[PEN-L:30299] RE: Re: military strategy

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: RE: [PEN-L:30298] Re: military strategy

 Do you think that the US North's defense of the Union against the South was really against slave society? It had the effect of destroying that society (or at least of converting slaves into debt peons), but the war was about defense of the union, disputes about trade policy, and the like. The idea of freeing the slave (the Emancipation Proclamation) rose to the top as a strategy. You could say that the Union was _pushed_ by circumstances into destroying slave society, but that's not how it started.

Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Carrol Cox
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 9/17/2002 6:34 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:30298] Re: military strategy

Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> Bobbitt, Philip. 2002. The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and
> the Course of History (NY: Knopf).
> 217: "Certainly since Grant and Sherman....
> accepted that modern wars ...would not be won by the elegant
> ....The theory of strategic bombing holds that air
> power will accelerate this process by leapfrogging the lines of
> defense and directly attacking the supporting society....

A reading of Grant's _Memoirs_ makes clear that his strategy (as
described in this passage) does _not_ apply to any war subsequent to (or
preceding) the Civil War (or war to crush the slavedrivers'
insurrection). The Confederate military, the Confederate State, had no
existence _except_ as extensions of the Slave Society. Hence to win the
war in _any_ sense required the destruction of that society, for it was
the society, not the army, that was making war. Hence the rationale for
the principle of Unconditional Surrender. No other princple made sense
_in that war_. But that principle has been purely vicious in all
subsequent wars.

Carrol