Originally Posted by George

Correct on dumping less competent Officers in the West. for every Cs recruit that came out of Kentucky there were 10 Union recruits. Missouri had a Cs Govt., but the Union drove them out of the State fairly quickly. The Confederates tried to establish as strong defence in southern Kentucky early, but were knocked out by the fall of forts henry and Donaldson, plus being out maneuvered and having to evacuate a strong position in Columbus, Ky.

So you are saying Kentucky and West Virginia was more pro-Union than Confederate?

Originally Posted by MontyB

So you are saying Kentucky and West Virginia was more pro-Union than Confederate?

Very much so. Western Va. had much more in common with the "free' states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois than with the part of Virginia east of the mountains. Also eastern Tennessee was very pro Union. Before War really broke out both the Union & Confederates had recruiting stations in Knoxville. western Tn. was very pro Confederate & eastern Tenn. was very pro union. There was a scheme to try to establish a union State of East Tenn., but the area remained in CS hands until too late in '64 for a new State to be of any help to Lincoln's re-election efforts.

I understood the West Virginia thing but didn't know about Kentucky, I have always seen it as part of the Southern USA, I knew it was a fairly volatile state but did not know that the views were split on regional line rather than a town-country line.

So was there any way the Confederacy could have survived?

Seems to me that it lacked the industrial, communications and transport capacity to have waged a protracted war, therefore, its only real chance was to either fight an effective defensive war (which is practically impossible), find a negotiated settlement or win a fast war.

Given that it showed no signs of doing any of those three things I can't see that it had any chance and you would really have to question the competency of its leadership in putting it in that position.

Originally Posted by MontyB

I understood the West Virginia thing but didn't know about Kentucky, I have always seen it as part of the Southern USA, I knew it was a fairly volatile state but did not know that the views were split on regional line rather than a town-country line.

So was there any way the Confederacy could have survived?

Seems to me that it lacked the industrial, communications and transport capacity to have waged a protracted war, therefore, its only real chance was to either fight an effective defensive war (which is practically impossible), find a negotiated settlement or win a fast war.

Given that it showed no signs of doing any of those three things I can't see that it had any chance and you would really have to question the competency of its leadership in putting it in that position.

both sides expected a quick battle that would prove victorious & end the problem. The South viewed itself as superior in quality of the individual soldier that would overcome the less able Yankees. Prior to the war math books in the south had word problems such as: If one Southerner can whip 10 Yankees, how many southerners would you need to whip 90 Yankees?
Of course on paper the South had no chance, but conflicts don't always work out the way that it should on paper.
how could they have won? Hard to say. One big mistake was the self imposed embargo on exporting cotton early on. They should have exported as much cotton as possible to build their finances, and imported as much materiel as possible, before the Blockade became effective. they turned down an offer of several east Indiamen that could have been outfitted as ships-of-the-line 7 imposed a blockade on Northern ports, at least for a while, helping the CS economy and hurting the North's war efforts. If the southern army was better organized maybe they could have captured Washington after 1st Manassas ending things. In the Summer of '64 the AoT missed an opportunity to beat, at least a section, of Sherman's army north of Atlanta. If Atlanta not fallen, perhaps combined with Jubal Early capturing, even if it would have been temporary, Washington might have resulted in Lincoln losing the election and "Peace Democrats' then letting the South go.
Most history books looks at the Eastern Theatre for a period of time and then covering the western Theatre for a while before switching back to the other theatre. There is a book called "1400 days, the Civil war day by day". it looks at everything that happened on each day in all theatres in chronological order from the firing on Ft. Sumter to the end. presented this way it's really amazing to see what was going on every day.

I find the US Civil War interesting as it appears to have been the first war fought where modern parameters such as logistics, industry and communications played a decisive role but it was fought in an outdated way, essentially Napoleonic in many respects it had a lot in common with WW1.

By comparison, the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 was a modern war being fought along more modern lines.

The beginning and middle (in the east) were fought pretty much the same way as wats had been for the previous Century or so. The Overland Campaign and the Siege of Petersburg showed to way to the stalemate of WW 1 in the trenches. European observers were shocked by the destruction they saw on that late war period battlefields. Early in the war there was a year long stand off between Union occupied Ft. Pickens and CS held Forts McRee, Barrancas, and the Pensacola Navy Yard. After the war a proposal was found in the files in Richmond where an Officer had proposed using balloons to drop poison gas bombs into Ft. Pickens.

Are there any books out there regarding all the European's and British observers opinions and observations/lessons they learned when following the two armies during this period. I am very interested to know what they thought and what if any lessons they took back to Europe to incorporate there.
cheers

There was a book called: The Military Legacy of the Civil War: The European Inheritance by Jay Luvaas.

It is based on the accounts and writings of British, French and Prussian observers, I am not sure if it is still available though.

Talk about strategy...do you realize that in every major battle of the war Confederate Generals lured the Union Army into a National Park?

How about we start at the top, was there ever a way that the CSA's economy could have supported a successful war?
Negatives:
1. It had 25% the "free" population of the North.
2. 30% of the nation's Railways
3. Produced 10% of the nation's manufactured goods.
4. 3% of the nation's arms industry

Positives:
1. It accounted for 70% of the countries exports.

Looking at those numbers, it seems to me that the first major mistake the CSA made was not protecting its exports and putting more effort into breaking the blockade.

But I really don't see enough in those numbers to indicate that the South could ever have overcome the Union on the ground.