why didn't the Confederates try a guerrilla warfare strategy?

[Os Cangaceiros]

Why didn't the Confederates, when it became clear that meeting the superior firepower of the Union on the open field was a losing game, attempt more of a "war of the flea" type conflict with the north? If they had burrowed into the low-lying mountains and forests of the American Southeast, they could've made the guerrilla war in Spain against Napoleon look like a pillowfight by comparison.

I remember reading somewhere that Robert E Lee was offered the choice of retreating into the Blue Ridge mountains to further prosecute the war guerrilla-style, but declined because he thought too much blood had already been shed or something.

?

[Geiseric]

Because they didn't have the support of most people in the south, which would of been necessary for a guerilla warfare strategy. Sure many racist white southerners were against reconstruction, that doesn't mean they supported the old aristocracy. Besides the south already realized the war was over, to the point where they started training their own slaves to be in their army. There were a lot of veterans who came to the western U.S. as well, and settled in the territories, who started gangs of their own, such as Jesse James.

[Ostrinski]

In some cases guerrilla skirmishes were indeed carried out between the Confederate and Union troops, in Kentucky specifically. In fact I think every engagement other than Perryville in Kentucky was of a guerrilla nature.

For a prolonged guerrilla strategy where an armed group takes refuge in the mountains, though, would require cooperation, participation, and dedication from the population in the mountain region, such as what the Cuban July 26 Movement was able to achieve in the Sierra Maestra. I am not sure if such a relationship could have been realized?

[Os Cangaceiros]

Yeah, I guess it really does depend on popular support or at least sympathy from the local populations. I'm not sure how much of that still existed by the end of the civil war

[keystone]

there was plenty of guerrilla warfare going on during the civil war in the united states. it started openly in the mid-1850s in kansas five years before the official declaration of the civil war, when pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces attempted to settle the state to win the territory to their side of the union/confederacy dispute.

john brown was part of these battles, leading a raid on osawatomie creek - a slaveowner settlement - where a small unit hacked several pro-slavery settlers to death.

later, after the war broke out in 1861, years of pitched guerrilla attacks between anti-slavery and pro-slavery forces continued in kansas and missouri with numerous raids and massacres. quantrill's raiders were an infamous band of confederate guerrillas who were inducted into the confederate army early on in the war, and conducted the lawrence massacre. lawrence, kansas, was a stronghold of anti-slavery forces and quantrill's irregulars killed dozens of people there and burned down much of the town.

there were also the proto-klan forces of nathan bedford forrest in tennessee, and other less important cores of guerrilla-style fighters. the issue for the confederates (as os cangaceiros points to) is that guerrilla warfare relies on support from the people, and the population dynamics of many areas - especially in the black belt where most of the southern population resided - weren't conducive to having mass support for pro-slavery guerrillas.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Part of the reason also lies in the preferred manner of fighting which resembled the European style of field combat. Abandoning this kind of warfare for a complete 360 to guerrilla warfare would have required a dramatic shift in military thinking and seemed unlikely at the time; skirmishes are one thing but conducting a whole war on a guerrilla basis is another I think.

[Raúl Duke]

Part of the reason also lies in the preferred manner of fighting which resembled the European style of field combat. Abandoning this kind of warfare for a complete 360 to guerrilla warfare would have required a dramatic shift in military thinking and seemed unlikely at the time; skirmishes are one thing but conducting a whole war on a guerrilla basis is another I think.

I agree. A lot of the confederate generals were from West Point and most likely learn methods of conventional warfare and the military culture at the time preferred that; officers/generals preferred it. If they did include any guerrilla fighting it was probably part of an overall conventional military strategy. I doubt the Confederate leadership desired to fight a primarily guerrilla war.

Second, the demographics (thus why not much guerrilla fighting even at the end of hostilities). You had areas and such were there were a substantial black population who would be opposed to white-supremacist guerrillas. Although, there was arguably a bit of "irregulars" I guess if you think of the original KKK (and perhaps others) but they were more of some kind of "gang" or say like "terrorists" and not much a guerrilla fighting force.

[Jimmie Higgins]

In some cases guerrilla skirmishes were indeed carried out between the Confederate and Union troops, in Kentucky specifically. In fact I think every engagement other than Perryville in Kentucky was of a guerrilla nature.

For a prolonged guerrilla strategy where an armed group takes refuge in the mountains, though, would require cooperation, participation, and dedication from the population in the mountain region, such as what the Cuban July 26 Movement was able to achieve in the Sierra Maestra. I am not sure if such a relationship could have been realized?

I think you're right. I don't know if this was a factor or not, but I've read that the South was disliked by the poor farmers in more remote regions; and that the term "Hillbilly" comes from small farm Southerners who supported the North.

But regardless, I think the main thing was that they didn't have the material ability to wage a war like that: what good is a slaveocracy without their plantations and slaves - they had nothing to base a guerrilla war on (though guerrilla tactics were used by both sides throughout in limited ways).

[Geiseric]

Many of the same politicians and landowners actually were integrated into the new U.S. after reconstruction ended, and the north only abolished slavery out of necessity, so there was a lot less tension between the Federal Government and the southern planter elite anyways.

[hetz]

On a side note, why did armies in the times of the American revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and so on fight all in neat ranks, marching in lines and so on?

[Blake's Baby]

They didn't. The 'jaegers' (German skirmishers, the name means 'hunters') and 'rangers' (American units based on hunter-trappers, first seen in the French-Indian War/American theatre of the Seven Years' War) would operate in a much more 'modern' way - they didn't form up in lines, they dressed in an early form of camoflage ('rifle green' in the British Army probably came from the jaegers employed by the Crown in the American Revolution).

The use of rifles might be a factor. Most infantry units used muskets that weren't very accurate and didn't have a great range. That sort of forces you as commander to concentrate your fire, I suspect. So lots of guys with muskets standing in lines.

Rifles are more accurate and have a higher rate of fire, but they require more training. So you tend to get smaller units that learn to hide, I guess...

[Sixiang]

Part of the reason also lies in the preferred manner of fighting which resembled the European style of field combat. Abandoning this kind of warfare for a complete 360 to guerrilla warfare would have required a dramatic shift in military thinking and seemed unlikely at the time; skirmishes are one thing but conducting a whole war on a guerrilla basis is another I think.

This is a major factor, I believe. Of course, the other points about the problems of achieving mass support are important too.

As mentioned before, all the major officers of the war on both sides were educated at West Point, where "European" warfare was taught I assume.

During the American Revolutionary War, guerrilla warfare was practiced in the southern swamp lands and probably in the forests of New England. The colonials knew their land better than the British troops and used it to their advantage.

The American Civil War has been called the first "modern" war, because it was the first war that utilized such modern weaponry like the miniball-loaded muskets, repeaters, and other sorts. I've heard before that the tactics of the Civil War were severely behind the technology of the war.

Ideology is important for an army's success, too. And the Civil War eventually became rather messy at times. I've heard numerous stories of northern soldiers asking southern ones why they're fighting, and the southerners said "Because you're down here, yank." Let us remember that Robert E. Lee was asked to lead the Union troops but chose the Confederacy because he loved Virginia too much.

[goalkeeper]

I don't buy the reason was that they lacked mass support.

Certainly they did lack support, however there are many instances of guerrilla struggles being waged (and lost) without support. The isolated and unpopular guerrilla band is hardly unheard of.

[Geiseric]

There are no examples of guerilla war working without popular support.

[Ostrinski]

Indeed. There is more to the guerrilla strategy than the strictly military aspect. The greater part of the strategy is dependent upon the political climate of the region and the attitudes of the masses in the surrounding areas.

[Lord Daedra]

There was no guerrilla warfare because that would entail abandoning the plantations, which were the only power centers that existed in the south.

[Ostrinski]

^Along with the fact that the slaves, the backbone of the plantation and what made them run, got the fuck out of dodge at the first sign of the Union Army being near. Ironically, the Union soldiers were able to take the slaves back as contraband, so they used the southern confederacy's own attitudes of black people being property to justify the mass fleeing toward the north of black people.

This massive break for the north on behalf of the black slaves was actually one of the reasons that led to the Republican government considering to step up from preserving the union to abolishing slavery, namely that it put the government in a position where they were forced to have a discussion on the issue and come to a conclusive decision.

[goalkeeper]

There are no examples of guerilla war working without popular support.

Not working, but attempted

[Invader Zim]

On a side note, why did armies in the times of the American revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and so on fight all in neat ranks, marching in lines and so on?

As noted by another member, they did. Just to add a side note to that, the term 'Guerrilla' entered the English lexicon during the Napoleonic Wars, based on the contact between the British Army, under Sir Arthur Wellesley (late the Duke of Wellington), and the Spanish and Portuguese insurgents who called themselves 'guerrillas', which translates to 'little war'.



Rifles are more accurate and have a higher rate of fire, but they require more training.

Not in the case of the English riflemen of the Napoleonic Wars, a veteran rifleman was expected to be able make two aimed shots with the Baker Rifle per minute. While a veteran soldier was expected to be able to make as many as three to four shots a minute with the Brown Bess musket. The Baker Rifle came into its own in skirmishing, which is where troops would move ahead of the main column or line and pick off as many of the enemy as possible before retreating back into the line before they were overwhelmed by the opposing force. The extended range and accuracy of the rifle, even after considering the reduced rate of fire, gave the skirmisher a distinct advantage. For some reason while the British employed Riflemen, the French did not, which is odd given the successes achieved by the British riflemen.

I spent way too much of my childhood and early teens reading books about the Battle of Waterloo.

[Blake's Baby]

...
Not in the case of the English riflemen of the Napoleonic Wars, a veteran rifleman was expected to be able make two aimed shots with the Baker Rifle per minute. While a veteran soldier was expected to be able to make as many as three to four shots a minute with the Brown Bess musket...

There you go, I thought rifles had a higher rate of fire. Learn something new every day, and all that.


... For some reason while the British employed Riflemen, the French did not, which is odd given the successes achieved by the British riflemen...

Because Napoleon didn't fight in America, where the British developed their rifle regments, maybe?

[Pelarys]

I thought the reason we didn't use that much rifle is that the rifling made common malfunction even more frequent.

[Invader Zim]

Because Napoleon didn't fight in America, where the British developed their rifle regments, maybe?

The Baker Rifle was introduced in 1801, the US didn't enter the conflict until 1812.

[Blake's Baby]

Yeah, you're right. But the skirmishers in the British Army (who became the Rifle Regiments) were, I'd argue, descended organisationally from the rangers of the French-Indian Wars and the jaegers of the American Revolution.

[#FF0000]

I really don't think popularity had anything to do with it. The main reason the CSA didn't go for guerilla warfare is, I'd think, because they had an officer corps that wouldn't really go for that kind of thing. They were a hella traditional "COURAGE IS MY AMMUNITION" bunch of dummies who thought elan alone would protect their soft tissue from canister shot so it doesn't really surprise me that they'd prefer to go for a decisive war.

[khad]

Guerrilla warfare, as a rule, is extremely wasteful of lives, since concentration of force tends to produce lopsided kill ratios. Guerrillas harass, but entire units are regularly caught and wiped out--look at vietnam for a good example. This would be fine if you have the people to spare but not when the occupying army rivals the size of your entire able-bodied white male population.

[Astarte]

Why didn't the Confederates, when it became clear that meeting the superior firepower of the Union on the open field was a losing game, attempt more of a "war of the flea" type conflict with the north? If they had burrowed into the low-lying mountains and forests of the American Southeast, they could've made the guerrilla war in Spain against Napoleon look like a pillowfight by comparison.

I remember reading somewhere that Robert E Lee was offered the choice of retreating into the Blue Ridge mountains to further prosecute the war guerrilla-style, but declined because he thought too much blood had already been shed or something.

?

I do not think it was a primary tactic of the South mainly because of the following reason/s A. The Plantation system of production could not be easily defended via guerrilla war - if soldiers are dispersed in the countryside, hiding in the woods for the majority of the time, it would have been much easier for the Union to simply march in, destroy those objectives, and retreat behind the safety of their own lines - even if it meant being harassed a bit by rifle fire, the Union still could have pulled this off through attrition owing to their superior numbers. B. The tactic of the Union which finally broke the back of the Confederacy was more or less total war with the objective of decimating the infrastructure of the South (Sherman's March), thus again, while guerrillas would have been able to harass the Union armies on their way to such objectives, they would not have been able to succeed in preventing the North from arriving with superior numbers and fire power to the urban and few industrial infrastructure centers of the South - they could barely hold them off via fielded armies for very long. C. Guerrilla warfare is only really a viable tactic when the invader is intending long term occupation. In the case of the Union's occupancy of the South in the U.S. Civil War, the goal was to make actual martial occupation as short-term as possible.

[Mather]

I agree with what a lot of other posters have been saying in that it was the nature of Confederate society and the plantation system that prevented the Confederacy from prosecuting a guerrilla war, plus the fact that such a system was devoid of the type of mass support that would have been needed for such a war. The very way in which Confederate society was structured would have prevented the military officer class of the Confederacy from waging a guerrilla war even if they had wanted to.

The cultural preference for the conventional style warfare that was dominant amongst the officer class was the result of their initial training at military academies such as West Point, but why do such ideas gain dominance in the first place? The ideas that made up the strategic and tacticial thinking of the Confederate officer class were formed by the material reality of Confederate society and the plantation system that was such an integral part of it. The Confederate Army was made up of foot soldiers drawn from black slaves and the white rural labouring class and was staffed by officers drawn from the feudal plantation class. Unlike industrial capitalist societies, feudal rural based societies cannot mobilise the mass of their population in such a manner. When the Civil War was lost and the plantation class lost their land and slaves, there was no question of the old order ever coming back as the social and class dynamics of the former Confederacy were permanently changed.

[Geiseric]

There were no slaves in the southern army. However by the time they chose to promise slaves their freedom for fighting, it was too little too late to avoid the massive escape migration to the north, which was near the end of the war. Southern slaveowners and rich people had the same mentality as roman slave owners, the north should of occupied it for much longer imo, seeing as the plantation ownes eventually got control of their land back and instituted sharecropping.

[skitty]

Why didn't the Confederates, when it became clear that meeting the superior firepower of the Union on the open field was a losing game, attempt more of a "war of the flea" type conflict with the north? If they had burrowed into the low-lying mountains and forests of the American Southeast, they could've made the guerrilla war in Spain against Napoleon look like a pillowfight by comparison.

I remember reading somewhere that Robert E Lee was offered the choice of retreating into the Blue Ridge mountains to further prosecute the war guerrilla-style, but declined because he thought too much blood had already been shed or something.

?They were almost doomed from the beginning: "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 and determined people on earth--right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared. . . . At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, and shut out from the markets of Europe by blockade as you will be, your cause will begin to wane."(Sherman, to a Southern acquaintance, 1860) I think I read that the manufacturing output of NY alone was 4X that of the Confederacy. So, barring a victory at Gettysburg or the intervention of a European power...

[Mather]

There were no slaves in the southern army. However by the time they chose to promise slaves their freedom for fighting, it was too little too late to avoid the massive escape migration to the north, which was near the end of the war. Southern slaveowners and rich people had the same mentality as roman slave owners, the north should of occupied it for much longer imo, seeing as the plantation ownes eventually got control of their land back and instituted sharecropping.

Thanks, I initially assumed that they would have conscripted their slaves into the army as many other previous slave based societies did. Given that the Confederacy did this out of a fear of arming and training slaves to fight, I guess that fact backs up what I said with regard to the material reality of Confederate society being unable to to sustain more modern forms of war such as guerrilla warfare.

[revoltordie]

On a side note, why did armies in the times of the American revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and so on fight all in neat ranks, marching in lines and so on?


Mr Engels

"At the beginning of the fourteenth century, gunpowder came from the Arabs to Western Europe, and, as every school child knows, completely revolutionised the methods of warfare. The introduction of gunpowder and fire-arms, however, was not at all an act of force, but a step forward in industry, that is, an economic advance. Industry remains industry, whether it is applied to the production or the destruction of things. And the introduction of fire-arms had a revolutionising effect not only on the conduct of war itself, but also on the political relationships of domination and subjection. The procurement of powder and fire-arms required industry and money, and both of these were in the hands of the burghers of the towns. From the outset therefore, fire-arms were the weapons of the towns, and of the rising town-supported monarchy against the feudal nobility. The stone walls of the noblemen's castles, hitherto unapproachable, fell before the cannon of the burghers, and the bullets of the burghers’ arquebuses pierced the armour of the knights. With the defeat of the nobility’s armour-clad cavalry, the nobility's supremacy was broken; with the development of the bourgeoisie, infantry and artillery became more and more the decisive types of arms compelled by the development of artillery, the military profession had to add to its organisation a new and entirely industrial subsection, engineering.

The improvement of fire-arms was a very slow process. The pieces of artillery remained clumsy and the musket, in spite of a number of inventions affecting details, was still a crude weapon. It took over three hundred years for a weapon to be constructed that was suitable for the equipment of the whole body of infantry. It was not until the early eighteenth century that the flint-lock musket with a bayonet finally displaced the pike in the equipment of the infantry. The foot soldiers of that period were the mercenaries of princes; they consisted of the most demoralised elements of society, rigorously drilled but quite unreliable and only held together by the rod; they were often hostile prisoners of war who had been pressed into service. The only type of fighting in which these soldiers could apply the new weapons was the tactics of the line, which reached its highest perfection under Frederick II. The whole infantry of an army was drawn up in triple ranks in the form of a very long, hollow square, and moved in battle order only as a whole; at the very most, either of the two wings might move forward or keep back a little. This cumbrous mass could move in formation only on absolutely level ground, and even then only very slowly (seventy-five paces a minute); a change of formation during a battle was impossible, and once the infantry was engaged, victory or defeat was decided rapidly and at one blow.

In the American War of Independence, [74] these unwieldy lines were met by bands of rebels, who although not drilled were all the better able to shoot from their rifled guns; they were fighting for their vital interests, and therefore did not desert like the mercenaries; nor did they do the English the favour of encountering them also in line and on clear, even ground. They came on in open formation, a series of rapidly moving troops of sharpshooters, under cover of the woods. Here the line was powerless and succumbed to its invisible and inaccessible opponents. Skirmishing was reinvented—a new method of warfare which was the result of a change in the human war material.

What the American Revolution had begun the French Revolution [75] completed, also in the military sphere. It also could oppose to the well-trained mercenary armies of the Coalition only poorly trained but great masses of soldiers, the levy of the entire nation. But these masses had to protect Paris, that is, to hold a definite area, and for this purpose victory in open mass battle was essential. Mere skirmishes would not achieve enough; a form had to be found to make use of large masses and this form was discovered in the column. Column formation made it possible for even poorly trained troops to move with a fair degree of order, and moreover with greater speed (a hundred paces and more in a minute); it made it possible to break through the rigid forms of the old line formation; to fight on any ground, and therefore even on ground which was extremely disadvantageous to the line formation; to group the troops in any way if in the least appropriate; and, in conjunction with attacks by scattered bands of sharpshooters, to contain the enemy's lines, keep them engaged and wear them out until the moment came for masses held in reserve to break through them at the decisive point in the position. This new method of warfare, based on the combined action of skirmishers and columns and on the partitioning of the army into independent divisions or army corps, composed of all arms of the service — a method brought to full perfection by Napoleon in both its tactical and strategical aspects—had become necessary primarily because of the changed personnel: the soldiery of the French Revolution. Besides, two very important technical prerequisites had been complied with: first, the lighter carriages for field guns constructed by Gribeauval, which alone made possible the more rapid movement now required of them; and secondly, the slanting of the butt, which had hitherto been quite straight, continuing the line of the barrel. Introduced in France in 1777, it was copied from hunting weapons and made it possible to shoot at a particular individual without necessarily missing him. But for this improvement it would have been impossible to skirmish with the old weapons.

The revolutionary system of arming the whole people was soon restricted to compulsory conscription (with substitution for the rich, who paid for their release) and in this form it was adopted by most of the large states on the Continent. Only Prussia attempted through its Landwehr system, [76] to draw to a greater extent on the military strength of the nation. Prussia was also the first state to equip its whole infantry—after the rifled muzzle-loader, which had been improved between 1830 and 1860 and found fit for use in war, had played a brief role—with the most up-to-date weapon, the rifled breech-loader. Its successes in 1866 were due to these two innovations. [77]

The Franco-German War was the first in which two armies faced each other both equipped with breech-loading rifles, and moreover both fundamentally in the same tactical formations as in the time of the old smoothbore flint-locks. The only difference was that the Prussians had introduced the company column formation in an attempt to find a form of fighting which was better adapted to the new type of arms. But when, at St. Privat on August 18, [78] the Prussian Guard tried to apply the company column formation seriously, the five regiments which were chiefly engaged lost in less than two hours more than a third of their strength (176 officers and 5,114 men). From that time on the company column, too, was condemned as a battle formation, no less than the battalion column and the line; all idea of further exposing troops in any kind of close formation to enemy gun-fire was abandoned, and on the German side all subsequent fighting was conducted only in those compact bodies of skirmishers into which the columns had so far regularly dissolved of themselves under a deadly hail of bullets, although this had been opposed by the higher commands as contrary to order; and in the same way the only form of movement when under fire from enemy rifles became the double. Once again the soldier had been shrewder than the officer; it was he who instinctively found the only way of fighting which has proved of service up to now under the fire of breech-loading rifles, and in spite of opposition from his officers he carried it through successfully.

The Franco-German War marked a turning-point of entirely new implications. In the first place the weapons used have reached such a stage of perfection that further progress which would have any revolutionising influence is no longer possible. Once armies have guns which can hit a battalion at any range at which it can be distinguished, and rifles which are equally effective for hitting individual men, while loading them takes less time than aiming, then all further improvements are of minor importance for field warfare. The era of evolution is therefore, in essentials, closed in this direction..."

[skitty]

I forgot to recommend Ken Burns' Civil War. It's expensive on DVD; but appears on PBS from time to time. I still have it on tape. It should be mandatory for every American; and sure wouldn't hurt anyone else!

[Astarte]

The Confederate Army was made up of foot soldiers drawn from black slaves and the white rural labouring class and was staffed by officers drawn from the feudal plantation class. Unlike industrial capitalist societies, feudal rural based societies cannot mobilise the mass of their population in such a manner. When the Civil War was lost and the plantation class lost their land and slaves, there was no question of the old order ever coming back as the social and class dynamics of the former Confederacy were permanently changed.

I would agree with Broody, slaves did not generally make up any numerically significant portion of the soldiery of the Confederate army; arming slaves to fight wars has always been sort of threatening for the owners unless it is by way of a promise of manumission, and even still in situations where the slave owners are that desperate it has historically been thought of as "unwise" by the owning classes of past epochs. Also, by "laboring class", we should be clear to recognize that the majority of confederate soldiers were not proletarians. They were a class of extremely small/petty landed farmers for the most part as the Southern proletariat in the first half of the 1860's was very small and of course mostly confined to urban centers.

Also, I would not characterize the economic base of the Confederacy as "feudal" in any way. It was really a mode which relied on slavery as the largest and most productive source of labor power, and land as the primary form of the means of production - in this way it was much like ancient Rome and Ancient Greece - the difference, of course being that the South was a slave-mode sphere operating along side and overshadowed by the larger backdrop of national and global capitalism - capitalism as a productive mode demands for capital to be the hegemonic mechanism of ruling class power and wage labor to be the hegemonic method of extraction, hence why in the latter half of the 19th century as capitalism finally was reaching its "prime" globally, slavery as a legally sanctioned mode all but disappeared. Even after the civil war, when a situation of share-cropping developed, I still would not categorize that as "feudalism" since the share-cropping mode was actually a form of debt peonage, or debt bondage more akin to the social relations associated with the hacienda system of Latin America than feudalism.


Southern slaveowners and rich people had the same mentality as roman slave owners, the north should of occupied it for much longer imo, seeing as the plantation ownes eventually got control of their land back and instituted sharecropping.

You are largely correct, a main difference between the Roman and Greek slave owners and the Southern ones was also that they used the "carrot" of manumission a lot less frequently than the ancient slave owners. Not that the ancient slave system wasn't completely brutal, but essentially the slave system of the U.S. South was on the whole much more active in applying coercive force to "keep slaves in line" than promises of future freedom.

[Ciarog]

Well there was the Cherokee portion of the Confederacy; both the Eastern and Western Bands kept fighting even after hearing word of Appomattox. William Holland Thomas' and Stand Watie's last battles were in May and June respectively. Both had every intent on staying in the field indefinitely, both were reluctantly convinced not to and in both cases many of their soldiers took their guns and went home, rather than bother with any formal surrender or stacking-of-arms.

(Had some ancestors fight alongside Thomas' Legion. One of the more unique units of the war.)

There was also the Mounted Seminole Volunteers, CSA, who as far as I know never officially surrendered.

One could almost see the post-war rise of moonshining as a form of economic resistance. Needed a new source of income, and if you could buck the taxes of the Yankee occupation government then so much the better! Same happened in Scotland after the failure of the Jacobite rebellion. In many Southern mountain regions there would be two or more rival gangs fighting each other for control of the Liquid Refreshment Business, consisting of families who had very often fought each in the Civil War. It was a way of life up until World War II and when the crude stops flowing it probably will be again.

As to the strategy of guerrilla war, it ain't like the concept was wholly unknown. I could name two predominately-guerrilla wars going on in the Western Hemisphere in the 1860's: Mexico and Paraguay, both culturally analogous to Dixie in many ways. One was a win for the home team, one wasn't.

I'd say the reason why more Southerners didn't employ it as a matter of policy is the same reason why the Mormons didn't after 1838; Washington offered a pretty good deal to the losing side's elites while not bothering the commoners enough to make continued resistance worthwhile.

Guerrilla wars are nasty enough if you manage to win, and really bad if you don't (one-fourth total population loss seems to be standard for most 19th century insurgencies; the low estimates for Paraguay start at about half the population). Yankee officers spent much of the post-Atlanta war demonstrating just how nasty. We love to hate on Sherman, but the pioneers of those demonstrations were actually Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley* and Banks in the Red River Campaign.

It could have happened. If Sheridan had been allowed to do as he wished with white Southerners (pretty much exactly what he did to Plains Indians), or maybe if Benjamin Butler had agreed to serve as his Vice President in 1864 or had managed not to lose his position as commander of the Army of the James (Butler running either Reconstruction or the Appomattox negotiations makes formal surrender very unlikely).

What effect would that have on class struggle in Dixie? Dunno. I recall a very good Alternate History series where Confederate Bitterenders allied with militant Populists and union workers to create a sort of proto-Maoism (Helen Keller becomes a prominent voice of the resistance, Thomas Watson gets assassinated before senility turns him into a horse's ass). I suppose anything could happen.

*This, incidentally, is why pro-Union sympathies pretty much disappeared in the Appalachians outside East TN and WV (and seriously wavered even there) after 1864.

[Mather]

I would agree with Broody, slaves did not generally make up any numerically significant portion of the soldiery of the Confederate army; arming slaves to fight wars has always been sort of threatening for the owners unless it is by way of a promise of manumission, and even still in situations where the slave owners are that desperate it has historically been thought of as "unwise" by the owning classes of past epochs. Also, by "laboring class", we should be clear to recognize that the majority of confederate soldiers were not proletarians. They were a class of extremely small/petty landed farmers for the most part as the Southern proletariat in the first half of the 1860's was very small and of course mostly confined to urban centers.

Also, I would not characterize the economic base of the Confederacy as "feudal" in any way. It was really a mode which relied on slavery as the largest and most productive source of labor power, and land as the primary form of the means of production - in this way it was much like ancient Rome and Ancient Greece - the difference, of course being that the South was a slave-mode sphere operating along side and overshadowed by the larger backdrop of national and global capitalism - capitalism as a productive mode demands for capital to be the hegemonic mechanism of ruling class power and wage labor to be the hegemonic method of extraction, hence why in the latter half of the 19th century as capitalism finally was reaching its "prime" globally, slavery as a legally sanctioned mode all but disappeared. Even after the civil war, when a situation of share-cropping developed, I still would not categorize that as "feudalism" since the share-cropping mode was actually a form of debt peonage, or debt bondage more akin to the social relations associated with the hacienda system of Latin America than feudalism.

Thanks for that post, it was very informative.

I'll confess that my knowledge of the Confederacy is rather limited which is due in part to the fact that what I did learn about the civil war was more focused on the military side of things such as the battles and personalities as opposed to the nature and structure of Confederate society and the slave system. Are there any good books or online resources which deal with the social and economic dynamics of Confederate society and the slave system?

Does share-cropping, debt peonage and the hacienda system fall within the framework of capitalism, given that it is not strictly speaking part of feudalism?

Also, is the hacienda system similar to that of the latifundia system that was practised in Spain?

[skitty]

Are there any good books or online resources which deal with the social and economic dynamics of Confederate society and the slave system?

Does share-cropping, debt peonage and the hacienda system fall within the framework of capitalism, given that it is not strictly speaking part of feudalism?

Also, is the hacienda system similar to that of the latifundia system that was practised in Spain?I just started Black Reconstruction in America by Du Bois. It might be perfect for you. For life in general:http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Chesnuts-Civil-War-Chesnut/dp/0300029799

[Mather]

I just started Black Reconstruction in America by Du Bois. It might be perfect for you. For life in general:http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Chesnuts-Civil-War-Chesnut/dp/0300029799

Thanks.

Du Bois's book looks interesting and I will give it a go. However his book mainly deals with the Reconstruction era (post 1865) and I am looking for books and/or resources which deal with the nature of the slave system before it was abolished in 1865.

[skitty]

Thanks.

Du Bois's book looks interesting and I will give it a go. However his book mainly deals with the Reconstruction era (post 1865) and I am looking for books and/or resources which deal with the nature of the slave system before it was abolished in 1865.Sorry, I left out part of the title: "1860-1880". He is discussing pre-war events.

[Astarte]

Thanks for that post, it was very informative.

I'll confess that my knowledge of the Confederacy is rather limited which is due in part to the fact that what I did learn about the civil war was more focused on the military side of things such as the battles and personalities as opposed to the nature and structure of Confederate society and the slave system. Are there any good books or online resources which deal with the social and economic dynamics of Confederate society and the slave system?

Does share-cropping, debt peonage and the hacienda system fall within the framework of capitalism, given that it is not strictly speaking part of feudalism?

Also, is the hacienda system similar to that of the latifundia system that was practised in Spain?

Great questions. As for a good book on the Southern slave economy, the highly informative British Marxist academic classical historian G.E.M. Ste. De Croix recommends Kenneth Stamp's "The Peculiar Institution". I have never read it, and am not sure if it is online, but if old Croiks (de Ste. Croix) recommends it, I am sure it has at least some merits.

Great questions in terms of debt peonage. To my knowledge I would say that there have been different types of debt-peonage throughout history. For instance, in ancient Greece Solon eventually outlawed the practice of "selling yourself into slavery" if you became too steeply in debt - that would be an ancient variety which operated on the basis of a slave mode. In the capitalistic epoch the hacienda system evolved out of a sort of merger of capitalism with the feudal political relations the Spanish brought with them from the Old World starting in the 1500 when they really began to colonize Meso and South American in a truly concerted effort (of course this consisted of a highly heterogeneous mode which incorporated nascent capitalism in the form of mercantilism with aspects of feudalism and slavery) - mostly today though, I would say the hacienda system pretty much always functions within the framework of capitalism - likewise in the 19th century the share cropping system functioned within the larger scheme of a capitalistic economic base - it essentially amounts to a ridiculously coercive form of rentism.

Feudalism itself actually arose out of the Latifundia system - small Roman property owners (peasants) eventually became indebted to larger ones and became "colonus" that were bound to the land which lead to enserfment - thus I would say the political superstructure of the Latifundia system essentially remained the same (more or less) during the epoch of slavery and feudalism, though of course the economic base changed and thus the mode of extraction of labor power shifted from slave-based to serf-based - likewise the case with the feudal "latifundia" or 'Romance' manor-estate when it transferred over from a feudal basis to a capitalistic one in the New World.

[Raúl Duke]

Does share-cropping, debt peonage and the hacienda system fall within the framework of capitalism, given that it is not strictly speaking part of feudalism?

Debt peonage I think would fall under capitalism (it still occurs today, I think even some small farm-owners in the US have a sort of indebted relationship with larger ag companies; recall watching a documentary which featured Tyson Chicken farms or something and they basically subcontract to farmers but at the same time indebt them so to make it unlikely they grow or quit the contract).

[MP5]

I thought guerrilla warfare was carried out quite regularly during and after the civil war by some confederate members? I think Jesse James and his brother Frank where involved in it and later adopted the same tactics as robbers and murders. I know that the hatred between the radical republicans and the southern democrats ran deep in some places especially Missouri during and after the civil war.

In anycase the south didn't stand a chance from the start. They where crushed by the union and still didn't learn their lesson. Their whole economy was based on slavery so i have absolutely no sympathy for them. Granted the north was certainly not innocent in exploiting cheap labour from blacks who escaped from slavery.

[Jason]

The Confederacy lacked support from major powers. For instance, the American revolution was only successful cause of French support. In more modern times, the Vietnamese war was only successful because of Chinese and Russian support. No matter how idealistic fighters may be, they can't win without ammo.

[MP5]

The Confederacy lacked support from major powers. For instance, the American revolution was only successful cause of French support. In more modern times, the Vietnamese war was only successful because of Chinese and Russian support. No matter how idealistic fighters may be, they can't win without ammo.

The Americans would have eventually have formed their own republic free of British rule without help from the French. Granted it would have taken them alot longer.

Didn't the British arm the confederacy in some small way?

[kasama-rl]

On the basic question of Confederacy and civil war:

There are different modes of warfare characteristic of different classes.

For very fundamental reasons, slave owners could not shift to guerrilla war.

When threatened by U.S. or Soviet invasion (in the Korea war, and then later in the 1968 border skirmishes), the communists of China said "draw them in deep, drown them in a sea of peoples war." In other words, given the far weaker technological level of the Chinese communist peoples army, they were arguing they would not rely on positional war on their borders, but would retreat before invasion and then drain/defeat invaders by guerrilla war (in which the party and PLA would lead the people themselves).

But the Confederates could not adopt such an approach. If the Union had been drawn in deep, the slave system would have fallen apart (as the slaves flocked to the invaders, and the slavery system collapsed in ways that could not be reassembled.)

The example of this was when Sherman marched into Georgia, and the destruction of Confederate agriculture resulted from both the wholesale military disruption of farms, but also the wholesale flight of slaves to the Union lines.

The Confederates did engage in irregular warfare (Quantrill in Missouri, Bedford Forrest in Tennesse, Mosby and so on)... but it was largely irregular warfare in areas not controled by the Confederates -- i.e. these were raids into union-held territory. But at a larger strategic level, the Confederate slaveowners had to hold the Union forces at the border as much as possible -- because once that conventional warfare defense was breached, the slave system started to unravel because of the liberation struggle of the slaves themselves.

[RedMaterialist]

It may have been because the confederates saw themselves as only a traditional army. They had defeated the North for three of the past four years. Their consciousness simply may not have extended to attacking the Northern troops and then disappearing into the white population. I'm not sure whether there is any history on this. I know that some of the confederate cavalry were referred to a guerilla raiders, but I don't think this was meant in the modern sense. They also might have thought it ungentlemanly (for slave owners) to attack and then retreat behind the women.

[Geiseric]

Scratch that, there was a Guerilla movement, called the KKK. How could we not consider that a Guerilla movement? It was completely supported by Southern Democrats.

[Red Commissar]

The OP was asking about the Confederate war effort during the civil war, not after, which is where the KKK would come in. At least that's how I come away understanding it.

The KKK I don't think fits into the mold of a guerrilla group, it shared more properties with a paramilitary taking up terror tactics rather than actively fighting against the reconstruction authorities there.

The White League would be seen more as the military arm of the southern Democrats, which was active in intimidating if not outright killing Republicans and freedmen across much of the Deep South, notably in Louisiana. There, the White League and its spiritual predecessors caused the Colfax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_massacre) and Coushatta (http://www.revleft.com/vb/Coushatta) massacres which targeted Republican officials and blacks. The biggest move it made against the reconstruction there was over the 1872 election where the Republican candidate, won the governor spot, and the Democrats refused to recognize it as they said the election was rigged.

That particular conflict created deadlock and led up to an armed seizure of power by the White League in what they called the "Battle of Liberty Place (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Liberty_Place)", which the paramilitary ended up overpowering New Orleans's police force (which was just racially integrated too) to seize control of the state buildings and create their own government from the rump legislature. It prompted Washington to send federal forces to restore the peace.

Such violence probably could have continued for a long time, but Republican officials were losing enthusiasm for reconstruction policies and they essentially let the southern democrats go back to business after the 1876 elections, where it seems Republicans agreed to remove the last military presence and reconstruction-bodies from the south in exchange for recognizing a victory in Hayes's favor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877).