WI: The Confederacy fights more as an insurgency than a standing army?

Is it possible that the southern states could have decided to combat the Union forces through sabotage, assassination, and raids on Federal assets, organizing their soldiers into Guerrilla bands, rather than a large, conventional 19th century Army, the way they did IOTL?

After all, they had a definite home field advantage.
 
Is it possible that the southern states could have decided to combat the Union forces through sabotage, assassination, and raids on Federal assets, organizing their soldiers into Guerrilla bands, rather than a large, conventional 19th century Army, the way they did IOTL?

After all, they had a definite home field advantage.

The problem with that idea it in no way helps them to preserve slavery which was a big goal of the war. If you simply allow the Union Army to waltz its way south the South will hemorrhage slaves from the get go.
 
Weren't the Sotherners all want to potray themselves as gentlemen? And who would be the leader of this guerrilla tactics? Stonewall Jackson?
 
I agree with what wanderingwanderer said, they see themselves as gentlemen, but also they need the world to see them as gentlemen. If they try and wage a guerilla war they are more unlikely to be accepted as a legitimate state (kinda like how monarchs used to hate giving support to rebels, even if they were on the same side as it screwed with the whole idea of don't revolt against your legitimate ruler). They were desperate for foreign support and waging a guerilla war would probably have completely ruined any chance they had of getting help from other countries.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
...they thought they could win conventionally, or with a conventional army and foreign assistance, like George Washington.

With a substantial portion of the country's military might and disproportionate share of the trained officer corps, the CSA both applied the training its leaders knew, and thought it had a strong chance. After all, they were at a much stronger starting point than the Minutemen and George Washington.

The only guerrilla armies historically have been ones that thought they had no conventional chance.

Plus, even Washington and the Continental Army was a mainly conventional force, not an insurgent/assassin force.

In both cases, the American Revolution and the Confederacy, the rebels wanted tho protect their way of life, in which property and orderly communities were a major part.

Going guerrilla means letting the enemy march all over your country, messing with your land, your women and your slaves.
 
I think the most plausible way (and probably most likely to succeed) of doing such a thing would be for the Confederates to dig in in important towns and force the Union troops to besiege them, meanwhile sending the rest of their army to harass their enemies' supply lines. You'd probably have to find some way of butterflying away their cocky sense of superiority to the Yankees first, though.
 
An old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

***

Since there has been much discussion in this newsgroup on guerilla warfare
as a strategy for the CSA, I think some of you may be interested in the
historian Gary W. Gallagher's extensive comments on this subject in his
chapter "Military Strategy" in his recent book *The Confederate War*
(Harvard University Press 1997).

Gallagher is highly critical of two strategies that are nowadays often
proposed as being better for the CSA to have followed than the one it
actually pursued. These two are a defensive war and a guerilla war. I
will summarize his objections to the "defensive war" strategy in another
post (suffice it here to say that he doesn't think Confederate public
opinion would have stood for it--even Lee was criticized when he seemed
"timid"--or that it could have won the CSA the European recognition it
desperately wanted; he also notes that strategically defensive campaigns
often drained manpower at a rate almost equal to that lost by the side on
the offensive).

Gallagher thinks that the idea of guerilla warfare as the principal
strategy of the South is the product not of a careful analysis of
conditions in the South of the 1860's but of romantic idealization of
Mao/Che/Giap "people's war" in the 1960's and 1970's. "Such a policy would
have required white southerners to repudiate their obvious military leaders
in 1861, embrace a type of war at best marginally related to their martial
tradition and for which they felt no affinity, and most important, accept
the risk of disrupting their social and economic control over 3.5 million
ensalved black people." (p. 141)

Gallagher thinks it totally unrealistic to expect Southereners to shun West
Point-trained men, who had won numerous brevets for gallantry and merit
during the Mexican War, and virtually all of whom would have found guerilla
warfare anathema, in favor of unknown and untried men who would command
small bands of partisans. For the younger Southern officers, likewise "the
meaning of soldierly duty meant a traditional military command, a
disciplined army, and the goal of final victory on the field of battle--not
a desperate resort to guerilla warfare. (p. 144) And these men formed the
core of strength in Lee's army and every other Confederate force of
substance throughout the war.

Furthermore, guerilla warfare would have been inappropriate for the sort of
nation the Confederate leaders wanted to establish. They wanted the CSA to
take its place among the roster of recognized western states, which
required the creation of formal governmental institutions. Jefferson
Davis, in his inaugural address, called for a "well-instructed and
disciplined army" largely because he wanted to convinvce European
governments that the Confederacy was more than an amorphous collection of
insurrectionaries. Harassment of federal armies, rather than victories like
Lee's in 1862 and 1863, could not have persuaded Europeans that the CSA
seemed destined to achieve independence (as Saratoga had pointed the way
toward American independence in 1777).

Moreover, a guerilla strategy would have required immediate concession of
considerable territory to the Federals--something that was politically
unacceptable. Gallagher quotes Russell F. Weigley's observation that "No
part of the Confederacy's frontiers, except possibly parts of the
trans-Mississippi West, was...so lacking in political influence that
President Davis" could simply write it off. Also, consider the effects on
morale. Irregular units could not have supplied battlefield victories as
spectacular as Lee's of 1862 and 1863 which did so much to keep Confederate
morale alive. There would have been no sense of building toward victory
and independence. Missouri, where conventional armies did play a secondary
role, simply suffered from brutality and reprisal without any compensating
progress toward Confederate independence.

Then of course there was the danger a guerillla strategy would have
presented to slavery--this has already been mentioned in this newsgroup.
Guerilla warfare would have accelerated the process by which slaves came
into contact with Federal forces. Not a very pleasant prospect for white
Southerners, who, even before the Emancipation Proclamation, were convinced
that the Yankees were a bunch of John Browns out to incite slave
insurrections. (To show how much this concerned the Confederates: the
magistrates of Pasquotank County, North Carolina, called out the local
militia in 1862 *not* to fight the Yankees who had entered Albermarle
Sound, but to increase slave patrols! p. 150)

Also, Gallagher cites the study of Steven Ash on the occupied
South--according to Ash attempts at organized partisan warfare in these
areas were generally disappointing. A few individuals grabbed their guns
and headed into the woods determined to wage guerilla warfare, but the
citizenry on the whole declined to do so. Wars, they thought, were
something for well-organized armies.

Finally, Gallagher points out that successful people's wars have benefitted
from dependable outside support. (Thus the British aid to the guerilla
forces fighting Napoleon, Soviet and Chinese aid to North Vietnam and the
Viet Cong during the Vietnam war, etc.) The CSA would find no such ally
for their partisan warfare.

If adopting guerilla warfare at the beginning was unthinkable, adopting it
once conventional warfare had failed would not save the CSA. As Lee
explained to Davis after Appomattox, "A partisan war may be continued, and
hostilities protracted, causing individual suffering and the devastation of
the country [not a bad description of what happened in Missouri, Gallagher
remarks elsewhere] but I see no prospect by that means of achieving a
separate independence." (p. 143)
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/DtzfPXU_WPA/A2eH62LrMngJ
 

RousseauX

Donor
Is it possible that the southern states could have decided to combat the Union forces through sabotage, assassination, and raids on Federal assets, organizing their soldiers into Guerrilla bands, rather than a large, conventional 19th century Army, the way they did IOTL?

After all, they had a definite home field advantage.

It doesn't work because there is

1) No foreign sponsor of the rebellion able to smuggle weapons in so they are gonna run out of weapons eventually

and

2) More importantly, I think people really overestimates how strong secessionist sentiments were in the south at the time. Many of the states seceded based on very narrow votes, for goals that are ultimately pretty pointless for the ordinary white Confederate.

Without an open war and army capable of defending Confederate territory, then chances are secessionist tendencies die down pretty fast.

3) The solution to this is really really simple, just do the equivalent of burning the Shenandoah and March to the sea, sure your guerrillas can launch raids and stuff but good luck with starving to death because all your farms got burned down.

Also the scenario you are describing is more or less what actually happened OTL during and after the reconstruction. The net result might be pretty similar, the federal government effectively loses most authority it has, it then transfers enough bribes to state governments to stay somewhat compliant, while Democrat controlled state legislatures/governors are the real power.
 

RousseauX

Donor
I think the most plausible way (and probably most likely to succeed) of doing such a thing would be for the Confederates to dig in in important towns and force the Union troops to besiege them, meanwhile sending the rest of their army to harass their enemies' supply lines. You'd probably have to find some way of butterflying away their cocky sense of superiority to the Yankees first, though.

This doesn't work because too many important objectives are right on the border, if the CSA was like 2-3x larger geographically and the important parts are in alabama or something it might work. But since your chief agricultural and industrial regions are like 90 miles from the border trying to do this just means you lose those regions and the war.
 
In addition to the things posted above there is also the fact guerilla operations are not as likely to be successful as most modern people think. In very few cases has a guerilla army driven out an occupying nation without some kind of safe haven or foreign support. Neither of these apply to the CSA.

In addition, the most successful campaign in recent history (Vietnam) was propelled in part by the American unwillingness to strike anything to stop guerillas, and the American public's distaste for the war. Insurgent tactics in Afghanistan and Iraq benefitted additionally by the very casualty sensitive views of modern countries. The Iraq war led to about 5,000 coalition dead.

The American Civil War inflicted 365,000 dead on the Union alone. What's more, Union commanders will not have little things like laws of war* in place to stop them from destroying guerillas.

*Please note, I am NOT trying to say rules of war like decent treatment of prisoners, not burning your enemy's country down, etc. are bad things; ONLY that Union commanders will not be operating the way a modern general would.
 
2) More importantly, I think people really overestimates how strong secessionist sentiments were in the south at the time. Many of the states seceded based on very narrow votes...

It has always amused me to see libertarians championing the CSA, because even besides the issue of slavery, the CSA was an extremely coercive and repressive government.

A very considerable part of the South's population was indifferent or hostile to secession. The CSA's power was based in large part on its ability to coerce obedience to its orders from these hostile or indifferent residents of its states, and to repress the Unionist minorities in these states. That ability rested in turn on its status as the government in power, with courts, prisons, police, and an army to back them up - and the USA's power kept far away.

Resisting only as guerrillas would give all that away. Union troops would penetrate to every corner of the South, and in cooperation with Southern Unionists, maintain and enforce US authority, nullifying the proclamations of secession. Indifferent or neutral Southerners would go along, recognizing the same government as before, which had the big battalions.

Fanatical secessionists could assassinate Union soldiers and officials, and local "traitors", but they would be subject to arrest and hanging, and their property would be confiscated. (The most fanatical secessionists were men of property, and that would not be attractive.)

In short - that cock wasn't going to fight.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
As has been pointed out, that is pretty much the strategy

Is it possible that the southern states could have decided to combat the Union forces through sabotage, assassination, and raids on Federal assets, organizing their soldiers into Guerrilla bands, rather than a large, conventional 19th century Army, the way they did IOTL?

After all, they had a definite home field advantage.

As has been pointed out, that is pretty much the strategy the rebels adopted in theaters as diverse as the Unorganized Territory, Missouri, and Kentucky after 1862, and significant parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Virginia after 1863 or so. The same holds true for the rebel operations against the north (the raids into Ohio and/or Vermont, for example) late in the war.

It didn't work in those areas, even with what amounted to a "sponsor" in the rebel Richmond government.

Such a strategy would have been ever less likely to achieve anything in the absence of Davis' government, and the military forces and war economy Richmond commanded.

Best,
 
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