Assess the reasons why the Union failed to win the Civil War by 1863. - page 1
Keywords: American Civil War
By 4stuchfi on 01/10/2008
Level: A Level (Year 13)
Page Number: 1 of 3 pages: 1 2 3
The Union came very close to winning the Civil War in the first three years but failed because of a lack of quality in leadership, supply problems and difficulties adjusting to the lay of the land.
The Union expected the war to be short, they knew they had a far superior economy and industry, better arms and more men in their army and so they were sure that they would conquer the Confederacy quickly and save the Union. However the Confederacy believed that if they could draw the war out long enough then the Union would give up and leave them be separate from the Union and so they defended so that battles would last longer. They believed the Union would not win as easily as they believed; the Confederacy had more to fight for than the Union and so they were more determined. If they lost they knew their lives would be up-turned, they wouldn’t be able to secede from the Union and slavery, which they depended upon greatly, would be abolished leaving them in an economic crisis.
The first battle of the war, The Bull Run or The First Manassas saw the Union come very close to a decisive victory however The Confederacy fought bravely and with the arrival of Johnston’s troops they were able to hand off the enemy, the Union soldiers fled. The Union was outnumbered but the defeat spurred them on to fight harder. In May 1861 New Orleans was captured and it seemed that the confederacy was on the verge of defeat. Throughout the battles in 1861 the Confederacy lost a lot of men, thousands more than the Union did, this is important because the Confederate army was already smaller than that of the Union. It seemed that the huge losses the Confederacy were sustaining would shorten the war, however the introduction of ‘stonewall’ Jackson and Robert E. Lee as generals of the army meant that the Union would be put on the back foot and victory would not be as easy as they first thought. The second Manassas showed this well, it was a disaster for the Union, and Lee’s operations proved to overcome Pope’s army and the Union as a result lost 16,000 men.
The Union had many chances to win the war quicker than they did, McClellan and his indecisive leadership was a main factor of this. Antietam could have been the turning
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