Warring sides 35In Virginia, the Shenandoah valley offered a
protected corridor through which
Confederate armies could march to threaten
Washington and other parts of the North,
and several rivers that flowed generally west
to east presented potential barriers to Union
overland movements against the southern
capital. On the negative side for the
Confederacy, the North could use these same
rivers as waterborne avenues of advance.
Aware that material factors favoured their
opponents, many Confederates nevertheless
understood their own strong points and
appreciated the magnitude of the North's
challenge. For example, George Wythe
Randolph, a Virginian who served as a
brigadier-general and Secretary of War,
commented in the autumn of 1861 that
Union forces 'may overrun our frontier States
and plunder our coast but, as for conquering
us, the thing is an impossibility.' Randolph
believed that history offered no instance of 'a
people as numerous as we are inhabiting a
country so extensive as ours being subjected
if true to themselves.' General P. G. T.
Beauregard similarly remarked after the war
that no 'people ever warred for independence
with more relative advantages than the
Confederates,' among which he noted
geography well suited to blocking Union
invasions. 'If, as a military question, they [the
Confederate people] must have failed,'
concluded Beauregard, 'then no country must
aim at freedom by means of war.'
A persistent myth about the Civil War
holds that the Confederacy enjoyed better
generalship. Such a view makes sense if
applied only to the Eastern Theater in the
first two years of the war. The Army of
Northern Virginia, under the guidance of
Robert E. Lee and a talented cast of
subordinates who included Stonewall
Jackson and James Longstreet, won a series
of dramatic victories in 1862-63 that created
an aura of magnificent accomplishment.
Overall, however, North and South drew on
very similar pools of officers. West Pointers
held most of the top positions in all Civil
War armies, and they shared a common
heritage. They took the same courses from
the same professors at the academy, learned
the same lessons in class and on battlefields
in Mexico, and tended to subscribe to the
same strategic and tactical theories. They
understood the dominance of the tactical
defensive because of the increased killing
range of rifle muskets and the value of field
fortifications. They therefore tried to avoid
direct assaults by turning an enemy's flank
(which often proved impossible). They also
sought to operate on interior lines both
strategically and tactically. Some generals
proved more adept at translating these ideas
into action, but most Civil War campaigns
and battles were based on them. Apart from
the West Pointers, both sides appointed
some political generals and saw a few
untutored officers achieve substantial fame.
The Confederacy seemed to have a clear
advantage in their Commander-in-Chief.
Jefferson Davis was a West Point graduate who
had commanded a regiment in the war with
Mexico and later served as Secretary of War.
Abraham Lincoln's military credentials
consisted of a short stint as a volunteer junior
officer during the Black Hawk war of the
1830s. But Lincoln learned quickly, and he
and Davis both exhibited a sound grasp of
strategy as well as military theory and practice.
One variable could throw off the entire
equation. The possibility of foreign
intervention, particularly by Great Britain
or France, received enormous attention
from both governments and the northern
and Confederate people. The example of
the American Revolution once again stood
out. Intervention along the lines of
French participation in the Revolutionary
War could yield profound military and
economic consequences.
In summary, the North entered the war
with a range of considerable advantages, but
the Confederacy by no means faced a
hopeless struggle. Other nations had won
against longer odds. In the end, it would
come down to which side mustered its
human and material resources more
effectively, found the better military and
political leaders, and managed to sustain
popular support for the war effort.