Retreat to Victory?: Confederate Strategy Reconsidered

by Robert G. Tanner

Book Overview

Did 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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 084202882X
• ISBN13: 9780842028820
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

An excellent study and analysis

Tanner has done an excellent job in laying out and then analyzing Confederate war aims, and in the process, debunking those that are advocates of the 'retreat school.' Highly recommended.

Clear, Concise Explanation of What the Confederacy Couldn't Do

Retreat to Victory: Confederate Strategy Reconsidered, Tanner, Robert G., Scholarly Resources, paperback, 161pp, 3 maps., $20.00, 2001 Could the Confederacy won the Civil War by retreating and nipping at the flanks of the invaders? Would four years of Fabian military strategy have saved the South and defeated Lincoln in the presidential election of 1864? No. Robert G. Tanner describes a Fabian war plan that may have been available to President Davis and his generals and his presentation leaves little doubt that a such a policy would not achieved the military or political goals necessary for the survival of the Confederacy. Fabius--the Delayer--led the Roman armies on the Italian peninsula during the 2nd Punic War. Opposing Fabius was Hannibal of Carthage. Tanner states that while Fabian was resisting but not attacking Hannibal, the Republic of Rome was invading Spain and Sicily, both Carthaginian strongholds, and building the fleet that would eventually carry the Roman army to northern Africa. Giving up Southern territory would have undermined that moral of those soldiers whose homes lay behind Federal lines and created losses of industrial facilities, railroads and ports that could not be replaced. Tanner, describes the inadvertent Fabian policy of the Confederacy from April 1861 through January 1862 as a successful one. The Federal advances of February through May in Tennessee, March through June in Virginia, and April through June in Louisiana, made the concentration of Confederate forces necessary. The beginning of the end of the Fabian policy was heralded by the fall of the Pamlico Sound and Roanoke in North Carolina, Jacksonville in Florida, Fort Pulaski in Georgia throughout the late summer and fall on 1861. Criticism of the Confederate selection of Richmond, Virginia as the fledgling nation's capital is noted; but the defensive line of the Rapidan and Rappahannock River, from the Wilderness to the heights of Fredericksburg, is not replicated until the Roanoke River, 100 miles south of Richmond. Also, the industrial strength of Richmond was equal to 50% of the Confederacy. It's loss through a Fabian policy would be cataclysmic. The geography of the American South does not lend itself to a `retreat to victory' policy. If only Texas was east of the Mississippi River! The region where the Union armies, supported by railroads and navies, was actually very large; the area to where the rebel forces could retreat, so as to isolate a Federal army from its supplies was to far from the border states, was very small. The Mississippi, the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Rappahannock, the Red rivers, along with the seacoast provided opportunities for supplying advancing Union armies that limited the region where Confederate armies could demolish a Federal army entirely and away from a ready path of retreat. Also, the existence of slavery and its position as a primary policy of the South eliminated a planned withdrawal of Confederate forces. If th