How the South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat - Hardcover

Alexander, Bevin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307345998 ISBN 13: 9780307345998

Publisher: Crown, 2007

Synopsis

Could the South have won the Civil War?

To many, the very question seems absurd. After all, the Confederacy had only a third of the population and one-eleventh of the industry of the North. Wasn’t the South’s defeat inevitable?

Not at all, as acclaimed military historian Bevin Alexander reveals in this provocative and counterintuitive new look at the Civil War. In fact, the South most definitely could have won the war, and Alexander documents exactly how a Confederate victory could have come about—and how close it came to happening.

Moving beyond fanciful theoretical conjectures to explore actual plans that Confederate generals proposed and the tactics ultimately adopted in the war’s key battles, How the South Could Have Won the Civil War offers surprising analysis on topics such as:

·How the Confederacy had its greatest chance to win the war just three months into the fighting—but blew it
·How the Confederacy’s three most important leaders—President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson—clashed over how to fight the war
·How the Civil War’s decisive turning point came in a battle that the Rebel army never needed to fight
·How the Confederate army devised—but never fully exploited—a way to negate the Union’s huge advantages in manpower and weaponry
·How Abraham Lincoln and other Northern leaders understood the Union’s true vulnerability better than the Confederacy’s top leaders did
·How it is a myth that the Union army’s accidental discovery of Lee’s order of battle doomed the South’s 1862 Maryland campaign
·How the South failed to heed the important lessons of its 1863 victory at Chancellorsville

How the South Could Have Won the Civil War shows why there is nothing inevitable about military victory, even for a state with overwhelming strength. Alexander provides a startling account of how a relatively small number of tactical and strategic mistakes cost the South the war—and changed the course of history.

About this title

About the Author:

BEVIN ALEXANDER is the author of nine books of military history, including How Hitler Could Have Won World War II, How Wars Are Won, How America Got It Right, and Lost Victories, which was named by the Civil War Book Review as one of the seventeen books that have most transformed Civil War scholarship. His battle studies of the Korean War, written during his decorated service as a combat historian, are stored in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. He lives in Bremo Bluff, Virginia.

From The Washington Post:

Alternative history is an alluring parlor game. Pick a crucial historical event -- Gettysburg, say -- and try to pinpoint exactly where things started to go wrong for the losing side. That's what military historian Bevin Alexander does in his latest book, How the South Could Have Won the Civil War.

Alexander argues persuasively that the wartime policies of President Jefferson Davis and the military strategy of Gen. Robert E. Lee led to the failure of the Confederacy. Had Davis and Lee listened to Gen. Stonewall Jackson, the South might have won. Some battles and campaigns -- including the Shenandoah Valley and Seven Days campaigns, Second Manassas, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and those that ended with the final surrender at Appomattox, which all led to tremendous loss of life -- might not have been fought at all.

Jackson wanted to bring the war directly into Union territory. He would have moved the Confederate army "north of Washington, where it would threaten Baltimore, Philadelphia, and the capital's food supply and communications," writes Alexander. By destroying vital industries, thereby undermining the Union's means of production and livelihood, Jackson hoped "to win indirectly by assaulting the Northern people's will to pursue the war." Alexander also contends that Jackson's tactics of "maneuver," rather than the frontal assaults favored by Lee, would have led to fewer casualties, an important point given the difficulty of replacing soldiers from the comparatively small Southern population.

Alexander's opinions are firmly stated, but his assertions are not always well documented. There is no evidence that I am aware of that Union Gen. George Meade "ordered the entire Union army to retreat back to Pipe Creek" in Maryland from Gettysburg on June 30, 1863. Nor does Alexander provide any proof for this. He may be referring to Meade's so-called Pipe Creek Circular, a contingency plan the general never implemented.

How the South Could Have Won the Civil War echoes chapters from two of Alexander's earlier books, Lost Victories and Robert E. Lee's Civil War. Even the chapter headings are essentially the same. It is not clear why Alexander felt compelled to repackage these previous works for public consumption, since the arguments he made in them are not substantially changed. Yet, despite the book's limitations, readers who are unfamiliar with Alexander's earlier works will find How the South Could Have Won the Civil War thought provoking and informative.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0307345998
• ISBN 13: 9780307345998
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352