The Defeat of The Confederacy Essay - 1810 Words

There were several reasons for the defeat of the Confederacy which included no industrial base, (Donald 1996, p. 99) inadequate transportation net (Donald, 1996, p. 99), and bickering among the generals (McPherson Hogue, 2009, p. 365) etc., but the overriding factor was that the Confederacy never became a nation (Donald, 1996, p. 100). That is, they seceded because the Southern states believed they had the right as independent States to do so (Donald, 1996, p. 7). The South lost because they never stopped believing this. No state could depend on any other for full support of the war. The Governor of Georgia specifically prohibited his troops from fighting outside the state for many months. Many governors set limits on how many†¦show more content†¦The entire truly tragic sense of the Lost Cause was that the South’s men knew their cause was lost, they knew there was really no way they could possibly win, and yet they fought on with tremendous bravery and dedicati on. The Civil War was such a poignant and even heart-wrenching time (Bowman, 2006, p.756). Despite the long-held notion that the South had all of the better generals, it really had only one good Army commander and that was General Lee. The rest were second-raters, at best (Donald, 1996, pp. 9-21). The North, on the other hand, had the good fortune of bringing along and nurturing people like Ulysses Grant, William Sherman, Philip Sheridan, George Thomas, and others. The South was way outclassed industrially (Donald, 1996, pp. 70-74). There was probably never any chance her winning without European recognition and military aid (Donald, 1996, p. 74); Jefferson Davis, realized at the time, that there was never any real hope of Europe intervening. It just never was in England or Frances best interests to get involved in a North American war. Industrially, the South could not keep up in output and in manpower (Donald, 1996, pp. 7-16). By the end of the war, the South had, more or less, plenty of weaponry still, but it just did not have enough men to sustain the use of the guns (Donald, 1996, pp. 18-19). History of the United States Columbian Exchange Colonialism The European and native AmericanShow MoreRelatedFollowing The Defeat Of The Confederacy In 1865, Nathan790 Words   |  4 PagesFollowing the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, Nathan B. Forrest was held in high regards in the south as a â€Å"War Hero†. It was reported that he had twenty-nine horse shot out from under him, killed or wounded thirty soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, and being wounded four separate times himself.1 The Ku Klux Klan was already in existence when they offered him a position of command in the fight against reconstruction and corruption that came with it. 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