area below, put a in depth plan as to what you would do

This is a truly great thought experiment. Because I am on my mobile phone, in this post I will just add/comment on your very solid plan before getting my hands on something large later.

Trans-Mississippi:
- Send Ben McCulloch back to Texas to take district command, replace him with John Bell Hood. Get Richard Taylor (direct subordinates Hood and Price) in command of the army and TTL's Pea-Ridge-Equivalent should be fine.
-Give a brigade to Polignac, he can fight and has propaganda value

Western Theatre:
-Give cavalry divisions to Van Dorn and Forrest, let them raid but under no circumstances force them into the same command structure.

Eastern Theatre:
-Robert Rodes, Dorsey Pender and Jubal Early need to get divisions asap, they are young and or very innovative
-Give a brigade to Stephen Ramseur and John Gordon, divisions at the end of the year

 

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

I agree with the other posters that holding New Orleans has to be made the priority, and after that nothing else is that important. They can't really improve on their OTL 1862 performance in the eastern theater.

One thing not mentioned that would help with holding New Orleans was changing departmental boundaries. The Confederates used the Mississippi as a departmental boundary, whereas the Union put the entire river in one department and had the boundary further east. Make the boundary between the (Trans) Mississippi and the West departments the border between Alabama and Mississsippi, sticking western Tennessee in the Mississippi department and the rest of the state in the West, and it becomes a much easier task to hold on to the Trans Mississippi. And that is not complete hindsight since the Union departments were organized this way.

Davis, like Lincoln, placed a great deal of importance on holding or taking Kentucky. If you can somehow convince the Confederate leadership to view Kentucky as a lost cause, and concentrate on defending the lower Mississippi, that would help. The chances of holding Fort Donelson for longer go up, you don't pull forces garrisoning the Mississippi away for the Shiloh counterattack, and the one western field army remains position where it should have been, defending the lower Mississippi, and not in eastern Tennessee. This was their one really big strategic mistake so its a considerable help.

 

[EWHM]

Building more blockade runners would also be a good idea.


IIRC, among the Stonewall Brigade there was a company or so of Irish inmingrants. Perhaps among them there are some former veterans of the British Army that could be more useful trainning than in the frontlines, aren't them?

And also, they should try to get more "Germans" like von Borcke,..

Yeah possibly. British army NCOs are what you really need. It's actually unfair to JV teams to call the US and CSA armies the JV of their day. They were more like the pickup teams you play sandlot football with than even a JV.

 

[Belisarius II]

Yeah possibly. British army NCOs are what you really need. It's actually unfair to JV teams to call the US and CSA armies the JV of their day. They were more like the pickup teams you play sandlot football with than even a JV.

I wouldn't exactly call the performance of the British Army in the Crimean War a model for anyone to follow.

 

[Worffan101]

1) SCENARIO/SUMMARY: It is November 1861. You are Confederate president Jefferson Davis. The 1861 campaign season is coming to a close. It is your responsibility to plan/lead the war effort for the oncoming year. You need to appoint/transfer commanders to new departments, plan offensives and defenses, manage the war economy, supply your armies, and improve foreign relations. In the area below, put a in depth plan as to what you would do.

2) RULES FOR THE THREAD: Please keep the following in mind:
- If you want to constructively criticize someone's plan, that is fine, just don't be rude.
- ABSOLUTELY NO "I'd surrender to the North because I have no hope of winning" plans. There's no point to that kind of talk in this thread. The goal is to come up with personal plans for how the confederacy can achieve a military victory. If its not possible, that's fine, but were still going to try to make it possible.
- Anyone can write their own plan. I would prefer something in depth though, not a one liner.
- Anyone with the rank of Brigadier general or lower in November 1861 can be made a army commander for 1862.
- You are limited by the resources/technological/and internal political issues that the South had in otl. No asb plans.

Beg, plead, grovel to, and try to bribe Nappy III and the British to join the war against the Union. No humiliation is too low. No amount of groveling is too much. Promising to free the slaves is on the table (just keep it secret or try to downplay it back home). Literally any plan that doesn't include massive foreign intervention will not overcome the overwhelming Union advantages in materiel, industry, and manpower.

In the meantime, hold New Orleans at all costs, that's Davis's best port. Do not invade north under any circumstances. Fortify the borders as much as reasonably possible. Plan to lose the Mississippi and everything west, so evacuate Texas ASAP.

Hang or fire Jackson, Pillow, Bragg, and Hood. I'd hang them but I hate the Confederacy, Davis would be better served by firing them or putting them in charge of unimportant commands. though Bragg could fuck up running an anthill.

 

[The Tai-Pan]

Beg, plead, grovel to, and try to bribe Nappy III and the British to join the war against the Union. No humiliation is too low. No amount of groveling is too much. Promising to free the slaves is on the table (just keep it secret or try to downplay it back home). Literally any plan that doesn't include massive foreign intervention will not overcome the overwhelming Union advantages in materiel, industry, and manpower.

In the meantime, hold New Orleans at all costs, that's Davis's best port. Do not invade north under any circumstances. Fortify the borders as much as reasonably possible. Plan to lose the Mississippi and everything west, so evacuate Texas ASAP.

Hang or fire Jackson, Pillow, Bragg, and Hood. I'd hang them but I hate the Confederacy, Davis would be better served by firing them or putting them in charge of unimportant commands. though Bragg could fuck up running an anthill.

Ah, but in doing these things you very well might find yourself no longer in a position to give orders.

 

[Lothar]

Hang or fire Jackson, Pillow, Bragg, and Hood. I'd hang them but I hate the Confederacy, Davis would be better served by firing them or putting them in charge of unimportant commands. though Bragg could fuck up running an anthill.

Concerning Pillow and Bragg you might be right, but Jackson excelled as an independent commander while Hood was superb at brigade and division level. Just do not give the latter a corps or an army.

 

[Worffan101]

Ah, but in doing these things you very well might find yourself no longer in a position to give orders.

Doesn't matter if it fulfills the objective.

In all seriousness, there are few if any things that can be done to even make the CSA last longer. Holding New Orleans early on gives them maybe six extra months, as a seat-of-pants estimate. The structural problems are just plain insurmountable without outside intervention.

Concerning Pillow and Bragg you might be right, but Jackson excelled as an independent commander while Hood was superb at brigade and division level. Just do not give the latter a corps or an army.

Jackson was an overaggressive fanatic, I wouldn't put him in charge of a henhouse for fear he'd lead the hens to war against the foxes outside the farm.

 

[EWHM]

I wouldn't exactly call the performance of the British Army in the Crimean War a model for anyone to follow.

If we look at their casualties relative to their opponents and other allies I'd say they did pretty well, especially when you consider they were mostly on the strategic offensive, which increases casualties normally. If you look at their casualties caused per round of ammunition, they look really good. If we look only at famous screw ups, well, a lot of that is par for the course even for the 'varsity team'. Especially early on in the US Civil war, a lot of the battles were total clusters.

French Crimean War Casualties: 95,000 dead (10,240 killed in action, 20,000 died of wounds, and some 60,000 died of disease)
British Crimean War Casualties: 21,097 dead (2,755 killed in action, 2,019 died of wounds, and 16,323 died of disease)

Sardinian Crimean War Casualties: 2,050 dead

Ottoman Crimean War Casualties: 175,300 dead

Russian Crimean War Casualties: 450,015 dead

 

[TxAggie]

In 1861, embargo'ing King Cotton to Britain and France is an understandable move. Jeff Davis and co made plenty of mistakes, but they were absolutely correct in realizing that they needed international help on their side.

But with the benefit of hindsight, we know that Britain and France won't go to war to keep Southern cotton flowing, or at the very least, they're going to keep fence-sitting until a Confederate victory looks likely. So if you're the CSA in that case, there's a lot of war material you need to buy and only one asset you have to trade for it. Sell as much cotton as you can before the Union blockade sets in for foreign arms and hard currency.

From there, set up for a defensive war. The Civil War has been not-incorrectly called "proto-WW1", and it carried a lot of the same advantages for the defenders. Many of those weren't realized early on as both sides tried to get their Napoleonic maneuvers on to disastrous results, but Get Lee set up with a large army near Richmond and hope that he can roll 6s like OTL, and defend New Orleans for as long as possible. For the rest of the west, I'd keep a flexible defensive army going. Take advantage of the west's size and your internal lines of transport, and run a Fabian strategy in the west where you trade land for casualties and time. It'd kind of look like the eastern Overland Campaign if you did it right - defend, fall back, defend, fall back... in the OTL Overland Campaign, Grant knew that victory was within his grasp and he just had to keep hammering away at the Confederates before they'd break, but in 1861/2, the endgame is much less clear. If you can smashing the Union armies in the east like OTL and keep stalling forces in the west on a campaign to nowhere, you might be able to get the kind of war-weariness the Confederates aimed for, the perception in the North that the war is going nowhere. And if you can land a breakthrough that could make the war look winnable, a Confederate Saratoga if you will, and some European power jumps in, the war breaks wide open.

 

[Kevin C. Smith]

In 1861, embargo'ing King Cotton to Britain and France is an understandable move. Jeff Davis and co made plenty of mistakes, but they were absolutely correct in realizing that they needed international help on their side.

I have only just started to read up on the CSA economy/home front (and if anyone knows of any good books on the topic, please PM me!) but I think that the embargo just helped French and British manufacturers learn to live without active CSA exports all the earlier. I seem to recall that the 1860 cotton crop had been large and allowed buyers to build up supplies as the war clouds gathered. I would take a counter approach and sell as much cotton as possible as quickly as possible to build up cash (Franc and Sterling) reserves. Though, most of the south's cotton normally went to the North so a built up dollar reserve might be an interesting thing to play with... Then, as the blockade takes its effect, push more (and earlier) for changing land over from cotton to food crops. As long as you can't export as much, anyway, you might as well put the land to better short term use. The big problem with export/import seemed to be that the CSA could not control what was being brought in, and consumer goods were all to often more remunerative to blockade runners than arms and supplies for the Army. If you can fix that, I think you go a long way to help the CSA.

Another thing would be to try and improve the railroad situation as much as you can. Too many breaks of gauge, and no industrial base for replacing worn out rails and equipment. Biting the bullet in 1861 on some re-gauging might make things better later on. Beyond that, the whole industrialization scheme of the CSA is always going to be wildly inadequate. Could the Ordinance Bureau start more projects earlier?

That's about all I can come up with to help. I don't know how possible it is...but that's my two cent's worth (but it may only be CSA cents).

 

[Belisarius II]

If we look at their casualties relative to their opponents and other allies I'd say they did pretty well, especially when you consider they were mostly on the strategic offensive, which increases casualties normally. If you look at their casualties caused per round of ammunition, they look really good. If we look only at famous screw ups, well, a lot of that is par for the course even for the 'varsity team'. Especially early on in the US Civil war, a lot of the battles were total clusters.

French Crimean War Casualties: 95,000 dead (10,240 killed in action, 20,000 died of wounds, and some 60,000 died of disease)
British Crimean War Casualties: 21,097 dead (2,755 killed in action, 2,019 died of wounds, and 16,323 died of disease)

Sardinian Crimean War Casualties: 2,050 dead

Ottoman Crimean War Casualties: 175,300 dead

Russian Crimean War Casualties: 450,015 dead

These casualty figures aren't particularly impressive, considering the size of the armies engaged. It's true the Allies were on the strategic offensive, but the biggest battles of the war were sieges, and beating back Russian counterattacks. The logistical, and command failures of the Allies were scandalous. The British Army was by design essentially Wellington's Army with rifles. The French Army was more modern in it's approach. The Union Navy was able to support it's Army on the Atlantic, and Gulf Coasts far better then the Allies did their Armies in the Crimea. The Union War, and Navy Departments had their act together better then the Allies did in the Crimea.

As the memory of the "Charge of the Light Brigade" demonstrates, the war became an iconic symbol of logistical, medical and tactical failures and mismanagement. Public opinion in Britain was outraged at the logistical and command failures of the war; the newspapers demanded drastic reforms, and parliamentary investigations demonstrated the multiple failures of the Army.[93] The reform campaign was not well organised, and the traditional aristocratic leadership of the Army pulled itself together, and blocked all serious reforms. No one was punished. The outbreak of the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857 shifted attention to the heroic defence of British interest by the army, and further talk of reform went nowhere.[94] The demand for professionalisation was achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering and publicising modern nursing while treating the wounded.[12]:469–71