Could guerrilla warfare have won Civil War
for South? History scholar raises question

A distinguished history professor at the University of Arkansas maintains the Confederacy lost the Civil War by miscalculation.

It could have been different if the South had waged a guerrilla campaign, Daniel E. Sutherland suggests.

“Tens of thousands of rabid Confederates wanted to fight as guerrillas – and at least 30,000 of them (a conservative estimate) ended up doing so,” he said.

“No need to wait for armies to be recruited, armed and trained. No need to endure the tedious drill and routine or restrictive regulations of military life. Simply grab a musket, hatchet or Bowie knife; then pounce.

“Was that not, these enthusiasts asked, how such Revolutionary southern patriots as Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox,” defeated the British? Was that not how generations of southerners had defended their homesteads against marauding Indians? For people who prided themselves on their talents as woodsmen, marksmen and horsemen, it was a natural way to fight.”

Some southerners regarded guerrilla warfare as a necessity, Sutherland continued.

“First, in the opening months of conflict, the Confederacy did not have enough conventional soldiers to confront the Federals everywhere necessary,” he commented. “The earliest comparative numbers show nearly 530,000 Union troops in the field by the end of 1861, compared to 260,000 Confederates. This 2:1 ratio would continue throughout the war.

“This was especially true in the border slave states of Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland, which had remained in the Union. Only sabotage, ambushes and constant harassment could hope to disrupt, or at least slow, the Union war machine in those places.

Equally important, Confederates believed that irregular bands were the only way to defend their property and families against neighboring Unionists, many of whom had formed their own guerrilla companies, although in smaller numbers.

“Consequently, communities that never saw columns of marching soldiers or heard the boom of cannons became embroiled in bitter brawls.”

Such conflicts broke out initially in the border states, but they spread quickly to any part of the South, such as Northwest Virginia or West Tennessee, where anti-Confederates (those white southerners who opposed the Confederacy, for whatever reason, including Unionists) threatened the status quo.

As Union armies moved ever deeper into the South, emboldened local Unionists who had earlier hesitated for safety’s sake to resist rebel rule now felt confident enough to take up arms.

“Just weeks after the start of the war,” Sutherland noted, “the governor of Virginia and his chief military advisor agreed that where the ‘organized forces’ of the army proved inadequate, they would rely on ‘the bold hearts and strong arms of a united people, to make each house a citadel, and every rock and tree positions of defense.’ A year later, General Thomas C. Hindman called on the citizens of Arkansas to attack the Union invader ‘day and night,’ to ‘kill his scouts and pickets, kill his pilots and his troops on transports, cut off his wagon trains … shoot his mounted officers.’”

The longer the general war continued, however, the more often the guerrilla war became a means to suppress or punish dissenters. As such, the guerrilla war soon spun out of control. A degree of vigilante justice often tarnished rebel actions. Then, too, thieves and outlaws notorious in their communities, seeing a chance for plunder, claimed the mantle of either the Union or Confederacy to exploit the disorder.

When Confederate officials finally tried to organize their guerrilla fighters into formal military units, called Partisan Rangers, and ordered them to follow army rules, regulations and directives, it was too late. Few independent guerrilla bands were willing to sacrifice their freedom of movement or leave their communities to the mercy of the enemy. As a result, the chaos intensified and expanded. An organized guerrilla warfare plan could have been an effective difference maker.

“It could be argued, as indeed my research has highlighted, that the Confederates’ gravest error was to wage not only a conventional war, but also a guerrilla campaign,” Sutherland concluded.