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elxaime -> RE: Why the Confederacy Lost (9/20/2014 9:36:02 PM)
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There is another thing that bears inclusion in the list of reasons why the South lost. It is not often mentioned because even today it is a sensitive topic.
A Confederate resort to guerrilla warfare would very likely have made the North completely abandon the notion of a "white man's war." Recruitment of additional African-American Union troops from former slaves would have been the natural counter to white Confederate guerrilla forces. Such forces would go far to erase the normal "home field" advantage guerrilla forces usually possess, e.g. knowledge of terrain and acclimation to local conditions. Bitter guerrilla war tends to undermine existing law and order and I think the prospect of such a prolonged struggle would have horrified whites, both north and south, since within it contained the seeds of upending social relationships based on race. That the war ended in such a conventional way enabled the de jure termination of slavery while largely keeping in place the social relationships. The ultimate failure of Reconstruction and the return of Jim Crow, the KKK night riders, etc. meant much of the promise of equal treatment remained illusory until the 1960's. It would have threatened to unwind the entirety of their existing social structure.
A good example of a similar situation is the Second Boer War, fought over three decades later (1899-1902). In that war, after delivering some early bloody noses to the British Empire, the Boer Republics conventional armies split into guerrilla columns. The British countered by increasing the recruitment of African troops, mainly as scouts and as guards to the fortified lines they created to hem in the guerrillas. Ultimate peace with the Boers was made on the basis of a deal whereby the Boers accepted British rule, while the British reneged on their promises to the Africans, leaving them with Voerwerd, pass laws, etc. in the years to come.
The British had attempted some similar moves in the American Revolution, by allying with Native Americans and decreeing freedom for American slaves who reached British lines. Since they lost that war, we can't know what they would have done with their Indian allies and black troops in the event of victory afterwards.
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