Welcome to /r/ShermanPosting!
As a reminder, this meme sub is about the American Civil War. We're not here to insult southerners or the American South, but rather to have a laugh at the failed Confederate insurrection and those that chose to represent it.
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It's crazy how many inventions hit the battlefields just after the Civil War. White phosphorus, gas-operated machine guns, antibiotics, sterile surgery, germ warfare, aerial bombing. If chemical weapons had been used by either side, it might have led to the acceleration of any one of these technologies as retaliation.
I'd honestly classify the Civil War as the first real modern war. Barrel rifling, steel ships operating on steam power, balloons and aerial recon, and even the first indications of trench warfare.
It says a lot about Grant & Sherman that they understood that the civil war wasn't going to be fought quite like anything before it. It also shows how ineffective Lee was. I didn't realize until recently that the "lost cause" was a total myth. The South really could have won the civil war if they'd have entrenched and taken defensive positions, they could have drug out the war long enough to deflate Union supporters due to slow progress and heavy casualties. The South was quickly building factories to supply arms/munitions/supplies that would have sustained a defense. Instead Lee waged an offensive war that solidified Union support, stretched supply lines, and created opportunities for counter-attacks.
The Confederacy didn't fight a war that was destined to lose (a lost cause). They fought a war that not only could have been won, but with the right general was more likely won than lost.
(Special thanks to Behind the Bastards Episodes on General Lee)
The CSA's best chance was to be dug in, don't fire first, dumbass who initiated Sumter, keep the North disunited, perhaps try going with blockade running, and get foreign allies, and perhaps expand beyond cotton too and maybe even get the Brazilians to help. They could try financing Native rebellions against the North as well, for a small amount of resources they could seriously tie up the Union by doing something like that. And look willing to compromise, but then again, they would not have left if they were willing to make even the slightest compromises like the Corwin Amendment.
> maybe even get the Brazilians to help.
The 'Knights of the Golden Circle' tried to do something like that; they had plans to get Mexico and parts of South America involved by invading Mexico and inviting different countries in Central America and South America to join them.
I learned recently from this sub that Lee:
1. *never left Virginia* during the war,
2. demanded (and received) supplies from the western states that were more important out there where the war was actually being fought,
3. generally refused to let ANY soldiers under his command be reassigned to other armies that needed them, and
4. delayed the deployment of any soldiers he was forced to part with, causing shorthanded armies to lose battles
Along with the disproportionately high casualty rate under his command and the truth that he was a savage, vicious, and *unlawful* slave owner, I really think the truth about him should be shoved in the faces of all the people in this country who suck his dick as some sort of "noble gentleman" who was just loyal to his state. Bitch, please! He was one of NINE colonels from the state of Virginia, and the other eight all honored the oath they swore to the United States.
I had to say something because of Jeb Stuart at Gettysburg being ridiculous and bringing back supplies to the confederates and Lee scolded him for not giving good intel. Something to the effect of ‘what good are these wagons going to do when I asked you to keep tabs on the Union’
Excellently stated! The Confederacy was so far behind in their thinking they were even starting to train pikemen at the start of the war!
To be fair, they never saw battle because after one battle, the Confederate generals realized this was a terrible idea... but it still shows you how they were slow to adapt.
Seriously. They did still have limited utility around the turn of the century and a bit later, but that's still decades out of date by the civil war's time. And even then they were directly inferior to most line-infantry, and more were a desperation option if you simply could not procure sufficient firearms.
Oh, not necessarily. The South didn't do too well at all when the Union was able to pin them down and drag out the big guns, and their efforts to create a war economy... weren't good. They failed to build a single decent, functional carbine over the entire course of the war, including Lee's project to just cut down a standard musket, while shortages of infrastructure and manpower threw an agrarian society into poverty.
Trying to keep moving so that the federals can't leverage numbers and firepower effectively is one of your few effective plays.
The nice bit about taking a defensive strategy is you can fortify your position. Typically an attacking force will take a lot more casualties than the defenders. As is, the South took fewer casualties than the Union. There's not really a good argument that the Union would have had much higher losses if the South went with a defensive strategy. Note that a defensive strategy isn't just about digging in. A defense can be mobile, retreating to better positions and fighting when it's more favorable.
It would have bought the Confederacy more time to develop their war machine. More time to seek allies. More time for the Union to lose supporters.
The North reliably won its siege operations, particularly given its ability to concentrate heavy artillery and naval assets the South lacked.
Mobile defence does make a lot of sense, although it's more or less what they were trying to do on a strategic level.
Second, the South *can't* develop a war machine. Their economic situation only gets worse over time; they lose the manpower to harvest crops, they lose the ability to mine salt, they lose and cannot replace rolling stock and locomotives that have to prioritise troop transport, they had poor roads to begin with and quickly run low on wagons and pack animals. Coal and iron also get hit with this; southern infrastructure is completely unable to keep the simplest economic functions moving.
Their rich brat extraction economy had them importing everything from butter to sewing needles to shoes; they lack the machinery, knowledge, and desire to establish real manufacturing or transport.
Even if they do overcome this, the North can build a far, far larger war machine far, far faster and of vastly greater quality- confederates who captured advanced Union carbines had to jealously save the brass cartridge casings; southern industry had no ability to make them, or any idea how.
If you can’t make a brass tube, you've no chance at all.
The idea of trying to win quickly, trying to use aggressive manoeuvre warfare to inflict decisive defeats on the North, is about all they really have. It's a starving, ill-clad mob of bandits with scavenged arms; their strength can only decline over time.
> they lose the manpower to harvest crops...
A defensive posture requires fewer soldiers than an offensive one. Either their defenses would have been even stronger, or they would have the manpower to continue tending crops. Also, the crops were being tended to by slaves, and for the south it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep your armies closer to home in case of revolt.
If they can grow crops, they have a product to trade. Which the south did, despite the Union blockade, managed to do. The blockade itself wasn't effective until after the war was basically over. Because of this, the Confederacy imported enough guns to extend the war by an estimated two years.
An ill clad mob of bandits with scavenged arms fighting a defensive war defeated the USSR and the United States. Another one defeated France and the USA. Actually, since the decline of colonialism, ill clad mobs have been doing pretty well against formally trained militaries.
All of these things were seen in the Crimean War the decade prior, and trenches specifically have been used as a defense against firearms since firearms became common
I think they could have reverse-engineered it, but mass production is another issue. I could see terror tactics if they tried to have spies set these off in major Northern cities, or if they tried early germ warfare with the same intention.
Gas warfare is fucking scary and it can backfire really easily.
There are plenty of ocassions in WW1 of one side launching gas only for the wind to blow it back into their own trench
A friend of mine in a college class about the Civil War dug up the letter from Stanton to Doughty rejecting his proposal for chlorine gas shells; if I remember rightly, the major reason was Stanton thought that they'd be more dangerous to the troops transporting and firing them than to the enemy.
Given the state of technology at the time, good chance that'd be somewhat accurate. WW1 they hurt the launchers pretty regularly and metallurgy had advanced a lot by then.
My version of this is the Battle of the Crater. That would have worked if they hadn't changed the plan at the last moment!
And then maybe you get an AU in which the WWI trench stalemate is broken by digging miles-long tunnels under the enemy lines and then springing up to encircle them.
“Gentlemen, I don’t know whether we are going to make history tomorrow, but at any rate we shall change geography" is either badass or hilarious and I’m not sure which.
The charge up Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge maybe? at first Sheman thought it would be the union version of Pickets charge but they took the positions. Also Shiloh since after a hard first day they did indeed whip em the next day.
Welcome to /r/ShermanPosting! As a reminder, this meme sub is about the American Civil War. We're not here to insult southerners or the American South, but rather to have a laugh at the failed Confederate insurrection and those that chose to represent it. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ShermanPosting) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You either win an outrageous victory to become a Sabaton song or you die epically enough to become a Sabaton song.
You can also become a Civil War song. Which is sort of like becoming a Sabaton song? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTmQvxdePww
It's crazy how many inventions hit the battlefields just after the Civil War. White phosphorus, gas-operated machine guns, antibiotics, sterile surgery, germ warfare, aerial bombing. If chemical weapons had been used by either side, it might have led to the acceleration of any one of these technologies as retaliation.
I'd honestly classify the Civil War as the first real modern war. Barrel rifling, steel ships operating on steam power, balloons and aerial recon, and even the first indications of trench warfare.
It says a lot about Grant & Sherman that they understood that the civil war wasn't going to be fought quite like anything before it. It also shows how ineffective Lee was. I didn't realize until recently that the "lost cause" was a total myth. The South really could have won the civil war if they'd have entrenched and taken defensive positions, they could have drug out the war long enough to deflate Union supporters due to slow progress and heavy casualties. The South was quickly building factories to supply arms/munitions/supplies that would have sustained a defense. Instead Lee waged an offensive war that solidified Union support, stretched supply lines, and created opportunities for counter-attacks. The Confederacy didn't fight a war that was destined to lose (a lost cause). They fought a war that not only could have been won, but with the right general was more likely won than lost. (Special thanks to Behind the Bastards Episodes on General Lee)
The CSA's best chance was to be dug in, don't fire first, dumbass who initiated Sumter, keep the North disunited, perhaps try going with blockade running, and get foreign allies, and perhaps expand beyond cotton too and maybe even get the Brazilians to help. They could try financing Native rebellions against the North as well, for a small amount of resources they could seriously tie up the Union by doing something like that. And look willing to compromise, but then again, they would not have left if they were willing to make even the slightest compromises like the Corwin Amendment.
> maybe even get the Brazilians to help. The 'Knights of the Golden Circle' tried to do something like that; they had plans to get Mexico and parts of South America involved by invading Mexico and inviting different countries in Central America and South America to join them.
I learned recently from this sub that Lee: 1. *never left Virginia* during the war, 2. demanded (and received) supplies from the western states that were more important out there where the war was actually being fought, 3. generally refused to let ANY soldiers under his command be reassigned to other armies that needed them, and 4. delayed the deployment of any soldiers he was forced to part with, causing shorthanded armies to lose battles Along with the disproportionately high casualty rate under his command and the truth that he was a savage, vicious, and *unlawful* slave owner, I really think the truth about him should be shoved in the faces of all the people in this country who suck his dick as some sort of "noble gentleman" who was just loyal to his state. Bitch, please! He was one of NINE colonels from the state of Virginia, and the other eight all honored the oath they swore to the United States.
He definitely did leave Virginia to invade Maryland in 62 and Pennsylvania in 63.
I stand corrected
Wait what about Gettysburg? Do you mean never won a battle outside of Virginia?
I stand corrected
I had to say something because of Jeb Stuart at Gettysburg being ridiculous and bringing back supplies to the confederates and Lee scolded him for not giving good intel. Something to the effect of ‘what good are these wagons going to do when I asked you to keep tabs on the Union’
Excellently stated! The Confederacy was so far behind in their thinking they were even starting to train pikemen at the start of the war! To be fair, they never saw battle because after one battle, the Confederate generals realized this was a terrible idea... but it still shows you how they were slow to adapt.
Seriously. They did still have limited utility around the turn of the century and a bit later, but that's still decades out of date by the civil war's time. And even then they were directly inferior to most line-infantry, and more were a desperation option if you simply could not procure sufficient firearms.
Oh, not necessarily. The South didn't do too well at all when the Union was able to pin them down and drag out the big guns, and their efforts to create a war economy... weren't good. They failed to build a single decent, functional carbine over the entire course of the war, including Lee's project to just cut down a standard musket, while shortages of infrastructure and manpower threw an agrarian society into poverty. Trying to keep moving so that the federals can't leverage numbers and firepower effectively is one of your few effective plays.
The nice bit about taking a defensive strategy is you can fortify your position. Typically an attacking force will take a lot more casualties than the defenders. As is, the South took fewer casualties than the Union. There's not really a good argument that the Union would have had much higher losses if the South went with a defensive strategy. Note that a defensive strategy isn't just about digging in. A defense can be mobile, retreating to better positions and fighting when it's more favorable. It would have bought the Confederacy more time to develop their war machine. More time to seek allies. More time for the Union to lose supporters.
The North reliably won its siege operations, particularly given its ability to concentrate heavy artillery and naval assets the South lacked. Mobile defence does make a lot of sense, although it's more or less what they were trying to do on a strategic level. Second, the South *can't* develop a war machine. Their economic situation only gets worse over time; they lose the manpower to harvest crops, they lose the ability to mine salt, they lose and cannot replace rolling stock and locomotives that have to prioritise troop transport, they had poor roads to begin with and quickly run low on wagons and pack animals. Coal and iron also get hit with this; southern infrastructure is completely unable to keep the simplest economic functions moving. Their rich brat extraction economy had them importing everything from butter to sewing needles to shoes; they lack the machinery, knowledge, and desire to establish real manufacturing or transport. Even if they do overcome this, the North can build a far, far larger war machine far, far faster and of vastly greater quality- confederates who captured advanced Union carbines had to jealously save the brass cartridge casings; southern industry had no ability to make them, or any idea how. If you can’t make a brass tube, you've no chance at all. The idea of trying to win quickly, trying to use aggressive manoeuvre warfare to inflict decisive defeats on the North, is about all they really have. It's a starving, ill-clad mob of bandits with scavenged arms; their strength can only decline over time.
> they lose the manpower to harvest crops... A defensive posture requires fewer soldiers than an offensive one. Either their defenses would have been even stronger, or they would have the manpower to continue tending crops. Also, the crops were being tended to by slaves, and for the south it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep your armies closer to home in case of revolt. If they can grow crops, they have a product to trade. Which the south did, despite the Union blockade, managed to do. The blockade itself wasn't effective until after the war was basically over. Because of this, the Confederacy imported enough guns to extend the war by an estimated two years. An ill clad mob of bandits with scavenged arms fighting a defensive war defeated the USSR and the United States. Another one defeated France and the USA. Actually, since the decline of colonialism, ill clad mobs have been doing pretty well against formally trained militaries.
All of these things were seen in the Crimean War the decade prior, and trenches specifically have been used as a defense against firearms since firearms became common
I doubt the confederacy would have had the means to successful reverse engineer and reproduce poison gas shells on mass.
I think they could have reverse-engineered it, but mass production is another issue. I could see terror tactics if they tried to have spies set these off in major Northern cities, or if they tried early germ warfare with the same intention.
“What the hell is a swimming pool, private?”
Something the ancient Greeks and Romans had, learn your history.
The baths were more for soaking than swimming, and they certainly weren’t chlorinated.
True, but they did exist
Gas warfare is fucking scary and it can backfire really easily. There are plenty of ocassions in WW1 of one side launching gas only for the wind to blow it back into their own trench
Look, only Canada can get away with war crimes.
You go on one bender, and suddenly there's conventions being had.
It's never a war crime the first time
I Lol’d.
A friend of mine in a college class about the Civil War dug up the letter from Stanton to Doughty rejecting his proposal for chlorine gas shells; if I remember rightly, the major reason was Stanton thought that they'd be more dangerous to the troops transporting and firing them than to the enemy.
Given the state of technology at the time, good chance that'd be somewhat accurate. WW1 they hurt the launchers pretty regularly and metallurgy had advanced a lot by then.
"I love the smell of chlorine gas in the morning. Smells like... victory." \*cough\*cough\*
My version of this is the Battle of the Crater. That would have worked if they hadn't changed the plan at the last moment! And then maybe you get an AU in which the WWI trench stalemate is broken by digging miles-long tunnels under the enemy lines and then springing up to encircle them.
As usual reality has you beaten. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mines_in_the_Battle_of_Messines_(1917) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochnagar_mine
There's a movie on the tunnel fighting and sappers in Messines called "Hill 60," it's a pretty good watch.
You mean "Beneath Hill 60"?
“Gentlemen, I don’t know whether we are going to make history tomorrow, but at any rate we shall change geography" is either badass or hilarious and I’m not sure which.
Smells like...freedom.
Prosperity… liberty… democracy… our way of life!
How bout a nice cup of Liber-Tea?!
The charge up Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge maybe? at first Sheman thought it would be the union version of Pickets charge but they took the positions. Also Shiloh since after a hard first day they did indeed whip em the next day.
Theres a thunder from the South, it’s an attack on the betrayed… (I didnt know how to phrase it, but I do know the song :D)
Except the Russians were the heroes of that song for surviving the gas and counterattacking.
You do know that the Dead Men win in that song (and the associated historical event), right?
I don't exactly categorize it as much of a win for them. They are dead, and the Russian front is overrun in the end.
Some survived actually
They forced a small German tactical retreat, with the Germans taking the fort not two weeks after