Cecily Zander
Appearances
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Yeah, Virginia voted not to secede more than once. And then they finally did after Fort Sumter. So Virginia felt compelled. But like Jubal Early, who will become one of the most ardent lost cause advocates and important general serving under Robert E. Lee in the Army in Northern Virginia, Ich bin gespannt, ob Propaganda in der Konfederaten-Strategie eine Rolle spielt.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
A little bit, but it's amazing how quickly the kind of information streams of these two nations, and we can think about this as a war between two modern 19th century nation states, diverge. Of course you get newspapers kind of going back and forth, but I think the Confederacy believed
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Sie konnten die Mehrheit des Weißen Nordens nicht überzeugen, dass ihre Ursache recht war, weil die Mehrheit des Weißen Nordens sie als den grundlegenden Kompakt der Union bezeichnet, was die Vereinigten Staaten so eine tolle Nation gemacht hat, dass sie ihre demokratische Republik veröffentlicht hat. Interessant.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Yeah, in lots of places in the Confederacy you see this devolution of kind of organized warfare. And the Confederates will say they're responding to Union strategy. They're responding to Sherman and Sheridan going off piste from what anyone expected, cutting loose from their supply lines, invading deep into Confederate territory. So the Confederates say they're sort of justified in this.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
And it's very few Confederate officers who don't at least entertain this in some degree.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
The one who really doesn't, at the surrender at Appomattox, Lee sits down and he says, you know, he contemplates, should I give orders to what is left of the Army of Northern Virginia to take to the forest, to take to the hills and to wage a guerrilla war, to see if they can go down to the Carolinas, maybe unite with Joe Johnstons Army.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
And he says, no, it's just not going to be worth the cost or worth the trouble. Let's just surrender it and call it done.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
I think the North came late. They unlocked the key late. And it was only through the ascension of Grant and his two key subordinates, Sherman and Sheridan in particular. They let George McClellan and his conservative approach dominate their view of the war for too long. MacLellan hatte einen Punkt. MacLellan dachte, eine einfache konservative Krieg würde die Konfederative zurückbekommen.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Und es ist nach 1863 und nach der Emanzipation-Proklamation, dass die Union wirklich anfängt, sich wieder zu evaluieren. Und dann stürzt Grant, was, wie du weißt, 1862 solidifiziert werden sollte. Aber Lincoln wählt stattdessen Henry Halleck aus dem Westentheater aus, um der Art Chefin Militäranwalt zu sein, anstatt von Grant. is delayed another couple of years.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
But once Grant is in place, the tide really turns. Although Grant's major initiatives are stalling, and we talked about how close did the Confederacy come, I would say the summer of 1864 is the closest the Confederacy ever comes to winning the war.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
This is when Lincoln writes his letter to his cabinet, saying, we're stalled in every military theater, we're not achieving any battlefield victories, I'm not going to be re-elected. So we need to do something in the next few months to bring this war to an end. Or George McClellan will win the election and the Confederacy will be a free and independent nation.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
And Sherman captures Atlanta and it changes everything.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
You know, it's funny, some of these are integral elements of the lost cause mythologization of the war. So we have to be careful, you know, not to oversell them, but they were outnumbered and they were outsupplied. That's very true. But they still for four years managed to wage a very effective war against this fact. And again.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Es ist der Ascension von Grant, der jemand ist, der bereit ist, diese Supplies zu benutzen, um die Konfederate durch den Mehlgrinder zu bringen, was es wirklich möglich macht. Die Konfederate scheint, ihre wichtigsten Positionen zu verlieren. when it finds itself subjected to a siege. And Robert E. Lee says this at the outset of the Overland Campaign in the spring of 1864.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
He says, I will fight Grant up and down Virginia. I can do that. But the second it gets into a siege, which it does at Petersburg in the summer of 1864 and then goes on for nine months until the surrender at Appomattox, Once it gets to a siege, it's only a matter of time. You can essentially start the countdown clock. Lee doesn't know how long that is, but you trap him down in a siege.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
He can't maneuver. It's attrition at that point. And we see this in the fact that Lee's army goes from some 60,000 men to about 15,000 in a matter of weeks as the war grinds to its really slow conclusion. And so the Confederacy got trapped. They fell victim to sieges and that kind of meat grinder of Union superiority.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Yes. So the Confederacy goes to a draft a few months before the United States does. Both do. But the Confederacy expands its parameters over the course of the war. So it starts at a fairly normal, something like ages 18 to 25. By the end of the war, it's something like age 17 to age 50. You could be drafted into the Confederate Army.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Und die Unterschiede zwischen den Vereinigten Staaten und der Konferenz in diesem Bereich. In den Vereinigten Staaten, als du dich eingestellt hast, um in den Krieg zu kämpfen, war dir garantiert, dass du nach drei Jahren, wenn du auswählen wolltest, kannst du. Viele Leute re-up und sie gehen zurück für die restlichen zwei Jahre des Krieges.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
In der Konfederate, sobald man in einem grünen Uniform ist, kommt man nicht raus. Es gibt keinen dreijährigen Term, es ist für die Dauer. Und das ist das, was die Konfederate ein bisschen harscher macht. Aber sie waren für Männer so besorgnisert in den letzten Wochen der Krieg, dass Robert E. Lee tatsächlich ernsthaft mit Jefferson Davis darüber spricht, dass er Menschen in seine Armee einschlägt.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
And Lee also says, the thing about it is, and Lee is a soldier through and through, and he knows what it means to fight. He says, if you ask them to do this, you have to give them their freedom.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
You can't sort of keep it from them. You can't order them to die. Like, that's where Lee kind of draws the line.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
So it tends to be overseers who stay back. Occasionally plantation owners would stay. The Civil War has often been portrayed as a rich man's war and a poor man's fight, especially in the South. And again, to be clear, about 60% of Southerners never owned a slave.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
That didn't mean slavery didn't impact their lives and they didn't rely on slavery to maintain social order and political order and so on. But we do know that slaveholders, especially in the early months of the war, are some of the first to enlist and the most eager. And so there's this interesting correlation.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
The more enslaved people a person owned, especially the sons of maybe these wealthy plantation owners, they're some of the first men to kind of go into the ranks. But Du hast etwa dreieinhalb Millionen geschlossene Menschen in der Konfederanz. Die meisten Plantagen haben nicht mehr als 20 Schläfe. Ich meine, die Anzahl ist von sechs bis zehn.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Also sind diese Ausgaben ziemlich rar, in Bezug darauf, wie sie geplant werden würden.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Yeah, they can't get anything in. I mean, they still get enough, you know, muskets and so on. But they are running short of food. They are running short of uniforms. It's very ad hoc in terms of what they get. We like to think of sort of wars and we see them in movies and both sides are sort of polished and well-dressed and everybody's in matching uniforms.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
The Confederacy just struggled throughout the war to ever achieve that kind of cohesive look because of the supplies they were able to get in or more often than not, weren't able to get in. And so they really do try to protect what they've got, but they're always at a disadvantage.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
And they're at a disadvantage in terms of where they can move supplies, even when one army, say, might need them more than another because they have, you know, something like 20% of the railroad mileage that the North has. They just don't have the logistical, not just the supply capacity, but the logistical capacity to move things quickly enough to respond to what's going on on the ground.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
It's tough to say. I think they throw a lot into trying to stall Sherman and Grant. You know, these things are sort of coincidental. And so they do need to if they possibly can. They know that that Lincoln's reelection kind of hinges on these two guys and whether or not they can succeed in their objective. So for Sherman, that's taking Atlanta. for Grant that is moving toward Richmond.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Lee stalls Grant at Petersburg in June. This is partly what prompts Lincoln to write that letter. Sherman is still moving. He's moving against Joseph Johnston. And Joseph Johnston goes into what's called a fighting retreat. He basically tries to retreat as slowly as possible in the face of Sherman's advance to save Atlanta.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Und die große Ironie ist, dass wir Joe Johnston nicht als einen sehr kompetenten oder kompetenten Offizier kritisieren. Es war sein Kampf-Retreat, der Sherman für so lange auf der See gehalten hat, weil er wusste, wenn er Männer an Sherman trug, würde Sherman sie einfach überlaufen und dann in Atlanta unabhängig marschen. Johnston schlug ihn wirklich runter.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Ja, Lincoln braucht diese Wiedererwählung, um zu wissen, dass die norderländischen Leute ihm das Mandat gegeben haben, diese Sache zu beenden, bis zu ihrer Schlussfolgerung. Und Lincoln ist immer, du weißt, es gibt so viel zu erwarten über ihn, aber sein Gefühl, was die Leute ihm gemacht haben, war wirklich großartig.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Und das Letter, das er schreibt, um nicht wiedererwählt zu werden, sagt essentiell, du weißt, die Leute können das Willen haben, dass ich nicht wiedererwählt werde. Und in diesem Fall haben die Leute das Willen, dass sie die Krieg nicht gewinnen wollen. Und wir müssen das akzeptieren, entweder zu negotieren oder zu verabschieden.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Aber als Prozent der Bevölkerung leidet die Konföderation unter einer höheren Todesrate als jede Nation in World War I. Wir denken an all diese europäischen Nationen, die ihre Jugend in der ersten Weltkriege verloren haben. Der Prozent der jungen Männer, die von den Konföderationen gestorben sind, ist eigentlich höher.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Das gibt dir wirklich eine Perspektive auf den Einfluss, den dieser Krieg psychologisch auf diese 11 Konfederatenstaaten hat.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Yep. They gambled big and they lost. And they had to know that that was, you know, when you hear people say that this wasn't really about slavery, the Confederates knew what they were betting. And their politicians say it and their generals say it. And that's what they're trying to preserve. But it takes a while for that to be on the table.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
But when Lincoln finally does put it on the table, he figures it out, right? I mean, it takes Lincoln until early 1863, but he finally figures out, if the thing the Confederacy is fighting for is slavery, then the thing we need to go after to undermine them is that thing. And so that's the irony.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
So I think they thought they might be allowed to go in peace if they did it carefully. But they also did immediately start seizing United States military installations, federal arsenals, weapons, and they started enlisting an army pretty quickly. So I think they had in the back of their minds, a war was not a distant possibility, though they probably held out hope it wouldn't happen.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
But if it did, and both sides were guilty of this, they thought it would be a fairly quick war.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Yeah, and the Confederacy has the problem they don't have a pre-existing professional army to draw on. They do have about 300 officers who had formerly been regular United States soldiers, so officers in the United States Army who resign their commissions and take up positions in the Confederate Army, but it's an entirely volunteer force. And it's going to be enlisted on a state-by-state basis.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
So you're going to get regiments like the 15th Mississippi and the 4th Virginia and so on. And so, just like the US Army will be ultimately 95% volunteer, these are volunteer soldiers. They're not professionals by any means. They may have some experience with
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Weaponry, perhaps some distant experience with militias or in the US-Mexico war, though that would be quite rare, except for the oldest amongst them. And so they're untrained, they're fresh, and they're coming to this because of a cause. And that's really their motivation.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
So it's a very good question. Just like in the United States Constitution, the president is the commander in chief, so he gets to make some important decisions. There is a cabinet in the Confederacy, though it's unclear how much influence they had as compared to the US cabinet. We know someone like Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War in the United States, was extremely important.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
This seemed less true in the Confederacy. There were some military advisors kind of fliegen und an verschiedenen Zeiten holt Jefferson Davis verschiedene Leute ein. Aber im Allgemeinen sind es Jefferson Davis und ein paar vertraute Senior-Offiziere, die viele der Entscheidungen für das konfederatische Militär machen.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Robert E. Lee verbrachte die ersten 18 Monate des Krieges in West-Virginia. Er machte sich keinen guten Namen. Eine meiner Lieblingsjournalisten war Katharine Ann Devereaux-Edmondson. Sie nennt ihn den alten Stecken in the Mud. Lee wurde als
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Not someone with a great potential, but after Joe Johnston is wounded at Seven Pines in the Peninsula Campaign during the Seven Days Battles against George McClellan, Lee is called to take command of the Army of Northern Virginia. And not only does he take command, he basically reorients the entire perspective of the war.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
The Union was within 15 miles of Richmond, and within three to four months, Lee will be launching an invasion of the United States into Maryland. And so it's a quick turnaround.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
He answers to Jeff Davis technically, but unlike most of the other senior officers, Davis respected Lee enough to really not dictate to him. He had some confidence in what Lee could do. There's only a handful of generals that Davis feels he can be this loose with the reins. Lee is one of them. Albert Sidney Johnston is another. But, you know, we've talked about U.S.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Grant in the Civil War at Shiloh. Sidney Johnson is killed facing Grant and the Confederacy loses its probably second best commander by April of 1862. So Lee kind of stands alone in terms of having a relationship where he can tell Davis what he thinks and Davis can't really tell him what to do. Davis will try to tell most of his other generals what to do all of the time.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
The answer to the question is the latter. He's going to be an inveterate meddler and kind of military affairs. But initially his experience is enough to scare Lincoln into basically saying, I think it's like I feel way behind here. I got to catch up.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Lincoln knows that as compared to Davis, they're going to look at those two and say, which of these two presidents is going to lead their nation to a military victory in an all encompassing war. I mean, Davis would have taken those laurels out the gate.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Not really, no. It's a lot of pouting, a lot of letters sort of being exchanged back and forth. A nice reminder to whenever you write that really snippy email to wait before hitting send to go back and reread. Jefferson Davis, Joseph Johnston, Pierre Beauregard, none of them were that careful.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
They would just sort of send off the top of their head what they thought about each other and it made for some chilly relations and Und Davis wird durch diese Generäle gehen. Er wird Beauregard entfernt, wenn Beauregard ihn beschädigt. Er wird Johnston aus der Kommande genommen, wenn Johnston ihn beschädigt.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Er bleibt für eine gewisse Weise loyal zu Braxton Bragg, der die zweite wichtigste Konfederate-Armee für den größten Teil der Kriege im Westen-Theater beherrscht. He won't remove Bragg for really interesting reasons, but eventually he's forced to do so because Bragg is fundamentally incompetent. So Davis has a couple of problems.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
He can't get along with most of his senior commanders, but he also doesn't have that many competent senior commanders. And so he's running out of options.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Yeah, I mean, the Confederate, if we want to talk about what does the Confederacy have to do to win militarily, they just essentially need to follow the blueprint of the American Revolution, of the Patriots. They need to defend home ground. They need to hold out long enough that the Union will give up.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
or in the Patriot case, the British, because in order to win, what the Union has to do, or the British have to do in the case of the Revolution, is invade and occupy. And as you said at the top, this is three quarters of a million square miles. This is 11 states, including Texas, which is quite big. And so for the Union, the task is almost insurmountable.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
The Confederacy just has to wait until the United States, the ordinary citizens, lose hope in the cause and
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
And the Confederacy, you know, one reason we talk about Lee so much and these two things tie so nicely together is that one reason Lee comes through so strongly is not only was he the most capable officer that the Confederacy had, but he also becomes sort of deeply associated with the survival of the Confederate nation. Mm-hmm.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Lee ist wirklich der Avatar für die Konföderation am Ende des Krieges. Und es gibt diese Vorstellung, dass so lange Lee im Feld ist, so lange die Armee von Nordvirginien im Feld ist, kann die Konföderation weitergehen. Und das ist eine wirklich wichtige Sache für die Zuhörer, um in ihren Gedanken zu bleiben, wenn sie über das denken, was die Konföderation militärisch zu tun hat.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Ja, ich meine, sie erwarteten eine Invasion. Und die wenigen Zeiten, dass verschiedene konfederatische Armeen nach Norden gehen, ist die Erwartung, nie in den Vereinigten Staaten zu bleiben. Es ist nie in Pennsylvania oder Maryland zu bleiben.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Braxton Bragg geht in Kentucky, ein konfederatischer Kommandeur namens Henry Hopkins Sibley geht nach New Mexico, was technisch eine Union von Texas ist, und macht eine kleine Invasion da drüben. Sie erwarten nie zu bleiben. But again, it's a way of attrition.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
It's a way of grinding down northern morale, saying, you're so incompetent at invading us that we have these six-week windows occasionally where we can pop north and actually invade you. And that's really supposed to be a real grind on northern morale. But for the most part, the Confederacy expected to sit back and fight a fairly defensive war, which, again, makes Lee such an ironic figure.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Lee is not a defensive general. He's a very aggressive general.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
So this was kind of what Davis hoped would be possible from the beginning. Sit back as much as possible. But when you had these opportunities to attack a concentration of Union troops, say they had invaded, the Tennessee campaign, the Shiloh campaign is a great example of this. The Confederates sit back in Corinth, Mississippi.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Grant fährt weiter Süden nach Henry und Donaldson und sie sehen, dass Grant sich nahe der Church von Shiloh konzentriert und die Konfederaten schießen und sie wollen Grant in den Nose schießen und dann wieder zurück zu Corinth fallen, um die Rennstrecke zu schützen. In diesem Sinne ist Shiloh nicht so viel ein Verlust für die Konfederaten, wie es manchmal bezeichnet wird.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Sie haben wirklich diese defensive-offensive Strategie erreicht, sich zurückzusetzen, einen Solid-Punch zu bekommen, Grant für einen Moment zu stoppen und dann sicherlich zurück in die Mississippi zurückzutreten.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Ja, absolut. Ich meine, wenn du dir denkst, wie viel Prozent deiner militärisch älteren Männerpopulation du mobilisieren kannst, kommt die Konföderation knapp zu 100 Prozent, weil sie fast niemanden brauchen muss, um zu Hause zu bleiben und die Früchte zu besorgen und die Farmen zu halten, die essentiell sind, um die Armee zu versorgen und sie zu verdienen.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Also, Frauen gehen in die Arbeit in der Kriegsindustrie. Sie tun das in der Civil War, so wie sie es in fast jedem amerikanischen Krieg getan haben, um Ammunition und Uniformen und so weiter zu helfen. But back at home, Confederate agriculture is sustained in large part by the work of enslaved people. And so it's a huge asset.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
They can mobilize something like 90, 95 percent of their military age male population. The United States doesn't have this luxury. And the Confederacy still has to turn to conscription to keep men in the ranks. They're forcing people into the army very early on in the war, trying to get those manpower numbers up, because as you say, it is a three to one disadvantage that they find themselves at.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
It's interesting, a lot of the most heavily populated enslaved counties, so where something like 90% of the population was enslaved, are sort of on the coast of the Carolinas and Georgia, where rice plantations and sugar plantations are very popular, and then on the Mississippi Delta, where the United States is concentrated on executing Winfield Scotts Anaconda Plan, which requires control of the coasts and coastal counties and cities and installations, as well as control of the Mississippi River.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Und wer war der Architekt dieser Konfederaten-Strategie? I think it sort of organically comes from this relationship that the Confederacy has to the Patriots in the American Revolution. I think it's really interesting. They all, you know, early on, people like Lee and Davis and Johnston and Beauregard, there's no sort of grand council of war.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
They don't all come together and say, this is what we need to do. They all just sort of understand that their best template is to do what their Patriot forebears had done and Und das ist, weshalb Virginia so wichtig ist für die Konfederanz. Virginia kommt spät ins Spiel. Sie kommen in die zweite Wende der vorliegenden Staaten. Virginia bringt dir dieses revolutionäre Geheimnis.
American History Hit
The Confederacy: Could They Have Won?
Es bringt dir die Beziehung mit Washington. Es bringt dir Robert E. Lee, der in die Washington-Familie getreut wurde, durch seine Frau. Es ist unglaublich wichtig. Und ich denke, die Konfederanz weiß von Anfang an, dass das die Grundlage ist. They see themselves as patriots. And that's the plan they're going to execute.