What Would a Confederate "Fabian Strategy" Have Looked Like?

The thing about a Fabian strategy is that in modern warfare, what you are really talking about is guerrilla warfare of the Mao Zedong Chinese Civil War or Vo Nguyen Giap of the French Indochina War or Tito's Partisan warfare. The enemy advances. You retreat. The enemy camps. You harass and ambush. The enemy withdraws. You attack.
If you are going to do that, it helps a lot if you have spent a year or two before hand building a guerrilla infrastructure behind the enemy's lines, not just your own. And that's hard to do (but not impossible) if you have to mobilize immediately after seceding.

The problem is that for such guerillas outside support is almost a must. Vietnamese received aid from Chinese and Soviets. Chinese could retreat to areas Japan couldn't occupy (force/space ratio).

If you look at successful guerillas they either had outside support and safe havens which their enemy couldn't take.

For CSA to have this it would require Union to occupy part of the country and then decide that for some reason or another woun't occupy rest, which could provide shelter to guerillas and produce required equipment which would be shipped to said guerillas.
 
Getting that to happen when Confederate sympathy outside the eleven states that broke away is between a distinct minority and a minimal presence is going to be somewhat less than feasible.

Even ignoring other obstacles to the Confederates embracing guerrilla warfare.
 
If you look at successful guerillas they either had outside support and safe havens which their enemy couldn't take.

I think Jared said something similar about DoD, about the Latino resistance.

But yes, if Johnston or another general had NOT retreated in Georgia: Could Sherman have walked around and caught them in a pocket?
 
Getting that to happen when Confederate sympathy outside the eleven states that broke away is between a distinct minority and a minimal presence is going to be somewhat less than feasible.

Even ignoring other obstacles to the Confederates embracing guerrilla warfare.

Quite. Unlike Japan Union could (and eventually did) occupy entire CSA (or so close to it it didn't matter) so CSA couldn't do what Mao did. And considering other countries wouldn't help CSA as a state they wouldn't help CSA guerillas either.
 

Dirk_Pitt

Banned
Quite. Unlike Japan Union could (and eventually did) occupy entire CSA (or so close to it it didn't matter) so CSA couldn't do what Mao did. And considering other countries wouldn't help CSA as a state they wouldn't help CSA guerillas either.

Yes, the goal of the Confederacy was to be seen as a legit and independent nation-state. A Guerilla strategy would be counterproductive politically.
 
People are being a bit too literal, methinks. I half-expect people to assume by the use of the phrase "Fabian Strategy" that I'm insinuating that the Confederacy should have fought with spears and shields rather than Enfield muskets. I'm simply referring to a strategy of general avoidance of major battles (especially offensive ones) in an effort to avoid high casualties and seek to wear down the Union will to fight. In other words, the opposite of Robert E. Lee's general strategy, which was to destroy the main Union field army in a decisive battle.

There are several problems with a Fabian strategy.

First, it is often politically unacceptable and demoralizing. It is usually only applied after repeated military disasters when people realize that there is no alternative. For the Confederacy to apply it off the bat might collapse the entire war effort.

Second, it concedes significant sections of the Confederacy to the Union immediately. Although many people don't want to admit it, there is significant support for the Union throughout the Confederacy, particularly in the Appalachia country. Without significant Confederate resistance, the Union is likely to occupy all of Tennessee, Arkanasas, northern Alabama and Mississippi and much of Louisiana far quicker than it did IOTL. Having access to eastern Tennessee, northern Alabama, and some of Arkansas so quickly allows the Union to recruit from those areas far quicker.

Third, at some point, you have to fight. The Confederacy mainly fought a defensive war anyway. So what battles are they exactly avoiding? What do they give up and where do they choose to fight? It's hard to see how exactly the Fabian strategy is to be implemented.

Fourth, the purpose of the Fabian startegy is to preserve your strength until such time help arrives either by a foreign power or by building your own army. It worked for Rome because Hannibal could not get significant reinforcements. It worked for Washington because the British could only send so many troops, and eventually French entry into the war prevented that. The Confederacy does not have those advantages. The Union is right next door. The Union can keep sending in more and more armies. Whatever they seize, they'll likely keep. Unlike the Carthaginians or Redcoats, the Union has significant support. Factoring in pro-Union whites and slaves, something like 50% of the total population is for them. They can recruit plenty of local help. And even among the loyal Confederate population, there will always be a significant collaborationist sentiment once occupation happens. Furthermore, when the Union advances, they deny the Confederates the recruiting pool for their own armies. The hotbeds of Confederate fire eaters are those states with the lowest white population and lowest industry. Once Europe sees the Confederates surrender huge swatches of territory without heavy opposition, they are even less likely to intervene than they were previously. Instead of buying time to strengthen their forces, the Confederates actually do worse.

Fifth, the guerilla has been vastly overrated. Guerilla forces, alone, are almost always defeated. Guerillas only work when combined with a real army that fights conventional battles.

Sixth, avoiding the battles that gave Robert E Lee high casualties also means the the Union avoids high casualties. Seeing Confederate armies retreat, earlier liberation of Union strongholds, and light Union casualties erodes much of the anti-Lincoln and anti-war sentiment in the North.

I don't see the elements of a successful Fabian strategy being present. There are certainly battles the Confederates would be better off avoiding, but that can only be known with hindsight.
 
Fifth, the guerilla has been vastly overrated. Guerilla forces, alone, are almost always defeated. Guerillas only work when combined with a real army that fights conventional battles.

Minor nitpick: I think it was Mao who said that guerilals had to eventually evolve into conventional army and kick occupier out. Which is what Viet Minh did.

Granted situation changed in 1980s but that's another matter.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Minor nitpick: I think it was Mao who said that guerilals had to eventually evolve into conventional army and kick occupier out. Which is what Viet Minh did.

Granted situation changed in 1980s but that's another matter.
That's what Mao did too: the PLA of 1949 was guinely a much better conventional army with tanks and artillery than the nationalists.

Kentucky and Southern Indiana and Ohio (which is hilly and contained quite a few "copperhead" Southern sympathizers) would have been the best place to organize an infrastructure like this, where Northern supply lines could be cut and the Union forced to devote valuable troop strength to chasing guerrillas through the hills--and even dealing with terrorist attacks and sabotage farther north in Union sympathetic territory. But this could have worked all over Maryland as well. Just because President Buchanan could call the Massachusetts Militia out to prevent the Maryland Legislature from voting for secession would not mean that sympathy for secession would be any less in Maryland--or that given proper organization, Marylanders would not aid Confederate guerrillas in cutting Washington DC's supply lines by blowing up bridges across the Susquehanna and repeatedly ambushing and derailing trains between Washington and Baltimore and between Baltimore and Philadelphia. And in Delaware and even southern New Jersey as well.
The total % of population supporting the confederacy just doesn't match up to the amount needed for a serious guerilla resistance: this is the sort of thing which is kind of a nuisance but not a serious military threat.

OTOH guerilla resistance during the war in Confederate territory is even more improbable especially in the deep south since like 50% of the population at least hates your guts.
 

katchen

Banned
I think Douglas Blackmon argues in his work Slavery By Another Name that in effect a Fabian/guerrilla strategy was exactly the strategy the South employed---after about 1872. What Southern White "redeemers" and "red shirts" did basically was outlast Northern occupation and wait for the North to a) tire of occupying the South b) for Northern whites to discover that they were at most ambivalent about African-Americans possessing civil and political rights and at the very least did not consider African-Americans to be the equal of white people c) for white Americans to fear Chinese coolie labor, which was the alternative to African American re-enslaved labor to work plantations in the South, and to pass "oriental exclusion acts --passed by 1881 and d) for Northern white industrialists to become up in arms about white labor union agaitation in the North and demand that federal troops be withrawn from the South to suppress the strikes.
When these conditions were met, whites moved through terrorism against African American militias and moved to suppress African Americans from exercising civil and political rights--which was successful over the period of the 1880s and 1890s and 1900s. And in that way, African Americans were effectively reduced once again to the status of slaves, first by making criminals of them on legal pretexts so that the criminal forced labor exception to the 13th Amendment could be used to enslave them and then by creating the fact of debt peonage through sharecropping; a method which was also used to control many poor whites as well.
Effectively, this was a Fabian strategy to endure and outlast Northern occupation by building an infrastructure and shadow government.
 
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