Why The Confederacy Lost, edited by Gabor S. Boritt

It is noteworthy, and intentional, that this book speaks of why the Confederacy lost, and not why the South lost, in light of the fact that the two were not and are not the same. Even during the Civil War, there were large areas of the South that did not support the Confederate effort, both in the Border South as well as the Appalachian regions, in particular. This is not even to begin to comment on the opposition of slaves to the cause of the Confederacy, whose open and avowed aim was to preserve the system of black slavery that had developed over the course of centuries of life in the South, and had proven resistant to gradual and political solutions. The fact that this book was in many ways an assignment that sprang from an annual meeting of the Gettysburg Civil War Institute is also important, as this particular gathering of historians and students of history is known for inspiring several notable books on Civil War history, many of which seek to counteract the general lack of interest in military history regarding the Civil War among contemporary historians.

The contents of this book are straightforward and mutually complementary. There are five essays: the first one by James McPherson focuses on the importance of contingency in Confederate defeat, namely the effect of Union victories on political and psychological matters, the second one by Archer Jones focuses on the ability to connect military means to political ends in tactical and logistical strategy, the third one by Gary Gallagher focuses on the three most important Generals of the war–Grant, Lee, and Sherman, the fourth one by Reid Mitchell focuses on the persistence of the soldiers in their war effort, and the fifth and final one by Joseph Glathaar focuses on the importance of black soldiers as well as escapees from slavery to eventual Union victory. The reason these correspond is because they are not necessarily dissimilar. The strength of Union leaders as a whole relative to Confederate generals, and the greater strength of the Union in naval and logistical matters and the fact that the North was able to bring more of its top-line troops to bear as the war went on as a result of an influx of escaped slaves, who were then armed in turn as well, gave the Union cause critical strength. Additionally, the fact that the Confederacy fought for a bad cause also influenced its strategy–it had to defend territory aggressively to preserve the system of plantation slavery that its economy and society were based on, which played into Union hands, especially when slaves started escaping and joining up with the Union army.

Often in arguments over the defeat of the Confederacy, there is a tension between external and internal arguments. In many ways, they are like a snake devouring itself, because they begin with the end already known. The fact that the Union was victorious means that explanations for the Confederate defeat must be found somewhere. Nations have fought long and hard for bad causes before, like that of Nazi Germany, and other nations have fought longer and more successfully despite even worse odds in terms of manpower and logistics, whether we are talking of the Americans in the Revolutionary War or of the Paraguayans in the War of the Triple Alliance, to give a couple of obvious examples (the one of the War of the Triple Alliance being partly contemporary with the Civil War). The combined verdict of this book gives a nuanced and complicated answer based on contingency, but that also includes other factors. At key points, the political requirements within the Confederacy for an aggressive defense and the fact that Southern war aims had alienated key manpower allowed for Northern parity or superiority in political and military leadership to prevent the Confederates from gaining victory through a negotiated peace by Europe or a war-weary North and led to critical desertion based on the collapse of the Confederate home front as a result of the critical loss of territory and slaves in the face of successful Union invasions. Despite being a short book, at only about 160 pages of main text, it is a worthwhile one in presenting five interlocking theses that give full credit to the role of military events in determining the course of the Civil War, which is exactly how it should be.