How The South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat
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How the South Could Have Won shows why there is nothing inevitable about military victory, even for a state with overwhelming strength. Alexander provides a startling account of how a relatively small number of tactical and strategic mistakes cost the South the war—and changed the course of history. Debunking some of the most common assumptions about this great conflict, How the South Could Have Won will transform the way you see the war. Alexander documents exactly how a Confederate victory could have come about—and how close it came to happening. Moving beyond fanciful theoretical conjectures to explore actual plans that Confederate generals proposed and the tactics ultimately adopted in the war’s key battle, the book offers surprising analyses on topics such as
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How the Confederacy had its greatest chance to win the war just three months into the fighting—but blew it
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How the Confederacy’s three most important leaders—President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson—clashed over how to fight the war
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How the Civil War’s decisive turning point came in a battle that the Rebel army never needed to fight.
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How the Confederate army devised—but never fully exploited—a way to negate the Union’s huge advantages in manpower and weaponry
- Introduction
- The South's Greatest Opportunity
- Failure at the Battle of Manassas in 1861
- General Pope at Second Manassas 1862
- The Lost Order in the Antietam Campaign 1862
- The Great Mistake of Fighting at Gettysburg