An old soc.history.what-if post of mine:
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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)
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