morganbj
Posts: 3634
Joined: 8/12/2007
From: Mosquito Bite, Texas
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I disagree with some of what you say Sulla. Let me explain.
I believe that Loncoln still believed that the Southerners were still Americans and that "subjugation" was not his goal, re-unification was. He wanted to restore the union, nothing more and nothing less. Freeing the slaves was a pure political move to gain support domestically and abroad. I don't believe he wanted to reduce the Southern economy to a wasteland at all. He wanted to destroy the Confederate nation's will to fight, hoping that the occupied states would come to their senses and admit their mistake. His wartime strategy was simple: choke the South economically, while destroying the military where possible.
I guess we could argue that that means the subjugation of the South, but I would choose a different word, given the meaning it has since WWII.
Also, I agree that the war was far more expansive than MOST others before, but rememebr that even in ancient Greece, Alexander the Great successfully conquered most of the known world. His army was much smaller, as was that of the Persians (and a few others). And don't forget the French in Russia in 1812. That was a miserable flop, but it was successful in that Napoleon won virtually every engagement until he started to withdraw that October.
Wile the civil war covered a much larger land area than most wars in the past, it was, however, still a "local" war. By that I mean that there was no need to maintain "lines" as we know them today. There was simply no need to do that because communication (after logistics, the most important aspect of war) was restricted to railroads, a few well established roads, and, of course, the sea. All of the major campaigns of the Civil War revolved around the communication system to one extent or another. (Read: The economic centers.) The South wanted to protect them, the North wanted to take them away. That is why there was no real major campaign to take major portions of land in the South. Instead, the strategy was to take the major economic centers, and destroying enemy forces when and where possible. Given a choice, however, the economic centers took precedence.
So, while the playing field was large, the battes were all local affairs. Strategic flanking maneuvers were not really conducted to destroy the enemy, like we do today, they were instead largely conducted to place the enemy in an intolerable logistical position to force them away from a major objective. It was the classic indirect approach described by Fuller (I think it was he who said that).
While the campaigns by Grant, and Sherman to some extent, are known for large, bloody battles, I would argue that their real purpose was economic. Grant wanted to take Richmond to end the war; Sherman wanted to destroy the South's ability to wage war. While Grant never avoided battle, he was most focussed on geographic objectives, not the Southern Armies. During the 1864 campaing in Virginia, he constantly tried to slip by the NVA to move to Richmond, and the major economic infrastructure near Petersburg. With the resources he had at hand, he could have made a major effort to crush Lee after each engegement, but he didn't. Instead, he went for Richmond again. Sure, his troops almost always got the worst of every engagement, but he kept his eye on the prize. Only after Petersburg, when the NVA was a quarter of his size, did he finally put forth a major effort to eliminate it from play. And this only after Richmond and Petersburg had fallen. Sherman didn't chase Hood back up into Tennessee to destroy his army, which he could have easily done, he headed into the deep South to rampage through the economy.
Also remember that the civilian populations involved were much, much smaller than what we know today. I'm sure some one has a source at had, but as I recall the population of the South was something like 8.5 million. The North was around 30. (My memory is real fuzzy, but I think that's right.) Take away large urban centers, and the population per square mile was very sparse indeed.
While I agree that the Civil War was different than prior wars, it was much more similar to those of Napoleon than those of the Kaiser a half century later. The major similarity to WWI was the level of casualties in each engagement and overall in the war. The strategy and tactics were much closer to Nappy and the boys.
All this brings me to the game. I find that it's entirely too easy for one side or the other to change the overall strategic objective of a force. Being from the South, I always try my hand at reducing those yellow-bellied shop-keeping invaders to a mass of retreating human debris (boy, that'll start a feud on this thread, won't it). After I defeat a force in Northern Virginia, another huge force comes in from Ohio, across the mountains. Beat that one back and another comes down the Mississippi. So far, so good. But, beat that one back and it retreats to Ohio, joins the previously defeated force and heads for Lynchburg. Armies just didn't do that. The western armies had a goal, say take the Mississippi, and they stuck to it. They didn't lose a battle and then move over to Kentucky to try something else. If they took excessive losses, they licked their wounds until they could give it another go. Yes, reinforcements could be redirected to other theaters, but entire MAJOR campaigns were not just abandonded, as a rule. Two objectives would never had been abandoned: Richmond and the Mississippi. I realize that some campaings just failed, like those whose purpose never made any sense anyway (Arkansas), but as a general rule, the key campaigns just continued until the South could no longer resist them. We could argue that point, I guess, but I can only base my argument on what happened, not what might have happened.
Overall, the game does a pretty good job at recreating the period, at least militarily. The economic system is much too simplified, and I believe that too many sacrifices were made to make history repeat itself, rather than explore alternate strategies. Let me give an example. Let's assume that Lincoln decided to forgoe the Mississippi campaign and make a one front war in Virgina. In the game, an Army of 450,000 could gather in Washington and move south, crushing all before it. (Well, maybe after a time.) The South could respond in the game by allocating a sufficient "covering force" in Virginia, and then begin their own Mississippi campaign to remove the West from the war before defeat happened near Richmond. I would argue that neither were logistically possible. There just wasn't sufficient infrastructure to support a Northern army of that size on a major campaign like that, and there's just no way the South could take Chicago, Detroit, etc. One thing I learned in all my years in the Army was that war isn't won by the grunt (there's another flurry of complaints from readers, huh?), it's won by the logisticians. (And just to let you know where I come from, I was a Cavalry/Armor officer. Our beasts of burden, the tanks, had to eat -- a lot!)
I guess I would prefer it if the game had a greater emphasis on objectives, giving "willing to sustain the war" points to the side who gains them. Take Atlanta, and the North's will to continue goes up. Take (or ravage) a large Northern city and their will goes down, way, way down. As eveidence, the North went absolutely crazy when John Hunt Morgan (my Great [several times] grandfather) invaded the mid-west. This just doesn't seem to have the same effect in the game. The South just gets no real benefit from oerations like that, at least not enough. Also, Lee's objective in invading the North was political, as much as military. yes, he wanted to find terrain to engage the Yanks and destroy them, but he primarily wanted the North to feel the pain of war as well to reduce their will to fight. The major battle was to seal the deal politically. (To get the North to quit, or to get European support if that didn't happen.) He could have destroyed the Northern army in Virginia as easily as he could in Pennsylvania, although I'm not sure either was really possible. I'm not sure he did either.
I've rambled on too long. Y'all have a good one.
< Message edited by bjmorgan -- 1/8/2008 11:52:36 PM >
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