Question

If you were in charge of the Confederate war effort, what strategy or strategies would you have pursued? Conversely, if you had to devise the Union strategy, what would you propose? How does your answer depend on your knowledge of how the war actually played out?

Answer 1

If I were in charge of the Confederate war effort, I would have paid a lot more attention to the lack of industry in the South. I would have focused on increasing the number of factories, shipyards and businesses in the region, as opposed to focusing on agricultural production.

If I were in charge of the Union strategy, I would have focused on the issue of slavery earlier in the war and tried to push for emancipation as soon as possible, as this would have allowed former slaves to join the Union earlier. It would have also debilitated the Confederacy faster.

Both of these strategies are heavily dependent on the fact that I know how the war played out. Before the war, it was not clear how industrial development was better for a region than agricultural one (considering both regions were reasonably wealthy). Moreover, it would have also been difficult to guess what the effects of emancipation were going to be in the war effort.