If The Confederate Armies Dissolve Into Guerrilla Bands, Could the Union Have Still Won?
- Thread starter frustrated progressive
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one thing that helped the nation heal would still be in place... the ability to go somewhere else and start over. Specifically, the west. The years after the ACW saw a lot of people migrate to both the western territories and parts of the south that were thinly populated as well (there was a short 'go south' period right along with the 'go west' one)... southerners ruined by the war, northerners who didn't want to go back to the boredom of their parents' farm or a factory job. Both sides went, they mixed and mingled, and most of them got over the war. In this scenario, I wonder if the 'go west' movement wouldn't be even stronger, if it means you can get away from 'those damn guerillas stirring up all that trouble'...
I doubt it, I think the guerilla war wouldn't have lasted long even if it started . The US government would be ruthless and Southerners were already dispirited.
The South wasn't as dispirited as some have claimed; I've read a lot of letters, diaries, and newspapers from Staunton VA, and references to low morale are pretty much all after the surrender, rather than the tribulations of the war. This was a community that was getting both barrels of the war for the duration, and even after multiple rounds of devastation, Southern women (critical agents of mobilization in the South) were bitter they had lost the chance to continue the struggle another four years on top of the past four. Union destruction inspired fiercer resistance, rather than breaking their will; the point of a strategy of annihilation like the Union pursued was to make the South's will irrelevant. This isn't to say the US couldn't succeed in its strategy of annihilation if the South switched to guerrilla strategy, but in doing so, it would do irreparable damage to the constitutional and republican ideals they were fighting for.
Southern women didn't form one iota of the Southern armies so their opinions were pretty damned irrelevant as far as continuing the fight goes. From what I've read, the civilians, especially upper-class types who most of these quoted women probably were, were much more eager to keep fighting than the actual soldiers and I've even heard that many Union soldiers despised the Southern civilians for the poor treatment they gave to Southern vets for surrendering. As for what was going on during the actual war, even Jefferson Davis acknowledged that before Appomattox 2/3rds of his armies were AWOL. That's not the sign of an armed force eager to continue the struggle. Also, morale in the Confederate armies dropped quite sharply after a couple years of war. The "Twenty-Negro Law" didn't inspire confidence or patriotism in an army mostly made up of the poor, a huge portion of whom were conscripts. And these rich men who didn't lift a rifle in defense of the country they so ardently supported were exactly the type people who'd have the most to lose in a guerrilla war anyways, they were never as loyal to the Southern confederacy as they were to their socioeconomic system that kept them above any sort of rough living or manual labor.
There are a few assumptions to unpack here.
I find the assertion that civilian will doesn't matter for a guerrilla war very interesting. For my part, I was addressing the idea that the Southern population was war weary and unwilling to support a protracted struggle, and there's no shortage of evidence that weighs heavily against that assertion. Soldiers were by and large mobilized for the struggle by social pressure; most of the Army of Northern Virginia actually signed on before conscription, though admittedly the government's more coercive measures had a role in keeping them in the ranks past their original terms of enlistment.
Tying into this, there's vanishingly little evidence that the exemptions for slaveowners caused much of a stir in the Confederacy. Not only was the ANV disproportionately wealthy and slave-owning compared to the base population, but in the thousands upon thousands of soldiers' correspondence Joe Glatthaar read, he could count on maybe two hands the number of complaints about conscription exemptions. If anything, in his judgement, they wanted more exemptions to keep order with the slave population.
You fundamentally don't understand the interplay of the US and CSA's objectives. The Confederacy was established to preserve the socioeconomic system you speak of, and by this time, the US was officially committed to wiping it out. Loyalty to one is loyalty to the other; the planters cannot give up on the Confederacy without losing slavery. They have the most to lose by admitting defeat, not by protracting the struggle; you cannot make someone shoot themselves by holding a gun on them when they still feel they have the strength to resist.
This is not to say the US couldn't eventually suppress a people's war in the South, but it would require long term occupation by a large standing army and abandoning American ideals of constitutionalism and republicanism with continued violations of southerners' rights as US citizens to fight the insurrection. The US had observed as European armies cracked down on peoples' movements during the Revolutions of 1848, and would now have its armies on the same side of the barricade.
So the Johnston's opinions I cited means nothing, the fact Bedford Forrest when the war was thinking of going to Mexico instead of submitting but didn't say a word about starting a guerilla war means nothing, the fact that RE LEE thought guerilla war was unsustainable means nothing, a few letters you found in Staunton, VA means everything!
Slavery will be dead anyways if you resort to guerilla warfare as the slaves will leave when you try hiding in the bush.
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No, although it could be used as a threat. The fight was over and everyone knew it. Even Lee's forces were deserting in huge numbers to the point he was clearly worried about it months before Appomattox. The fight gone out of the Confederacy after Lincoln's re-election.
And by 1865 the majority of that army was either dead, wounded, or just gone back home. That's not the basis of a threatening guerrilla force.
I'm going to need a convincing citation on that, I've read easily available sources like Company Aytch that suggest otherwise, hence the popular phrase "rich man's war, poor man's fight". Certainly the rate of desertion did not drop after that law was passed.
I don't misunderstand their objectives at all. The Confederacy was dead. Trying to bring it back by fighting a guerrilla war is plainly not a smart way of keeping slaves since a guerrilla ain't gonna be watching their plantation when they're fighting and they can't take their slaves on the war path with them either like they did in the conventional army. Far more efficient to instead just try and pass laws that propagate slavery in all but name as they did IOTL. Four years of bloody total war was enough to convince even most ardent Southron fire-eaters that military methods ain't in their favor.
Exactly, a guerilla war isn't going to cause the CSA to rise from the dead. The Confederacy is completely overrun by that point outside of Texas and there is no way of stopping its fall at the point. There is nowhere you can keep your slaves. There is no way you can stop them from running off. There is no longer long range slave patrols, the army will help the slaves and not you because the only army left is the US Army. How do you prevent them from running off short of killing them or maiming them which defeats the purpose and that is only viable if you are armed, they are not and they don't outnumber you by too much? Better to have your ex-slaves work as serfs and get something out of them rather than hide in the woods and losing them all. Keeping even a part of your plantation while turning slaves into serf will produce cotton for you hiding in the woods will not.
You also have to take into account the 800 pound gorilla in the room, yeah I know Hah Hah, what if Booth still kills Lincoln? With everything that Stanton did with the full acceptance and support of the powers that be IOTL, imagine what would happen if there is a active Confederate guerilla movement in the south. You would see people being subjected to all kinds of things.
On my mother's side there were two brothers, both in the Mississippi Volunteer Cavalry Corps. Both fought throughout the war but in late 1864 one brother deserted and went home to help attempt to feed his family and his brother's while his brother continued to fight. It wasn't what they wanted but their family farms were all but overgrown and there was little to eat. It was the only way to keep someone in the fight...
Yes, that is another thing the Union Army can easily say "Get back to lives , remain peaceful and obey the law and we will give you and your family rations. If you rebel you and your family can starve, the choice is yours." Meanwhile the guerillas are the ones robbing you of your food as they need to do so to live. How many are going to join the guerillas if they know if they rebel their wife and children will starve but will be fed if they remain quiet?
The James-Younger gang, which emerged from Bloody Bill Anderson´s Guerrilla lost support and regressed into a gang of ordinary robbers.
Yep, and that is the problem. I am not in the habit of quoting CSA generals but in this case they are right and Lee was right here
He turned out to be right, the only thing they would have turned into is bandits. Outlaws fit only to be hanged according to most people of those times.RE Lee said:
Lee was right. Without the Confederate government to support them, guerillas would have ended up preying on the people of the South. Most of the best areas for guerilla activity were Unionist, so Confederate guerillas would be actively opposed by the populace there. And even in more sympathtic areas, the black people would almost certainly report the guerillas to the Union forces.
Saphroneth
Banned
I'm trying to look through this, and as far as I can tell this was a sentiment at least as strong in the North as in the South. (Hence the New York Draft Riots.)
From the review of Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia found here:
Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia: A Statistical Portrait of the Troops Who Served under Robert E. Lee (review). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/public...e_Troops_Who_Served_under_Robert_E_Lee_review [accessed Aug 5, 2017].