How the South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat
By Bevin Alexander
(April 2009 Civil War News)

Maps, bibliography notes, index, 338 pp., 2007. Crown Publishers, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019, $25.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Richard M. McMurry
Richard M. McMurry's latest book (edited) is An Uncompromising Secessionist: The Civil War of George Knox Miller, 8th (Wade's) Confederate Cavalry.

Review:
Stonewall Jackson, Bevin Alexander believes, was the general who on several occasions presented Confederate authorities with proposals that, if adopted, would have brought about victory for the Secessionists.

At first Jackson urged that the Confederates avoid useless efforts to destroy Federal armies in the field and concentrate instead on wrecking the cities, factories and other infrastructure of the North. (This “indirect approach” to warfare was advocated in the 1920s and 1930s by B.H. Liddell Hart who believed that it had been practiced in the 1860s by William T. Sherman.)

Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee rejected Jackson’s wise counsel. Instead, those worthies sought to win Southern Independence by a passive defense (Davis) or by destruction of Union armies through frontal assaults on the battlefield (Lee).

Faced with the rejection of his first concept, Jackson then developed the idea of defeating Yankee armies by luring them into an attack on the Confederates after which the Southerners would counterattack (a “defend-the-attack” approach). Usually Lee ignored or forgot this sound advice and launched assault after assault, incurring horrific casualties and bringing about Confederate defeat.

Lee’s “demonstrated fixation on frontal assaults” was doomed to failure by Civil War-era weapons.

Alexander’s (and Jackson’s) ideas as to what the Confederates should have done are highly debatable. Space constraints do not permit a discussion of each, but consider one example.

After First Manassas in July 1861, Alexander believes, the Confederates should have marched on Washington, as Jackson urged. They could have cut the city off from the north and forced the Lincoln government to abandon it.

In fact, much of the Rebel army was disorganized by the battle. The Southerners had no logistical network in place to support such an effort. Some 5,000 Union troops in Washington who had not been at Manassas, and surely a few of those who had, could have been rallied in the day or so it would have taken for the Confederates to reach the city.

A fresh Union army of about 15,000 men was in the lower Shenandoah Valley-western Maryland area and could have joined the Washington defenses or operated against the rear or flank of a Rebel force around the city.

More troops would quickly have arrived from Pennsylvania and, in a few days, from New York, Ohio and elsewhere as well. Finally, why could not a besieged Washington have been supplied by water?

In summary, was Jackson’s July 21 plea for 5,000 men to take Washington realistic?

Alexander’s speculations are not well-thought-out, and at best his book offers only material for musing. (Those desiring to muse should also consult his Lost Victories: The Military Genius of Stonewall Jackson.)