Funny how the southern states literally only had Mobile, New Orleans, and Charleston. The war should've been a year long no diff ngl. Good generals make a difference, who could've guessed?

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

'Good' is a strong word. A lot of '61 was two sets of incompetents flailing at each other, and the dice coming up lucky for the South, while '62 and '63 was largely a series of unforced errors on the part of incompetent Northern generals. The strategic acumen of Lee et co is much overstated.

[–] FerretyFever0@fedia.io 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I wasn't saying that southern generals were good, just that most of the northern ones didn't seem to be. Sorry for being unclear.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Ah, yeah, completely correct then.

[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Tactical Acumen I think. That's the overall reputation of Lee, earned or not. He's never really been noted as a good strategist.

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 9 points 1 month ago

If labour is free, you don’t need industrialisation, and that attitude carries over to logistics.

[–] logicbomb@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

The north was also fighting in enemy territory. If you ignore that part, for example, then our recent wars in the Middle East don't make any sense.

[–] join@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The northern elite also didn’t want to win at the start of the war: the union as it was, constitution as it is (with slavery that is). For the northern elite the south was a source of cheap cotton and an export market for finished goods, winning decisively would break that balance.

The end of slavery was truly a bottoms up movement, that forced the contradiction to be so great that it could not exist in one country.

John Dolan (aka the war nerd) has a great series on this subject on his podcast: Radio War Nerd.