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Southern military strategy civil war
What are the significant turning points that lead to the civil war
Thr turning point of the civil war 123
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Led by Jefferson Davis The Southern strategy early in the Civil War entailed a few different aspects. The South was the largest supplier of cotton to Europe. Producing 700 million pounds of the 900 million pounds Europe used. The South felt if the cotton supply to Europe was interrupted the economic need would make Britain an ally. The South was also outnumbered almost two to one. They new they had to minimize their limitations, while maximizing there Strengths. Avoiding big bloody battles that would certainly decimate the army, Staying home letting the fight come to them and outlasting the Unions will to fight.
Lincoln took the divide and conquer approach putting a military in Virginia while also sending the military troops through the Mississippi
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Valley. 2 The Union Believed in the fight they also believed they had many advantages. Population, industry, standing army, standing navy, the largest military academy in the nation, far greater wealth and land area. They felt far superior than the South. The Union felt the South didn't have any advantages at all other than the Union's unwillingness to use their best officers like Grant at first. Mainly the South had 2 advantages. First the South for the most part was fighting a defensive war and could pick the ground on which to fight. The reason this is an advantage is because you can pick an area where you can fire at the enemy and the element of suprise, knowing the terrain, and usual weather conditions. Second was the fact that the majority of Union officers were southern and so when southern states seceded the officers went to defend their homes. 3 There were many small fights during the first year of the Cival War.
Battle of Fort Sumter is where the war started. Fort Sumter was in South Carolina however the Union had control of the Fort. On April 12th 1861 Jefferson Davis instructed his troops to take Fort Sumter. The First Battle of Bull Run/First Battle of Manassas Called bull run by the Union and Manassas by the South was a bloody battle where about 4000 total soldiers lost their live the majority of those where Union soldiers. Battle of Hatteras Inlet Batterie was one of the few victories that the Union had in the first year of the war, losing only three soldiers compared to about eight hundred Southern soldiers. Thew South was winning the war. The leadership was …show more content…
better. 4 The Battle of Antietam, was General Robert E Lee’s attempt to bring the fight to the North. Lee was invading Maryland and felt if he could win this battle it would remove Maryland from the Union. It was the bloodiest and deadliest day in the war with over Six thousand soldiers dead and many more wounded. With the win for the Union it gave President Lincoln the victory he needed to deliver the emancipation Proclimation. Many would sway stopping lees invasion of the North, here is what aaas the turning point in the war. Robert Ressetar 5 The main Economic issue facing the south during the civil war was The Federal blockade prevented them from carrying out trade, particularly in cotton, overseas.
Cotton was the South's main source of income, so to lose that was an incredible blow to the economy. The South felt before the war they would be able to use the cotton as a way to gain alliance with Europe. Europe, nor any other countries ever recognized the Confederate States of America a true Confederation. The King Cotton diplomacy was a big reason. where the South believed they would get help from Britain they dId not. Britain found other avenues for cotton like India and
Egypt. 6 The Northern economy was helped by the war. It experienced a railroad boom as railroads were built with federal government support. This was the most important change in the Northern economy as it led to westward expansion and to a much better transportation grid for the North's economy. Since most of the Civil War was fought in the South, parts of it were ravaged, by occupying forces who did not make any particular effort to conserve resources, by burning, and by other forms of destruction. After all, it was a war. So, in addition to losing its free labor, the South had to do a significant amount of rebuilding.
South Carolina had many important battles fought on its territory, Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter is an island in the Charleston Harbor, its main purpose for being built was to protect the harbor. The Confederacy felt like the Charleston harbor would be a key port in this area. When the first shots were fired, at Fort Sumter, by the Confederate soldiers this began one of the darkest periods in American history.
The North entered the Civil War with many distinct assets that rendered them more competent than the Southern states. Those assets consisted of having more men, more financial stability, economic strength, and far reaching transportation systems. According to the book: Why the North Won the Civil War by Donald, David Herbert, and Richard Nelson the primary cause to the North’s success was given by, “the vast superiority of the North in men and materials, in instruments of production, in communication facilities, in business organization and skill – and assuming for the sake of the argument no more than rough quality in statecraft and generalship – the final outcome seems all but inevitable.” In many ways the north, during the Civil, was more economically dominant than the South
The Differences between the North and South on the Eve of the Civil War On the eve of the Civil war, both the North and the South had differences, both minor and large. The main difference was Slavery where both sides had a completely dissimilar view point on how the treat black people an example of this is the Missouri compromise in 1820. There were also differences in the rate of industrialisation and Education. The largest difference between the North and the South was the number of free black people. The North had hardly any slaves; however the South had around 4 million slaves.
The advantages of the Union going into the war are numerous. The system of government had long been established in the North and along with that came the benefits of a treasury and a prepared army and navy. The South had no preexisting system of government or infrastructure prior to the war. While the North was preparing to fight, the South faced the issue of jumpstarting a nation. They were charged with creating institutions and a culture separate from the North that did not rely on slavery as its center. That is, it was not enough for the Confederacy to merely be the Union with slavery; they needed to create a sense of nationalism through an autonomous and cohesive Southern identity. The war effort united Southerners under a unity of purpose in the early days of fighting, but after 1863, as the war waged on and years passed, Southerners began to lose faith in the Confederacy (Perman, 229).
D. W. Griffith's film "Birth of a Nation" shows that the South fought the war not only to protect slavery, but also to preserve a whole culture, a way of life. Their wealth and identity belonged to the land they lived on. Southerners fought to protect sovereignty, pride, identity, and their decision to secede which was under attack by a despot - President Lincoln. Few of the southerners could give up their culture without a fight.
The conservative stands Lincoln originally held were broken with the Emancipation Proclamation, causing a massive internal struggle in the South to bring them down. This is why the North had already won to the extent of Lincoln’s conservative political stands. “Having taken an oath to preserve and defend the Constitution, which protected slavery, “I did not consider that I had a right to touch the ‘State’ institution of ‘Slavery’ until all other measures for restoring the Union had failed….”” (Who Freed The Slaves, pg 203) The attrition strategy was halted with the mental conversion of the war being a moral war and the internal divisions in the South would finally clinch victory for the North. However all other advantages were possessed by the North and therefore the North had won the Civil War before it began to the extent of Lincoln’s conservative political stands.
Why did the southern states believe they could win the civil war? The southern states, known as the Confederacy were very confident going into this war that they could successfully defend their rights' and their way of life. They had many reasons for being so confident. First, the southern leaders were sure the north was not going to have a full-scale military conflict. They thought that a compromise and peace agreement could be reached after a short period of fighting. Second, the south was going to fight a defensive war. Third, the southern lifestyle made them familiar with firearms and horseback riding. Therefore they would be better soldiers than the northerners. Fourth, the south had a great source of wealth in its cotton exports and felt they would be able to fund the war. Last, the south thought that France and Britain would come to its aid. The south didn't want to defeat the north they wanted a compromise. Therefore, the north would not have the authority to govern them. The south did not have to win the war, it just had to keep the north from winning. On March 7, 1861 Jefferson Davis selected John Forsyth, A. B. Roman, and Martin J. Crawford to represent the Confederacy in a meeting with Lincoln's administration. Not trying two overpower anyone, the Confederate leaders said they simply wanted to be left alone. The Confederates thought to defend its region from being taken over and to keep its armies from destruction they would have to fight a very well planned out defensive war. The Confederate armies did not have to invade the north to win that kind of war. They need only to endure long enough to force the north to the decision that th...
The right military strategy is the key to a war. In order for the South to win the war, they would have needed to apply what is now called a blitzkrieg strategy. This would have been a quick decisive attack on the North to follow up its early victories of Manassas in the East and at Wilson's Creek and Lexington in the West.
When the war began and the union blockaded all their ports the south was out of luck. They had very little industrial workers and manufactured goods compared to the north so during the blockade they could not make their own weapons or food other than corn. (Doc 2) The north had the advantage because they supplied the south with a lot of important items such as cotton-mills and steamships. (Doc 3) They also had better means of transportation. The north had better boats because they had factories equipped to make them and they also had more railroads to transfer weapons and equipment to soldiers. (Doc 1) The north was meant to win from the beginning and even though it took longer than expected they still beat the south and defeated slavery. No one document will tell you that slavery caused the Civil War, but if it had not been for slavery the war would have never
South did, however, have more slaves and more cotton. This was not any sort of military advantage, and merely made it more obvious to the North how desperate the South was to keep its peculiar institution running.
The South was fighting against a government that they thought was treating them unfairly. They believed the Federal Government was overtaxing them, with tariffs and property taxes making their lifestyles even more expensive than they already had been. The North was fighting the Civil War for two reasons, first to keep the Nation unified, and second to abolish slavery. Abraham Lincoln, the commander and chief of the Union or Northern forces, along with many other Northerners, believed that slavery was not only completely wrong, but it was a great humiliation to America. Once we can see that with these differences a conflict would surely occur, but not many had predicted that a full-blown war would breakout.
Shenton, James P. The Reconstruction: A Documentary History of the South after the War: 1865
... yet they strongly believed that they could be victorious. Despite numerous disadvantages, the South entered the war with some important advantages. The South adopted a strategy like that of George Washington in the American Revolution. The plan, known as attrition, called for a strategy of winning the war by avoiding losing. That is, the South did not have to match the North's resources, they only needed to avoid full-scale battles and prolong the war making it too costly for their opponents.
the pre-Civil War era, only about 5 percent of white Southern women actually lived on plantations and about half the Southern households owned no slaves at all. Still, slavery defined everything about life in the South, including the status of white women. Southern culture orbited around the strong father figure, simultaneously ruling and caring for his dependents - Mary Hamilton Campbell was struck when her servant Eliza refererred to Campbell's husband as "our master". Black and white women never seemed to develop any sense of common cause, but every Southern female from the plantation wife to the field slave was assinged a role that involved powerlessness and the need of a white man's constant guidance. A Southern slave owner named George Balcombe advised a friend to "Let women and Negroes alone. Leave them in their humility, their grateful affection, ther self-renouncing loyalty, their subordination of the heart, and let it be your study to become worthy to be the object of their sentiments."
The South was at a disadvantage to the North throughout the war. The South was at a lack for manpower during the war, since most of the seamen in the US Navy were from the North and therefore stayed with the Union when the southern states seceded. The South was also found disadvantaged for iron plates for ship armor, since there was only one establishment in the South capable of producing them.