Editing Confederate States of America (section)

===Military strategy===
Civil War historian [[E. Merton Coulter]] wrote that for those who would secure its independence, "The Confederacy was unfortunate in its failure to work out a general strategy for the whole war". Aggressive strategy called for offensive force concentration. Defensive strategy sought dispersal to meet demands of locally minded governors. The controlling philosophy evolved into a combination "dispersal with a defensive concentration around Richmond". The Davis administration considered the war purely defensive, a "simple demand that the people of the United States would cease to war upon us".<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 342–343</ref> Historian [[James M. McPherson]] is a critic of Lee's offensive strategy: "Lee pursued a faulty military strategy that ensured Confederate defeat".<ref>{{cite book|author=James M. McPherson Professor of American History Princeton University|title=Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War: Reflections on the American Civil War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KejHFo7A8eQC&pg=PA152|year=1996|publisher=Oxford U.P.|page=152|isbn=978-0199727834}}</ref>

As the Confederate government lost control of territory in campaign after campaign, it was said that "the vast size of the Confederacy would make its conquest impossible". The enemy would be struck down by the same elements which so often debilitated or destroyed visitors and transplants in the South: heat exhaustion, sunstroke, and endemic diseases such as malaria and typhoid.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 348. "The enemy could not hold territory, a hostile people would close in behind. The Confederacy still existed wherever there was an army under her unfurled banners."</ref>

[[File:Seal of the Confederate States of America.svg|thumb|The Seal<!-- "Great" would be historically inaccurate, and was not in the 1863 law passed by the C.S. Congress establishing the Seal. --> has symbols of an independent agricultural Confederacy surrounding an equestrian Washington, sword encased.{{efn|The cash crops circling the Seal are wheat, corn, tobacco, cotton, rice and sugar cane. Like Washington's equestrian statue honoring him at [[Union Square (New York City)#Union Square Partnership|Union Square]] NYC 1856, slaveholding Washington is pictured in his uniform of the Revolution securing American independence. Though armed, he does not have his sword drawn as he is depicted in the [[Washington Monument (Richmond, Virginia)|equestrian statue at the Virginia Capitol, Richmond, Virginia]]. The plates for the Seal were engraved in England but never received due to the Union Blockade.}}]]

Early in the war, both sides believed that one great battle would decide the conflict; the Confederates won a surprise victory at the [[First Battle of Bull Run]], also known as [[First Manassas]] (the name used by Confederate forces). It drove the Confederate people "insane with joy"; the public demanded a forward movement to capture Washington, relocate the Confederate capital there, and admit [[Maryland in the Civil War|Maryland]] to the Confederacy.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 343</ref> A council of war by the victorious Confederate generals decided not to advance against larger numbers of fresh Federal troops in defensive positions. Davis did not countermand it. Following the Confederate incursion into Maryland halted at the [[Battle of Antietam]] in October 1862, generals proposed concentrating forces from state commands to re-invade the north. Nothing came of it.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 346</ref> Again in mid-1863 at his incursion into Pennsylvania, Lee requested of Davis that Beauregard simultaneously attack Washington with troops taken from the Carolinas. But the troops there remained in place during the [[Gettysburg Campaign]].

The eleven states of the Confederacy were outnumbered by the North about four-to-one in military manpower. It was overmatched far more in military equipment, industrial facilities, railroads for transport, and wagons supplying the front.

Confederates slowed the Yankee invaders, at heavy cost to the Southern infrastructure. The Confederates burned bridges, laid [[land mine]]s in the roads, and made harbors inlets and inland waterways unusable with sunken mines (called "torpedoes" at the time). Coulter reports:

{{Blockquote|Rangers in twenty to fifty-man units were awarded 50% valuation for property destroyed behind Union lines, regardless of location or loyalty. As Federals occupied the South, objections by loyal Confederate concerning Ranger horse-stealing and indiscriminate scorched earth tactics behind Union lines led to Congress abolishing the Ranger service two years later.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 333–338.</ref>}}

The Confederacy relied on external sources for war materials. The first came from trade with the enemy. "Vast amounts of war supplies" came through Kentucky, and thereafter, western armies were "to a very considerable extent" provisioned with illicit trade via Federal agents and northern private traders.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 286. After capture by Federals, [[Memphis, Tennessee#19th century|Memphis]], TN became a major source of supply for Confederate armies, comparable to Nassau and its [[Blockade runners of the American Civil War|blockade runners]].</ref> But that trade was interrupted in the first year of war by [[David Dixon Porter|Admiral Porter]]'s river gunboats as they gained dominance along navigable rivers north–south and east–west.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 306. Confederate units harassed them throughout the war years by laying torpedo mines and loosing barrages from shoreline batteries.</ref> Overseas blockade running then came to be of "outstanding importance".<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 287–288. The principal ports on the Atlantic were [[Wilmington, North Carolina in the American Civil War|Wilmington]], North Carolina, [[Charleston, South Carolina#Civil War (1861–1865)|Charleston]], South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia for supplies from Europe via Bermuda and Nassau. On the Gulf were Galveston, Texas and [[New Orleans in the American Civil War|New Orleans]], Louisiana for those from Havana, Cuba and Mexican ports of Tampico and Vera Cruz.</ref> On April 17, President Davis called on privateer raiders, the "militia of the sea", to wage war on U.S. seaborne commerce.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 296, 304. Two days later Lincoln proclaimed a blockade, declaring them pirates. Davis responded with [[letters of marque]] to protect privateers from outlaw status. Some of the early raiders were converted merchantmen seized in Southern ports at the outbreak of the war</ref> Despite noteworthy effort, over the course of the war the Confederacy was found unable to match the Union in ships and seamanship, materials and marine construction.<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', pp. 299–302. The [[Confederate Secret Service#Torpedo Bureau|Torpedo Bureau]] seeded defensive water-borne mines in principal harbors and rivers to compromise the Union naval superiority. These "torpedoes" were said to have caused more loss in U.S. naval ships and transports than by any other cause. Despite a rage for Congressional appropriations and public "subscription ironclads", armored platforms constructed in blockaded ports lacked the requisite marine engines to become ironclad warships. The armored platforms intended to become ironclads were employed instead as floating batteries for port city defense.</ref>

An inescapable obstacle to success in the warfare of mass armies was the Confederacy's lack of manpower, and sufficient numbers of disciplined, equipped troops in the field at the point of contact with the enemy. During the winter of 1862–63, Lee observed that none of his famous victories had resulted in the destruction of the opposing army. He lacked reserve troops to exploit an advantage on the battlefield as Napoleon had done. Lee explained, "More than once have most promising opportunities been lost for want of men to take advantage of them, and victory itself had been made to put on the appearance of defeat, because our diminished and exhausted troops have been unable to renew a successful struggle against fresh numbers of the enemy."<ref>Coulter, ''The Confederate States of America'', p. 321</ref>