Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 1:19am

Rhett Butler: Why the South Was Bound to Lose

My favorite scene from Gone With the Wind in which Rhett Butler explains succinctly the disadvantages the South will encounter in any war with the North.  Far sighted Southerners at the time also gave such warnings:

“To secede from the Union and set up another government would cause war. If you go to war with the United States, you will never conquer her, as she has the money and the men. If she does not whip you by guns, powder, and steel, she will starve you to death. It will take the flower of the country-the young men.”

Sam Houston

Far sighted Northerners living in the South saw the disparity at the time also:

“You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is follu, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you’re talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mightly effort to save it… Besides, where are your man and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive or railway car, hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical people on earth – right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and your determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see that in the end you will surely fail.”

William Tecumseh Sherman, December 1860

Shelby Foote, perhaps the greatest Southern historian of the War sums it up for us:

I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back. At the same time the war was going on, the Homestead act was being passed, all these marvelous inventions were going on… If there had been more Southern victories, and a lot more, the North simply would have brought that other hand out from behind its back. I don’t think the South ever had a chance to win that War.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
25 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Jay Anderson
Tuesday, February 1, AD 2011 8:03am

As you pointed out several months ago at Almost Chosen People, Robert E. Lee, himself, pointed out the folly of secession in the run-up to the war:

http://almostchosenpeople.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/lee-on-secession/

And while I agree with the substance of the Sherman quote, I hardly should have to point out the rich irony of his invoking “crimes against civilization” in his argument against secession. Crimes against civilization are something with which he became intimately familiar during his march through the South and his Indian extermination policy.

Jay Anderson
Tuesday, February 1, AD 2011 8:38am

Well, I hope my comment doesn’t bring a bunch of neo-Confederate kooks out of the woodworks, but you know I HAD to say it, Don.

😉

As a son of the South, I, like Lee, Houston, and Foote, am nevertheless cognizant of the folly in which the South deluded itself into believing it had the wherewithall to defeat, or even hold to a stalemate, the North. And I hope that, had I lived 150 years ago, I would have been as prescient as those who recognized the folly beforehand. So, I’m not some neo-Confederate secessionist, and I am a great admirer of Lincoln and other participants in the cause of the Union.

But I’m still a Southerner and one who is sympatheric to the native peoples of this Nation, so Sherman and Sheridan will always hold a place of infamy in my heart.

c matt
c matt
Tuesday, February 1, AD 2011 9:50am

Clearly outclassed in weaponry and supplies. Not that I would necessarily have wanted history to come out differently, but I wonder if the South had fought less gentlemanly – that is, if they had adopted tactics similar to Al Qaeda and whatnot, I wonder if they would have won. Talk about your one-sided wars – the US (and Russia for that matter) clearly had the military superiority, yet for all of our military might, we can’t seem to win. The South couldn’t do it in a more equally matched contest; yet AQ seems to be able to do it against a far more outmatching foe.

Dale Price
Dale Price
Tuesday, February 1, AD 2011 9:56am

Quantity has a quality all its own.

Tom McKenna
Tuesday, February 1, AD 2011 10:03am

Certainly my home of Virginia was opposed to secession… until Lincoln made the decision to raise armies from the states, including Virginia, and made it clear that he would invade the south to settle the issue.

Virginia would certainly never have gone out but for Lincon’s militancy. It’s entirely possible that if he had made clear his intention to leave Virginia out of it (by not requisitioning troops and crossing her boundaries to get at the lower states) she would never have seceded… and without her, the southern confederacy would have been doomed to an even shorter life.

Oh, and there was one canon factory in the south… Richmond’s Tredegar Works.

Jay Anderson
Tuesday, February 1, AD 2011 10:12am

Hey Tom,

What are they doing with the Tredegar Iron Works building now? When I lived in Richmond, it had been a museum, but that venture didn’t last very long. Have they utilized it as part of the “river walk” / “canal walk” project? And, for that matter, has the “river walk” / “canal walk” project ever really gotten off the ground? I know there was some success with it in Shockoe Slip, but what about around the Brown’s Island/Tredegar area?

antonio caetano
antonio caetano
Tuesday, February 1, AD 2011 11:05am

thank you. You have given me a perspective I had never been exposed to. Much appreciated.
antonio

Jacob Morgan
Jacob Morgan
Tuesday, February 1, AD 2011 12:40pm

c matt:

Different types of war. The Civil war, and WWI and WWII, were wars of attrition–grind down the other side and see who runs out of people first. The Civil war left over 300,000 Union dead alone, and about that many US troops died in WWII as well. Those wars were against other armies with clear lines of who held what territory. A counter-insurgency is something different and may not ever really be completely won, since so long as some yahoo out there decides to be an insurgent, well the insurgency continues. One could compare (speaking of the post-Civil war time) Al Qaeda to the KKK perhaps.

Speaking of the Civil war, it occurred to me that ten years from now we will be as far removed from WWII as those who were in WWII were removed from the Civil war.

Nate Wildermuth
Nate Wildermuth
Tuesday, February 1, AD 2011 7:16pm

If the south had no reasonable chance of success, then the war they waged was unjust, and therefore murder — the opposite of honorable.

I know that Donald disagrees about the just-war criteria set out in the current catechism of the Church, but from the my perspective, I wonder how it is possible to see the south’s futile war to defend their unjust society as anything but ignoble and sinful?

Sometimes the most honorable thing to do is surrender, as Lee discovered four years too late.

Nate Wildermuth
Nate Wildermuth
Tuesday, February 1, AD 2011 7:58pm

Everyone has to follow their conscience, and soldiers of both sides ought to be praised for the courage it took to follow their conscience.

On the other hand, we know that conscience can be wrong and that truth is not relative. While the gallantry of the deluded soldiers of the south should be commended, the gallantry of those soldiers who refused to fight for the south ought to be even more commended. For both types followed their conscience, but only one was right.

Donald, as one with a great deal of knowledge (or at least more than my own) about the Civil War, I wonder if you know of any southern men who conspicuously refused to fight for the south?

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Wednesday, February 2, AD 2011 7:33am

“I wonder if the South had fought less gentlemanly – that is, if they had adopted tactics similar to Al Qaeda and whatnot, I wonder if they would have won.”

In Missouri and Kansas, they did, even before the war — and the results were so appalling that it quashed any desire on the part of Lee and other Confederate generals to continue fighting a guerilla war after Appomattox. For a really good explanation of this read “April 1865: The Month that Saved America.”

Tom McKenna
Wednesday, February 2, AD 2011 8:49am

Jay, Tredegar is now part of the NPS, and is the home of the American Civil War Center, which seeks to present the war from all “sides,” Confederate, Yankee, and of course, enslaved blacks. (http://tredegar.org/) River walk is slowly picking up steam, a music venue has opened up, and new office and apartment buildings have gone up on the canal… have to wait and see, but lots of potential there.

Nate, it’s a dangerous proposition that holds that one part of this country can decide it doesn’t like what another state or states is doing and decide to forcibly invade to effectuate a change. The typical southerner was not fighting “for” slavery any more than the typical Yank was fighting “to free the slaves.” The southerner was fighting to free his state from what he viewed as the tyranny of forced membership in the Union. The Yank was fighting to preserve the union.

Only much later did Lincoln attempt to change the moral focus of the war to liberation, seeing that it would kill southern efforts to enlist the aid of Britain, and would also provide a more trenchant rallying point than preservation of the Union by force of arms.

Even Lincoln however, recognized that there was no constitutional authority to invade the south in order to free the slaves. His stated legal rationale for invasion was preservation of federal property and of the union, and to suppress insurrection.

Much as I despise the liberalism of New York or California, I would never imagine that we should combine arms to invade that state to suppress the immoral practices enshrined by law in those states.

Tom McKenna
Wednesday, February 2, AD 2011 8:51am

Ooops, “invade THOSE STATES”

DarwinCatholic
Wednesday, February 2, AD 2011 11:07am

Don,

I’m trying to recall if you were the one who linked, a while back, to a book on Southerners (not just officers, but enlisted men) who fought for the North. I seem to recall the number was in the tens of thousands.

I thought I’d saved the book link somewhere, but now I find I can’t find it.

Tom McKenna
Thursday, February 3, AD 2011 9:28am

Yes, and they were on occasion ill-treated, I’m thinking of Gen’l. George Thomas, the “Rock of Chickamauga” who was surely one of the best military commanders in the Union army, yet never ascended as high as his merit suggested. From an old Virginia family, he realized that siding with the invader would probably bring him infamy at home. It did, his family and state disowning him, even after the war’s end. Then to be the subject of at least an implicit suspicion amongst the Union high command must have been a bitter thing to bear.

Jay Anderson
Thursday, February 3, AD 2011 1:12pm

Sherman was also fairly critical of Thomas as being too plodding and deliberate. Perhaps Thomas didn’t burn out enough population centers for Sherman’s liking.

Tom McKenna
Friday, February 4, AD 2011 9:13am

It’s interesting, the myth-making that occurs after a war. Grant and Sherman are the Union heroes, even though as a tactician, Grant was nothing to boast about– George Thomas was superior in my view. Grant simply had enough sense to remain engaged with Lee in the overland campaign of ’64-’65, rather than retreating after getting whipped, which had always allowed Lee breathing room and time to recoup his troop losses. Grant understood that by staying engaged with the ANV, he could get tactically beaten but replace his losses, where Lee could not replace his.

Sherman of course is most notable for herocially creating a large swath of desolation of civilian targets in Georgia and South Carolina, repeating the same type of crime that occured in the Shenandoah valley.

On the confederate side, the myth was of the invicible Lee, who, while a great strategist, was not always on his game tactically, witness his mistakes at Malvern hill and Gettysburg. The myth machine chewed up and spat out Longstreet, making him the scapegoat for Gettysburg (and it helped that he became a Catholic after the war and cooperated with the Repbulicans).

Discover more from The American Catholic

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Scroll to Top