Why did the confederacy fail?

Why did the confederacy fail?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=bFtcLJVN8yg
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ia_Drang
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hamburger_Hill
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khe_Sanh
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Short answer: Union had more resources in general and critically, manpower.

Long answer: Read a book nigger.

Good soldiers, leaders, and national spirit but not the industry and manpower require for a war of that size.

Roughly the same reasons nazi germany lost to the allies

>Rural retards vs Industrialized urban society

It was over before it began.

Read this man's book specifically.


Except the Confederacy weren't being led by a strung out Meth addict who was prone to shitting himself. Nor did they waste valuable resources on impracticable weapons projects and mass murder of an entire ethno-religious group as a national security policy.

They feared the Yankee warrior.

>shelby foote will never narrate your life

>Ignoring draft riots, south sympathizers in the north, all the times the Union nearly gave to their secessionist demands or was ready to sign some abomination that would have let confederacy to be a semi-autonomous part of union (really wonder what that would look like)

I hate totalists like you, I think you find comfort in absolute statements like this because you can't handle chaotic and unpredictable nature of the world.

Because it was a shithole on par with medieval England going against a 19th century industrial behemoth.

They didn't have to win, they just had to make cost of fighting for enemy outweigh any potential political gains. It's surprising how often small nations manage to do just that even in more unfavorable ratio of power.

The Union was superior in almost every metric. There was really no way for the CSA to make up for the sheer economic and material advantage held by the Union at the onset of the war.

This. The CSA was a corgi trying to outbox a gorilla, with predictable results.

Now do the same graph of US vs Vietnam

Because it was almost comically inferior in terms of development and material production. They would've lost no matter how skilled their generals were, and their only path to winning would've been British intervention which was effectively prevented by the Russians.

>thinking the two situations are comparable in almost anyway

Not that guy, but Vietnam was supplied by heavily industrialized USSR and China, wheareas the CSA was facing America alone with no allies.
Also nice Hitler digits.

Or the British Empire vs 13 colonies.
The point is the same, defender can very much take on numerically superior opponent, especially if aggressor's populace doesn't see enemy as immediate threat but they at the same time show determined resistance.

>Vietnam war: North Vietnam+USSR+China+DPRK+Laos
>Revolutionary war: USA+France+Spain
>Civil war: Confederacy alone
I don't know how people can ignore this. If Britain faced the 13 colonies alone, they would've gotten BTFO. Same with Vietnam, where would they be without Soviet and Chinese weaponry, vehicles and ammunition?

Was the civil war actually about slavery?

Are you completely retarded or do you just read everything in context that agrees with your ideas and ignore everything else? Let me spell it out for you: LITTLE GUY > BIG GUY IF BIG GUY DOESN'T CARE THAT MUCH. Imagine being scrawny nerd in a fight with basketball chad so you cover yourself in manure. You do understand that he might let you be because he doesn't want to get his new jersey stained and you are pathetic enough for him to ignore?

>Imagine being scrawny nerd in a fight with basketball chad so you cover yourself in manure.
More like scrawny nerd calling his chad friends to beat up the chad who's been threatening him.

if you read letters of confederate soldiers they mostly talk about liberty

Lee saw himself as a new George Washington. He had limited resources and manpower and was fighting a technically superior enemy. His advantage was that the Union had to win, while the South just had to not lose. He was hoping that in 1864 the war would seem so costly that peace democrats would win the presidency or congress and end the war (like what happened in Vietnam over 100 years later, or like what happened in the British parliament during the revolution).

If you didn't already know, Washington won the revolution in 1782 when the British ruling elite no longer found it beneficial to prosecute the war any longer. Lord North (who had held office since 1770) was replaced as Prime Minister by the opposition leader, Lord Rockingham, and later that year by Lord Shelburne who finalized the peace.

The difference between the revolution and the civil war (or the first revolution and the second revolution if you're from the South), is that Washington had two major advantages that Lee didn't.

The 18th century British Army was not as well led as the 19th century US Army. British Army promotion was based on birth and family standing in England, whereas US Army promotion was based on merit. Both armies could effectively recognize poor generals and sack them in the early years of the war, but only the US Army was able to effectively replace them. The US Army, unlike any army before it, was able to sort through its officer corps to find the one man who could match Lee's military genius, which was Grant. The Imperial British had no such man as Grant.

Washington also had an easier time than Lee because the British were forced to resupply from Canada or Europe, and were essentially operating in a completely hostile theater. The Union however was never far away from its home power base. That's why the US Civil War really can be explained by industrial strength in a way that Vietnam or the American Revolution cannot.

Liberty to own slaves.

yeah

I swear to fucking god you "lose" one "war" ONE GOD DAMN TIME after you've won every other (many) wars and other third world cancerous nations who havent even been in a war bring it up every chance they can

yeah, but it is nice to see that even back then they were internally in denial about that

the us didn't lose in vietnam, it lost in korea.

This video needs to be put on repeat for these threads: youtube.com/watch?v=bFtcLJVN8yg

BUT THEY HAD LIKE 92% OF COTTON, CHECKMATE YANKEE SCUM

>The Imperial British had no such man as Grant.

Cornwallis could've been had he been appointed earlier.

Ironically, he was opposed to the war from the very start and before had warned Parliament not to antagonize the colonists.

>it lost in korea.
>by successfully preserving the existence of South Korea, which had been the point of going to war in the first place

Is that why South Korea still exists?

The CSA actually would have a chance to "win" if a pro-peace candidate had won the 1864 election. All they had to do is to hold ground, inflict losses and avoid being defeated. Too bad Lee, while being a brilliant tactician, was a shitty strategist who didn't understand how to better use the limited resources that were available to him and insisted on being overly aggressive. His decisions to invade the North cost the CSA the only opportunity they had, first by raising Northen moral and then by providing the North with the victory they needed.

It didn't fail—it suffered a military defeat. There is a difference.

the CSA could've also won (arguably) had it been better organized at the onset (and basically preformed a blitzkreig or zerg rush of Maryland and/or Washington DC in the first year or so of the war)

I think they lost after New Orleans was liberated by Farragut, because if they can't hold a port that strategically important they can't hold anything.

Obvious weak moral foundation and resources, etc, manpower, etc.

They decided to wage a war in which almost 4 million of the people in their borders had a vested interest in them loosing. When a war boils down to a question of slavery versus no slavery, things are going to suck for the slavers because a large chunk of their population/economy will want the other side to win. Every plantation the Union army comes across is going to add numerous zealous soldiers to their cause, and there was a vast amount of slave sabotage of the war effort and spying. As I recall even Jefferson Davis' own house slave acted as a secret agent for the Yankees, he listened in on their meetings and would report it directly to the union. Apparently Davis didn't care that he was in the room for important and top secret meetings because he along with most confederates had drank his own kool-aid about blacks liking slavery.

Is that why South Korea survived, gained territory, and currently holds 2/3 of the population of the Korean Peninsula? Why Chinese battle deaths outnumbered American/allied ones 5-1?And why the war almost completely destroyed North Korea due to the USAAF literally running out of targets to bomb? Not to mention it was a significant financial hit to China, which nearly collapsed as a result.

Literally the only way you could possibly stretch it to a "loss" or even a "draw" was if you considered annexing the North to be a primary objective. Which it wasn't, it was a secondary objective. However, annexing the South was EXPLICITLY the primary objective for both the North Koreans and the Chinese (Mao said as much), and that failed beyond all doubt.

Bonekemper argues it's because Lee was too aggressive with the CSA's best field army:

>"The results of Lee's faulty decisions were catastrophic. His army suffered 209,000 casualties- 55,000 more than Grant and more than any other Civil War general. Although Lee's army inflicted 240,000 casualties on its opponents (ratio 1:1.15), 117,000 of those occurred in 1864 and 1865, when Lee was on the defensive and Grant engaged in deliberate war of adhesion (achieving attrition and exhaustion) against the army Lee had fatally depleted in 1862 and 1863. Astoundingly (in light of his reputation), Lee's percentage of killed and wounded suffered by his troops were worse than those of his fellow Confederate commanders." By comparison, "For the entire war, Grant's soldiers incurred about 154,000 casualties (killed, wounded, missing, captured) while imposing about 191,000 casualties on their foes" (ratio of 1:1.26)

>"Had Lee not squandered the Confederacy's limited resources on offensives during the three preceding years, the Confederacy's 1864 opportunity for victory might have been realized. It was Lee's strategies and tactics that dissipated irreplaceable manpower- even in his victories. His army lost at Malvern Hill, Antietam, and Gettysburg. His army took unnecessarily large losses in those defeats, as well as throughout the entire Seven Days Battles."

>"Throughout the Seven Days Battles, Lee's strategy and tactics were extremely aggressive. His strategy was totally offensive. Incredibly, Lee watched thousands of his best troops be slaughtered while charging usually fortified Union positions but did not seem to realize the foolhardiness of such tactics. Lee's Seven Days battle plans were overly complex; he frequently issued vague and discretionary orders to his generals, and then he failed to to supervise their execution through adequate on-the-field command and control."

Because literally everything was in favor of the Unionists. Not just resources, but culturally the North was much more fitted for war as well, with their work ethic and respect for authority and sensibility. The South had the dual problems of everyone acting like they were a king and everyone being lazy, which is discussed at length in "Celtic Ways in the Old South" (though the author of that book comes to a silly conclusion, the anecdotes and data he assembled are sound). This is most obvious in the fact that unlike the Unionists, the Confederate armies barely coordinated their war aims and had terrible communication.

A famous example is the state of Florida refusing to supply Georgia with unused railway equipment, that Georgia sorely needed, escalating to the Governor of Florida calling out his militia to resist by force of arms any attempt by Georgia to appropriate the equipment, because HE and HIS guys needed that equipment. It's HIS, not that other guy's; who gives a shit if they're supposedly part of the same country and cause. He's got gunfire for anyone who disagrees.

> The common soldier actually knowing what they are fighting for
> Opinions of the common soldier on their cause actually mattering.

They rebelled against the half of the country that made guns thinking that without cotton they wouldn't be able to do anything

Depends. Slavery was the driving issue but at the core was the very idea of what the United States actually was going back to the very founding of the country and what the federal government's role in that country was.

>at the core was the very idea of what the United States actually was going back to the very founding of the country
And that core is "does it allow slavery, or are all men free?." Not just the civil war, bit every single major policy decision prior to the war was driven by the one issue.

Interesting, I never heard this argument. I haven't read all that much about the US Civil War but Lee is usually referred to as a strong general. Thanks for sharing

America won the civil war
America lost Korea and Vietnam
Kys

It's actually amazing they endured as long as they did.
Some people here mention Vietnam but you can't compare that, CSA was fighting a conventional war mostly.

America lost Vietnam but didn't lose in Korea. That war started to defend SK from NK. SK still exists.

>America lost Korea
But they didn't.

The answer you will most commonly hear defending secession is that it was about "states' rights," and not slavery. This answer is only partly true, however, because "states' rights" mostly meant "states' rights to decide whether slavery should be legal," but also things like the fact that southern states were being taxed to build railroads in the north and west that didn't benefit the south, and also the tariffs imposed on foreign trade, which mostly affected southern states because they got most of their manufactured goods from Europe.

America didn't lose Vietnam because American troops never fought North Vietnamese troops on the ground. Strictly speaking, there never was a war. Americans helped the South Vietnamese keep peace on their own territory and selectively bombed North Vietnam, but there wasn't a war to the full extent as there was in Korea. South Vietnam lost the war.

Yes but it makes everyone's balls tingle to say the US lost the war

>American troops never fought North Vietnamese troops on the ground

>American troops never fought North Vietnamese troops on the ground
What did he mean by this?

American troops did fight NVA.
Furthermore USA entered that war to stop communists from seizing SV.
After they left, SV regime endured for 3 more years, so literally nothing. Thus, America lost the war, because they didn't achieve their goals.
The fact it wasn't a "classic" war doesn't mean anything.
By your logic Soviets won in Afghanistan, since communist government there survived for a few more years after they left.

>Strictly speaking, there never was a war.

The US entered the war to stop the VC insurgency. Throughout all their time in South Vietnam, Americans mostly fought the VC. Except for Tet offensive, there weren't any major scale NVA operations against the American troops.

> American troops never fought North Vietnamese troops on the ground
Time to stop posting

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ia_Drang
You fucking mong.

I see, sporadic skirmishes are now considered a war. Thanks for telling me, I didn't know.

>America never fought the NVA on the ground!
>but they did
>t-that doesn't c-count
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hamburger_Hill
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khe_Sanh
Bugger off brainlet.

>The US entered the war to stop the VC insurgency
>war officially began because North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked a US Navy ship

>Nor did they waste valuable resources on impracticable weapons projects and mass murder of an entire ethno-religious group as a national security policy.
only an inefficient economic system that required the dehumanization of a large percentage of the population

>American troops never fought North Vietnamese troops on the ground

Sorry, all I see are irregular skirmishes with the number of casualties barely worth mentioning.

They failed because they didn't press the attack after winning the first few battles and fought a defensive war instead of an offensive war

Khe Sanh was literally the bloodiest ground battle of the entire war retard.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hamburger_Hill
not an argument

The pretext for the war is irrelevant.

none of that even came close to stopping the union though. People always have this line about how close the 1864 election was, and if McClellan had won the war would have ended

Of the 233 electoral votes available at that time Lincoln won 212. It was a massive landslide.

That's why I said there never was a war. These are skirmishes, not battles. What were the casualties in Korea—would you care to compare?

>all I see are irregular skirmishes
>he replies this to a post about Khe Sanh, the longest and most brutal battle in the entire Vietnam war

Sorry, care to compare your "Khe Sanh" to the casualties in Korea? I thought so.

>putting Khe Sanh in quotes
For what purpose

>the longest and most brutal battle in the entire Vietnam war
>U.S. losses: 274 killed

>if you read letters of confederate soldiers they mostly talk about liberty
[citation needed]

>Lets secede because muh right are being violated
>But lets make the new nation we want to found based on depriving other people of rights
It was bound to fail because it's creation was based on a paradox.

TRAINS NIGGA
FACTORIES NIGGA
CAN'T WIN ON COTTON ALONE

>Confederate and Union soldiers interpreted the heritage of 1776 in opposite ways. Confederates professed to fight for liberty and independence from a too radical government; Unionists said they fought to preserve the nation conceived in liberty from dismemberment and destruction....The rhetoric of liberty that had permeated the letters of Confederate volunteers in 1861, grew even stronger as the war progressed."
>James McPherson

McPherson's a Yankeelover btw

>Implying the confederacy had manpower problems
They had an ass load of volunteers just not enough supplies to arm them.

It was run similarly to America during to the articles of Confederation and couldn't get what it needed

This.

Even if it was allowed to secede, the CSA would have ended up a third world country like Brazil. (Where slavery was only abolished in 1888)

>implying they didn't

More or less. I mean, some people will claim it's about state's rights, but the right they wanted was to keep slaves.

Less organization and industrialization when compared to the Union.

Also, the type of government the Confederacy chose was also the first government of the United States, which proved very early on that it was ineffective, hence the change to the current government. The South should have learned from this.

If you haven't noticed, the United States turned out better than any, and I mean ANY, central or south American state. This is due to several things:

>predominance of white men (not mestizos or mulattoes)
>Protestantism (Catholic states are particularly vulnerable to revolutions)
>limited number of slaves brought to the US
>English language and legacy of English law system

The South would have been fine, and would have kept Africans as domestic servants after technological progress made them less than useful as farm machinery.

>The South should have learned from this.

The War meant they didn't have time to. The Confederacy was a reactionary governmental system, they rebelled not just against the North, but against what the American republic had become: an anti-agrarian, anti-Southern, pro-mercantile, and thanks to Northern cuckery, an increasingly anti-Trinitarian secular government.

They had that system centuries before the war so that was a pre-existing problem.

Nazi Germany on the other hand took the working economic system Hjalmar Schacht had built for them and flushed it down the toilet

>anti-Trinitarian secular government

Reminder that Separation of Church and State is the White Man's Institution and was started by Virginians.

Virginians who learned from the words of Scots and Englishmen. The Enlightenment wasn't kind to many.

But the point remains, Christianity in the North and South developed along two different lines. It's why Protestantism still holds the South in its grip and the old Puritans died out in the North long, long ago. And this affected the government in the buildup and the aftermath of the Civil War.

>required the dehumanization of a large percentage of the population

Dehumanization is not a problem itself from the economic standpoint.
Difference between South and Germany is that German economics relied on the pillaging and plundering like a junkie relies on his dosage of heroin.

Without states to plunder, it fucking imploded. Also, German bureaucracy, which is a meme on itself.

>South
>white men

>niggers
>human

Let us not also forget that the American Revolution and Vietnam involved the attacker having to ship men and material across a fucking ocean. I'd say that's a contributing factor.

no
>The Federals at the start of 1862 had a two-to-one advantage which steadily mounted until the end of 1864 when the Union advantage in numbers present was over three to one. Also of great importance are the absentee figures.
>At the end of 1864, the Southern absent totaled more than 50 per cent, and was of course much more important as the total available forces were so low. In addition, for much of the war a large Confederate force was in the Trans-Mississippi region, where it could not contribute to eastern operations.

Much of Lee's inflated reputation came from three sources. Wartime propaganda of the Confederacy that understandably wanted to support their most important General. Union excuse making for their terrible leadership at the start of the war (We don't suck! We're just facing an invincible God-King!). And most importantly post-war Southern revisionism that turned Lee into a Jesus like symbol of defiance and martyrdom (despite the fact he didn't die a martyr).
Stonewall Jackson was the real genius of the Confederate Generalship, and it's telling how once he died Lee's performance dropped so quickly.

South is a nigger country, son. No white men there.

>Dehumanization is not a problem itself from the economic standpoint.
it definitely is, by stripping people of rights and forcing them to work their efficiency is far lower than that of a professional farm hand. Without any incentive to work hard, and a deep hatred for their master a slave will work just hard enough to not get beaten and the "accidental" destruction of tools from intentionally poor handling is an added dip to efficiency as well. Even though the labor is free you pay in other ways.

Union had more people, more weapons, more money, and was more organized