Retreat to Victory?: Confederate Strategy ReconsideredDid Confederate armies attack too often for their own good? Was the relentless, sometimes costly effort to preserve territory a blunder? Why great battles in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Tennessee rather than well-laid ambushes in Alabama's sandhills or the pine forests of the Carolinas? These questions about Confederate strategy have dogged historians since Appomattox. Many have come to believe that the South might have won the Civil War if it had only avoided head-on battles, conducted an aggressive guerrilla campaign, and maneuvered across wide swaths of territory to exhaust the Union's willingness to continue the war. Retreat to Victory? Confederate Strategy Reconsidered challenges this widely held theory. Robert G. Tanner argues that deep retreats and battle avoidance (the strategy of maneuver rather than combat) were not available to Southern leaders in planning their wartime strategy. The South fought as it did for valid reasons, according to Tanner, and this book examines these reasons in detail, including the South's need to protect its slave-based economy, to establish a state's rights-oriented government, and to win independence from the Union. Tanner uses Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz's classic On War as a means for evaluating Confederate actions. On War provides a single measure for testing claims that the South could have prevailed by avoiding battles and forcing the Union to hold large tracts of land. Provocative and carefully researched, Retreat to Victory offers a fresh perspective on Confederate strategy and makes an important contribution to the field that no serious student of American history will want to miss. |
From inside the book
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... battles in Pennsylvania , Maryland , Virginia , and Tennessee rather than well - laid ambushes in Alabama's sandhills or ... battle was the high road to Southern independence . For example , the 1862 Seven Days Campaign on Virginia's ...
... battles . Thus , Bevin Alexander , a combat historian , is highly critical of the decision to fight outside Richmond . He rea- sons that the Union had positioned its largest army to allow the rebels to deliver a heart - piercing thrust ...
... battles of annihilation are the prescribed solution for victory . The failure to resort to wholesale guerrilla warfare is regarded as a particularly rich opportunity missed . One historian expresses disbelief that the Union " could have ...
... battles , particularly offensive battles . Civil War actions could be murderous affairs . Heavy casualties were almost guar ... battle ; repeatedly , he sur- rendered rich provinces rather than be lured into a direct clash . He utilized ...
... battle - bugle . The University of Virginia's Professor Gary Gallagher faults Lee's decision to fight the Battle of Antietam since Lee supposedly stood to " gain not a single military advan- tage " there , while a Fellow of the Company ...
Contents
CONFEDERATE STRATEGY AN OVERVIEW | xxiii |
CONFEDERATE GEOGRAPHY | 21 |
REBEL ARMIES ON THE MARCH | 45 |
ON CLAUSEWITZ | 71 |
SLAVERY AND CONFEDERATE STRATEGY | 85 |
INDEPENDENCE AND CONFEDERATE STRATEGY | 113 |
NO PLACE TO HIDE | 139 |
Bibliographical Essay | 147 |
Index | 153 |