if the Union Army was x2 larger than the Confederate Army and had better weapons/tech then why tf did it take them nearly half a decade to "beat" the Confederates?
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if the Union Army was x2 larger than the Confederate Army and had better weapons/tech then why tf did it take them nearly half a decade to "beat" the ...
Same reason it took the USSR almost half a decade to recover from extremely heavy losses and utilize their industrial/manpower advantage. The union was clumsy, taken by surprise and worse-led
It had no significant advantage in the first year of the war, and even in the second it had not fully materialized. Care to explain why you think four years is a particularly long time for a war?
>worse-led
Lol yeah. All those exceptional Confederate generals like Johnston, Bragg, and Hood sure whooped the union again and again in countless battles.
let's hear how you, great IQfy general, would manage the civil war from the union side and come out on top plus in better shape.
Dump McClellan into the Atlantic Ocean
ZOGchuds cant fight
I'm a southerner but buddy my man the confederacy was led by freemasons and israelites
Lincoln was about the only one that wasn't a Freemason
I still keep a battle flag but you fr got a lot of things to accept about you south you probably don't like.
>implying Confeds weren’t playing defense the whole time, a position which any good military authority will tell requires twice the men effectively zerg-rushing said defenses
Gee, I fricking wonder
Funny how dixoids never ask why the Confeds never managed to effectively gain and hold any Union ground
>Funny how dixoids never ask why the Confeds never managed to effectively gain and hold any Union ground
Why would they need to, strategically speaking?
>start shit in an effort to become Haiti 2.0
>entire movement rests on grinding the Union to such a standstill that Lincoln capitulates or somebody replaces him in ‘64
>fail utterly at every turn and slowly lose the entire West while Lee just wastes his mens lives holding Richmond
“Strategically speaking”, it was their only hope and they were fricking trash at it
White people dont build Haiti.
Their movement rested on breaking Union morale which they nearly did more than once and it created an extreme imperialist authoritarian mindset of the US Government which basically created what America is today.
There is no big brother without the Confederacy making it necessary.
>Funny how dixoids never ask why the Confeds never managed to effectively gain and hold any Union ground
Because they didn't want to take over the US but just secede
Seceding meant holding enough ground that you could get peace terms in your favor, moron
The Union had some really shitty generals from elite backgrounds who sympathized with the Confederacy and had to be sidelined before Bernin' Sherman and other guys could wage total war.
How well would 10 men armed with the best rifles available do against just you and a friend armed only with bolt action rifles in your own home/surrounding neighborhood if you a.) Knew they were coming and b.) Had time to prepare?
cause as the Russians and Chinese repeatedly learn over the last thousand years, numbers aren't everything.
And even if the motivation and quality were equal it would still take a long time to capture the entire confederacy
That's what all these revisionists that have sprang up claiming with a straight face that Lee was a blundering buffoon whose reputation is only propped up by Lost Cause propaganda and Grant was Napoleon reincarnated can't explain. In just about every metric important to war the Union had a colossal advantage - population, economy, industry, naval, merchant marine etc. etc. etc. The only advantage you could possibly give the Confederacy the edge was in horses - the South had more and were much more skilled horsemen on average. Other than that nothing.
If you do the various military model equations, the South should not have lasted more than a year at max and really 6 months to be considered a good performance. So what gives? How can a buffoon hold off a relative juggernaut led by Alexander the Great for almost half a decade?
>The only advantage you could possibly give the Confederacy the edge was in horses - the South had more and were much more skilled horsemen on average
this was only the case at the start of the war, by 1865 the Union Cavalry/Dragoons (or mounted troops) numbered well over 200,000 men, by comparison the Confederate Cavalry at it's peak only numbered 70,000 men not to mention that practically 100% of the Union's Cavalrymen were armed with either a Breechloading Carbine or a Repeater, the Confederate Cavalry on the other hand had a 50/50 split when it came to weaponry, about half were armed with Revolvers and half with Breechloading Carbines (most of which were captured from the Union) so the difference in power between both sides was massive yet the Confederates still managed to hold out for nearly half a decade and inflicted double the amount of casualties on the Union than they themselves received.
>If you do the various military model equations, the South should not have lasted more than a year at max and really 6 months to be considered a good performance. So what gives? How can a buffoon hold off a relative juggernaut led by Alexander the Great for almost half a decade?
That can be easily answered: It takes time to mobilize manpower reserves, industrial capabilities, and economic activities to a wartime economy. Sherman literally called the outcome of the war when conflicts first broke out, he opined that it would take the North about 3-4 years to mobilize it's economic power to the war effort and once achieved it would lead to a Union victory.
The governor of Texas said the same thing, that the South would win at the start but as the anger of the North built they would seize the advantage in the long run.
The Texas legislature promptly sidelined him by altering the powers of the governor and decided to join the war anyway.
I hope that guy spent the rest of his life walking up to people's doors yelling "I TOLD YOU SO"
His name was Sam Houston and he died before the war ended. He was pretty much the father of Texas.
Stephen F Austin was the father of Texas. Sam Houston was the George Washington of Texas.
so how come the Union almost lost in 1863 and 1864?
1863 - the year of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, when the Mississippi River was fully taken, an act which itself rendered the CSA unviable as a project? Which opened up a route into the Southern interior?
1864 is a better argument, but even then, it was a question of whether the attritional fighting could deliver results on a timescale that would be satisfactory to Northern public opinion, rather than Federal forces being defeated. Any scenario where you're counting on a morale victory is inherently more uncertain, as you're relying upon forces that aren't within your control or power to deliberately modify.
>the Union almost lost in 1863
Why did the Confederacy lose outright in ‘63? It was literally over for them the moment Vicksburg fell
>it was over when Vicksburg fell
Why?
They still would not reach full strength until 1864.
>Southern interior
you mean where less than a third of their production came from?
>inherently more uncertain
???
Its far more likely because of the numerous times it almost happened.
>warfare
>anything being in your control
>Why?
Fall of Vicksburg
>Union has undisputed control up and down the most important waterway in the South, from New Orleans and up
>Mississippi River, the most important economic waterway in the Confederacy, is lost
>30,000 Confederates surrendered, basically a field army or a corp or two
>Cuts out Texas from the rest of the Confederates, so inability to resupply or get troops from Texas to help out the Eastern theatres
>Weakens Confederate ability to wage war, has to rely on domestic supply for food and weapons.
>Sherman incoming to frick up the South and break whatever industrial and agricultural base the South might have to wage war since it's all irreplaceable now without a secure and reliable way to get food/weapons to the South
>No, blockade runners can't supply Lee's army of 60,000 and feed a starving southern population
Turns out you can win a war by making the enemy starve and bleed to death.
yet no one starved or bled because of Vicksburg.
>most important waterway in the South
important for what? It was useless to Lee.
>30,000 surrendered
the only real effect.
>cut out Texas
a small state population wise and contributing even less in regards to supply, not a significant factor.
>inb4 le elite fightin' texuns
get the frick out of here moron.
>weakens Confederate ability to wage war
not in the East
>has to reply on domestic supply for food and weapons
they already did in the East and were using captured weaponry/ammo/supply even when rebuffed they collected weapons and supply to last them months.
For example Gettysburg supplied Lee until 1865.
This alone BTFOs the significance of Vicksburg, at best you can speculate that maybe Lee would have run out if he had lasted longer.
But that didnt happen anyway.
>whatever agricultural and industrial base
such as?
The majority of Southern production was in Virginia, they had no issue raiding Maryland and PA when they were pressed for supply.
Not to mention, the war went on for nearly two years longer despite Vicksburg falling.
>blockade runners cant supply Lee's army
they werent supplying Lee's army, and the Union didnt even blockade all the Southern ports anyway.
>starving Southern population
The Union fed them unironically.
Turns out you cant win a war by taking Vicksburg, because if you could, they would have won by doing so.
>but this lead to
you could say the Confederates winning BVLL run 1 lead to their defeat because thats just how history played out.
In reality, Vicksburg was not enough, not even close, and Lee's army was well supplied by its own local chains and by raiding.
The only reason they ran out of supply for Appomattox was because they had done non-stop fighting, and even at Appomattox they were not fully out of munitions as much as they were out of manpower, and the majority of Lee's men came from The East, not the West.
>The only reason they ran out of supply for Appomattox was because they had done non-stop fighting
*blocks your path*
Sheridan was less effective in the Eastern woodlands.
His only strategic effects were killing Stuart and running over Early.
>cant answer the question
lol
well no because Midway was a turning point and specifically itself was pivotal to the US war effort.
Whereas Vicksburg fell and no one noticed in The East and even in the West Morgan's raid sustained their morale and preserved their fighting spirit.
>you cant understand a battle's aftermath
I literally stated what was significant in the aftermath, re-read.
>the losses of this particular battle
in what way?
It had no effect on Eastern morale
It had no effect on Eastern supply
It had no effect on actually fighting in the East (against Lee)
And the war was over when Lee surrendered, Lincoln and Halleck didnt see it as significant in determining the outcome, neither did the retired Scott.
It was Lee and Richmond that were the big fish and this was known by everyone at the time.
>the Eastern woodlands
Holy fricking cope
He destroyed the Shenandoah Valley and starved out Lee by doing so and you know it
>can’t answer the obvious strawman
Why must you ruin every civil war thread? Are you this desperate for (you)’s?
Lee wasnt supplied via the Shenandoah and if youre talking about him vs Early, I already said that you fricking monkey.
>heh you made fun of me, that means I win
kys, moron.
You have no rebuttal, so naturally shaming is the best way to deal with you.
>strawman
You claim Vicksburg had some great effect, I have already explained why it didnt.
>self-sufficiency of Eastern theatre
>morale bonus of Morgan's raid
I even advocated for your point of view and put in the contribution of Vicksburg being diverting men away from Lee.
You are simply antithetical to reality because you can not come to grips with ZOGdogs getting blown out in their proto-blm crusade.
>blm
Wow. You're a shit landlord because you got so many things living rent free up there.
cope. zogdog
>Lee was supplied from the North
Can you explain how the Shenandoah supplied Lee while Lee was either East or South of it?
or are you talking about some non-existent third invasion?
You still havent explained why Vicksburg is some pivotal point in the war, its a milestone but ultimately did less than Gettysburg, Antietam, Stones River, Franklin part 2, and Richmond-Petersburg.
>Lee wasnt supplied via the Shenandoah
Are you fricking moronic?
0/10 you can’t possibly be serious
>if youre talking about him vs Early, I already said that you fricking monkey.
I’m referring to
This post is the equivalent of "If Midway was such an important battle and spelled the end of the Japanese, why did the US take 4 years to win against the Japanese in 1945 instead of 1942? Checkmate!"
You can't even understand a battle's aftermath, effects on the overall strategic landscape, and the idea that over time, the losses of this particular battle have an outsized effect on the whole war itself.
Lee was a talented general, but he was and is heavily overrated especially in the South where even today he's seen as Washington, Jesus and Napoleon wrapped up into one. Lee's aggressiveness and willingness to take risks allowed him to defeat several Union generals but he also burned through his army very quickly and the Confederacy could not effectively replace manpower later in the war. He also fricked up pretty badly at Gettysburg.
The Confederates mobilized (and lost) a substantially larger segment of their available manpower, which gave them the strategic depth needed for years of bloodletting. If one looks at the actual figures for battles, there are few in which the Union manpower advantage is at or greater than 2:1, and also few in which Union losses were proportionately higher.
>led by Alexander the Great
Most of the Union's best generals were in the Western Theater, while the Potomac/Northern Virginia Front was saddled with various degrees of incompetents, some of whom (like Maj. John Key) even admitted in engaging in conspiracy to sabotage the war effort.
>That is not the game. The object is that neither army shall get much advantage of the other; that both shall be kept in the field till they are exhausted, when we will make a compromise and save slavery.
>got rolled in less than 5 years
lmfao that's nothing to be proud of. Ever heard of the Hundred Years War?
the Confederates managed to hold out for the same duration as the Germans did in WW1
Because real life wars aren't Paradox map painting simulators or Total War auto-resolve battle where bigger numbers are insta wins, kiddo.
America is fricking big.
Union:
-led by an inept drunk
-lower morale: fight because we told you to, don’t and go to prison
-too many conscripts that didn’t speak English
-shitty incentives; even union blacks were often sent back to contraband camps after their service
-generals/captains from outside, less experienced
Confederates:
-higher morale: kill all invading scum
-defense on home field
-led by military genius (Lee/Jackson)
-less industrialized = more rural = higher chance of experience in hunting
>led by an inept drunk
moron alert
Grant was an inferior strategist and a well-known drunk/womanizer who was unbelievably corrupt.
Lee was none of those things.
>a well-known drunk/womanizer
Keep lying, Cletus
>Why?
Are you moronic or just really bad at trolling?
>hoes mad
Yankees “won” and still can’t get over it.
>trolling
no
Vicksburg was ultimately insignificant
you meme about thousands of square miles but ultimately Virginia produced more than the rest of the CSA combined, and Virginia plus North Carolina did the Lionshare of the war determining fighting in the east.
Scott and McClellans Anaconda strategy was not helpful to the Confederacy, but it was ultimately Lee being outnumbered 5:1 which made the Confederacy Valhalla-bound.
>muh Grant
look im sorry, I like Grant too, he's based and was a proto-gamer, redpilled on JQ, and would have knelt of floyd george.
But Vicksburg was a meme.
The greatest effect it had, was causing Davis to send more men West instead of fortifying Appalachia and leaving the West to do what they did best which was "Indian fighting" and gorilla warfare.
had they listened to Lee in early 64, locked down the East, held the Union from taking the Carolinas (which the Union never took anyway), and diverted their remaining men to Lee, giving him another Horde like he had at Antietam, Lee would have smashed Grant (which he did at first but for want of men could not do so a third time) and the Maryland would have been devoid of men (as it was when Grant sieged Richmond Petersburg) and the Union would have to fight Lee head on with Lee having 2-3x more men.
Which if we go by his actual military record, Lee would have no equal in The East.
The War certainly would have been a lot closer had this occurred if not a probable CSA victory given they actually pulled off a successful counter attack with sufficient men to overwhelm the North East.
>Vicksburg was ultimately insignificant
Stopped reading there
If its so important, why didnt it end the war?
>Lee being outnumbered 5:1 which made the Confederacy Valhalla-bound
Maybe he wouldn't be outnumbered 5:1 if he had actually won some battles outright instead of slugging it out mono y mono with a numerically superior force and managing to inflict barely more casualties than the enemy.
>Union: 200k
>Confederates: 100k
>Lee fights and takes 10,000 casualties to kill 12,000 yanks
>Union: 188k
>Confederates: 90k
Rinse and repeat a few times and Lee is grinding his army down until he's caught in a situation and lacks the manpower for anymore set piece pitched battles.
>won some battles outright
Like Second BVLL run?
Fredericksburg?
Cold Harbor?
>barely more
try 2-3x more casualties lel
>Lee is grinding his army down
well not really, rarely did Lee not inflict 30-50% more on the enemy.
Not to mention his strategy wasnt about grinding, it was about appearing invincible, he did to the point where people today debate as to whether Lee was the greatest general in American history, and its fairly conclusive he was the greatest in the Civil War.
>b-but
relax, I said debate. Not that Lee was, only that reasonable cases are made for both sides.
>>b-but
>relax, I said debate.
Good to know you're debating against a strawman figment of your imagination so you can feel good about yourself. Nice try debating your imaginary best friend, buddy.
>missing the point this hard
lel
I said Lee was debatably the best general of the war, to say he was a bad commander because he once took losses comparable to his enemies instead of a stunning victory is just total nonsense.
I said that to spare your ego because you come across as an ideologically driven moron.
go back to Europe, moron.
>resorts to ad hominen
>uses moron twice in a row
lmfao
It's amazing how strong the opinion of the American Civil War are on this site considering the fact that passionate posters like this get all of their information from wikipedia and headcanon. This might actually be the worst, most uninformed place to talk about the conflict online.
Initially, there was lots of division in Lincoln’s cabinet a lot of them were southern sympathizers or outright spies and leaked a lot of plans to the south. Lincoln’s military leaders were grossly incompetent at the beginning and actively undermined him.
The south had the initial advantage of having all the veterans generals of Mexican American war which is what put them at the advantage initially.
The North realized it had one advantage over the South and that was bodies and eventually they just bled the south dry of manpower.
Bumping another worthless thread
>"beat"
you say that like it isn't what happened lol
The thread is obvious bait because it completely ignores that the US Civil War was one of the most successfully fought wars in its era.
No other country in the mid-1800s waged the same kind of war that the US Union Army did against the Confederates, which was to effectively annihilate the rebel government of a near peer power. OP is trying to use some kind of 'gatcha!' moment to imply the Union army was incompetent (which is was in many ways) and squandered its population/industrial advantage but the fact remains that the Union was competent enough to get the job done.
The Napoleonic Wars typically lasted for a season before armistice were signed, because Napoleon crushed them and took land (sometimes a lot of land), but the survival of the Great Powers (Austria, Prussia, Russia) wasn't in question. Even then, the invasion of Russia and the counterattack lasted from 1812 to 1814. If the Coalition had 3x as many troops as France, why tf did it take them 3 years to defeat Nappy?
The Mexican-American War was similar. While the US Army handily defeated the Mexican Army, the land they seized were relatively empty and the Mexican core territories were preserved. The US would have faced a different struggle annexing all of Mexico and imposing their will on every warlord and bandit.
The Crimean War lasted 3 years and it fought between great powers for a single sea port and ended without any significant changes in territory.
The French had invaded Mexico during the French Intervention and that lasted from 1861 to 1867. They never fully 100% ruled the country and had to leave in disgrace.
The Union took significantly longer to beat the Confederacy while outnumbering it 5 times over, outproducing it 5 times over, and out-financing it 10 times over, not only that it was basically The Union vs Virginia which dragged the war on, and within that, The Union vs Lee and friends.
The West fell considerably more easily than the East, it fell in the time it took for the Union to march.
The question is really why with such advantageous strengths did the Union take so long to conquer tiny Virginia.
Virginia had to be isolated for a year before it was close to being subdued.
1. The Union had won within the first few years. They captured the western portion of Virginia, embargoed confederate states, captured the port of New Orleans, and forced Lee to recall Jackson to make a last-stand defense of Richmond, the capitol of the Confederacy.
2. The Confederacy's goal wasn't to conquer the Union, which they knew they hadn't a chance; it was to make reabsorbing them such an expensive prospect the Union would be forced to recognize their independence as a new polity as a fact accomplished.
3. The greatest potential for a swing in their favor for the Confederates, given the British couldn't get through due to Russia's blockade, was MD switching to their side. MD was highly sympathetic to the Secessionist cause and Lincoln previously arrested their congressmen to prevent a vote of sucession from occuring in MD. Lee saw his most sucessful battles in MD but lacked sufficient manpower, mobility, and discipline to ever build upon the momentum of a won battle into a definitive closure.
In short, Lee was always outnumbered and so severely limited in where he could deploy forces. Spreading out his detachments would see them overwhelmed and picked-apart by the Union. His insubordinate subrodinates would retreat when he told them to hold, hold when he told them to pursue, and pursue when he told them to wait. He repeatedly lost opportunities to bleed the Union or destroy one of their armies, which he adequately planned and gave orders for, because other officers simply disobeyed his orders.
The Union forces were repulsed repeatedly but their armies weren't destroyed. This allowed them to capture pieces of Virginia, entrench, and await reinforcements. This long game far favored them over the Confederacy. The Confederacy did not have the reserves of men or material forthcoming the Union did so the longer the war drew out the more it favored the Union.
Lee's charge into PA was a move of pure desperation after Jackson died and he was injured.