From
“Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst:
October 24
The South should have won the Civil
War. They had a cause, for starters, that was so stirring that it excited the
admiration, and unfortunately the allegiance, of the vast majority of America’s
military talent, to include arguably the most able field commander in
American history, Robert E. Lee. The Confederate fighting man left his Yankee
counterpart in the dust in terms of ferocity, ingenuity, stamina. [Case in
point: in one seven-month period in 1862 the Army of Northern Virginia under
the command of Robert E. Lee inflicted almost 71,000 enemy casualties while
suffering just over 48,000; they captured nearly 75,000 small arms while losing
only 6,000 and captured 155 Union cannon while losing only eight.] Then there
were the text-book considerations: interior lines of transportation and
communication, and the fact that a defensive war can be won even if you’re
outnumbered three to one if you’re prepared to pay the price. And the
Confederacy more than paid the price. And finally, we compare the two
presidents and it’s all over. Jefferson Davis cut his teeth in the big leagues
of Washington politics for nearly 15 years; he slipped into the presidency of
the Confederacy smooth like a hand into a glove. A West Point graduate and
decorated hero of the Mexican War, he was a former Secretary of War who, unlike
Lincoln, required no steep learning curve – as Commander in Chief Davis was up
to speed from day one. True, the North outnumbered the South by 5 to 2, had a
vastly more robust industrial base, but none of those factors would be decisive
as long as the war was a short one.
“The
best laid plans o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.” – Bobby Burns
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