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Why the South Lost or How the North Won?: Part 2

© Melanie Storie

The attrition strategy was a good plan for the South given their limited resources however Davis was unable to fully carry out this strategy. One reason for this was the fact that state governors, officials, and the Southern people demanded that Confederate troops defend every portion of the Confederacy. They did not want the Union armies to be able to take any Confederate territory. Thus the Confederate army was spread out so thin that Union troops were able to break though the defenses in several places. Additionally, the mind-set of the southern people tended to undermine the attrition strategy. It was a common belief that "Yankees" were no match for Southerners when it came to fighting. So the idea of waiting for an attack by the Union army was not particularly popular. Southern newspapers demanded that Confederate armies move against Washington immediately. Finally, given these factors, Davis constructed a plan called an "offensive-defensive" strategy. This idea contained parts of attrition in that the military would defend the Confederate homeland however if the opportunity presented itself, the Confederate forces would go on the offensive. On two notable occasions the Confederate army invaded the North. Both ended in disaster for the South. The first came in the fall of 1862 when Lee invaded Maryland. Both General Lee and President Davis hoped that a decisive victory on Northern soil would convince England and France to ally with the Confederacy. Nevertheless after the after the battle of Antietam, known as the bloodiest single day in American History, Lee was forced to retreat back across the Potomac. The second invasion of the North by the Confederate army came in the summer of 1863. The Confederate war effort in the deep South was becoming desperate as General Grant's Union army laid siege to Vicksburg. Vicksburg was the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. The three-day battle at Gettysburg inflicted over 60,000 total casualties. Lee's army had no choice but to withdraw to Virginia. After Gettysburg the Confederacy never regained its strength and never attempted another invasion of the North. After Gettysburg the Confederacy never regained its strength and never attempted another invasion of the North.

It also became clear as the war progressed that the North had a more skillful leader in Abraham Lincoln than the South had in Jefferson Davis. Lincoln was more eloquent than Davis in expressing war aims, more successful in communicating with the people, more skillful as a political leader in keeping factions working together for the war effort, better able to deal with criticism and work with his critics to achieve a common goal. Lincoln was flexible, pragmatic, with a sense of humor to smooth relationships and help him survive the stress of his job; Davis was austere, rigid, humorless, with the type of personality that readily made enemies. Instead of trying to defuse the situation Davis often lashed back at his critics in a manner that only increased their hostility. As James McPherson noted, "Davis seemed to prefer winning an argument to winning the war."Lincoln had a strong physical constitution; Davis suffered ill health and was frequently prostrated by sickness. Lincoln picked good administrative subordinates and know how to delegate authority to them; Davis spent a great deal of time and energy on petty administrative details that he should have left to subordinates. Lincoln demonstrated far better leadership and administrative abilities than that of Davis.

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