The Day the South Nearly Won the Civil War
AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
HISTORY
Mar 13, 2020 Guest Blogger
It has become an accepted historical fact that the South could not have won the American Civil War. The North’s advantages in finance, population, railroads, manufacturing, technology, and naval assets, among others, are often cited as prohibitively decisive.
Yes, the South had the advantage of fighting on the defensive, this with interior lines, but those two meager pluses appear dwarfed by the North’s overwhelming strategic advantages, hence defeat virtually a foregone conclusion. But if strategic advantage alone was always decisive in warfare, then names like Marathon, Cowpens, Rorke’s Drift, and Cannae would today be meaningless, and they are not.
Indeed, there are times when the decided underdog wins in war, and there was one day in 1862 when the stars aligned, so to speak, to offer the South a victory of such magnitude that the Civil War might have ended in its favor.
It was June 30, 1862, and for days the Federal Army of the Potomac had been in retreat from Richmond toward the James River in a series of actions later named The Seven Days.
Their leader, General George McClellan – believing erroneous intelligence reports and Confederate misinformation – was fleeing an enemy he fancied 200,000 strong, when in fact the Rebel army was no larger than his own, about 90,000.
The Yankees had already fought several sharp actions at Beaver Dam, Gaines’s Mill, and Savage Station. Now the Federals were marching in strung-out columns on the few roads leading south, while the Confederates had the advantage of a series of roads that ran east and west.
After attempts to break the Federal line at White Oak Swamp had failed, General Robert E. Lee, the recently appointed Confederate commander, glanced at his map and immediately grasped his good fortune, for the road network below the swamp appeared to offer a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Lincoln and George McClellan after the Battle of Antietam in 1862.
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https://www.warhistoryonline.com/american-civil-war/civil-war.html
