Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Volume 6: Volume 6

47. Why the Confederacy Failed

566 47 Why the Confederacy Failed Duncan Rose if a person be asked the question, “Why did the states fail seceding to win independence in the war of 1861–65,” the chances are that he will give one of two answers. It is likely that he will say that it was never intended that they should win; that America was designed by almighty Providence for one great nation; that it is not divided by interior seas and other natural boundaries, but is essentially one country; and that any effort to divide it,not being a good cause, must fail. If he does not give such an answer as this, it is probable that he will say especially if he is a Southerner that the South was overpowered by the superior numbers and resources of the North. Now,the first of these answers is not satisfying.Whatever happens is intended to happen. If the Southern states had succeeded in their effort to separate from the North and to set up a government for themselves, it could have been said with equal truth that it was intended to be so.As to the oneness of the country ,Canada and Mexico are also a part of this one country; for hundreds of miles they are separated from it by imaginary lines only. As to the other answer, all history teaches that in a war for independence superiority in numbers does not count.For instance, the little republic of Switzerland , surrounded by kingdoms and empires in arms, won its independence upward of six hundred years ago, and is independent today, yet it has, and has always had, only an army of militia. The little principality of Montenegro has been fighting the Turks since the fall of Constantinople,even before the discovery of America.The Dutch republic,and Scotland under Wallace and Bruce,and Prussia under Frederick II in the Seven Years’ War, and America in the Revolution , all succeeded with greater odds of numbers against them than were opposed to the seceding states. And today Cuba, with only a million and a half of population,seems to be successfully fighting Spain with nearly twenty millions. No; in a war for independence numbers do not count, and it has not often hap09 .565-592_Cozz 12/2/03, 8:58 AM 566 Why the Confederacy Failed • 567 Cotton Culture in the South (Harper’s Weekly) 09.565-592_Cozz 12/2/03, 8:58 AM 567 568 • part 9: epilogue pened in the history of the world that a people who have fought with such desperate valor as the Confederates displayed have failed to win independence. As to material resources, there is no region under the sun more blessed in natural resources for waging war than the territory formed by the eleven seceding states. Within their own borders was to be found everything necessary for arming,equipping,feeding,and clothing their armies.The history of the industrial development of the South during the war has never yet been written. It is even more wonderful than that of its armies in the field, and is the most striking proof of that versatility and ingenuity which are peculiar to the American people. Before the war it was purely an agricultural people; there were no shipyards , dockyards, factories, or machine shops to speak of.Within a few months after hostilities began these farmers and planters were building ironclads, marine boilers and engines, and torpedoes and torpedo boats, and founding cannon and shells, and manufacturing muskets and rifles. When Sumter was fired upon there was not a powder factory in all the land. Soon almost every village had its piles of refuse for making saltpeter, and before the war ended the factories in Georgia and North Carolina could have supplied all the armies in the field with gunpowder. Cotton factories had also been built, and were all at work making cloth for the soldiers and there was plenty of food in the South, though the soldiers failed to get their share of it, for corn had taken the place of cotton in the fields, and there was an abundance of cattle and hogs. In the last year of the war Sherman’s army marched through the South, not starving, like [General Robert E.] Lee’s men in the trenches before Petersburg, but living upon the fat of the land.No; there was no lack of men and warlike...