Running Head: 1

Why did the South lose The Civil War?

By [Name of Student]

Course

Professor

[Name of Institution]

April 22nd, 2019

Introduction

American civil war is the biggest event in American history. It is that event which changed

America’s history and America itself. It is one of those events which shaped not only USA for

the future but the whole world. The civil war began in America in 1861 and lasted for over 4

years till 1864. It was a long civil war of 4 years of continuous fighting and conflicts. This war

was defining moment in the history of America. Although America itself was created because of

a revolution but this civil war determined what kind of country and nation it would eventually

be. The civil war decided on two very important issues that shaped USA; the fact weather what

kind of structure USA would have, would it be a confederation state that is dissolvable or would

it be a united nation with sovereign states. It was a defining moment in the issue to decide what

path this nation would choose being made on the declaration of being a nation where all men are

equal with equal rights while also being the largest slave holding country in the world

(McPherson 2017).

The civil war didn’t break out all of a sudden; it had a lot of history behind it. The civil war

broke out after decades of tensions between the southern states of America and northern states.

The southern states were all states with slavery and were confederation states while northern

states were states against slavery and were free states. The differences were such that no

compromise could be reached. The final push was Lincoln winning the elections in 1860 and

making a pledge to abolish slavery. After that the southern slave states announced to secede and

went on to form a separate nation. The northern states didn’t recognize this and then an incident

at Fort Sumter on April 12th, 1861 where the Confederate army forced the garrison to lower the

American flag with open fire with the northern states eventually winning after four years of war

in 1864 with confederate states surrendering. The civil war is by far the deadliest war ever fought
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on American soil with 620,000 soldiers killed, millions injured and infrastructure of south ruined

(History n.d.).

Why did the South lose the Civil War?

The south lost the civil war for a number of reasons. There were a couple of departments in

which the North had a clear upper hand against the South which contributed to them losing. First

one being resources. The north had a clear upper hand in departments of resources, they had way

more men who could fight and they had a huge and stable economy to support that fight as

compared to the south. The north had an economy which was stronger in the manufacturing thus

being able to provide war materials easily to their soldiers. The north was producing nearly all of

the countries weapons thus the upper hand. In terms of population the north had almost the

double of the population of south thus more people to fight. Apart from that the north had a fully

developed infrastructure like roads and rail which gave easy and fast supplies (ZEBROWSKI

1999).

Secondly, strategy played a big part in the civil war; bad strategy in the case of the south and

good strategy in the case of the north. The battle was for the north to take back the rebellious

land back and defeat the whole south, the south only had to defend itself and it failed to do so.

The south had a huge territory which almost had 750,000 square miles. It is impossible to defend

such a huge territory with limited resources and so the strategy of south should have been to give

up land which wasn’t of that much importance and fully focus on defending the key areas and

cities, more like ‘holding the fort’. The south tried to defend all its territory with limited

resources against the north that had ample resources and this turned out to be a failed strategy.
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Another problem with the strategy of south was that it gave all the initiative to the north, they

could attack whenever and wherever they wanted when there would be the most advantage and

the south would have limited opportunity to react (Boritt 1992).

Thirdly the performance on the battle field played a very important role in deciding who won the

civil war. Despite the south having lesser resources than the north and lesser soldiers to fight, the

combatants on the field were equal to each other in terms of training and fighting skills as many

had fought wars together before the civil war broke out. The battle between the combatants was

intense but because the north was superior in arms and men, they always had the upper hand and

few blunders by the generals of the south made south’s loss inevitable. For example Lee’s two

invasions of the north were uncalled for and turned into two horrific battles; Antietam and

Gettysburg. Similarly the southern General Bragg didn’t follow up on his victory at

Chickamauga and gave ample time to the northern general to re gather themselves and defeat re

capture the area back and defeat the southern general. Such mistakes by the southern generals in

the battle field contributed a lot to the eventual defeat of the south (Still 1986).

Conclusion

Having researched and discussed the reasons on why the south lost the American Civil War, it is

quite evident that there is never one single factor that contributes to losing a war. There are

several factors combined, several failures piling up, several mistakes happening that lead to the

eventual loss. In the case of the south it was the wrong strategy used to defend itself and several

mistakes in the battle field while already being behind in numbers and arms as compared to the

north. Having said that the civil war went on for 4 long years and the south fought till it
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exhausted everything it had meaning it showed great resistance until it succumbed to its

inevitable defeat (History n.d.).

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References

Boritt, Gabor S. Why the Confederacy Lost. New york: Oxford university press, 1992.

History. "Civil War." History.

McPherson, Dr. James. "A Defining Time in Our Nation's History." American Battle Field Trust, 2017.

Still, Willian N. Why the South Lost the Civil War. London: The University of Georgia press, 1986.

ZEBROWSKI, CARL. "Why the south lost the civil war?" February' 99 American History Feature, 1999.