394
T
he answer to this question had long been answered with
numbers: The South had too few people and factories. But
many have rebutted this point by noting that the South
nearlydidwin. Although southern commanders were
plagued with shortages, they lost no battles because they ran
out of bullets or shells. In a study of industrial output, Emory
Thomas (1979) concluded that southern leadership “outdid its
northern counterpart in mobilizing for total war.” The South’s
chief deficiency was, surprisingly, in food production. Frank L.
Owsley (1925) blamed the South’s defeat on “state’s rights
jealousy and particularism.” Confederate states failed to coor-
dinate financing and production and thus made the South’s
defeat “inevitable.” Jeffrey Hummel (1996), however, has
advanced the opposite argument: Jefferson Davis’s centraliza-
tion of power strangled the South with bureaucratic ineffi-
ciency and deprived it of ideological coherence. The
Confederacy was hampered by the central authority it
deplored in the federal powers of the Union. David Eicher
(2006) adds that Davis interfered with generals and promoted
incompetents. Folklore holds that the genius of southern
generals, especially Robert E. Lee, overcame all southern defi-
ciencies; but James McPherson (1988) holds that, apart from
Lee, the South lacked generals such as Grant and Sherman
who understood total war. In Attack and Die(1982), moreover,
a book whose thesis is contained in its title, Grady McWhiney
and Perry D. Jamieson insisted that Lee’s audacity, and that of
other southern generals, was ill-suited to the military technol-
ogy of the day. Rifles were particularly effective at cutting
down attacking armies. Detailed statistical analysis, however,
has challenged this thesis: The North and South initiated
attacks with nearly equal frequency and losses. Edward
Channing (1925) proposed that the South was defeated
because by 1865 Confederates “lost the will to fight.” This is
rather like saying that the South stopped fighting because it
decided to stop fighting—an instance of circular reasoning.
But many historians have found the argument, restated more
subtly, to be persuasive. Richard Beringer, Herman Hattaway
and Archer Jones (1986) proposed that while the
Confederacy could field and equip an effective army for most
of the war,“an insufficient nationalism” failed to “survive the
strains imposed by lengthy hostilities.”
Source: Emory Thomas, The Confederate Nation(1979); Frank L. Owsley, State
Rights in the Confederacy(1925); James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom(1988);
Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson, Attack and Die(1982); Edward
Channing,History of the United States(1925); Richard Beringer, Herman Hattaway
and Archer Jones, How the North Won(1986); Jeffrey Hummel, Emancipating
Slaves, Enslaving Free Men(1996); David Eicher, Dixie Betrayed(2006).
DEBATING THE PAST
Why Did the South Lose the
Civil War?
This photograph of a Union soldier, just freed from Andersonville
prison, enraged Northerners. Nearly a third of the prisoners there
died. But by 1865 food shortages throughout the South weakened
morale. In several cities, including Richmond, women led bread riots:
“Our children are starving while the rich roll in wealth!”